What Is Shared Hosting And Is It For You?
A website is needed in order to start a business or get famous. One day, you realize that you have to make a name for yourself so you decide to get a website. Once you make up your mind, you are made to consider your options:
You are asked:
- Do you want a shared hosting plan?
- Do you want a dedicated hosting plan?
- Do you want a cloud hosting plan?
The sad part is that you don’t know about anyone. So, what will you do?
In this article, we’ll explain shared hosting.
Shared Hosting
When you want to opt for a website, you need to know about two things.
- Domain name
- Hosting
Computer science, on a basic level is all about numbers. To pass information over the internet, numbers communicate with each other, but to a layman, you simply cannot tell your numerical address if you want them to visit your website.
Say, the numbers of your web address (IP address) are (192.168.28.4). It is hard to remember the numbers. What if you could get a name out of them when registering your website?
A good example is that of Google’s. The IP address of Google is 8.8.4.4. You have two options. Either type the numbers on your browser or access the website via www.google.com
Hosting
Websites are needed to be online from a source, so that other people across the world can access it. Inside shared hosting, a large server (is offered by web hosting companies) which hosts multiple websites. The large server works on the model of ‘resource sharing’.
This means that for all the websites on that server, the sources are divided for each website. This makes it cheaper for a person to avail web hosting service.
Price
In terms of pricing, shared hosting is the cheapest option you can avail. Usually the monthly pricing of top web hosting companies starts from 1.50 dollars and go all the way up to 10 dollars.
Is Shared Hosting for You?
For most people and low – medium sized companies, this option is best one considering you have to pay a fixed yearly or a monthly amount and it is likely that your website will not be overcrowded. Also, shared hosting is the cheapest web hosting option available to you.
The downside of shared hosting is that the loading time can be slower than dedicated servers + you never know which other websites are being shared by your web hosting server. What if their size is large and they end up utilizing your resources? Your website may experience some downfall in this scenario. Also, (although quite rare) neighboring websites on your server can pose as a security risk to your website. But considering your business in ‘medium’ category, it is safe to opt for a shared hosting plan.
For large companies it is recommended to go for a dedicated server plan since a lot of people will be accessing your website. You cannot afford to make your website unavailable and hence lose all of your revenue.