What is Shared Hosting?

Introduction

 

Many hosting companies provide hosting services and the most commonly used hosting service is the
Shared Hosting Service. Most of the people prefer shared hosting to host their websites because of the
less cost of hosting.

Just because of the costing, one should not consider the Shared Hosting Services as a preferred hosting
to host the website. Before selecting a hosting, one should know about the features, advantages,
disadvantages, cost and then decide whether shared hosting is beneficial for them or not.

 

What is Shared Hosting?

 

Shared Hosting Services, as the name suggests, it is shared. Customer needs to share the resources of
the server with other customers. In simple words, it is like a public transport which is shared by many
people and you just pay for your own seat. In a shared hosting environment, many websites are hosted
on the same server and the number of websites can be less or large depending on the configuration of
the server. Normally, from 200 to more than a thousand websites are hosted on such shared servers.

Each customer on a shared server has limited resources. No user is allowed to use more resources than
allocated. These resources are defined by the hosting provider. This, however, raises the question of
performance. Such shared hosting services are highly equipped to handle reasonable loads, but when
overloaded, the performance of the server is an issue. Most of the Hosting companies will constantly
review the load and performance of the server and act accordingly. A reputed hosting company has a
limit of the accounts on a server.

 

How Shared Hosting Works

 

Shared hosting offers you all the necessary tools to host a website. You can manage databases, emails,
FTP accounts, and add multiple websites in just a few bucks. It offers the resources for the amount which
you are paying. The higher you pay the more resources you will get. The resources like CPU, RAM,
and Bandwidth allocated to your account define the performance of your website.

Most of the hosting companies offer three or four plans of shared hosting. Each plan comes with
different resources and limits. A customer needs to look for the CPU and RAM column before selecting
their plan. A normal blog can work with fewer resources but eCommerce websites require more
resources.

 

Things to Consider Before Purchasing Shared Hosting

 

Shared hosting is the cheapest among all hosting services but there are many factors that need to be
considered before selecting Shared Hosting. There are certain points that you must check out before
making a final decision. Below are the some most important factors:

 

Bandwidth:

 

 

Bandwidth describes the amount of the traffic allowed and the data can transfer between the user and
your website. It gives you a fair amount of ideas if you need to worry about the number of traffic.
Bandwidth also matters if your website has heavy images, audios or videos. Each hosting company
offers a different amount of bandwidth in each plan. If your website has high traffic, then low
bandwidth will definitely impact the performance of your website. If you have a small website or blogs
with not much traffic, you should not worry about the bandwidth.

 

Storage:

 

 

Storage is one of the key factors in hosting companies. It is the amount of the disk space allocated to
your account. Your account will not able to use more disk space than allocated. Most of the companies
only allow you to keep website-related data on the server. You cannot use it as a storage space to store
your files, backup, etc. If your website is only an informational website or running a blog, you will not
need to worry about the disk space. Even the lowest plan offered by hosting providers cover the
minimum space required for running a small website.

 

The number of add-on domains:

 

 

Add-on domains are the factor that you need to check out if you are planning to host multiple websites
in shared hosting. Most of the hosting companies offer a good number of addon domains. The lowest
plan mostly does not offer any add-on domains. You will need to be careful while selecting the plan if
you want to host multiple websites.

Also, Initially you may start with a single website but later you may plan to host additional websites.
Purchasing new hosting for every new website will put an additional burden on your pocket.

 

Customer Support:

 

 

The backbone of a reputed hosting provider is customer support. The best hosting companies offer
24X7 Support and within minimum wait time. There are various methods of support available
including, email, telephone, live chat. Before purchasing hosting services, you will need to make sure
that the hosting company has a great technical support team that also covers shared hosting customers. A
good technical support team always helps you to keep your website online when something happens to
websites.

 

CPU and Physical memory:

 

 

It is also important to take a look at other important resources such as CPU and RAM. These factors are
one of the major factors which affect your website’s performance and mostly customer ignore these
factors. For an example, consider your own personal laptop, if you have less CPU power and Physical
Memory (RAM), the performance of the system will be sluggish whereas systems with good
configuration operate without any issue.

The optimal resources are always required for a better performance of your website. The resources
requirement usually depends upon the nature of the website. If you have an eCommerce website, it will
require more resources than a blog or informative websites.

 

Pricing:

 

 

Shared hosting is popular because of its costing. Most of the hosting providers offer different plans
with different price ranges. You can purchase the hosting as per your budget and needs. You can pay for
the hosting every month or pay upfront for six months or a year or more. The monthly reoccurring
payments are costlier than a longer time hosting period. If you are deciding a host on a basis of
features, you should select an annual plan to save some additional bucks.

You also should need to review the renewal cost of the plan. Most of the hosting companies offer a
discount on the first payment and the costing looks promising at first glance. However, the renew
costing of the plan may different what they offer on the first payment. It is wise to review the costing
before purchasing a hosting plan.

 

Back-up/Security:

 

 

Your website data is most important for your business and nothing can be more important than your
website. Security and regular backups are very important for online business. Disaster can happen to
anyone at any time and the backups are required to restore your website in case any difficulties.
Backups are always required for unwanted data loss. It can occur in the form of hacking, human error,
component failures.

