If you plan to publish a website online, you’ll need to get it hosted. There are various types of web hosting to choose from, with different levels of technical resources and control over your hosting. But for many online projects, such as a blog, online portfolio, or e-commerce website, shared hosting is the most popular choice.
How shared hosting works
A more accessible form of hosting, shared hosting allows multiple users to be hosted on the same web server. This means all of the server’s resources are shared between all the different users. These resources include:
- CPU (Central Processing Unit — the “brain” of any computing system).
- RAM (Random Active Memory — short-term memory capacity).
- Disk space – storage space for website images, videos, and other files.
Each shared hosting plan has its own specifications in terms of server resources. This gives you the freedom to choose the plan with the CPU, RAM, and disk space that is right for the exact requirements of your project.
You can also choose the number of websites you need to host, and often get other extras like email addresses and SSL certificates included in your plan — but more on that later.
Who is shared hosting for?
Shared hosting is a great choice for anyone who wants to get online quickly and for an affordable price. It’s also very simple and easy to manage compared to many other hosting options, which take more time and effort for management and maintenance.
In terms of websites, Shared Hosting is suitable for a personal website or blog, an “online business card”, a portfolio, or a website for an event or hobby — with a moderate level of traffic expected. It is also great for businesses, that need a website to make their product or service accessible to more people to develop and grow the brand and business.
You can use a shared hosted business website for specific projects, to advertise services, or to sell your products online as an online business.
E-commerce and online stores
Shared hosting is also a suitable option for small online shops and e-commerce websites that receive low or mid-level traffic. When websites are getting huge surges of traffic, it’s probably time to upgrade to the next level of hosting.
The pros and cons of shared hosting
Cost-effective
Shared hosting is usually the most affordable hosting category, which makes it perfect for small businesses, personal websites, and low-budget projects. If your website has no resource-intensive or streaming requirements and receives a moderate level of traffic, then shared hosting could be the best way of keeping costs to a minimum.
Easy-to-manage
Shared hosting is a beginner-friendly hosting category. Hosting providers typically offer control panels that allow you to configure your website. They may also offer website builders that allow you to create or edit your website design.
Shared hosting plans usually offer a selection of content management systems (CMS) to choose from, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. This means you can quickly and easily create and manage your website without special coding skills, and you don’t need to manage any complex server settings.
Shared hosting drawbacks
With shared hosting, there are certain limitations to bear in mind when it comes to performance, security, and configurability.
When you’re sharing the same server with other users, there is always the possibility that your neighbors will suddenly start taking up more resources. This may affect your speed, or for a temporary period your uptime, which is the amount of time that the service is working and available. However, this risk is minimized in hosting plans with cloud storage or cloud hosting options.
With Shared Hosting, server-level security is handled by the provider, so users don’t have to configure and manage security settings. If you need these controls, then it may be better to go for your own dedicated server or Virtual Machine (VPS hosting).
For every challenge of hosting plans and building an online presence, there’s always a solution and the common issues of getting started with a shared hosting plan can always be overcome.
Using shared hosting
Domains connections & integration with other products
When getting a website started, one of the first things you need to do is get your domain and hosting connected. It could be an option to get domains and hosting from the same provider, as this may improve your experience and make sure everything is set up quickly and easily.
It’s generally best to select a hosting provider with a user-friendly platform that makes managing connections between products easy and intuitive. Consider the extra tools and functionality you may need, such as email, security products, and advertising tools — of course, you can save more time and effort if all of these can be found in the same place.
When you have your web products from one provider, getting started is smoother and it’s easier to handle any issues encountered down the line.
Speed and resource optimization
With shared hosting, you can configure your plan to ensure your website loads more quickly and smoothly for your visitors.
This starts with choosing the hosting plan with the specifications right for all your personal or business needs. Here’s a rough guide:
- For those starting out: 1 CPU core, 20 GB storage, 1 GB RAM.
- For growing projects: 2 CPU cores, 50 GB storage, 2 GB RAM.
- For small businesses: 4 CPU cores, unlimited storage, 2 GB RAM.
You can also optimize your website, select a shared hosting datacenter location closest to your audience for more speed, and get a CDN for your website.
When it comes to resources, you can manage your settings to optimize performance or hire a web professional to help with this. This optimization may involve practices like avoiding the overuse of demanding special effects or high-resolution content not properly configured for the web. You could also manage your CPU, RAM, and disk space more effectively to ensure your website runs smoothly.
When to consider upgrading
If the performance of your hosting plan is not meeting demands, then you could think about getting more resources as add-ons, such as extra storage or bandwidth, or even upgrading to another shared hosting plan. But if this still isn’t enough, then it may be time to consider getting a Virtual Machine of your own — which is a good step up for those who need extra power in control.
How to manage security
Just how secure is shared hosting? This largely depends on your hosting provider, as well as how you choose to follow security best practices.
Every hosting provider should regularly update and patch their servers, monitor for vulnerabilities, and use security measures like firewalls, DDoS protection, or intrusion detection systems to counter the growing threats to online ventures.
As a user, you should keep all software you use up-to-date to avoid security vulnerabilities associated with any add-ons, or other services you use with your hosting plan. You can also consider additional products for security, like DDoS protection and malware scanning. It’s always best to follow best practices for password security and introduce multi-factor authentication (MFA) to maximize protection.
Another good security measure is to activate SSL certificates for your website. These protect both your website and your visitors against phishing scams, data breaches, and other attacks. Websites that aren’t secured by SSL certificates are often marked as unsafe and visitors may notice warnings in their browsers or online malware protection software.
Collaboration and account access
You may not be creating your website alone, but also have a designer, web developer, or other technical personnel that requires access to the back end of your site.
Different users can have different levels of access to mitigate security risks. With the help of FTP accounts, the same can be applied to resources. Each user account set up can be correctly managed to allow access to certain files and folders, and limit access to others. A limit of storage can also be set for each user account.
It is also essential that if you receive user credentials for your hosting account, cPanel, CMS access, or FTP account logins, then you only share them securely.
Uptime and downtime
Make sure you have carefully selected your hosting provider for a high-quality uninterrupted service for your website hosting. Cloud storage and technology help you reach 100% uptime, or as close to it as possible.
Backups and data recovery
When performing website updates, it is easy to come across glitches caused by incorrect settings or other errors.
To get back online as soon as possible, and improve your scores in website uptime, it’s good practice to keep regular backups of your website files and data. In the event of a cyber attack, you can quickly resort to your latest backup and seamlessly restore a functional instance of your website. It’s much easier if your backups are kept regularly and automatically for you, so they can be instantly restored.
It’s easier with shared hosting
If you’re looking to get your project off the ground and need a hosting service that’s reliable and affordable without taking up too much time and effort, Shared Hosting will probably be the hosting type to go for. There are still key technical decisions to make when picking out your plan and some maintenance is required. But there is also the flexibility to make changes at a later date when your website traffic is beginning to push your plan’s limits.
So whichever shared hosting plan you go for, you can always make it work for your project, and upgrade when you need to.
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