Ever wanted to sign up for a web hosting plan?
You will agree with me that there are a plethora of hosting plans available to choose from, the most common being shared hosting.
As a newbie or someone who does not understand some of the industry terminologies, you may have asked “what is shared web hosting?”
Don’t worry. You will find out in this post what shared hosting is. In fact, it is just as simple as the name is.
Don’t worry if you can’t wrap your head around it.
That’s because, in this post, I will go into details to reveal all you need to know about shared web hosting.
Ok, let’s begin…
A Shared Hosting Plan is a hosting service that allows several websites to be hosted on the same server.
This implies that a collection of websites hosted on the specific server share all of the shared server’s resources, such as storage, bandwidth, FTP accounts, databases, and email accounts.
A single server can actually host an unlimited number of websites.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of users, may be involved.
The fact that a single server’s resources are shared is one of the reasons why shared hosting plans are so inexpensive.
Essentially, the web hosting provider sets up a large server, and then several websites are installed on the same server, sharing the same resources such as RAM, processor, network bandwidth, and storage.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of websites, may be hosted on a typical shared hosting domain.
Are you still unsure if shared web hosting is right for you?
We’ve compiled a list of features that distinguish shared web hosting.
1. Cost-effectiveness
Shared website hosting is inexpensive, so you won’t have to spend a lot of cash to get your website up and running
For a few dollars per month (usually between $1 and $10), you can share server resources (such as disk space and RAM) with other users, ensuring that everybody gets exactly what their domain requires, and even more.
Rather than spending hundreds of dollars a month for a cPanel license, you’ll spend a portion of that because you’ll be sharing it with hundreds of other people.
The low-cost hosting reduces costs and allows small businesses and individuals to have their own websites.
Furthermore, several companies have unique web hosting offers for students, which is extremely beneficial.
Similarly, auto-installer applications such as QuickInstall or Softaculous provide users with the most common and best web hosting platforms and software for a small fee.
That is why shared hosting is the best choice for people on a tight budget who want to save cash for other things while still getting the features they want in a web hosting service.
2. Unlimited bandwidth
The majority of shared web hosting plans provide unrestricted monthly bandwidth for your website.
That ensures you won’t have any issues if you only use one GB of bandwidth or more.
Nevertheless, don’t overload the server, as you would on a real server with less bandwidth, or your account would be terminated.
If you’re using a lot of bandwidth that affects the other domains on the same server as you, your web host can send you an alert or an email requesting you to upgrade your account to a higher bandwidth cap.
Just 1% or less of the domains hosted on shared accounts fall into this category.
This means that 99 percent of sites will not exceed their planned bandwidth consumption and, as a result, will not cause any bandwidth issues.
As a result, shared website hosting is ideal for beginners and small websites.
But wait a minute. Yes! No bandwidth limitations mean no restrictions, but is it really unlimited? I’ll get to that later.
For the time being, we’ll call it “unmetered” because it sounds better and you won’t have to think about it on a regular website.
3. Ease of use
This is not only right but also advantageous for users who wish to operate their websites without requiring technological expertise.
In fact, a large percentage of popular shared web hosting providers include a decent control panel, such as cPanel, that allows you to easily upload and download files.
Furthermore, the cPanel file manager tools allow you to edit, delete, copy, transfer, change, and even modify the permissions of your website or blog’s files and directories.
With the exception of VPS or dedicated servers, you can easily alter passwords, add FTP users, and unzip or compress files with a shared web hosting account.
Without costly tools and complex setups, this is not possible on VPS or dedicated hosting.
So, with everything structured and simple, using shared web hosting is simpler, and both beginners and experienced users can find it convenient.
The cPanel in shared hosting comes with a variety of website management tools, email forwarding, DNS management, website compression, and more.
4. Multiple domain hosting
If you’d like to host multiple domains, shared hosting is a good option.
A large proportion of web hosts allow several websites to be hosted on a single account.
However, there are restrictions; some web hosts only allow two, three, or seven domains per account, based on what the web host wants to sell.
Others, on the other hand, have no restrictions unless the website receives a lot of traffic.
