Web hosting allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible to the World Wide Web. Many web sites contained on a single server are called web hosting.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting:
Shared hosting services are the most cost-effective type of hosting. Shared hosting is considerably cheaper than both co-location and dedicated servers. This is often the most important factor when choosing a host. Since only a portion of the server is being utilized, the price is lower.
Shared web hosting is very useful to those people who have medium size websites. The major benefit of the use of web hosting is cost saving as the number of websites shares a server. Normally a good web hosting account which has approximately 150 gb of data transfer can be available for as low as $10 a month. Another advantage of web hosting is that you will always be backed up with professional help if you face problems with your hosting, throughout the day, which means that even the people who are not that familiarized with web hosting or website making, they can also host their own web sites with the help of professionals who help you when you buy a web host.
Another advantage is the simplicity of setting up and maintaining a website on a shared host. Since shared web hosting is the most basic form of managed hosting, most offer easy-to-use graphical user interfaces (GUI’s) with point and click functionality. Tools such as control panels (cPanels) and website builders offer these easy-to-use options. Additionally, those that don’t possess the technical know-how to maintain a server will benefit greatly from shared hosting.
Aside from the price, technical support is another deciding factor. Shared hosting provides you a guarantee of excellence when it comes to customer support since it is one of the basic foundations of their business, and one of the selling points among hosting providers. So if you are not familiar with this kind of business, shared hosting can be an excellent choice because you know that your site is in good hands.
Moreover, with shared hosting, you can have access to other features such as multiple e-mail and PHP assistance. In addition, you do not need to have a thorough understanding of hosting and server management if you choose shared hosting.
Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting:
As shared web hosting has many advantages it also contains disadvantages, for instance, shared web hosting servers are being shared between a number of clients you if you have a shared web host, it means that you will have to share your hosting space with other clients as well, it means that if another website is experiencing high traffic, your website will work slower, so a drawback of using a shared web host is that you will not be in control of the whole scenario and will depend on the traffic level of other websites on the same server. In addition you will also be in danger of hackers and viruses entering your web site and having a negative impact on all your servers.
Finally, with shared hosting, you do not have permission to install programs. Since the server is maintained by another individual or company, you do not have the authority to download or run any program that you wish to maintain on your server. However, since you have multiple servers at your disposal, finding the program that you desire may not pose any problem.
Even though shared web hosting has advantages as well as disadvantages people still seem to use them today. There are many web hosting available nowadays some are less dominating than the others though UNIX and Linux are the most dominating of the all. To choose a web hosting you will have to consider which technology your web site will utilize the most and which will be more profitable for you.
