What is shared hosting? (shared host)
In this article, we are going to learn what shared hosting is its benefits and also the negative points of having a website on such hosting.
What is Shared Hosting
Shared hosts are servers that host websites or web applications.
It is called shared because several sites use the same machine, which ends up being cheaper for the company that provides this type of service.
However, not in all cases is cheaper for those who hire, as there are now very affordable dedicated server options.
The problem with the dedicated server is that it will probably require some knowledge of Linux, which is a widely used OS on web servers.
Let’s say you won’t have support as present as in one of those companies that offer the shared service.
In contrast, shared hosting is much more democratic, making the user perform all actions through friendly and self-explanatory panels, such as cPanel.
cPanel is a graphical interface where you can perform the same actions you would through commands in Linux, but only with clicks or text settings.
You can from putting new files on the site to creating a database, it’s very useful and doesn’t require that much knowledge.
Making it harder to get it wrong and you generate a problem for your site.
Advantages of Shared Hosting
It is worth mentioning that all these statements express my opinion, both of the advantages and disadvantages, so you may not agree or, for example, some disadvantage is not a real disadvantage for you.
1 – Friendly process
Many of the companies that offer this service help you with the entire process, from hiring until the website goes live.
This is very beneficial for non-IT people.
2 – cPanel
Sometimes the dedicated servers (the vast majority) do not have cPanel, which makes some processes slower, in the sense that they will take time to do, and require more knowledge.
Besides, sometimes it’s much easier to click on an option than to go into SSH and run the command on Linux, right? 😀
3 – Price
Companies offer shared hosts sometimes for very affordable prices and there are also several promotions
So it’s a cheap way to expose your brand online, you don’t need to pay an agency for it, just with the price of the plan you have all the support you need to enjoy the service.
4 – Support
Another very interesting service, as the company provides you with this support practically free of charge.
Assisting you in all forms of the process and any future questions that may arise.
The forms of support are: chat, forum, FAQ, telephone
Disadvantages of Shared Hosting
I believe that better than knowing the advantages is knowing the disadvantages
Because they can negatively impact your business
I think the disadvantages start to become clear when you are evolving your business, you need more speed, customization, etc…
Going from a more generic business to an actual product
1 – Speed
As the server is shared with several other sites, you will have much lower performance than if only your site had it there.
In this case, you will compete with all other hosted sites, creating a greater delay for your site’s response.
That’s why when you test at a Page Speed or similar, part of the blame for the low grade is this delay in the response from the server to the client.
In other words, speed, in addition to impacting your customer’s experience, also harms your website’s SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): simply put, it’s what makes your site rank high on Google.
Furthermore, shared servers tend to have low settings, that is, low RAM and bad processors, this also impacts slowness.
2 – Settings inflexibility
Most of the time the configuration of these servers comes pre-defined, which causes some problems or headaches.
It may be that you need to modify Apache for example and the hosting support does not allow you to do this.
And if it is possible to make the change, you may need to contact the hosting company.
In case you own the server and the changes only impact you, these settings can be made by yourself.
Since the question in these changes is: will other sites hosted on that host be impacted?
In addition, sometimes new technologies are released and the hosting is stuck to an old version precisely for this reason.
A case that can still be found in some companies today is the change from PHP 5 to 7, many companies took a long time to change, in this case forcing you to stay on PHP 5 for an indefinite period.
Also, companies are, most of the time, limited to back end languages, for example, some won’t let you host Python-based projects.
3 – Price
Well, I mentioned the price as an advantage but it can also be a disadvantage.
That’s because depending on your experience in Linux and server configuration, sometimes you don’t even need that much 😀
You can find incredibly cheap and good services like dedicated servers.
This is the case of this blog, hosted on Amazon on the Lightsail service, with plans starting at $3.50.
I advise you to look at the plan, when I migrated from a shared host to this one, the Amazon service was the most interesting financially and also in terms of machine configuration 🙂
Also, note that the disadvantages arguments are denser because they are usually more technical details that must be amply exemplified to understand the heart of such a problem.
4 – Support
One more negative point that I also mentioned in the positive, but it is a fact that if you have a dependency on the company, whatever it is, the support needs to be agile
And you don’t have to go far to find bad reviews about this service, from delay to respond to lack of solution.
So I believe that if you are dependent on support for most issues, support can slow down your project due to the aforementioned points.
I believe that this one of all the disadvantages, should be tested in practice and see if it satisfies you, I’ve never had big problems with this, but I have some knowledge in these issues of deployment, hosting, and IT.
Conclusion
In this article I explained what is shared hosting or shared host, we saw that it is a server that hosts several sites/projects/applications.
And because of that, it can generate some problems such as: slowness, lack of support, lack of the desired configuration, etc…
But there are advantages, you can count on support if your site goes down, to detect the problem, you have a panel like cPanel to help you with the settings.
So it’s up to you to analyze both sides, a shared or a dedicated server, and make your choice.
Remembering that for those who are starting in this world, I indicate what is shared, I believe that your experience throughout the entire process will be more pleasurable and with fewer problems.
And that’s it for today, until the next post!