Individuals, students, small businesses, and developers who want to host a few websites will benefit from the shared account.
Consider how many domains you might have and how little it would cost to host them all if you are using a shared hosting plan.
5. Email hosting
These days, sending an email with your domain name isn’t a choice.
It’s what most business owners are looking for to personalize their emails and make them stand out.
For several people, getting many emails with the same domain name is advantageous.
Even better, if your cheap web hosting plan includes cPanel, you can easily add email, assign quotas, and delete others, as well as forward emails to Gmail or any other service.
For most users, this is one aspect that makes shared hosting a no-brainer.
6. Professionally managed
Using shared hosting means that there is a low level of maintenance involved.
By doing simple server administrative activities, your host will relieve you of the burden of running your server.
Web management is the most comfortable solution when compared to running your own server.
With that said, it is better to leave the hosting of your website and all other necessities involved to the experts.
You should expect competent technical support for anything from DDoS attacks to hardware improvements and repairs, network outages, and software updates when you use shared hosting.
See Also: What Are The Different Types of Web Hosting? – The Ultimate Guide
Don’t be easily carried away by all the advantages that come with shared hosting.
Yes! I mean it, don’t be carried away yet. Just hold on a bit.
Web hosting on a shared server has its own set of drawbacks.
The following are some of the disadvantages and drawbacks of shared web hosting that are important to consider.
1. Weak support
Shared web hosting generally comes with a server performance issue, which is not ideal for bloggers who worry about uptime.
If you ask for help when there are outages or slow loading issues, don’t expect a fast response.
The explanation for this isn’t implausible.
These hosting companies have invested a lot of money to get started and stay in operation, and their most loyal customers aren’t those who use shared hosting.
Instead, they concentrate on those that are on more expensive plans such as VPS, dedicated, cloud, and even managed hosting.
Furthermore, some web hosting companies have a customer service team, but they don’t often invest in updating and training their support staff on the new tech, web server, and problem-solving technologies.
Even if the web hosting company is one of the best, the technician could even need additional time to isolate and resolve a specific issue.
Just keep in mind that an issue in shared web hosting isn’t something that can be fixed in a matter of minutes; it can take hours, if not days, to resolve.
If you truly require shared web hosting, make sure you use a downtime warning plugin or software to prevent any of these problems.
If your website goes offline, you’ll receive an instant text message, and you can resolve the issue yourself if it’s something you can easily pull off.
Should you decide that the issue is not within your scope to handle, and your web host is not helping matters, you can just cancel and move the site to another web host without waiting hours or days, which is particularly useful if you run an ecommerce shop.
It’s time to look for a new web host if your current one takes longer than 24 hours to respond to any requests you may have about server and hosting issues.
2. Speed issues
The most obvious downside of shared web hosting is slow page load.
Since a large number of users are using the same server resources, such as RAM and CPU, the speed would be slower.
And worse, if a website gets a lot of traffic, it will affect all other websites on the server due to the disproportionate server resource use of only one website, as well as the fact that there is only one IP address.
In fact, shared web hosting will shorten the time it takes for your site to load to about 5 seconds or less if you’re fortunate.
The server response time, on the other hand, will be about 1000 milliseconds.
Notwithstanding, since some web hosts are slower than others, don’t anticipate the same server response time from all of them.
3. Security problems
Since web hosts choose to host as many domains as possible on a single site, they prefer to make it simple and without any real security measures.
When it comes to hacking, shared hosting is by far the most vulnerable form of website hosting.
This is true since a hacker may use a single domain to gain access to the entire server, including all other websites hosted there.
However, while some web hosts claim to use domain isolation to protect other domains from being compromised if one is hacked, keep in mind that if you’re on a shared hosting plan, your website protection isn’t guaranteed in any way.
See Also: Do I Need Domain Name Privacy Protection? The Truth Revealed
4. Limited resources
The basic principle of all fields of economics, including shared hosting, is that resources are often minimal.
But wait, I thought you just said I could have unlimited bandwidth, and my web host also said I could have unlimited storage space?
