What is a shared web hosting ?
After designing a website, it is natural to want to make its content available to the Internet users. This operation is very easy to perform, the administrator or owner of the site will only have to contact an excellent web hosting provider to look into its web hosting offers. The web host provider generally offers several types of hosting, including shared web hosting.
Shared web hosting is a type of hosting where multiple sites share a very powerful single server. In other words, in order to respond to the requests of the sites it hosts, the server will allocate its resources for a period of time to process each request. Processor, RAM, throughput, storage space represents the resources of the shared server. It should be noted that the shared server in some cases is a cluster to ensure high availability hosting.
Customers of the shared web hosting, do not have administrator access to the server as the web host provider is responsible of the administration of the server. However, users access the server through an account given by the web host. It is therefore through the administrator interface of its account that the user can manage its website and the ancillary services offered by the web host provider, such as, the messaging, storage and spam filtering service.
Shared hosting offers matches small to medium size and audience sites. For a site with a considerable success and crowd making the initial shared hosting offer no longer suitable, it is better to opt for VPS hosting with dedicated resources and great freedom of configuration.
Benefits of shared web hosting
A large number of sites use this type of web hosting. This solution suits the beginners, small projects, blogs, showcase sites, etc. It also offers several advantages:
- Economical solution.
Sharing a single server, the cost of the infrastructure is divided between the sites and the expenses to be incurred by each user is reduced considerably.
- The administration of the server is the responsibility of the host.
An advanced technical skills is not required to manage a user account on the server. The web host provider takes care of everything from interconnecting infrastructure components, installing software, to managing server security. Hence, the users will focus on just taking care of their sites.
Disadvantages of shared hosting
Of course, low price means reduced functionalities, certain restrictions and other disadvantages.
- When one or more sites on the server consume a lot of shared resources, all other sites will be affected. The user may experience slow connection and in some cases service interruptions.
- Sites on the same server share the same IP address of that server. When mail servers mark a site as subject to spam, that mark will affect all sites on that same server.
In conclusion, a standard shared web hosting allows having a first presence on the web. When the need for a better performance increases, it is preferable to opt for a more powerful solution in order to ensure the sustainability of your project.