Is it sensible to get a Dedicated IP on shared hosting?

Question

I'm thinking to get Dedicated IP for my Shared Hosting (I'm running wordpress on shared hosting). Will it be beneficial for me? Above all, my shared hosting won't misbehave after i get it?

Answer 1

Yes as answered above, dedicated IP does help in a shared hosting environment where if the main shared IP gets blacklisted and the datacenter decides to null routes the IP address, all the sites sharing that IP will get offline.

In the past having a dedicated IP address was a requirement for installing SSL certificates, which had some SEO advantages as well. But, now you can install an SSL certificate without dedicated IP on any shared hosting. So I wouldn't say it's beneficial.

Do note that if you decide to get a dedicated IP for your site, having already a shared IP address, once IP is changed there is going to be some propagation period for the new IP. So you may get site loading issues for a few hours.

Answer 2

Certainly get it if you can afford it. No matter if it is shared or shared-reseller hosting (where you can assign your dedicated ip as your own shared ip for your websites).

It will make your websites more independent, especially if you use self hosted e-mail system on your shared hosting. Like Fahad said, there are IP blacklists, and when some bots hack weakly protected websites or flood their contact forms with spam the IP usually gets blacklisted soon after and all the websites which use that IP suffers from that.

You asked if it can break / misbehave something - yes it can, but its all solvable, if you know your stuff (changing DNS settings, etc) . You can always revert back to your shared IP, if you feel you are getting in too much trouble.

Answer 3

Dedicated IP is good for security due to the following reasons:

1. In case when the shared IP is blacklisted, all domains pointed to this IP will be involved. But if you are using the dedicated IP, you will not experience any issues as you have another IP.
2. It will be possible to reach the domain using the IP address. This option will allow you to avoid the DNS cache poisoning.