November 23, 2010
Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting
Shared hosting has its time and place. It can be a great money saver in the beginning for any website but as a site grows it can quickly outgrow shared hosting. Typically shared hosting works best for smaller scale sites but you may be surprised what shared hosting plans can offer.
What is Shared Hosting
A shared web hosting service is simply a service in which multiple websites reside on a singular server. Hosting companies typically split the drives between clients, allocating resources as need be to each client. All of the sites on the server then share the resources. This can be a huge money saver as most shared hosting plans start in the five dollar a month range.
Benefits of Shared Hosting
One of the benefits to shared hosting is the client usually doesn’t have to deal with the administration of the server. A lot of time and effort goes in to keeping a web server running well over time. Take for instance updates to the operating system. Every time an update comes out to an operating system it’s not uncommon for a network administrator to have to reevaluate security and safety protocols on the server as these elements may have changed. For those who aren’t comfortable inside a server, this can be a real headache and this can be one of the primary advantages to shared hosting.
Another benefit of shared hosting is the ability to avoid all licensing fees. Typically with shared hosting, the licensing fees for the operating system and any other features fall on the host company. This can be difficult in terms of savings because licenses and seats add up in cost very quickly.
Cons of Shared Hosting
There are some downsides to shared hosting to consider. The first is speed. As all of the resources are shared between clients, traffic must be low to moderate for a site to function well. When a site begins to generate a ton of traffic it may be time to move on to dedicated hosting.
Another downside to consider is a client doesn’t have much freedom to customize the server. Clients have little to no access to the actual server in shared hosting. This means any and all changes to the configuration of the server must be made by the host company. These changes can take anywhere for a few hours to a week and can severely impact the functionality of your site over the long run.
Regardless, shared hosting is great in the beginning. It’s affordable and functions relatively well with little to no experience or knowledge needed. This allows the client to focus just on the site and not on the server.
Categories: Shared Hosting |
Tags: Shared Hosting,
shared web hosting,
server administration,
server configuration
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