- Top 10
Best Shared Web Hosting companies
for 2020
for 2020
When a server provides services to more than one client or tenant, it is called shared hosting. Shared hosting is simply explained by the name of it. Imagine when you rent a three-bedroom apartment and share the rent with two other people. Then your apartment is similar to that server. Your website will be sharing the same server with other websites.
As shared hosting is a popular web hosting plan, it has plenty of benefits. For example, it doesn’t cost as much as other options because you will share the expense with other customers. Users can also save money on license as well. However, it includes some drawbacks. In particular, you can’t expect perfect performance all the time due to its low cost. This might not be a problem for small businesses, but if you want to upgrade the scale of your businesses, it might not be a great option. In this overview of shared hosting, you will learn more details about it.
So if you want to build a website, you need to find its host where it is stored. A host here refers to a server which is a type of computer. This server helps the website become visible to users and it marks its name on the website’s URL. In particular, when you type the website into a browser, you will also see the address where it is stored.
And this is how it works. Once you type the name of the website, your browser will request the server to provide information about the website, including all the necessary data. Afterwards, you will see the web page in the browser. From now on, users can easily interact with the website the way they want.
One server in shared hosting stores all the files for more than one site at the same time and therefore, it is responsible for providing information about all of them. It is completely opposite with a dedicated server which exclusively hosts one website.
When a website uses a shared hosting plan, it takes up fewer resources. That’s why it doesn’t cost as much as when it is hosted on a dedicated server. The website’s host also takes on the responsibility of maintaining it, so you don’t have to worry about maintenance costs. The downfall comes when sites want more resources and compete with the others.
In summary, shared hosting plans are a good option, especially for small businesses and start-ups because of small investment and lack of maintenance requirements.
When choosing a hosting plan for your website, you need to consider a few factors, which is listed in this overview of shared hosting, as below:
When it comes to shared hosting, you don’t need to spend much. Compared to other types of hosting plan, it is less expensive. The main reason, as we stated above, is because you only use part of a server’s storage space and resources. And you are not responsible for maintaining the server.
In addition, if your site or business is not very big and doesn’t drive enough traffic, it will be wise to opt for shared hosting, but not dedicated servers. This is how you can save money and spend for other prep works.
Furthermore, you need to consider the hosting plan’s features, check them out carefully. For example, some hosting plans come with a free domain or email services. If you are trying to save some money on these services as well as looking for low monthly cost of the hosting, a shared plan is the best option for you. It can help you to stick to a strict budget and ensure decent performance.
If you are building a website for the first time, you might not have a lot of experience about managing a server. If you are not confident to handle this task because your technical skills are not good, you should opt for a shared hosting plan because the host of your server will be in charge of it.
It is also crucial to check out the web host’s control panel. It plays an important part in performing troubleshooting, upgrading your plan, managing billing, etc… Therefore, you need to make sure that your control panel is easy to navigate to simplify your site management process.
When your website shares the server with others, you have to expect some problems and they will have a significant impact on your website.
First of all, the storage space that shared hosting provides is limited. Therefore, it is not the right option if your website is large. Or if you don’t have the intention to expand your website, other websites that are sharing the server with yours can grow big. In this case, they will take up more storage space and it still affects your site’s performance.
Secondly, you don’t know how big your site can grow and how it attracts traffic. And when it happens, you don’t want your visitors to have trouble loading the page. Furthermore, when there is a traffic spike on another site that shares your server, it could affect your site’s loading speed as well.
These restrictions are for preventing any site from using up more than its fair share of resources, which is common on shared hosting. The restrictions can be helpful, and sometimes they can cause some issues as well.
Firstly, it is about memory limits. Every web host limits its resources, from bandwidth to server memory that each website can use. Therefore, if your website is going to expand and it needs more resources, you have to upgrade the hosting plan so that your website can still have a good performance.
Secondly, the website on a shared hosting will have file restrictions. When one website is infected by malware, other websites can be infected as well because they share the same server. Therefore, some hosts restrict on the type of files that can be uploaded on your site.
In addition, there are some restrictions regarding spam and hacker activity. In case the web host finds any of these activities on your site, it might disable it to ensure servers security and performance.
Because of these restrictions, you might have problems when it comes to downloading specific plugins or sending emails directly from your server. But if your site is a portfolio, a small business site, a blog, a personal site or a database-driven site, you won’t find these limitations a problem.
So this overview of shared hosting has provided basic information about this hosting plan. Just like any other type of web hosting, shared hosting has its own pros and cons. Below are the advantages when you decide to use a shared hosting plan:
This is possibly the biggest advantage of a shared hosting plan. As we have been mentioning about it, shared hosting plans offer low cost because you have to share a server with other websites. Not only does it have a reasonable price, but also excellent benefits to users.
Furthermore, you will pay less for service fees of shared hosting plans than other types of hosting plans. Although you will have to share space with other websites, you will still get more than enough space for your own site.
Shared hosting plans offer plenty of comprehensive tools like control panel and website builder software. With these tools, you can easily customize your shared hosting experience, even if you are a beginner.
Shared hosting also offers a webmaster that uses control panel tools to control your website. You will find it easy to use this tool and customize it. You can also be able to manage some other features such as uploading images and other files, or observing website statistics.
With shared hosting, your website management will be handled by experts from the provider. Along with the extremely affordable price and customization options, this convenience is another benefit you get.
Despite having many advantages, as listed earlier in this overview of shared hosting, this type of plan has its drawbacks.
Efficiency can be the biggest downfall of shared hosting plans. Imagine when many people connect to a WIFI network at the same time, they will be frustrated with low response and interruption. With shared hosting plans, users have a limited amount of disk space and bandwidth because they have to share the resources with other users. That’s why we have mentioned that if your business is small, it doesn’t really matter. However, when your website is expanding and has a lot of data, bandwidth is an important factor to ensure its performance.
Besides, your website will also face performance issues when another website on your shared hosting plan increases its traffic. And things get worse if you have no preparation for it, like the traffic just increases suddenly. You can’t upgrade your plan quickly enough, resulting in a slower performance on your own website and slow loading of your pages. This issue is really irritating, not only for you as the owner, but also your guests and clients.
In addition to efficiency, crashes is another issue that is one of the biggest disadvantages of shared hosting plans. This is common if there are many websites on one server. It will cause a lot of lost time for your website, and other websites sharing the same server as well. However, one good thing for you is that there are many web hosts that offer shared hosting plans. That means users have plenty of options when choosing their hosting solution. So there is no need to worry about thousands of websites on one server of a web host.
When it comes to shared hosting plans, users tend to worry about the safety of their websites as well as their data. This issue arises because web hosts allow their clients to be able to manage their website and access the server freedomly. When there is just one mistake, it still causes a lot of problems for the server. Therefore, websites on shared hosting have experienced a lot of hack attacks. Also, whenever one specific website gets hacked, it will impact and affect every other website on the same server. This is why it is a serious security problem and many shared hosting plan clients are not satisfied with this plan.
As an owner or an entrepreneur, it is a must to establish a website and online presence for your business. And if you are on a tight budget, you can still afford a good quality hosting service like shared hosting. Hopefully this overview of shared hosting has provided all the information you are looking for. This plan will fill the need of any business with its flexibility, cost-efficiency, and ease of use.