Benefits and Drawbacks of Shared Hosting Plans
What do I need to know about Shared Hosting Plans?
A shared hosting plan is a hosting service where a single server hosts a multiple number of websites together, with each website sharing the server’s resources such as the bandwidth, disk space, the CPU and the RAM among themselves. Basically, it can be better compared to an apartment complex where a number of tenants live in separate rooms but shares the electricity, water and space within the apartment.
For some, the fact that websites need to share the resources of a single server is reason enough to shun and turn their backs from Shared Hosting plans. True, sharing the use of a server’s resources could be disadvantageous to the websites, but this shared hosting plan characteristic is also what makes it a success in the hosting market. You see, the websites sharing the use of the resources also gets to share with the cost of operating and maintaining the server. And since a number of websites get to divide among themselves the cost of running and maintaining the server, the hosting cost that each website pays could be significantly low. The fact that everything is shared effectively lowers the cost of running the server, reason why shared hosting solutions are the cheapest hosting solution in the market today. This is so ideal for companies and for websites who are just starting out and do not possess the financial capacity to subscribe to other more robust and more expensive hosting solutions.
One thing you also need to know is that shared hosting plans include in their services the task of managing and running the server for you. For many, this comes as a big plus factor as it means that a big burden of responsibility is lifted off their shoulders, giving them ample time to concentrate on the business of running their website.
The best thing about shared hosting is its hosting price. Shared hosting prices usually vary from a low of $3 per month up to $10 per month.
What benefits does a Shared Hosting plan bring?
Shared Hosting plans are very beneficial, especially for those small- to medium-sized companies and for those companies who do not have big budgets for their websites. Among the benefits that Shared Hosting plans bring are the following:
Cost-efficiency
It is very cheap and is considered as the most cost-efficient hosting solution in the market today, making it ideal for companies who do not have huge budgets to run their websites.
Convenience
Clients can focus their skills and attention to the task of running their websites as they do not need to spend time and resources for the administration and maintenance of the servers as these are taken care of the hosting provider. What’s more, clients do not need to have any technical knowledge in server administration and management tasks as the hosting provider takes care of these tasks.
Customization
Hosting plans are provided with a cPanel plus other user-friendly website management platforms. They are also provided with multiple email accounts for each client’s own domain as well as the option to have more than one database.
Service efficiency and reliability
Although a number of websites share the same resources, most shared hosting plans provides for a round the clock supervision, maintenance and technical support that gives you optimal service efficiency and uptime reliability.
What are the drawbacks of Shared Hosting Plans?
Despite the number of advantages that shared hosting plans bring to their clients, it also has its share of disadvantages. These are the common disadvantages of shared hosting plans:
Security Concerns
The number of websites sharing the same server could bring serious security concerns, despite the number of deterrent factors that service providers has put in place. For one, any website that is affected with any malicious activity could put the entire network of websites using the server at risk.
Sluggish website performance
As resources of a single server are shared often results to websites experiencing sluggish performance brought about by activities of other sites. Server may also get swamped by requests or overloaded which might cause it to stop and crash.
Limited resources
Client’s resources have limitations as everybody else in the network uses the same CPU, memory and hard drive..
Lesser Features
Shared hosting plan may have lesser features compared to other hosting plans.
Are shared hosting plans more susceptible to security concerns?
Generally speaking, the answer is yes. Compared to dedicated or VPS hosting, Shared hosting plans are typically more susceptible to security concerns. The reason for this is the difficulty of protecting the multiple number different websites that shares the single server. Any server interacting with the any running website puts itself open to the risks of potential threats, threats that could come both from outside and from the other websites themselves. Increasing the number of sites interacting with the server in a shared hosting environment multiplies the security risks that the server faces, increasing the server’s susceptibility against security concerns.