A Beginner’s Guide to Shared Hosting: How it Works and its Pros and Cons

Shared hosting servers are the best option for hosting individual and small business or start-up websites. This type of hosting allows numerous websites to be hosted by a single server by sharing its resources and infrastructure. It offers an affordable and convenient solution for those who do not need the full control of a dedicated server.

Before we enter this article tutorial, we will briefly discuss some topics in this tutorial.
First, we will know what shared hosting is and how shared hosting works.
Next, what are the pros and cons of shared hosting?
Finally, we will see, before purchasing your shared hosting server, check those essential points.

What is shared hosting?

Shared hosting is a feature of web hosting. Here, a single physical server hosts multiple websites. Depending on the hosting package, each customer can use a limited amount of resources within the server. Since many customers share a single server, the cost of shared hosting is much lower (compared to dedicated cloud hosting). The user is given a selective part to host his website.

How does shared web hosting work?

We already know that a single physical server hosts multiple websites in shared hosting. Here a single physical server is shared with hundreds to thousands of clients or users. However, the number of clients to be shared depends on the resource capacity of the server (e.g., RAM, STORAGE DEVICES, CPU, etc.). All resources are shared with each client or user on that server.
For example, suppose a server has 1024 GB of RAM; now, 1 GB is shared with 1000 clients, and that RAM and the rest of the resources are shared in the same way.
In the case of dedicated servers, as a single server is allowed to be used by only one person, in this case, multiple customers are given a separate selected part of a server through different accounts. Users can host their website, store data, etc., through an account registered with the hosting provider via the Internet.

What are the Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting?

Below we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting in more depth.

The pros of shared hosting are –

• Cost-effective: Its cost-effectiveness is much lower compared to other types of hosting. The cost of shared hosting is very low because the cost of one server is borne by all the users on that server. The basic plan starts from around $ 0.99.
• Easy to set up & customize:- Shared hosting is very easy to set up and customize. Most hosting companies offer customers the convenience of installing WordPress with just one click, setting up email, installing plugins, importing database SQL files, etc., which can be done in a very short time. The service provider also provides you c-panel, email account, FTP account, and any other add-on offers, etc. The user himself can easily design the website in a very beautiful way and publish it without any special technical knowledge.
• Multiple domains with email account:- You can host multiple domain name websites here, but you should be the domain name’s owner. You can also use multiple email accounts with the same domain name. For example, you can run a business website (eCommerce .com) with websites like traveling.com, blog.com, etc.
• Problem free from administration and maintenance of server:- Shared hosting users do not have to worry about the administration and maintenance of the server because the hosting provider does those things. As a result, shared hosting users are freed from worries.
• My SQL and PHP support:- MySQL and PHP support makes it very useful for database and programming languages.
• Technical support: Most of the shared hosting packages include technical support, and the service provider’s experts will help you with any server-related issues; their experts are in charge of server maintenance and troubleshooting.

The pros of shared hosting are –

Along with the advantages of low-cost and easy-to-manage shared hosting, there are also some disadvantages –

• Load time is much slower than the dedicated server.
• Since a server is assigned to multiple clients, the server may be down or crash due to the overuse of a site.
• If your site starts to get a lot of traffic at a critical time, then your site is likely to go down, and a warning notification will come from the hosting company that your site is overloaded.
• This hosting is more likely to be hacked because a server is shared with many clients, so if one site is hacked, it can affect other sites or the whole server.

Before purchasing your web hosting plans, please check these important points.

Before buying shared hosting, it is better to know some essential points; otherwise, you may face problems in the future. Let’s take a look at some important aspects of shared hosting –

• Price: This hosting usually ranges from $0.99/month to $45/month or more. Find out which service provider’s offer fits your budget.
• Uptime: Uptime guarantee should be checked carefully before buying shared hosting. The uptime guarantee should be 99.99 percent.
• Resources: When buying shared hosting, check the resources carefully because you need to keep track of how much resource usage you have and how much you are using, so as your website traffic increases, your resources will be used more, and other websites on that server will go down. Can and so can you. Therefore, you can manage the popularity in advance.
• Speed: When buying shared hosting, check how much momentum the hosting provider will give you, i.e., downloading, uploading, and browsing speed. You can change the hosting provider if you don’t like it or if the company’s claim is not fulfilled after buying it. But of course, you should purchase hosting with a money-back guarantee that you can cancel the plan after a few days because if your website is late to open, the visitor will feel dissatisfied, and you will fall behind in SEO ranking. Your website will go down.
• Easy to Use: The control panel and user interface of the hosting company you choose should make it easy for you to use and manage your website. Moreover, the service provider should provide you with a user-friendly control panel along with essential features like file manager, email management and database management.
• Support: This is an essential aspect; while buying hosting should check what support the service provider provides you, like call, chat, email, Whatsapp, etc., and how quickly you can get it because you may face some problems during or after hosting the website. You can solve your problem through this support.
• Security: While choosing a plan, check what important security your hosting service company provides in your shared hosting package. For example, do they have measures to protect against cyber threats? Besides, whether there are essential security features like SSL certificate, malware detection and periodic breakup.
• Backup and Recovery: Make sure that your hosting company provides you with regular backup and recovery features within the shared hosting package. This is a significant feature because in case of any disaster or emergency or something terrible happens to your website. You have a backup of your website, which you can recover again.
• Migration: Suppose you have purchased a package today, and after some time, you feel like transferring your website to another service provider. Then you will feel this service feature. For this, ensure your service provider can smoothly transfer or migrate the site.
• CMS Installation: Nowadays, the content management system is an important platform. With this option, you can easily install a content management (CMS) platform and create a website with it without any coding knowledge. For example, the WordPress platform is the most popular content management system (CMS). Also, platforms like ‘Joomla’ and the website builder ‘Wix’ can be easily installed with one click. Check if this one-click CMS installation option is available

Getting these things right will help you stay ahead of the curve and know more about what to do in time, keeping you far away from any significant problems.

Conclusion:

In short, shared hosting servers offer cost-effective and user-friendly website hosting services. Its use has many advantages that make them attractive, such as its affordability, easy customization, ease to use, and low maintenance requirements. It is not suitable for complex functionality or high-traffic websites. Individuals, small businesses and start-up businesses etc., have proven to be one of the best options for starting websites.

Related Article:

What is Web Hosting and how does it work?

What is Dedicated Hosting and How does it work?

What is VPS Hosting and how does it work?