Shared Web Hosting Explained
By Josh
Shared web hosting is a service offered by web hosts wherein more than one website is hosted on a single server. It is an economical option since the overall cost of running and maintaining the web server is shared among many websites.
A real-life comparison can be that of a students' dormitory where all students share the same facilities. Except that in case of shared web hosting, individual website owners do not normally know each other.
Usually small websites prefer shared web hosting to keep overhead cost minimum. It is quite common to find websites from any part of the world availing shared web hosting service from a single provider. For them, ability to host own website is more important than other considerations.
On the other hand, in many large companies every department has its own server which is shared only by department personnel. Clearly then the concept of shared web hosting varies from need to need depending on necessity and ability to afford the cost involved.
In the paragraphs below we will look at the pros and cons of shared web hosting in more details:
Shared Web Hosting - The Pros
If you are dipping your toe in web-world for the first time, shared web hosting will be a good choice. Costs are low since you are entitled to a small portion of the whole pie. More than that, shared web hosting offers unique advantage of many features and software that already come installed in host server. In addition, a system administrator, available 24x7, will be there to help you in case of any trouble with your shared web hosting.
Depending on service provider, typical freebies in shared web hosting include open-source software such as fully-featured shopping cart (like Agora, Oscommerce, CubeCart, Zen Cart, etc.), content management system or blogs (like Nucleus CMS, Drupal, WordPress, etc.), image galleries (4Images, Coppermine, etc.) and so on.
This apart, most shared web hosting plans come equipped with web statistics facilities like Awstats and Webalizer, and sometimes even with a site-builder so that you can design your website in no time.
Since all hosting-related needs are taken care of, shared web hosting specially appeals to those website owners who want to focus on their web businesses and have no reason to bother about nitty-gritty of host server. In short therefore, with shared web hosting, one gets going without too much of hassle and certainly in shortest possible time.
Shared Web Hosting - The Cons
Not everything is rosy with shared web hosting. The principal concern is lack of privacy. If your website deals in sensitive data, then shared web hosting is not preferable. Since you have no control on what others are doing in shared web hosting, there is no guarantee that your website data will not be tampered with intentionally or otherwise.
It is true that some shared web hosting will offer SSL and TLS shields (SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and TLS means Transport Layer Security) to ensure that all your web communications remain totally confidential. But in practice this is not so. This is because in shared web hosting, all websites have same IP address (Internet Protocol Address) and therefore share the same SSL/TLS digital certificate.
Another issue of concern is when your host server malfunctions. This can happen even if yours is not a shared web hosting. The problem is that since you do not control the server, you will not know what ailed the system and so you cannot take any preventive measure.
Summing Up
Shared web hosting is without doubt the first stepping stone across the turbulence of web world. Once you graduate and progress you will find you no longer prefer shared web hosting for various reasons. You have grown big and have reached a point where it will be a better option to move out of shared web hosting, for good.
Why does shared web hosting offer unlimited bandwidth but dedicated servers or VPS hosting does not?
Just curious why you don’t get unlimited data transfer if you’re paying A LOT more for a dedicated server or virtual private server.
shared hosting providers usually have their servers on an unmetered line, which will be shared among their many clients. You could get an unmetered line for your dedicated/VPS, but it would cost you a real lot.
Will my site be okay on shared web hosting, or should I go for dedicated hosting?
I’m going to be starting a speculative fiction web magazine, but I’m unsure whether to use a shared hosting service or a dedicated host.
Dedicated hosting will cost you for a month what shared hosting would cost for an year. Well, of course that is not the way to decide which one to go for.
Usually many people start with shared hosting (even forums and small social networking sites).. and when they find that they have lots of visitors and hence bandwidth requirement, that’s when they move over to semi-dedicated (most people don’t know of this option) or dedicated hosting. It gives you the time to grow your site to the point where the fee you pay for dedicated hosting is really worth it. Usually it might take you anywhere from 8-12 months in doing so unless of course you are already a well known person and the launch of the website you are talking about is anticipated by lots of folks, in which case you’ll have a flood as soon as you start your website.
Would shared web hosting fall within the ranges of SaaS ?
Some say it doesn’t, some say It does.
What is your professional opinion ?
Would a service such as shared webhosting provided by companies like Godaddy fall within the classification of SaaS?
I say it does, as customers or companies are requiring support for web based services.
Your opinion ?
Yes, by definition shared web hosting is SaaS –
Software as a Service (SaaS): is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Using SaaS also can reduce the up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing. From the software vendor’s standpoint, SaaS has the attraction of providing stronger protection of its intellectual property and establishing an ongoing revenue stream. The SaaS software vendor may host the application on its own web server, or this function may be handled by a third-party application service provider (ASP). This way, end users may reduce their investment on server hardware too.
What is shared web hosting? Where I can find good shared web hosting?
is shared web hosting safe?
Shared hosting is when a web host puts multiple sites on the same server, to save money. For most people, shared web hosting will be fine. Since you’re sharing a server, there’s a possible risk that someone could slow down a server with an unexpected spike in traffic, or by using disproportionate amount of the server’s resources. This is pretty rare, however. Most web hosts can handle this, so I think it’s an acceptable risk considering the cost savings.
Still, consider choosing a web host with good historical uptime performance. In our testing, we’ve seen great results from Yahoo!, 1&1, HostGator, Lunar Pages.
Tell me some thing about shared web hosting service?
Hi friends what is the use of sharing the web hosting service and also tell me the procedure to get this share web hosting service….
Shared web hosting is the which creates separate partition on the server and allow to interact with multiple user at a time…Shared hosting typically uses a web-based control panel system…It reduces the cost and it is easy to maintain the server…It has security updates which is the main features in the shared web hosting….