If you are planning to launch your first website, you may have confusion about which hosting type you should choose. Hosting is one of the most important elements of a website that determines its success. Therefore, it is crucial to make the right choice.
Shared web hosting is a popular choice among beginners and small business owners. If you are considering this web hosting but are not well aware of it, then you have come to the right place. This article walks through every aspect that you need to know about shared hosting.
Shared Hosting Explained
As the name indicates, shared hosting is a kind of web hosting in which multiple websites share the same space and other resources of a large web server.
It is one of the most economical and affordable kinds of hosting, which makes it very suitable for beginners, portfolio websites, and small business websites. Most of the shared hosting plans that common hosting providers offer start from $3.95 to $9.95 per month.
You must be wondering why it is so cheap compared to the other types of hosting. The reason is simple, multiple websites share a single server instead of using an individual server. Having your own server for your website is called dedicated hosting.
You can understand it with the example of renting a house and then sharing it with multiple roommates. All roommates will divide the total rent amongst each other. The amount owed by each roommate will be a lot lower than the total rent of that place. On the contrary, if you rent that place by yourself, you will have to pay the whole rent on your own.
Shared hosting requires less technical maintenance by the user. A host provider like Hostinger is responsible for maintaining the server and hardware for your website.
Shared hosting is very affordable, but it comes with certain limitations. For instance, your website’s performance can get affected when websites of other users overburden the server or when you start receiving higher levels of web traffic.
How Shared Hosting Works
All websites available on the internet are hosted on a server. They need this server to become publicly available.
If you enter a URL in a browser, the browser will find the server that has hosted (or stored) the website then it will request info or data related to that URL from the server. Upon request, the server makes the content of the site available to the browser from where the user opens the site and explores different pages, etc.
If it is shared hosting, then one server will store or host information about multiple sites, and it will be responsible for providing all this info to browsers or users.
It is contrary to how dedicated hosting works because in dedicated hosting, one server stores or hosts only one website.
Who Would use Shared Hosting?
Now that you have learned about shared hosting and how it works, it is time to see who would use this type of hosting. To understand who should buy a shared hosting plan or not, we review the benefits.
Shared hosting is useful for those who:
Small Budget
Shared hosting plans provide a low-cost option for individuals and businesses who are just starting out. Inexpensive shared hosting starts at less than $10 monthly, making it an accessible investment for those with limited resources or just starting a website.
Shared hosting is a great option for individuals or businesses that do not need much space. It is cheaper than other types of web hosting, but it does come with limitations such as less customization and storage capacity.
Shared hosting is the perfect fit for new blogs, portfolio websites, and small businesses.
Lack Technical Skills
Shared hosting is the perfect option for beginners who are not skilled in technical aspects of managing a site. The host will take care of any issues with your website, so you can focus on running it to make money and generate traffic through updates. You get access to powerful tools that allow you to check stats or add new posts!
Shared hosting is a great fit for beginners who are not technically savvy.
Want to Launch a Small Website
Shared hosting provides limited space, which makes it more suitable for small websites that do not need a ton of storage.
Similarly, it is good for sites that have less web traffic.
If your site hosted on shared hosting is driving more traffic and getting slammed with visitors at all hours of the day, then time to upgrade.
If your website gets a ton of traffic on shared hosting, then the loading time will increase exponentially, and performance will be severely impacted. The shared hosting plans do not have the memory or capacity to handle huge traffic spikes.
If you are running a smaller or simpler website without high-definition videos, then shared hosting will work till your site grows bigger!
Is Shared Hosting Good to Use, and Why?
Shared hosting is good to use for small businesses, new bloggers, and beginners. It provides beginners many benefits that an expensive type of hosting cannot provide. The below points will show you why it is good to use.
- One of the best things about shared hosting is that it is very budget-friendly. You can buy it for as cheap as $3.95 per month. It gives you a chance to invest money in other important areas of your website business.
- Many hosting providers offer multiple hosting levels. You can upgrade your hosting according to your website’s needs. If you are getting more web traffic than you anticipated, you can simply sign-up with the hosting provider to upgrade it to the next tier.
- It comes with a built-in control panel which makes maintaining a website pretty easy.
- You do not need to have high-level technical skills to manage shared hosting. You can set up shared hosting with a single click. Your hosting provider will handle all the technical back end, making work easier for you. The hosting provider can even help you troubleshoot issues with your website on the server.
- It is popular among beginners because it is user-friendly. You do not need to have any previous experience to understand or use it.
Difference Between Shared Hosting and Other Forms of Hosting
Dedicated Hosting
It can be difficult to determine which type of hosting best suits your needs. If you are looking for a high-performance website, Dedicated Hosting is the way to go.
Run a website with exceptional performance! Dedicated hosting means that your site will have all the server resources without having to share them with other sites. This is expensive but worth it for many businesses. Dedicated hosting does not come cheap, but you gain access to high-performance web servers and can focus on what matters most – making money.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud servers are scalable, which means the server will always have enough resources for your website to operate smoothly. The cloud also offers reliability and security as you do not need to worry about installing updates or backups on your own.
The main benefit of using a cloud host is scalability – it grows with the demands of your traffic spikes so there is no downtime during those busy times! Cloud hosting providers offer free trials where you can get started without any commitments right away if this sounds like something you might be interested in trying out.
WordPress Hosting
As the name indicates, WordPress hosting is built to meet the security, performance, and other needs of WordPress websites. Unlike shared hosting, it is not a kind of plan. It can be dedicated, shared, etc.
WordPress hosting can be managed or unmanaged. A managed WordPress hosting will be like a shared hosting in which you do not need to have the technical skills required to manage the hosting. On the contrary, unmanaged WordPress hosting requires technical skills.
WordPress hosting is also an affordable option, but it still costs more than shared hosting.
VPS Hosting
A company can host its website on a virtual private server (VPS), instead of using shared hosting, which is done by renting out space from another business.
How does VPS work? A virtual machine will run your web site with its own operating system and software stack. This means you do not have to share any resources with other customer’s websites or applications running on the same physical hardware.
That will give you more speed and security for your site because it is not sharing resources like CPU time, memory, and disk access. All those things are dedicated to your account when hosting on VPS!
Best Shared Hosting Providers
Hostinger
Founded in 2004, Hostinger, a web hosting and domain name provider, has more than 29 million users. It provides Single, Premium, and Business shared hosting plans.
Its simplest plan comes with 30 GB SSD storage and 100 GB bandwidth. All shared hosting plans provide a free SSL certificate, and some provide free domain registration.
BlueHost
It is one of the top hosting companies. BlueHost was launched in 2003, and it hosts more than 2 million domains.
It provides multiple shared hosting plans and shared hosting levels. If you buy a shared hosting via BlueHost, you will also get a free SSL certificate and domain name. They will also provide you with different custom themes and 50 GB SSD storage.
You can check out BlueHost here.
Conclusion
Shared hosting is the most affordable web hosting type that does not require maintenance and technical skills compared to the other types of web hosting.
It is more suitable for small business and new bloggers who do not need large sites and substantial traffic. You can sign up for shared hosting with our recommended providers such as Hostinger or BlueHost.
