Shared hosting service is said to be the most common type of web hosting service offered. Also referred to as virtual hosting or sometimes derive host, shared hosting refers to a web hosting service wherein numerous websites reside or hosted on one or the same web server that is connected to the internet. The websites of the clients are housed together in by that single server to share the same resources, such as memory, bandwidth, software and processor. The number of web sites hosted per server can be up into hundreds or even thousands. However, each site has its own partition (each web site “sits” on its own place or section) which keeps it separate from other sites on the server. This option of hosting in recent years dynamically became the most popular. This maybe because it is the most economical hosting choice since the users of the server share the overall cost of the server maintenance.
In shared hosting service, the provider is generally responsible for the server management, server software installation, technical support, security updates and other aspects of the hosting service.
Benefits of choosing Shared hosting service
- The maintenance of the server is not the user’s responsibility.
- Server software and updates, as well as control panels are pre-installed by the web host.
- Since the cost is shared among the end users or a number of similar clients, shared hosting is a cheaper than any other type of web hosting plans.
- Users are charged only for what they need and upgrade their plans when their need grows or increases.
- Drawbacks of Shared hosting service
- Share hosting accounts has no root access.
- Making and restoring backups can sometimes be difficult or even impossible.
- Limited resources such as disk space, monthly bandwidth, CPU and RAM.
- Some problems of one web site can affect other sites on the same server, since resources are being shared.
- Spammers on the same server can have the I.P. you are sharing blacklisted, which could result to trouble sending email to other people.
- If the web host or the administrator of your shared hosting platform chooses to do some upgrades on the system software, this could sometimes cause problems with your scripts or codes if they are not compatible.
- Using newer features of scripting languages can be difficult since the software versions you are using are shared, you normally have to stick with the latest stable version.
- If file or data permissions have been configured improperly, then file systems that are shared can possibly give other unsolicited users processes system-wide access to these files.
- How Shared Hosting is implemented or accomplished
Shared hosting service can be done in two ways: name-based and IP-based.
- Name-based virtual hosting is also known as shared IP hosting. In this type of shared hosting implementation, the virtual hosts serve numerous hostnames on a single machine with also a single IP address. This is possible because HTTP/1.1 is used when a web browser requests a resource from a web server wherein the requested hostname is included as part of that request. The web server makes use of this information in order to determine which web site to show to the user. When your domain name is registered, your Domain Name System setting is being kept by their server, and mostly points your domain to the Name Server of your web host or hosting provider .
- IP based virtual hosting is also known as dedicated IP hosting. In this kind of shared hosting implementation, each virtual host has his own IP address. The server is being configured by many physical network interfaces on the same physical interface. To determine which site to show to the user, the web server uses the IP address the client connects to.