Is Shared Hosting A Good Idea?

As many budding businesses will tell you, having online presence is a great idea to get noticed – fast, but the costs related to having that presence are a major bummer, especially since there are just so many other costs associated with getting the business up and running.

The best idea to get online presence is going for shared hosting so that the cost factor can be mitigated somewhat. In shared hosting, quite a number of websites are hosted on the same physical server. This kind of a hosting plan is known as a shared hosting plan. All these sites share the resources of this server, such as memory, bandwidth, etc. These plans are extremely low priced and thus affordable for growing businesses.

Benefits galore

1. As mentioned, the first and biggest advantage of shared hosting is the cost factor, which is extremely low, say from USD 3 - 10 per month.
2. The hosting provider takes care of all the administrative and maintenance tasks related to the server and the client does not have to bother about these technical aspects. This means that even if the client is not tech-savvy, they can easily make do.
3. The provider offers an easy to use control panel which makes website management an easy chore for the client.
4. The client has the option of having more than one database, and can have multiple email accounts at their own domain.
5. The provider offers PHP and MySQL support.
6. Though the client shares resources with many others, yet most providers offer 24/7 support and maintenance which gives the client uptime reliability that is almost at par with dedicated plans.

While there are many advantages to shared hosting, there are several disadvantages too. Here are some of them:

1. The shared server is usually quite vulnerable to security issues. And if the server gets affected by any malicious software, all the sites hosted on it are affected.
2. Since the resources of the shared hosting server are shared by many sites, if any particular site demands more resources, the remaining sites would suffer from the resulting sluggishness.
3. If the demands on the server are many, it may get swamped and even stop working.
4. Unlike other plans, the support offered may not be very good.
5. The client does not really have any choice of the software and have to make do with the software provided by the hosting service.

Many leading hosting services providers offer shared hosting plans of various types to their clients. These include Linux Shared Servers as well for those seeking plans based on Linux Operating System.

Though it may seem that the benefits and issues with shared hosting cross each other out, the fact remains that it is a great choice for newbies who don’t want to shell out exorbitant amounts of money on dedicated hosting. Shared hosting is good to begin with, and once the business is set and growing, the client can always move on to a better choice.