I did, of course. But, remember how I said that “unlimited” doesn’t always mean “unlimited”?
Oh, no! It was my fault. Perhaps I overlooked something. But that is just what it is.
For the time being, we’ll refer to them as unmetered resources.
When selecting shared hosting, read the terms and conditions page to see what their fair usage policy entails.
To begin, understand that if your site receives a lot of traffic and your visitors download a lot of content, or if a script forces the server to slow down, you can create problems for others.
5. No dedicated IP
Since all of the sites on the same domain share the same IP, shared hosting typically does not include a dedicated IP.
If another website on the shared server uses the shared server’s email address to send spam, this may damage the IP credibility.
As a consequence, your outgoing emails may be deemed spam, or worse, Google may negatively review your site and lower your rankings.
6. Not for high traffic websites
When it comes to the amount of traffic a shared server can manage, shared hosting has its drawbacks.
Just as your website can only use a small fraction of the server’s resources, it’s natural that it won’t be able to handle a large amount of web traffic at once.
Furthermore, if another site experiences a sudden surge in traffic, your website’s output could be impacted.
A website on shared hosting should not experience traffic visits of more than 1500-3000 users per day as a general rule of thumb, depending on the hosting provider.
When those numbers are reached, you can explore other hosting options such as VPS or dedicated hosting.
7. No root access
Root access grants you increased rights as a user, allowing you to install or uninstall all documents and files on a server, including the most basic system files.
You may also specify the permissions that other server users would have.
Given your limited resources, shared hosting will never be able to provide you with such a benefit.
If you don’t want to purchase a shared web hosting service or if your current website requirements outweigh those of shared hosting, there are several alternatives to consider.
1. Dedicated hosting
This is a form of hosting in which you have exclusive access to the entire server.
You don’t have to share server resources with someone else, which improves the security of your website.
This results in improved website performance and complete server power.
It’s best suited for websites that need a lot of resources.
Needless to say, this is not cheap.
2. Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting
Is a great choice for those looking for a hosting solution that falls somewhere between shared and dedicated hosting.
It partitions the server into several virtual machines, each of which operates as if it were its own dedicated server.
Several websites will share the very same server with VPS hosting, but each website will have its own set of server resources.
VPS hosting is a form of “pseudo-dedicated” hosting that looks and acts like dedicated hosting but isn’t.
Users will have root access and will be hosted in a protected environment.
3. Cloud hosting
This is not a distinct form of hosting; rather, it refers to a set of servers (cloud) working together to host a vast collection of websites
The way cloud computing functions is that it combines many servers to host a website.
Your website information is spread through all of the servers that make up the cloud when you use cloud hosting.
Simply put, this arrangement implies that you will be able to reach your website from either of their cloud-based servers.
The benefit is that it is highly scalable, allowing for both high traffic loads and rapid traffic spikes.
The amount of money you pay with cloud hosting is based on your level of usage, and you can access your website from anywhere in the world.
4. Managed hosting
Operating systems, routine hardware management, and standard applications are all handled by some hosting providers.
That is exactly what managed hosting is just for. It is a web hosting service in which the web hosting company manages the server on your behalf.
Configuration, program setup, management, testing, upgrading, technical support, and maintenance are all handled by them, allowing you to concentrate on content and your business.
In addition, there are companies that provide specialized WordPress hosting, which means that the hosting server is configured solely for running WordPress websites.
5. Reseller hosting
If you’re thinking about starting your own hosting business, this one is for you.
It has a different control panel for each of your websites that you can use to manage them.
You choose the amount of disk space and bandwidth allocated to each location, and also set your preferred price.
Many shared hosting companies’ marketing activities are one of their strongest assets.
They offer limitless disk space, domains, bandwidth, and pretty much everything else as well.
If you reside, in this world, you are aware that the only unlimited resource we have is the amount of air we can breathe.
When it comes to web hosting, keep in mind that there is no such thing as unlimited.
Smaller websites, such as new bloggers, personal bloggers, and small businesses, will benefit from shared web hosting.
Shared hosting would not work if every site exceeded its limit. But, since very few people can, it works out well for everybody.
