Dedicated IP is a unique IP-address, which belongs to your website only and is not used by any other web-resource.
Websites without a dedicated IP are assigned a common IP-address. More often than not, such an address is shared between dozens or even hundreds of websites. And if one of those websites is a) under a DDoS attack; b) using some illegitimate SEO techniques and thus is blocked from search engines; c) sends spam to its clients and is thus blocked by mail providers; or d) is blocked by internet providers for hosting data that is illegal in this region, the consequences are felt by all the websites that share the IP-address.
Advantages of a dedicated IP
- Independence. With a dedicated IP, each website is responsible only for their own actions.
- Precise statistics. Statistics for the number of visitors to your dedicated IP are much more precise than anything that can be applied to the website with a shared IP address.
- Ability to use specialized software. Only with a dedicated IP you can use non-standard ports for the program servers, setup an anonymous FTP-access and use VPN. Thus, a lot of specialized software refuses to work without a dedicated IP, for example a local mail service.
So if you are serious about your web-project and do not want it to suffer due to the actions of completely unrelated people — you need a dedicated IP-address. Dedicated IPs are provided for free to the owners of Unihost dedicated servers or VPS’s, but must be bought separately for the shared hosting.