What is Shared Hosting?
What is a shared hosting platform?
With a shared hosting platform, several clients and their websites are hosted on the same server. Therefore, they are sharing the same resources. Every client has dedicated amount of features at a certain capacity such as disk space, traffic, bandwidth, the amount of email accounts available. However, the power of the server and its resources, such as RAM and CPU are shared among all clients.
Shared hosting is considered one of the most affordable and eco-friendly options in running a website. As opposed to each website dedicated to one server, they share the resources with other websites. Many websites do not need the capabilities of just one server, but rather a fraction of it. Also, by opting for shared hosting, the cost of building and maintaining the server such as electricity and raw materials are shared with other clients with websites.
What are the Advantages of Shared Hosting?
The most significant advantage of shared web hosting is affordability. Without shared hosting, a client would have to absorb the costs of using a hosting service by themselves. With shared hosting the cost is shared. This is advantageous for individuals who only need a limited amount of resources for their site. Therefore, sharing the resources of one large server that possesses a lot of power is the optimal choice. In addition to affordability, there are also other advantages as well.
Shared hosting is ideal for individuals who want a more hands-off approach to maintaining and administrating a server. Shared hosting services have a control panel feature that makes setting up and promoting your website easy and intuitive.
What are the disadvantages of shared hosting? When is shared hosting not the right fit for you needs?
Although shared hosting is appropriate for many clients, it is not perfect for anyone. The main group of clients who would see shared hosting not as advantageous solution are clients with advanced technical experience. These individuals tend to be highly skilled professionals in the field of technology. These professionals need to have the ability to perform custom configurations and have a large amount of resources at their disposal for their website, web applications and services. With shared hosting, the capabilities that they need are limited because it must be shared with others. Therefore, there are a large amount of applications and services that require a dedicated service with root access. However, many hosting services provide a variety of Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions. This type of service is based on cloud infrastructure, i.e. cloud hosting. Cloud Hosting involves a number of servers on the internet, which provides a large amount of services without the need for having stationary hardware like a server in an office.
Is Shared Hosting the best choice for me?
Choosing a shared hosting service will be dependent on the needs and demands of your website. A personal shared hosting plan is ideal for individuals building a website around their website.
A business shared web hosting plan on the other hand is for businesses that have several employees, as well as a need for a website that will be visited on a daily basis and presents your services.
However, if you have a business that is entirely conducted online, a hosting service with dedicated resources is needed. Therefore, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) is the best option for your needs.