Users benefit from a low-cost option while hosting companies profit handsomely.
To cut the long, story short, it is the best choice for people who are just getting started.
However, if your website becomes popular and consumes a lot of server resources, the web hosting company would require you to upgrade.
With our background working with a variety of hosting firms, we’ve discovered that some of them don’t always demand such politely. They will actually terminate your account and send you an email informing you of the suspension.
Others, too, are not courteous enough to do so. They’d actually take down your website and leave you to figure out on your own what really happened.
That is why you should choose a shared hosting provider with a clear track record and reputation.
When it comes to shared WordPress web hosting, reputation is by far the most important factor to consider.
However, there’s a good chance you won’t use any of the functionality they provide, so using a feature list to select a web host won’t benefit you at all.
Frequently, hosting companies overload their feature lists by including the most obvious of product offerings.
Since most newcomers are unfamiliar with industry jargon, they depend on the length of the feature list to make a hasty decision.
The only thing you can consider when looking for a reputable shared web hosting company is its track record in the industry.
Since most shared hosting companies have the same deals, this is the single most critical aspect.
See Also: What is Disk Space in Web Hosting? – The Truth About Unlimited Web Space
Let’s look at how to choose a successful hosting services provider now that we’ve covered what shared hosting is.
This is because, knowing this has a significant impact on the security of your data, website efficiency, and traffic.
The following are some of the criteria to look into:
1. Disk space
This is the amount of physical storage space allotted to you for storing your files, databases, and media.
In any case, it is largely determined by the size of your site.
Even though it has been stated that you get unlimited disk space with any web hosting plan, this is one of the aspects through which web hosting companies make their money.
You should however try as much as possible to ensure that your web hosting of choice will offer you enough storage space to host your website files and documents.
2. Domain name
Some hosting companies still provide domain name registration as an add-on service.
This is useful if you want to set up and run your website from a single location.
If at all possible, choose a web host that will provide you with a free domain for the first year.
Since you are just starting out, you want to save cost as much as possible.
3. Bandwidth
The maximum amount of data that your website users can upload to/download from it.
If you go over this cap, you will have to pay additional fees on top of your plan charges.
Despite the fact that most hosting services provide unlimited bandwidth, data transfer rates will suffer if the right hardware isn’t in place.
As a result, you must keep a close eye on your bandwidth to avoid going overboard.
Check with your web host to see whether they have an automatic plan upgrade or if they charge an overage fee, as this will prevent your site from being shut down due to a resource overage.
4. Uptime
Visitors to your website must be able to access it at all times.
The majority of service providers guarantee 100 percent uptime, but you should strive for at least 99.9%.
This is important because even a 99.9% uptime would result in over 8 hours of downtime over the course of a year.
Consider what will now happen with an uptime that is less than 99.9%.
5. Email hosting
Who wouldn’t want to be different and stand out from the pack?
If you can find one, a web host that also provides email hosting should be your primary choice.
This is due to the fact that several web hosts provide this as an add-on for an extra fee.
As a result, it’s a no-brainer that you should look for a web host that will provide this for free if at all possible.
If your web host does not provide it as a free service, it is much easier to use a web host that will still charge a small fee, rather than paying for a third-party service.
6. Security
Your information must be kept safe and protected.
When searching for a web host, this should be at the top of your list.
Security features are often omitted from low-cost hosting plans.
You should look for web hosts that provide security functionalities such as DDoS protection, regular backups, and so on.
7. Easy to use dashboard
It’s more comfortable if the control panel lets you complete the majority of tasks using a user-friendly interface.
Pre-installed applications and eCommerce capabilities are also things that should be looked into.
Evaluate the cPanel dashboard to see if it has any applications that are important to your website.
8. Database and programming language
The server must be able to handle a wide range of databases (MySQL) and programming languages (PHP).
This makes it easier to migrate to newer technologies or switch languages in the future.
If the necessary programming language is supported by your web host, you can run scripts and other applications later down the road.
9. Customer support
This must really be at the top of the list, particularly if you’re new to hosting and don’t have a lot of technical knowledge.
