What is Shared Hosting? Pros & Cons with Alternatives Explained


At the point when the opportunity arrives to pick where to have your site, you will have a huge amount of alternatives available to you. Past choosing which organization to have with, you'll additionally need to choose what sort of hosting bundle suits your requirements. Both budget wise and utility wise. 

Shared hosting is one of the most well known hosting choices for individuals who are working out their first sites. In any case, what is shared hosting, and does it bode well for your site? 

Underneath we jump into what shared hosting really is, and what sort of individual could profit by a shared hosting bundle. 

Let’s get into the details.

So, How do we define – Shared Web Hosting?

Shared hosting permits numerous sites to use a particular server. Normally, you'll have no clue who or what sites you're imparting the assets of a server to. Every client pays a kind of rent for the server resources used by him. Like RAM, Disk space and processor, all of them are shared with multiple websites or customers. Hence, shared hosting is by far the best hosting option available as on date.

You are not the only one on the server using its 100% resources. Therefore, you are not the only one who will pay the entire server cost. Since the resources are shared, the cost is also shared and this way, it is cheaper than other available options.

Shared hosting is effectively the least expensive and most efficient choice for your requirements. Since most hosting providers will offer almost similar kind of features, it's imperative to pick a plan you can trust.

PROS OF SHARED HOSTING PLANS-

Shared hosting plans are best for countries with the middle-income groups and for beginners. Shared Hosting options are one of the best hosting options to starting out. Why? Let us discuss it -

1. Shared Hosting is by a wide margin, the least expensive choice for new bloggers or entry-level websites. The typical cost for Shared Hosting ranges from $.99-$8.99 per month. 

2. Most hosting providers have a variety of options or upgrades, so you can update your hosting bundle as per the requirements. This makes shared hosting an extraordinary choice to begin (For low traffic or entry-level websites). 

3. Shared hosting generally comes with cPanel (Control Panel), which makes it simple to deal with day to day operations related to your site. 

4. Maintenance-free as it is the part of your hosting package. It is managed centrally by the company technicians.

CONS OF SHARED HOSTING PLANS-

Like every other thing in the world, Shared hosting too have Cons. Let us now discuss some of the drawbacks of shared hosting plans – 

1. As resources are shared, your website loading time is usually slow as compared to other options like VPS or Dedicated server.

2. Security issues as your site can get infected to malware if any other site is infected.

3. You cannot customize as per your needs as the servers are preconfigured for general use.

4. Limitations of use - You are allowed to use only a fixed percentage of resources and hence you can face downtime when your server limits are exhausted.

Therefore, we suggest you to always upgrade to options like VPS or Dedicated server as per the requirements and budget. Thought shared hosting is good to go for beginners, they are not the most reliable options for high traffic sites.

Hence there is a need to look at the alternatives too.

Alternatives of Shared Hosting-

Once you are aware of the entire concept and your website is now getting enough traffic, you should consider the following upgrade options - 

1. Cloud Hosting – Cloud plans give you fixed virtual resources and are really fast. Your data is safe as it is on the cloud. 

2. VPS – VPS stands for a virtual private server, where you are allocated dedicated resources and IP within the server. Although the resources are still shared, but each VPS plan gets fixed resources which no one else can use. Hence are better than shared Hosting.

3. Dedicated Server- Here the entire server is yours. You are the king of the server and entire server resources can be utilized by you. This plan costs you really high but for websites getting traffic in millions, this is the best available option.

Conclusion -

Choosing a web hosting for your website is not an easy task but shared hosting is the best choice for beginners. The cheapest web hosting option enables you to get online in a few dollars. You can taste the blogging world within the budget and later on upgrade as per the requirements. If you are new to the blogging world, you must consider spending a few dollars on keyword research. For beginners, using platforms like Semrush is useful as you can read your competitor’s strategy really well.

One free tip – Always use CDN like Cloudflare with all your plans to maximize the speed and minimize the server usage. Choose a hosting provider which enables you to upgrade as and when required without any hassle.