What is Shared Hosting?

The most standard and commonly utilized form of web hosting is the shared hosting solution. It's a means to host your website without having to know much about programming and handling a web hosting server. Additionally, it's also the cheapest form of website hosting and it's quite affordable for everyone. However, what is shared hosting?

What is shared hosting?

As the name denotes, the shared hosting service is a type of service where numerous clients share the system reserves of one and the same hosting server. This goes to say that all hosting server components such as CPU, hard disks, RAM, NICs etc. are apportioned among the customers whose accounts are on that very same server. This is normally made viable by opening different accounts for the different clients and imposing given restrictions and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are appointed so as to restrain the clients from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overloading. Normally, shared hosting users do not have root-level access to the web hosting server's configuration files, which primarily means that they cannot access anything else on the hosting server but their own personal website page hosting account. The website hosting features that each account may use are set by the hosting supplier that owns the web server and by the respective web hosting package. That brings about the second important question:

How are the shared web hosting servers split among the users?

Hosting corporations that offer shared hosting accounts commonly have various hosting plans. Those plans include different amounts of web hosting resources and specs, which actually set the limits that a web hosting plan will include. The user may pick between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he deems will suit him best. The web hosting package will then define what restrictions the client's account will have, once set up. The prices and the specifications of the website hosting plans are chosen by the particular web hosting firm. Depending on the politics of the vendor, the shared hosting solution falls into two categories - the free hosting service and the normal shared solution, most recently very famous among "cPanel hosting" merchants as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to allege, which one is better, since they are quite different from each other and they indeed depend on the business strategy of the particular supplier and, of course, the needs of the particular customer.

What is the difference between the free of cost and the popular shared hosting solution?

Of course, the chief difference between the free and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they offer. Free website hosting providers are not able to maintain a big amount of hosting servers, therefore, they simply accommodate more customers on one server by reducing the amount of resources provided by the accounts. This will be efficient only on condition that the hosting servers are kept under surveillance and administered properly, because the big number of accounts may cause the server to crash frequently. Most of the free web hosting firms, however, neglect the quality of the service and therefore, it's quite tough to discover a free of charge website hosting solution that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting providers commonly offer free customer support even to the free web hosting users, because they want their web pages to grow bigger so that they subsequently upgrade to a paid hosting plan, which offers more website hosting resources. Such provider, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the largest and eldest free website hosting firms in the world.

On the other hand, established shared hosting vendors like us, may afford to keep lots of hosting servers and therefore, we are able to provide much more feature-rich website hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the pricing of the web hosting packages. Paying a higher price for a web hosting solution, though, does not necessarily mean that this service has a better quality. The most optimal services are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that matches the real service which you're getting. What's more, we also offer a free extra with the web hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with hundreds of cost-free design templates. As a website hosting vendor, we do care about our reputation and that's why if you select us, you can rest calm that you won't get duped into buying a service that you cannot actually avail of.

What should I anticipate from a shared hosting service?

The shared hosting solution is best for those who wish to host a standard web page, which is going to utilize a small or medium amount of web traffic every month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business develops, your website will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to eventually move to a more feature-rich website hosting service like a semi-dedicated hosting, a VPS hosting (aka a private virtual hosting server, or VPS), or even a dedicated hosting. So, when picking a web hosting distributor, you should also consider scalability, otherwise you might end up relocating your domain manually to a separate vendor, which can cause site predicaments and even extended downtime for your site. If you choose Happy Hosting UK as your hosting supplier, you can rest safe that we can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is vital and will save you lots of hassles in the long run.