Most web hosts nowadays provide 24/7 support, but only if you choose a reliable web host.
Since poor support is associated with shared hosting, good support is not something you’ll not want to contend with.
For the best shared hosting services on the market, see our list of suggested web hosts below.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the best-shared hosting providers?
We understand how difficult it can be to make a firm decision when it comes to selecting a web host.
As a result, we’ve chosen the best-shared web hosting for you.
However, you should be aware that not all shared web hosts are created equal, as a result, certain organizations put a lot of money and effort into server configurations in order to get the best out of their hosting plan.
So, without further ado, here are some of the best-shared web hosting options:
2. Why is web hosting so expensive?
Mostly because of the following factors, web hosting is costly:
- Money is needed to purchase storage space for websites
- Websites need bandwidth to function, which necessitates the expenditure of funds
- Web hosting companies must spend money on server security
- Money is also needed to scale web hosting infrastructure to meet the rising demands of hosting websites
- Web hosting companies must train their employees on a regular basis, particularly those who work in the support department
- Salaries would have to be paid to employees
Any of the above would not have been possible without financial support which is why web hosting costs money and expensive if you are considering high-end hosting such as dedicated hosting.
3. Why is shared web hosting so cheap?
Shared web hosting is so inexpensive because web hosting companies can easily offer the service at a lower cost by hosting several websites on the same server.
Consider it this way: If you are the sole owner of a pet, you are solely responsible for its upkeep.
However, if you and another person own the pet, you can share the cost of caring for it, lowering the amount each person would contribute.
4. Who is shared hosting for?
Shared web hosting plans are suitable for database-driven websites, blogs, small companies, individuals, and portfolio websites due to their low cost.
When starting out, most newcomers do not even need anything more than shared web hosting.
When looking to start, it’s always a good idea to keep your costs down and work your way up.
You don’t have to waste money on resources that you don’t need right now.
5. Why are there upgrades if my bandwidth is unlimited?
It all comes down to what has already been mentioned in this article.
Don’t be fooled by the word “unlimited” that is thrown around.
If your website’s traffic exceeds a certain threshold, such as 3000 visits per day or 100,000, you will be required to move to a higher package.
However, if you truly have limitless bandwidth, you won’t need to upgrade to a higher plan.
6. When to avoid using shared hosting
Consider a VPS or Dedicated Server hosting package if you need to install advanced software or build new server configurations to get your website up and running
Since your website is hosted on a shared server with many other websites, Shared Hosting is the most cost-effective option.
As a result, the server is configured to enable common frameworks such as WordPress to run smoothly with standard settings.
You’d be better off with a hosting plan like VPS or dedicated hosting if you want to use a custom website framework that isn’t already built on the server, or if you want to customize server resources for particular site tasks.
Though these plans necessitate a lot more knowledge and experience with systems management, they will allow you to tailor the server to your exact requirements.
Using email, common security methods such as Sucuri, ModSecurity, and SSL certificates, as well as applying basic codings such as CSS or HTML and downloading WordPress, do not require root access and can be done quickly with the basic setup of a Shared Hosting account.
Shared hosting is a great place to start unless you need root access to install new software or configurations.
7. What is the price of shared web hosting?
A traditional shared web hosting plan costs between $1 and $10 per month.
If you’re thinking of using shared web hosting, this is the price you can expect to pay.
Another aspect that influences the monthly rate is the length of time you initially subscribed.
The longer it is, the less the first year would cost.
Conclusion
Now that we have a clear picture of what is shared web hosting, it’s also easy to see that it’s almost always the best option for beginners.
Even the most simple shared web hosting plans come with a user-friendly interface and customizable options to meet your specific needs.
If this is your first website, we typically suggest starting with a shared plan.
Bluehost and Dreamhost are the two shared hosting services that we suggest for this reason.
Shared hosting is a good option for new website owners who don’t expect a lot of traffic.
Always keep in mind that you can upgrade or change hosting environments at any time.
WebHost Bros is an online resource that helps you to find the best web host that is best for you. Here is our list of the best hosting providers in the market.