Shared Web Hosting is a type of hosting, where users share resources of a single server or a set of servers with others. Shared Web Hosting is the most basic and cheapest web hosting among all web hosting types. The companies providing shared hosting bear the cost of infrastructure and software licenses. The end-users don’t have to worry about the infrastructure cost, software licenses, and server management. Managing servers required specific skills. Hiring persons who can manage the servers are the responsibility of the service providers. Shared Hosting providers allow multiple users to take space and resources on a single server or infrastructure which reduces the cost. On a single setup, multiple people can host their websites. A typical example of shared hosting is a hostel, a train, a bus where multiple people use single resources and save money.
Table of Contents
Types of Shared Web Hosting
There are two types of Shared Hosting: Linux Shard Web Hosting and Windows Shared Web Hosting. In general, if you have built your web application using Dot Net or ASP, you will need Windows Hosting, if you have developed your web application using PHP, JAVA, Python you will need Linux Hosting.
Nowadays Web hosting service providers, also providing two types of storages: HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and SDD (Solid State Drive). In general, SSD is much faster than HDD and is costlier as well.
Benefits of using Shared Web Hosting
- Shared web hosting is the cheapest web hosting available. There are lots of packages offered by different companies at an affordable price.
- It is managed by the service providers so you really don’t have to worry about server management and maintenance.
- No Infrastructure Cost: You don’t have to bear the infrastructure cost of hosting. To host webservers it requires a significant amount of money that involves, server cost, hardware cost, electricity bills, etc.
- It is flexible, most of the shared web hosting companies provide easy upgrades options, using which you can upgrade your package if needed.
- Many Shared Hosting companies allow multiple domains hosting on a single account, which again saves money.
- Most of the Shared web hosting companies provide free emails with web hosting.
- Most of the Shared Web Hosting companies offer free domain name with their package at least for one year.
Disadvantages of using Shared Web Hosting
- There are some limits and restrictions of using resources on the shared servers. The limitations and restrictions depend on the terms of usage of services providers.
- At times security could be one concern with Shared Hosting.
- Not suited for heavy applications. Web applications using heavy memory or CPU is not suited for Shared Web Hosting, you may be violating the terms of usage if your application uses high memory.
- Limited access to Web Servers, you can not perform certain tasks on the web servers.
- The server and software updates depend on the hosting service provider. If you have specific requirements of version of any software or application, Check their related versions before purchasing.
Who should be using Shared Web Hosting
Now the question is who should be using Shared Hosting? Since Shared Hosting have significant benefits especially cost and have some disadvantages, how do you know if Shared hosting is for you? so, the answer is, Shared hosting is best suited for Students, beginners, and websites with low traffic volume that uses less memory. If you are beginner, I would suggest you go for shared hosting, and you can always upgrade later either to better shared hosting plans which can handle high volume traffic and provide high memory or to VPS, Cloud or Dedicated hosting.
To user shard web hostings, you really don’t have to be technically expert of web hosting. You just need to know a few basic steps of hosing your website. Their hosting consultants and support staffs can get you up and running.
