Considered to be the most economical shared hosting is a solution used by more and more websites. It is widely used by blog owners, small businesses, and news websites, and it is considered an ideal solution for those who want to start a website quickly with limited funds.

If you are also considering using shared hosting for your blog or business, here are some most important things you need to know about shared web hosting.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is a type of web hosting in which a single physical server hosts multiple websites. In this hosting costs can be kept low because many users use resources on a single server. The user gets a section of the server where the website file can be hosted. A shared server can accommodate hundreds of users. All clients using servers on the shared hosting platform can access features such as databases, monthly traffic, disk space, email accounts, FTP accounts, and other host-provided add-ons. System resources are shared on demand by clients on the server. Each client has RAM and CPU, and all percentages from other items such as a single MySQL server, Apache server, mail server, and so on.

Since the cost of maintaining the server is shared by all users, shared hosting provides the most cost-effective way to keep the site online. This hosting method is most suitable for small websites or blogs that do not require advanced configuration or high bandwidth. Since shared hosting is not enough for high-traffic sites, high-volume sites should turn to VPS or dedicated hosting solutions.

How Does Shared Hosting work?

In shared web hosting, the server is split to host multiple accounts on different clients. Each client manages websites, email, and databases individually. However, they all share server resources and costs.

Shared hosting is like sharing an apartment with others. You have your own room, but you need to share resources such as electricity and common areas. The economic benefit is that rent and maintenance costs can be shared equally among all residents.

Effects of Sharing a Server

As stated, using a shared server is like sharing a highway. You will be required to pay the road maintenance tax and a small monthly fee for the use of the shared hosting. The price of individual users is kept low because many people contribute to the cost.

If you’re expecting low to medium traffic to your website, shared hosting packages are a great option because it’s affordable and convenient. Just as many cars on the highway can cause congestion, when computer resources shared with others are sent to a very busy website, the speed of the website is slow.

In general, a reputable web hosting company like Namecheap can easily support most websites with little risk of speed issues. If traffic to your site is constantly increasing, you can always upgrade to a higher level.

What Kind of Websites Work Best on Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is an ideal platform for managing small and medium-sized websites. You can include everything from small blogs to fully dynamic business websites. Shared hosting provides the flexibility and convenience to start your dream of bringing your business online.

Therefore, if you are starting a small website, small business, or blog, shared hosting is the best choice. However, if your business has the potential to grow, if payments are involved, or if the information on your site is secure, you should consider upgrading.

Things to consider Choosing Hosting Provider

There are some important criteria to consider when choosing a shared host provider, which is beyond price. You need to look for the following features of the shared host package:

Storage Space: The actual physical disk space used to store databases, files, and media. It really depends on the size of your website.

Bandwidth: The amount of data your visitors can upload to/download from your website. If you exceed this limit, you may have to pay more than the plan fee. Although most hosting service providers offer unlimited bandwidth, if the right hardware is lacking, the data transfer speed may lag behind.

 Uptime: Your website needs to be constantly available to visitors. Most service providers guarantee 99% uptime, but ideally, you should target 99.9%+. You can use uptime monitoring to check it.

Speed: Websites that share a server may not affect the speed and performance of others who use shared hosting. But that’s not true for many web hosting companies.

Traffic: Incorporate your expected website traffic into your decision. Predicting network traffic is not easy, but if for any reason you expect a lot of traffic, shared hosting may not be suitable because you may be violating their fair use policy.

Customer Support: In fact, this may be the most important, especially if you are not familiar with hosting and do not have good technical skills. Today, most hosts provide 24/7 support.

Resources: Resources are always limited. This is the basic premise of the entire field of economics and applies to shared hosting. When choosing shared hosting, please review the detailed rules in its fair use policy. If visitors download a lot of content, or scripts cause the server to slow down, then if your site gets a lot of traffic, this can cause problems for others. For example, the podcast site Frog pants ran into problems because visitors were downloading and streaming large files.

Security:  Your data needs to be safely maintained. Cheap hosting plans tend to skimp on security features.

Limited Customization: This may not be your plan if you have special technical requirements. You cannot use your personal software. For example, if you need to run an alternative operating system such as FreeBSD or PostgreSQL scripts on your database, you will need your own server if your shared hosting plan does not provide a server. The best option, in this case, is a virtual or physical server. The most popular CMS engines and bloggers are designed to use MySQL and PHP, so most of the time they will use MySQL and PHP.

