Shared Web Hosting Uncovered
The most basic and commonly utilized variety of web hosting is the shared hosting solution. It constitutes a way to host your website without having to know much about programming and running a hosting server. What's more, it's also the cheapest type of web hosting and it's in fact affordable for everyone. Still, what is shared hosting?
What is shared hosting?
As the name implies, the shared hosting solution is a type of service where a lot of clients share the reserves of the same server. This suggests that all hosting server components like CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, NICs etc. are divided among the users whose accounts are on that same hosting server. This is mostly made accomplishable by setting up different accounts for the different users and setting specific restrictions and usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are imposed so as to hinder the customers from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the server from overloading. Normally, shared hosting customers do not have full root access to the server's configuration files, which principally implies that they do not have access to anything else on the server apart from their own website hosting account. The website hosting features that each account may utilize are fixed by the hosting corporation that owns the hosting server and by the respective website hosting package. That paves the way for the second important question:
How are the shared hosting servers divided among the users?
Hosting firms that furnish shared hosting packages commonly have different web hosting plans. Those plans involve different quotas of web hosting resources and specs, which in fact determine the limitations that a web hosting plan will include. The user may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will befit him best. The website hosting package will then define what limits the client's account will involve, once opened. The costs and the features of the web hosting plans are defined by the specific hosting provider. Based on the policy of the provider, the shared hosting solution falls into two types - the free hosting solution and the popular shared service, most recently very famous among "cPanel hosting" suppliers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to say, which one is better, since they are quite different from one another and they indeed are subject to the business policy of the specific provider and, of course, the needs of the given client.
What is the difference between the free of charge and the typical shared hosting solution?
Of course, the primary difference between the free and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they involve. Free website hosting companies are not capable of maintaining an immense number of web servers, therefore, they just accommodate more customers on a single server by decreasing the quantity of resources provided by the accounts. This will be effective only if the servers are kept under surveillance and handled properly, since the great number of accounts may make the hosting server crash over and over again. Most of the free hosting companies, however, overlook the quality of the service and as a result, it's quite hard to find a free web hosting solution that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting corporations commonly offer free customer support even to the free web hosting users, since they want their web portals to get bigger so that they subsequently migrate to a paid website hosting package, which includes more web hosting features. Such supplier, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and eldest free web hosting companies worldwide.
At the same time, established shared hosting distributors like us, may afford to maintain lots of web servers and as a result, we are able to offer much more feature-rich website hosting packages. Of course, that reflects on the pricing of the web hosting plans. Paying a higher price for a website hosting plan, however, does not automatically mean that this solution has a finer quality. The most advantageous services are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that matches the real service which you're receiving. Also, we also offer a free extra with the web hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with hundreds of complimentary web templates. As a web hosting distributor, we do care about our reputation and that's why if you select us, you can rest assured that you won't get deceived into buying a plan that you cannot actually use.
What should I anticipate from a shared hosting service?
The shared hosting solution is best for individuals who want to host a normal web portal, which is going to devour a small or medium amount of traffic each month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, since as your business grows bigger, your website will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more feature-rich website hosting service such as a semi-dedicated servers, a virtual private servers (also known as a virtual hosting server, or VPS), or even a dedicated server. So, when selecting a hosting supplier, you should also consider scalability, or else you might end up migrating your domain manually to a different vendor, which can create site predicaments and even extended downtime for your web page. If you select WANTOK Web Hosting as your web hosting supplier, you can rest safe that we can provide you with the needed domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is crucial and will spare you lots of nuisances in the long run.
| Silver | Gold | Platinum | Bronze |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $3.92 / month | $8.67 / month | $12.50 / month | $3.00 / month |