What Is Shared Hosting Meaning and How Does It Work?
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Shared hosting is designed for small businesses and individuals who do not want to pay the high upfront cost of a web hosting plan. It is a web hosting server where a single physical server is utilized for multiple sites in the shared environment.
It means that the one computer space allocated to the group of websites and resources is shared equally. Due to shared resources, the hosting plans are cheaper compared to other hosting services.
What Is Shared Hosting?
The shared hosting definition is ideated as a form of web hosting that utilizes a single server that tends to host numerous websites together. The purpose of doing so is to reduce the operational cost without difficulty. Indeed, every organization gets a dedicated section that acts as the storage space for their data files.
Besides storing the files, uses get access to monthly traffic, email accounts, disk space, FTP accounts, and even databases. The matter is all about getting your website live without spending much money.
As an economical option, shared hosting comes with slight restrictions in features like slower loading time and reduced customization services.
With shared hosting services, the provider holds the right to maintain servers through constant software and hardware upgrades. Further, the company or the user is provided access to a dedicated control panel for uploading files and monitoring the website. This will allow controlling the bandwidth allotted to you. These details will enable you to know about what is shared hosting.
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How Does Shared Hosting Work?
Now you know about shared web hosting definition, Continue article to learn about shared web hosting meaning completely. Though shared hosting is the perfect option to get your website online; still, many want to understand how does shared hosting work. Indeed, shared hosting plans have the requisite tools to transform a website into a profit-generating venture of a company.
It allows you to liaise with technologies like Joomla, WordPress, and many other content management platforms. Also, you can add databases, email addresses, auto-responders, forwarders, and various domains too. The variety of shared hosting plans available in the market will decide the additional features allowed.
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting
1- Economically Effective
The first one to notice is that shared hosting comes at low rates, making it a favorable choice for many companies. These low-priced packages will enable you to get enough storage for managing your website and its database without any difficulty.
2- Highly Efficient
Shared hosting is considered highly efficient because it provides necessary resources for the better functionality of a website. The bandwidth needs and storage space requirements are handled with much efficiency. The running speed is good enough to drive web traffic to your website. All you have to do is select a hosting provider with good bandwidth.
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3- Convenient Usage
In shared web hosting packages, you have the liberty of upgrading your plans that allows for more convenience. This enables you to manage resources, scripts, applications, installations, and a brilliant control panel. Now that everything seems visible, it allows you to understand better how and what to manage. Moreover, different content management systems can be downloaded without any difficulty.
4- Multiple Databases and Email Accounts
Though shared hosting is an economical option, it does not mean that the features are not good. Indeed, you get an abundance of email accounts and databases that makes your website functional. Also, the upgraded number of plans will unveil better features as well. This makes shared hosting to be an excellent option for business organizations.
5-Flexible
Start your new business with the shared hosting plan at the lowest upfront cost. Upgrade hosting plan as demand rises.
6- Easy to Self-manage
It comes with already installed control panel software for managing the server space. A simple user interface gives you instant script/software installation capability.
7- You Can Host Multiple Domains
Host unlimited domains on the shared hosting plan. Connect the name server, link with the hosting provider, create a folder on the server, and you are ready to go live. Create a business website, blog, image-sharing site in a minute.
8- It’s Professionally Managed
A shared hosting plan comes with advanced features that enable the users to manage the resource professionally. With low maintenance needed to the server, you can run your website worry-free. The hosting company regularly conducts maintenance procedures such as spam protection, security upgrade, file backups, and server speed boost. The technical team will be available to assist you in solving server issues.
9- It Can Host Dynamic Websites
Modern shared hosting is fully equipped with the necessary resources to run the high-end dynamic website. It supports a wide range of scripts and programming languages. Quickly installing popular scripts such as WordPress and Joomla will give you access to the full-loaded dynamic website in a minute. Host custom-build websites in various programming languages such as Python, Php, Perl on the shared hosting plan without any trouble.
10- Easy To Upgrade
Every shared hosting plan comes with upgrade functionality. As the visitors on your site grow, you will require more resources to handle the growing traffic. You can raise the query to upgrade the server resource with the team, and your plan will be upgraded instantly to meet the demand.
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Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting
1- Slightly Less Dependable
Though it comes with loads of features and is excellent for medium-sized organizations, shared hosting tends to cause trouble. In this case, any other user uses more space than allotted, there are chances that servers tend to crash. It will create an issue for other company’s website to function correctly.
2- Security Problems
Shared hosting certainly has a whole lot of crowd on a single server. This can lead to serious security threats as HT access can turn things upside down. With such access, there is a possibility that sensitive information might get leaked, and the server’s IP address is blocklisted. This will be a severe problem for the organization’s website and its reputation because webmasters will get access to your confidential files.
Technology is one such thing that has its pros and cons. People willing to know what is shared hosting should also consider the disadvantages associated with it.
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3- Potential Impact On SEO
Share environment of hosting plan poses a significant threat to the website hosted with the bunch of other websites on the same physical server space. Some studies show that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could be affected if you end up in a lousy neighborhood. Once you have hosted the website on the shared server, you have no control over the physical server.
The hosting provider could put you in any group of website and share the space with other. Also, the hosting plan does not select the website based on its categories. Therefore, there are high chances that you will end up around a malicious webpage, affecting your organic ranking.
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If you aim to know shared hosting vs vps hosting, check this article out!
Share hosting server would be using the single IP address to host multiple websites. If any of the websites in the local group gets banned due to their cruel practice where other sites share the space with your website, the IP address of that website will be blocklisted. In this case, the blocking of IP addresses would affect your site, and your Search engine ranking will drop immediately.
Moreover, shared hosting is also known for its slow speed. With the limited resource allocated to the group of websites, there will be many occasions when your site would not be accessible during peak hours. Also, a security risk is very high on the shared hosting server. One website from the local group getting hacked could result in security issues and data thief of other websites hosted on the same server. Thus, when you decide to get the shared hosting plan, ensure that you are aware of these challenges.
Is Shared Hosting Right for You?
Saving capital or cutting on investments is a need of every business to establish itself. This has paved the way for shared hosting that costs much less than allotting an entire server for a company. It is a perfect option for moderately trafficked websites, small business houses, and medium-sized companies. For such companies, shared hosting is the right place to thrive with affordable packages.
As the monthly fee is affordable and excellent scalability is identified in shared web hosting, your website is bound to grow. Besides this, you will get quick access to the website, forums, blogs, chat options, and much more. For those who think that is shared hosting right for me, the choice depends on the requirement of their business.
Generally, shared hosting is suitable for the beginner who is just starting their web journey. Below are some of the reasons why people choose web hosting plans:
- Need hosting space to start a new website.Low-cost server
- Small business website to create a web presence.
- Not going to run high-end programming languages.
- Support of Joomla or WordPress CMS
- Small websites for a startup, personal blog, educational site.
- Test web platform to make resource live while designing and development is in progress
Beginners would have limited requirements while sharting the website. A small website with few pages would not need many resources. A shared hosting plan is perfect for a company that doesn’t want to spend more on hosting services. If you fall into the above category, the shared hosting plan will fulfill your requirement.
Conclusion
It is rightly said that every step should be taken with caution. When it comes to the matter of shared hosting technology, one should ensure that it is safe enough to allow your business to flourish online. Of course, shared hosting is an excellent way to get amazing features without paying much.
All you have to do is take care of your space on the server and keep a constant check on the security measures. This will allow you to operate excellently on the web platform. The slightest security breach can lead to serious business problems. Of course, no one wants to face technical mishaps, which enables them to play safe.