Easy to Use Dashboard: This is useful if you can perform most tasks in the control panel from an easy-to-use interface. Pre-installed apps and e-commerce features are also attractive. Check your dashboard to see if your site has the right application.

One-click Install Applications: For seamless integration with services such as WordPress CMS and website builders such as Weebly, choose a host that offers easy-to-install features.

Database and Programming Language: The server must support many types of databases (MySQL) and programming languages ​​(PHP). Useful for upgrading to new technologies or changing languages ​​later.

Domain Name: Some host providers also offer domain name services as an add-on. This is useful if you want to set up your website and manage it from one place.

Above all, don’t forget that you are sharing it. You share the server with many other clients. All of these clients ideally have a small website. These sites are relatively lightweight, so they don’t require a lot of resources and the server doesn’t have to host them all together.

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting

There are many advantages to choosing shared hosting. Let’s take a look at the basic features of shared web hosting:

1. Cost-effective

Shared hosting provides the most cost-effective hosting solution. The cost of the host business is distributed across the server, as many people contribute to the cost of the server. If you want to test your body of water before making a large investment in your website, shared hosting is an ideal option. The base plan starts at around $ 30 a year, but you can expect to pay more than $ 100 a year for a premium plan with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited websites.

2. It’s Quite Simple

Shared hosting is simply called managed hosting. This is because it is managed by a dedicated server. Shared hosting has a data centre where you can store servers and associated hardware. It acts as an administrator, providing all basic and complex connections.

If you don’t know how to maintain and manage your server, or if you have difficulty maintaining your server, you can adapt to a shared host environment. The shared hosting environment also provides website builder and control panel software. This simplicity is one of the great benefits of the growing web technology industry.

3. It’s Flexible

Online startups can start with a shared plan and upgrade seamlessly as your website grows.

4. It’s Easy to Self-manage

Shared hosting is simple and easy to set up. Most providers offer a control panel for managing your website. This simplified user interface manages administrative and monitoring tasks related to server management.

5. No Technical Maintenance

Qualified professionals are responsible for the technical maintenance of the shared host server. So you can focus on your business success without having to worry about maintaining the servers that support your website.

6. You Can Host Multiple Domains

You can install many websites in your user directory. You need to make sure that the domain you buy is linked. This example is for people with different personal websites, hobby or business blog domains. Shared hosting is ideal for this.

7. It Can Host Dynamic Websites

Websites that look different depending on who is browsing are called dynamic. Popular dynamic sites include Facebook, Quora, and Twitter, and dynamic content management systems (CMS) include WordPress and Joomla! It is included. Dynamic websites and CMS use alternative programming languages ​​such as Perl, Python, and PHP. All of these work on shared servers.

Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting

Though it’s a popular web hosting still it has some disadvantages. Now I will talk about the disadvantages of this hosting.

1. System Crashes

As I mentioned earlier, shared hosting is the sharing of a host server with many websites. As more websites are loaded on the server, traffic will increase and the search process will slow down. Even, if the traffic increases with high value the system may crash and collapses.

2. Performance Problem

Performance is a very important issue. Shared Hosting Web server components are shared. Therefore, in the end, the components are not evenly distributed. As a result, some sites on the server may experience poor performance.

3. Security

Security is of paramount importance in web hosting, but in shared hosting it is negligible. It offers a number of services, but there is no guarantee. This makes it a little easy for hackers to break into your website. Maybe you didn’t know what was going on for a long time? Therefore, try to avoid these issues and avoid threats by continuing to monitor website files after a certain period of time.

Is Shared Hosting Suitable for You?

Shared hosting is suitable for websites when you:

  • Have little experience with web hosting.
  • Want to keep costs low.
  • Design small business websites or something for friends and family.
  • Do not require access to extensive web programming.
  • Are researching applications like Joomla and WordPress.
  • Are running a small business or startup.
  • Are experimenting with web design and coding.

There are many things you may not know when you first start a website, but there are some things you can trust. If your website is launched recently, it’s unlikely to attract a lot of traffic unless you plan to launch a large marketing campaign. In this case, it is unlikely that the new website will require a lot of bandwidth. It’s also difficult to predict how much space you’ll need unless you’re 100% sure about the size of the content and images you’re delivering. Shared hosting provides a flexible solution for these strangers.