Not every shared plan comes with a backups option. Some providers offer backup options at an
additional cost or some include limited backups in the plans. Usually, backups are taken on a daily
basis and kept for some days. This may vary from provider to provider as per their backup policies. It is
always recommended to maintain your own backup as well to avoid any hiccups of shared hosting.

 

Refund Policy:

 

 

This is an important aspect because when you are purchasing a hosting plan and need to stop the
service due to any reason such as you are not satisfied with the hosting services, you are moving
another hosting provider, you will need the money back for the remaining term.

It is also good to review the Money Back Guaranteed terms offered by the service provider. Some
provider offers 30 days Money Back Guaranty and some host offer anytime money-back offer. It is
very important when you are purchasing a shared plan from a new hosting provider and want to test the
services before finalizing the things.

 

Advantages of the Shared Hosting:

 

Shared Hosting comes with lots of advantages and features. Below are some of the major advantages of
the Shared Hosting:

 

Affordable:

 

 

The shared hosting environment is shared by many users, hence, it is very cheap compared to other
hosting services. For small businesses or new startups shared hosting is the best suitable hosting. It
offers you great features at a minimal cost. It allows you to grow your business while least spending on
the hosting services.

 

Fast Support and Maintenance:

 

 

Shared Servers are maintained and managed by highly skilled professionals. Hosting companies are
responsible for maintaining the essential components of the servers. Since multiple websites hosted on
the shared server, hosting companies monitor the shared servers very closely to mitigate the downtime.
It also allows the host to offer fast rates and technical support to shared customers.

This is the benefit of the shared hosting, you can more freely concentrate on your business instead of
thinking about managing your account.

 

Good Efficiency:

 

 

Efficiency is one of the benefits of shared hosting. The most crucial aspect of web hosting is disk space
and bandwidth. Shared hosting offers enough disk space and bandwidth for your websites. The
bandwidth allows you to run your websites efficiently. If you are planning to begin your hosting then
shared hosting is the best option without any worry of bandwidth and disk space.

 

User-Friendly:

 

 

Building your website is the first step to take our business online and the next step is to host the website
online. The hosting provider offers a very user-friendly panel to host the website and offer various
tools. Hosting companies provide a Cpanel panel that is very user-friendly and it has efficient tools that
help with the configuration and setup of your website.

User-Friendly panels allow to upload and modify the content of your website easily. It also offers other
tools to manage databases, FTP accounts, emails, visitor statistics, and marketing tools etc with a
simple click.

 

Room to Grow:

 

 

Shared hosting is the best option for starters, blogs, and informational websites. The business grows
with the time and the website traffic too. As your business and the website started to exceed the
resources of the shared servers.

The heavy websites especially which have lots of images, videos consume more bandwidth and with
heavy traffic the bandwidth consume will begin to constrain. This will make an impact on the
performance of the website.

The growing website needs more resources and shared hosting allows more flexible features for a
hassle-free upgrade to higher plans.

 

Disadvantages of the shared server

 

Shared hosting also has some disadvantages as well, below are some of them:

 

Limited Resources:

 

 

The shared server’s resources are shared multiple customers and this is one of its big disadvantages.
You may need to suffer because some other customer abusing the server resources and making it
unstable. The server may get overwhelmed by demands or over-burden which may make it stop.
Because of this, you may start losing some of your potential customers.

As your website grow, you will need to upgrade your hosting to more powerful VPS or Dedicated
servers.

 

Security:

 

 

Security is one of the major concerns about shared hosting. Sharing the same server 100s of the
customers will make it prone to hacking-related attempts. If one of the websites is hacked or malware
on another website will also create problems for your website. However, the hosting provider adopts
the methods to restrict an account to its own zone which protects other accounts from any malicious
activities.

 

Limited Access:

 

 

The shared servers are managed by the hosting companies. They are in charge of managing the server
and installation of any software on the server. Since you are paying just for your own account, you
cannot make any changes at the server level. You cannot install new software, customize existing
installation or make amendments in the limits.

Hosting companies also offer SSH access but the access is restricted. You cannot do anything outside of
your area. You also do not have a choice over the application and software and bound to use only
applications provided by the hosting provider.

 

Will Shared Hosting works for you?

 

You are the only one who can answer this question. After reviewing the features, advantages, and
disadvantages of the shared hosting services, you should be able to make a decision if it rightly suits
your or your website’s needs.

If you are starting your business, running a blog or your website is to provide information about your
business, then you should not worry about a thing. Shared hosting is the perfect solution to start. It
provides you with everything that you need to begin with and that too in a limited budget.

However, if you are expecting high traffic and your business grow in recent time, then shared hosting
may not be an ideal solution for you.

 

Alternative of Shared Hosting

 

When your business grows it is the time to upgrade to more powerful hosting solutions. The next stop
for you will be the VPS server or Dedicated server. These servers are capable of handling more traffic
and give you the independence to boost your business. You will not share resources with other
customers in VPS and Dedicated hosting.

The VPS and Dedicated hosting are costlier than a basic shared hosting plan. However, they will
provide you with more resources and freedom of customization of the server environment as per your needs.