Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

[Olga Elizarova]

There are a lot of various types of web site hosting. They can be classified by different indexes.
There is Paid and Free web hosting; Linux/Unix-based and Windows-based (and other but they are no that popular); shared, dedicated and VPS. Every hosting type has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The key aim of this article is to acquaint you with main merits and drawbacks of shared hosting.
First of all we must give a definition of the term "shared hosting". So, what is shared hosting?
Shared hosting is such kind of providing space for web sites on the hoster's server when you share this server with other customers' web sites. All web sites use the same software and operating system. But unlike free web hosting which has the same conditions, with shared web hosting you have much more benefits.
Shared web hosting can be divided into two subtypes:
Free Shared Hosting is the best choice for trying some new ideas and not paying for hosting. This type of web site hosting provides you with everything necessary for floating your site. Of course you should not expect the best conditions for your site. Bandwidth and Disk Space is limited. This type of shared hosting may not ensure you with MySQL, PHP support. Web statistics is also poorly provided.
Paid Shared Hosting provides such necessary features, as multiply e-mail, MySQl, PHP are supported. You may use it if you want to host small business web site, intermediate or large professional site but don't need the whole server's space.Using shared hosting you get a good possibility to host your site on a powerful, well administrated server at a low monthly cost.
Shared hosting is in first-time webmasters' great demand, 'cause it can provide reliable web presence without having special technical skills.
So now we can pick out pros and cons of shared hosting:
Pros
• Low cost
• Good server administration
• Multiply e-mail, MySQL, PHP support
• You don't need some unique knowledge in web site and server administration
Cons
• Low security level
• Resource limitation -everybody uses the same memory, CPU and HardDrive.
• You can use only the software which is provided with your hosting company, and correspondingly you can't install your own.
• Some available ports and connections can be limited because of security policy).
The main feature of shared hosting is that you don't need to worry about about possible server problems. Your hosting company's support service is to fix all troubles. So, when choosing shared hosting you must carefully look at company support's quality, the better quality of support - the better conditions for your site.
With shared hosting you can also place several sites in the neighbour parts of the server.
Now when you are acquainted with all special features of shared hosting you can decide whether this type of hosting is appropriate to your needs and requirements.
More hosting articles you can also find here Web Site Hosting Reviews- http://www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com , Web Hosting Review- http://www.web-hosting-review.net and Cheap Web Hosting Directory - http://www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com .

[HComm]

Many times shared hosting gets looked down on for supposedly being an inferior service.
To the contrary, a quality shared package provides a secure, managed environment that can allow many features found only in 'developer style' packages. You can have your cake and eat it too.

[integranet]

Hello,

HComm is correct. Shared hosting from a reliable provider is an economical way to get quality services at a reasonable price. Dedicated servers can run anywhere between $100 to $400 per month - a very expensive proposal.

Thigs to consider when seeking a shared hosting provider:

1. Features - What types of features are you looking for? Windows-based features such as FrontPage support, server-side, includes, etc.? Linux-based features such as cron jobs, MySQL Databases, etc.

2. Support - What kind of support is available? email? phone? hours of coverage?

3. Reliability - What kind of uptime does the host boast.

4. Customer feedback - What are others saying? There are many "Web Host Ranking" sites where you see the same hosts over and over again. That doesn't mean they're neccessarily the best - especially when the ranking site doesn't provide a place to submit a review - most of them have paid a fee to be listed there. A site that provides real customer feedback like www.webhostingjury.com is a good place to look.

5. Exagerated Claims - any provider claiming that you get 250GB of disk and 1000GB of transfer is pulling your leg. They're basically counting on the fact you'll never use that much space and therefore attempt to overload the server with clients in order to maximize their revenue per server. This can lead to slow, poor-performing websites that ultimately drive visitors away.

Gook luck in your search

Dave
Integra-Net Web Services
www.integra-net.com

[Mark07]

A site which has no images or graphical presentations and basically which is just made up of text which is also small in size should opt for shared hosting. Also sites with huge amount of unique visit should not go for shared but in fact choose between a dedicated or a VPS.

[grimlins]

I think it's wise to start from a shared hosting and then you may always change it for something bigger.

[rumsfo]

Why don't check the date for this thread? I assume that is quite old one and do not actual anymore

[Jennifer]

If your site is small then shared hosting is suitable.

[pacifichost]

for the good advice there

[Hosting India]

Shared hosting includes a risk factor. If some other website makes the server down, even if you have nothing to do with it you face a down time, also the traffic load on the other site makes your site slow as well as the server gets slow, also the vulnerability increases

[~ServerPoint~]

People that is old thread. Try to avoid posting in the old threads. I need to close this thread now