Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

June 03, 2011

Shared Hosting: The Ideal Solution for Small Business Web Hosting Needs

With the looming economy woes forcing companies to tighten budget belts, many website owners are proactively looking for ways to save costs without compromising quality.  Shared hosting allows numerous users to share a single web server.  Each site sits on its allocated partition, separated from other sites hosted on the same server.  This platform is an excellent solution for many small business endeavors.  Shared hosting, or virtual hosting, is a cost-efficient solution for managing professional websites for several reasons.

Price

Compared to VPS or dedicated hosting plans, shared hosting is a more affordable option for those on an allocated budget.  Basic shared hosting packages range in price from $3 - $10 per month.  Among the top 10 shared hosting providers include: FatCow, Inmotion Hosting, BlueHost, and HostMonster. It’s important to compare what selected providers provide before making a final decision to choose the host that’s the best overall value that accommodates your entire web hosting needs.

“Unlimited” Features

Competitive hosting services offer appealing bundle packages, often advertising numerous unlimited features such as bandwidth and disk space.  The question is, however, do shared hosting providers really deliver unlimited services?  The short answer is no.  Although there are web hosts that do offer such unlimited features, shared hosting is not a conducive platform to deliver unlimited options as compared to cloud hosting and VPS.  Shared host users are required to share valuable resources such as bandwidth, RAM and CPU usage; therefore it’s often impossible to deliver unlimited services.  While not always capable of offering unlimited features, shared hosting provides the adequate resources to manage small business web hosting needs.

Software Options

A huge advantage of shared hosting is access to more popular software applications as compared to other hosting platforms.  The reason being that the provider of the single server is required to purchase software license for the hosting server; thus granting users access to the software without having to shell out a lot of money for otherwise expensive products.  Such popular blog software includes WordPress, Drupal and Joomla as well as SSL certificates.

Maintenance

The shared host provider is responsible for the majority of web hosting maintenance responsibilities including managing servers, technical support, software installation and other control panel applications.  Due to the fact that most servers run on a Linux operating system, there’s low cost associated with open source software.  Additional benefits include MySQL support, multiple PHP and quality server administration.  For novice users, shared hosting is one of the best options for managing websites.

Conclusion

While many small business owners find shared hosting the best option to meet their web hosting needs, for those in need of a more robust host able to support massive amounts of bandwidth transfer and disk space, it’s simply not a good choice.  Oftentimes, however, business owners launch smaller websites using shared hosting, and then upgrade to an enhanced VPS package to accommodate greater demands.  Whether managing a small business website or corporate blog, shared hosting is the perfect dependable and cost-efficient solution.

Tags: bandwidth,  CPU,  disk space,  Shared Hosting,  vps,  VPS hosting,  linux,  web hosting,  benefits,  technical,  operating system,  features,  mysql,  php,  open-source,  disk usage,  software,  system,  dedicated server,  dedicated,  shared,  server,  budget,  virtual,  business,  best hosting,  control panel,  web hosting control panel,  control panel options,  RAM,  shared hosts,  shared server,  PHP web hosting,  affordable web host,  dedicated hosting,  dedicated hosting package,  hosting server,  SSL,  dedicated Linux hosting,  Linux hosting,  server administration,  web host,  website,  dedicated support,  linux server,  web hosting packages,  shared servers,  affordable web hosting,  small business,  making money,  servers,  Joomla,  dedicated server hosting,  blog,  Wordpress,  budget web hosting,  hosting plans,  shared web hosting,  shared host,  affordable hosting,  multiple websites,  professional web host,  web hosting business,  linux operating system,  Linux platform,  web server,  small business owners,  web hosting providers,  technical support,  server space,  web hosting package,  BlueHost,  cloud,  dedicated web hosting,  virtual hosting,  web hosting companies,  web hosting provider,  web hosting solution,  Linux Web Hosting,  Dedicated Servers,  control panel software,  website administration,  installation,  business economy,  advertising,  web hosting services,  web host provider,  compare web hosts,  web host costs,  hosting packages,  multiple hosting,  unlimited hosting,  platform,  budget hosting,  low cost hosting,  support,  server resources,  professional web hosting,  low price hosting,  Joomla hosting,  Joomla hosting package,  server maintenance,  blog hosting,  web hosting platform,  server solution,  hosting upgrade,  Drupal,  shared hosting platform,  web servers,  support system,  server platform,  web host support,  website owners,  web applications,  shared bandwidth,  shared space,  hosting solution,  unlimited bandwidth,  unlimited web space,  SSL support,  cost of web hosting,  web hosting support,  shared hosting packages,  open source software,  shared hosting support,  web hosting plans,  cloud hosting,  cloud hosting solution,  multiple servers,  low cost web hosting,  VPS server,  control panel applications,  web server resources,  Linux server hosting,  on-site server administration,  server needs,  shared hosting providers,  software applications,  best hosting solution,  Linux web server,  multiple web hosting,  dedicated hosting packages,  VPS hosting plans,  website resources,  web server administration,  site support,  web hosting cost,  business owners,  budget hosts,  dedicated hosts,  as space,  popular control panel,  shared hosting plans,  popular web hosting,  server partition,  dedicated web server,  cloud vps hosting,  hosting provider,  VPS plans,  cloud VPS,  shared hosting costs,  several hosting plans,  multiple hosting plans,  web host control panel,  shared control panel,  hosting budget,  virtual dedicated server,  professional website,  dedicated host,  open source operating system,  hosting business,  Linux for business,  VPS servers,  open source