What is Shared Hosting? Is it Right For You?

Shared hosting is the most common type of web hosting. It is the cheapest option when deciding what kind of web hosting plan you are going to go with for your website. Shared hosting means that multiple websites from different hosting accounts share a common server and server resources. If you are not familiar with what web hosting is I wrote and article explaining it click here to read. In this article, I am going to take a deeper dive into shared hosting and explain what you get. It will cover: resources and server power, the speed you can expect to have with shared hosting, what types of website shared hosting is a good fit for you and, when it is time to upgrade to VPS hosting.

What is Commonly Included in a Shared Hosting Package?

Keeping in mind there are different levels of shared hosting and different providers who offer slightly different packages. The following list is pretty typically of what you will get with a shared hosting plan:

• 20 GB SSD Storage
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Optimized CPU Resources
• Free Domain – 1 year
• Free CDN Included
• Free SSL Certificate
• Free Domain Privacy
• Free Automated Backup
• Free Dedicated IP

20 GB SSD Storage

This is plenty of storage space for a new website. You can definitely get yourself up in running with this amount of storage space and probably could do with even less at first.

24/7 Customer Support

This can vary from hosting company to hosting company with the type of hours you are offered. But, generally with any hosting company that I would recommend, they are going to have 24/7 support. This will be in three forms. The first is online chat which I would recommend for small issues. The second is phone support which I would recommend for bigger issues. The third is ticketed support which is for when you can’t solve an issue via chat or on the phone and the problem needs to be escalated up the chain. What you do for this is, you will create a ticket and explain your issues (in detail) that need to be fixed.

Optimized CPU Resources

This means that the hosting company will optimize your CPU resources for you which is a nice feature. You won’t have to personally worry about having to go through an optimize everything yourself. This will improve your site speed and performance and provided better up-time (the amount of time your webiste is up online).

Free Domain – 1 year

This is a great feature for your new hosting account if you don’t already have a domain. It’s always nice to get something for free! This means you will be able to select the domain you want and you wont have to start paying for it until it is time to renew.

Free CDN Included

This is a nice option that is being offered more and more now. If your not familiar, a CDN stands for a Content Delivery Network. This is a service that basically stores your webpages in different locations around the world so that your content can be delivered faster to internet users.

Free SSL Certificate

You are going to need an SSL on your website if you are planning on taking any payments on your website, or, if you will be receiving and storing any sensitive customer data. I would recommend having one either way as it is going to make your site more trusted.

Free Domain Privacy

Domain privacy is a service that is offered by most hosting companies this keeps your names and information private.

Free Automated Backup

This is a great feature for beginners. This mean you website will be backed up automatically incase you crash it and lose all of your data. Always back up your work!

Free Dedicated IP

Having a dedicated IP address is like having your own personal address for your domain. This IP address is not shared with anyone else and unique to your Hosting account. They will improve your site speed and security. Also, with shared hosting you don’t have to worry about someone else doing something that will get your IP address blocked.

What Kind of Performance Can You Expect With Shared Hosting?

You won’t have any problems getting started with shared hosting as your choice if you are starting a new website. With an optimized website you can still achieve good load time for your page and have a good google page speed score. Click here to check your page speed. If you go with a hosting provider that offers a free CDN this should also make sure your website visitors are getting a good load time around the world. I was personally able to start a very successful membership website on shared hosting without too many issue. However, I did after a year, have to move up to VPS hosting. The shared hosting got the job done for the fist year and kept my expenses low. You will need to keep an eye on your resources on your cPanel. Not sure what cPanel is click here to read my article explaining it.

What kind of Website is Shared Hosting a Good Option For?

Now that you have a better understating of what shared hosting is, it time so figure out what types of new sites can start on a shared hosting plan. Certain project would be recommended to start on VPS hosting right away. I have written an article about VPS hosting if you think that is right for you click here to read. The following would be my recommendations for using a basic shared hosting plan.

• Blogs
• New Sites
• Ecommerce
• Membership
• Online Coarse

Keep in mind these examples are for new website that are just starting out and do not need to much Bandwidth will not be getting heavy traffic at first or a high number of users.

When is it time to Upgrade from Shared Hosting?

One factor that you can easily track and will mostly likely be tracking anyway is traffic. How much traffic your site can handle on a shared hosting plan is going to depend on what kind of website you are running. So for an ecommerce store where customers are interacting with your website, you won’t be able to handle as much traffic as a blog could where visitors are just reading the blog and not making accounts, purchases etc. You can find a lot of people online saying a shared hosting blog can handle 100,000 vists a month. My response to that is, if you are getting 100,000 visors a month it is time to start investing in your hosting. With my membership website I was getting 12,000 visits a month and it was time for me to upgrade to VPS. So watch your traffic or your revenue. If you running a membership or ecommerce website and your starting to make 100, 200, a month – invest in better hosting and security before you have an issue! I have written an article about website security click here if you want to read it. If you are running a blog and your hitting 10,000 I would recommend upgrade sooner rather than later.

Conclusion

I hope after reading this article you have a better understanding. Hopefully you are in a better place to make the decision if shared hosting is the right way for you to go. If your still not sure, make sure you go with a hosting service that makes it easy to upgrade to VPS. It will only take a few minutes to jump on the online chat and check on what the process for upgrading is. I hope my personal experience has shed some light on what you need to have in mind when it comes to your website. All the best.