What Does Mean By Shared Web Hosting And Advantage Of Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting that hosts multiple sites on a single physical server. This helps to reduce hosting costs significantly. Each of the users gets a part of the server where they can host their website files. One such server can host hundreds of users.
Every customer using shared hosting has access to features such as databases, monthly traffic, disk space, email accounts, FTP accounts, and other add-ons offered by the hosting company. System resources are distributed evenly among the users on the server. Each gets its percentage of RAM, CPU, and other items such as MySQL servers, Apache, and a mail server.
Shared hosting offers the most economical way to bring a website online, as server maintenance costs are shared among all users. This type of hosting is best for small websites or blogs requiring additional settings or high bandwidth.
Since shared hosting is not enough for high-traffic sites, such sites should use VPS hosting or even a fully dedicated server.
Shared hosting is similar to using public transport. Traveling by bus is an alternative to driving a private car. This approach has its advantages: it is both more environmentally friendly and, in many cases, cheaper. But if you rode the bus during rush hour, you noticed that sometimes it could get crowded. And the time of one trip by bus is more extended than when using personal vehicles.
This is how shared hosting works. Resources on the server are shared with other users, but you can still use many resources.
Shared hosting is an entry-level service that can offer the number of resources needed for a novice webmaster or sites that will not have much traffic, such as a local school site. Most newbie web admins opt for shared hosting.
Shared Hosting is famous for Two Main Reasons
- This Is the Most Economical Option: Because many people share server resources, the cost to individual users remains low.
- Ease of Use: Although VPS can compete in price with shared hosting in many cases, there is nothing easier than shared hosting in terms of convenience for beginners. Perhaps ready-made website builders, but this is a separate topic.
Most of the shared hosting offerings come with easy-to-use features such as a user-friendly control panel that lets you upload your website files, create an email account, and add databases.
How Does Shared Hosting Work?
As I said, shared hosting is when multiple sites are hosted on one server. The numbers can range from a few hundred to several thousand, depending on available hard disk space, RAM, and processor power.
Such hosting is hosted on a machine identical to a dedicated server, but many clients use its resources. The files of each website user account and any application are stored in separate sections on the server, and each hosting client has its file directory tree. Users do not have access to either the root directory or to each other’s files. All accounts on a shared server share the computing resources of the web server.
Advantages and Benefits of Shared Web Hosting
Choosing shared web hosting offers many benefits. Let’s take a look at the main features and Advantages of shared web hosting.
1. It’s Cheaper
Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting solution. Since many people pay for one server at once, the costs of the hosting company are distributed among all of them at once. The cheapest tariffs can be found at $5 per month, while the most common price is $100-$200 per month.
2. A More Flexible Approach
At any time, you can raise and lower your tariff. Compared with VPS, where you can also submit your tax, it is impossible to reduce the tariff in most cases.
3. Ease of Management
Shared hosting is simple and straightforward to set up. Most providers offer a control panel to manage your website. This simplified user interface works tasks and any monitoring functions related to site operation.
4. You Can Host Multiple Domains
You can install multiple sites in your user directory; you need to make sure the domains you purchased are connected to them. You saw this example in the screenshot above. On my shared hosting, several of my sites are sitting at once. Shared hosting is perfect for this.
5. Configuration Tools
Most shared hosting providers make configuration tools available to users. These have the advantage of being easy to handle. In addition, they are accompanied by open-source applications, very popular, and just as easy to use. The purpose of this maneuver is to help clients better manage their resources. This is one of the significant advantages of shared hosting.
6. Security
Some believe that a shared server is not well protected, but this is not entirely true. The security offered for this package is as effective as that of a dedicated or VPS server. When it comes to protecting customer data, most hosts don’t differentiate between these offerings. It is also one of the significant advantages of shared hosting.
7. Easy Certification
In other words, you will enjoy almost the same levels of security as if you were on a dedicated server. The most used protection is anti-DDoS. It is very efficient and protects your files from external attacks. Some web servers even offer a free SSL certificate. This advantage of shared hosting shows why it is so popular with the public.
8. Great Support
The supplier often bears all expenses related to repairs, upgrades, and maintenance. This allows clients to focus on their web projects entirely. In addition, many hosts make tools available to their clients.
9. Its Simplicity
When we launch our website, we look above all for a simple and effective solution that suits our needs. This is a tremendous advantage of shared hosting. The choices you will have to make will be much more limited because the proposed offer is often well-defined.
