Shared Web Site Hosting 101

A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Brandie King

Introduction to Shared Web Site Hosting

Shared web site hosting is the most basic, often used, and well known type of hosting on the Internet. According to HostingGlossary.com, the definition of shared hosting, also know as virtual hosting, is "Hosting option whereby several client web sites are housed on and share the resources of a web server." When you use a shared web site host it does not mean that your hosting is shared with somebody else, it means that the server your account is on is shared with others.

Additional Information about Shared Web Site Hosting

This type of hosting is perfect for both personal web site and small business web sites alike. Normally if the type of hosting is not specified by the hosting company then it is shared (or virtual) hosting. When it is another kind of hosting, such as dedicated hosting, that will be specified somewhere on the company's web site. With shared web site hosting you will get a set amount of disk space and a set amount of bandwidth to use each month.

With some companies you will be able to purchase additional disk space and bandwidth, although there are quite a few of them that provide you with enough that you will not have to worry about purchasing more.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Shared Web Site Hosting

Shared web site hosting is one of the cheapest forms of hosting available. This is a very big advantage of using it. You should not automatically assume that cheap means horrible though because most of the best known hosting companies are shared web site hosting companies. When you compare it to other hosting options such as dedicated hosting, you will see that it saves you a lot of time and hassle as well. You do not have to manage your own server like you do with dedicated hosting.

In addition, you will normally receive full technical support when you use a shared web site hosting service. One of the disadvantages that you may come across is the problem of the servers being over crowded with a shared web site hosting company. With some companies there are so many accounts on each server that it causes problems and the company has not managed things well enough to take care of the problem.

The other major problem with shared hosting is that it has some inherent security issues associated with it. If one of the other web site owners that has an account hosted on the same server as yours decides to start testing scripts on his account and one of those scripts causes the server to crash, which is a very real possibility, then your account will suffer too.

You also have to worry about those people that are unethical that have sites on the same server as yours because it would not be very hard for them to hack into your account. Lastly, you will not have very much, if any, control over what software is used to run your web site.