Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common web hosting type today. Most of the people who are in need of web hosting encounter shared packages at the beginning of their search for perfect host. One of the most important features of many individuals and businesses is the price. Since shared hosting can be had for cheap they choose this type of web hosting.
What Shared Means
It means that on one server, usually Linux, many web sites are hosted. All web sites share limited amounts of resources so hosting companies manage their servers in a way to only allow small amounts of resources for each web site. Once your web site becomes popular with hundreds of visitors per day or if your web site is dynamic and resource intensive, you are likely to encounter slower loading times or even temporary shut downs.
Shared Hosting Features
Majority of hosting providers deliver full blown features to shared hosting. That means all the usual suspects such as PHP, MySQL and nice hosting configuration panel where you can configure many web scripts, your emails and ftp user accounts. Mind you that shared hosting is managed hosting solution and you pretty much get everything set up by your provider and usually everything works out of the box.
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting
- Shared hosting is the cheapest and fastest way to get your web site online
- Fully managed by web hosting provider
- No unique knowledge needed for managing your web hosting
- Usually high reliability
Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting
- Limited server resources
- Sometimes lower performance
- Not possible to install your own server software
Suitable for…
Shared web hosting is suitable for small web sites that use little server resources. It is perfect for static web sites since usually those will run as fast on shared hosting as on other hosting solutions. You can run PHP and MySQL dynamic driven web sites but as soon and the site becomes popular you will experience issues and will have to upgrade to hosting that offers more resources but if you are just starting out and need to get your web site out in the open, shared hosting may just be the perfect solution. Usually very cheap and reliable it proved as a hosting type “to go” for most people and businesses. Usually no prior knowledge is required and hosting provider will also provide all the necessary support if you encounter any issues.