What Is Shared Hosting? The Pros And Cons Of A Shared Hosting Plan
What is shared hosting? Simply put, it is when one website shares the same server as many other websites. When one site requires maintenance, another site is not affected. The more sites you share the server with, the more traffic your website receives. This is one of the reasons why shared hosting has become so popular.
There are several benefits of shared hosting. For small to medium-sized businesses, they can save a lot of money on technical skills necessary to maintain their own servers. With shared hosting plans, they do not need to employ staff to perform the required tasks. Furthermore, they can have a single server, with minimal operational overhead.
However, what is often overlooked is that shared hosting types also have their drawbacks. Although they are extremely cost-effective and allow you to enjoy low costs with ease of operation, there are certain disadvantages you should be aware of before signing up. This article will explain what these disadvantages are and why you should avoid them.
Cost - As previously mentioned, shared hosting or dedicated hosting depends entirely on the cost of operating the server. With a shared hosting plan, you pay a flat fee that covers the cost of the server plus any hardware that you choose to use. Dedicated server hosting involves purchasing your own hardware which increases your costs significantly. In addition to that, you would need to add extra hardware such as a cabling network in order to use your own hard drive. If you are not too tech savvy, this may be an impossible task for you. On the other hand, since you are sharing the server with other websites, you would also require extra technical skills to administer the setup of your shared hosting or dedicated hosting.
Limitations - Shared hosting plans typically have very limited disk storage space and bandwidth which limit the number of websites you can host at the same time. A typical shared hosting plan would allow you to host four to eight websites at the same time but this is just not enough. For large websites, you may need more than eight websites to properly utilize the resources of the single server hosting plan. Although you will be paying less than if you had a dedicated hosting plan, you will be paying for this in terms of higher storage space and bandwidth.
Control Panel Access - As discussed earlier, shared hosting allows new users access to your control panel via a URL. However, some hosting services may limit the number of allowed users and block certain types of URL's. For example, some hosting services may limit the number of allowed users that can connect to the control panel and deny access to any other URL's. Others may not allow all traffic to access the control panel at one time which can also restrict the amount of data that can be transferred to your website.
Bandwidth - A shared hosting plan utilizes server resources which may limit the amount of bandwidth your website requires. Most shared plans offer a default of 20MB/s or less which can create a problem for large or rapidly loading websites. If you use a software application that makes use of a large amount of bandwidth, you will likely incur high charges from your web host provider. This is because your website requires too much bandwidth. Even if you use a free service, if you exceed your bandwidth allotment, your website will go temporarily unavailable.
Technical Knowledge - Shared hosting plans are ideal for new website owners and do not require any type of technical knowledge. However, even if you are technically knowledgeable, the amount of time and effort it takes to manage your server can take a toll on your day. If you do not maintain your server correctly, you could experience outages that are prolonged, which negatively impacts customer satisfaction. By taking advantage of a shared hosting plan, you can avoid the complications often associated with server management.