10. Easy to Operate
Shared hosting does not require much maintenance. Your hosting company will save you the headache of launching your website by taking over the basic server administration tasks. For example, you can install WordPress on your site in just a couple of clicks, and it will only take a couple of minutes.
Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting
Alas, shared hosting also has its drawbacks. Let’s go through the main ones.
1. Risk Of Being Blocked
Here I am talking about our specifics. Shared hosting sites have one IP address. And now, if your hosting neighbor turns out to be a malicious site that violates the laws of any country, then the blocking of this site is often done by the IP address. It’s just easier to block that way. As a result, all places that sit on this IP address will also be secured. And it will take a while before you can remove this blockage.
2. High Price
When your site begins to develop, then very soon, it may exhaust the possibilities of the basic tariff that you subscribed to. And then, you will have to either raise the tax itself or purchase additional services, including in the form of an increase in the processor capacity quota.
3. Overload Risks
On shared hosting, a large number of sites use shared resources at once. And if one of the sites begins to create a sharply large load, then the server will not have the capacity to process requests from other sites on the hosting. Simply put, the shipment will be created by your neighbor’s place, and both the neighbor’s site and your site will “fall.”
Such overload can occur either due to sudden surges in traffic, which happens periodically or as a result of a DDoS attack on one of the sites hosted on shared hosting.
4. Safety Problems
All the critical software on the server is in the hands of the hosting admins. On the one hand, this is a plus since the user will not shoot himself in the foot, but on the other hand, if the admins fail, then all sites on this server, or even on the entire hosting, may be under attack. And there have been cases of hacked hosting.
5. Restrictions on The Software Used
On shared hosting, you won’t be able to run something of your own. Thus, if your site needs some specific software, you will have to choose a VPS or a dedicated server. However, this is not required for ordinary sites.
6. Limited Resources
As a result, vendors impose a specific limit on the amount of RAM, processor power, storage, and bandwidth. If one of the clients abuses the resources, this will affect the loading speed of your website. Which, of course, will influence the presence of SEO. On the other hand, you are more likely to be a collateral victim of a malicious attack. However, it should be noted that the advantages of shared hosting outweigh these disadvantages.
7. Performance Suffers
When there is high traffic on the web, server performance is likely to suffer. In the same way, if there is an increase in traffic from other clients who share the same hosting.
8. Backups Not Guaranteed
Some shared hosting offers to offer a backup on servers so that you can restore your work quickly. However, we advise you to make regular backups of your site locally (on your hard drive). This will allow you, for example, to be able to recover an old version of it (or of specific files). Backups are a big problem with shared hosting.
9. Your Hosting Neighbors Depend On You And You Depend On Them
In shared hosting, a large portion of resources is shared by hosting neighbors. If one of the sites in a shared hosting starts using more resources, the other may face problems.
10. You Won’t Be The Webmaster
The server is a shared hosting that is already configured, and you won’t be able to install software of your own that is not supported or permitted by the hosting provider.
What should you consider when choosing a shared Wen hosting?
There are some essential criteria to consider when choosing between different hosting services, not just the price. You should pay attention to the following characteristics of the proposed shared hosting plan.
1. Uptime
When looking for a shared hosting company, make sure you have some uptime guarantees in place. The absolute minimum you can agree to is 99%.
2. Speed
Each hosting provider has its capacity. You can also see this speed in the site rankings.
3. Resources
Resources are always limited, and this applies to shared hosting too. See how much disk space is allocated to you, how much traffic, how many sites you can host, how many databases, and so on. Usually, if you need to increase these resources, you will have to either change the tariff or activate additional options.
4. Support
In this regard, virtual hosting should have everything at its best. Newbies often use shared hosting, and support should be fast and competent. Look for hosting with round-the-clock support and with the most convenient means of communication for you: communication by telegram, in the chat of the site, the possibility of a voice call by phone.
Conclusion
For most people, the benefits of shared hosting outweigh the disadvantages. The most significant advantages are low cost and ease of operation, which is a decisive factor for many potential buyers. However, shared hosting has significant drawbacks. This is the risk of running into blocking the site and the lack of complete control over the server software. These are the risks that are absent when choosing a VPS server.
To summarize, beginners in site building do not have a choice; unambiguously, virtual hosting is the only reasonable option in this situation. But for seasoned webmasters, shared hosting can be a good choice. If you need to create a small, narrow-topic site that will not be visited by tens of thousands of people a day, shared hosting is more accessible and often cheaper. What do you think about this? What kind of hosting do you use, virtual, VPS, or dedicated server? Let us know in the comments!
