Warnings to Consider About Shared Hosts

“Unlimited” has become a prevalent term in the web hosting industry. It seems as if every other provider is offering some type of unlimited service, whether it’s storage space and bandwidth or domain names. So does this mean that there is no limit to the scalability of your business? Not exactly, especially in a shared hosting environment. Even if a web host is genuine about their claims of providing unlimited space, bandwidth and domains, there are other factors that need to be considered, factors that are unworthy of the unlimited title.

Before you are able to enjoy the benefits of unlimited bandwidth, you are likely to experience issues such as exceeding associated resources. Resource usage is a major factor that limits the capability of a shared host. It generally covers three areas: CPU usage, RAM usage and database usage.

CPU

CPU (central processing unit) is responsible for the functionality of a website and delivering content to visitors. If your website is built with dynamic content, with applications such as blogs and message boards, it would naturally require more CPU usage. This is because the CPU has to process web content and recreate it every time a user requests it.

If you are building on a shared server that is hosting a number of other sites, the performance of your site may eventually endure issues and thus function much slower. This is because the server uses CPU to compensate for each individual site on the server. Shared hosts with limited resources typically monitor CPU usage and restrict those use too much.

RAM

RAM (random access memory) is temporary memory used to store the programs, scripts and related data of your website as they are running. While many web hosting providers openly advertise their amount of bandwidth and storage, rarely will they disclose the capacity of RAM and how much you are allowed to use.

RAM usage also determines how fast your website runs a script or process. Keep in mind that every script and application requires RAM usage. The more you install on to the server, the higher amount of RAM you’ll need.

Database Connection

The database is a very critical feature in web hosting. With more than 10 million installations throughout the globe, MySQL is the most widely used database management system available. Your database is what stores the content of your website such as user names and passwords, customer addresses and credit card numbers, etc. However, when there are too many requests or connection to a database, the server may easily become overloaded, especially when a number of users are constantly making simultaneous adjustments.

In Closing

Before purchasing service with any web host, you should ask the provider about resource usage and how they handle accounts that have exceeded server limits. Shared servers are popular but at the same time they are limited. Hopefully this article helped you to become familiar with this type of hosting. This environment tends to be more suited for personal sites and small businesses opposed to large e-commerce sites.

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