What is Shared Hosting, and How is It Different From Other Types of Hosting?

As the name implies, Shared Hosting is essentially sharing space on a physical server. Your website will take up storage space on a server that is owned by your hosting company, along with potentially thousands of other websites taking up their own space. A good hosting provider is reliable and fast among other things, while a less than ideal Shared Hosting provider will give you nightmares. As there are virtually thousands of Shared Hosting providers available, you would be best served to perform due diligence on the provider that is best for you.

Generally, Shared Hosting runs between a few dollars per month, up to $25 on the higher end.   Pricing varies widely, depending on the level and quality services offered.

Is Shared Hosting Right for Me?

For the majority of individuals that expect to have less than 1000 visitors per day, a shared hosting solution is usually the best one. As you may have guessed, Shared Hosting is the most popular type of hosting, simply because most sites are well under this 1,000 visitors per day.  But take note, that isn't an exact number.  Some sites, depending on how much programming is behind them, how many pages are being visited, peak visit periods, and several other technical factors; may support 50,000 or more visitors per day.  

How do you know if it's right for you?  Since there is no way to know exactly, the general rule of thumb is, unless you are planning on heavy advertising out of the gate, most small companies will fare well on Shared Hosting.  Then, if needed, you can always upgrade later (your hosting company can probably let you know if you are close).

If your site is a business, and your website is a revenue generator, then obviously, spending more than $3 - $10 a month is not a difficult decision. On the other hand, it may be difficult to want to upgrade a site that does not generate revenues.  For example: some personal sites, blogs, free resource sites, etc... 

How Do I Know When I Need to Upgrade From Shared Hosting?

Your hosting company should let you know when you have been exceeding the limits on your Shared Hosting plan.  What typically happens is your site will basically be throttled to not go over the hosting limit.  When that happens, they will usually send you an email as well, but at that point, you are getting large numbers of visitors at that moment.  

But just because you exceeded that limit, may not be normal, so you don't necessarily need to upgrade if it's not a long term problem.  If for example, your site gets mentioned on a popular news site, social network, etc... then you may get a sudden influx of traffic.  A few hours later, that peak traffic often dissipates, so unless thats a problem, temporary spikes may be acceptable for you.

What Should I Look for When Choosing A Cheap Shared Hosting Plan?

A couple of the more important factors when deciding on a Shared Hosting server include:

• Affordability - Obviously, you would not be on this site if price wasn't important to you. Overall, Shared Hosting is the most affordable hosting that's available. Depending on your budget and the traffic that your website receives, you will have to determine the amount it you can afford to pay your shared hosting provider per month.  Often, we have found large differences in pricing in the hidden services, such as if you need a dedicated IP, extra upgrades such as SSL installation.  It's best to know what you need ahead of time, and then check out their detailed pricing page for add-ons.  Chances are though, these hidden costs usually don't amount to much if you only have a couple of websites.
• Simplicity - This aspect is generally more important for those newer to hosting, and have just a single website. If your Shared Hosting provider is not easy to use, it will make everything that you do much more difficult. Uploading files, FTP, e-mail and virtually anything that you do behind the scenes is affected by the simplicity of your web host.  Hosts that use CPanel for example, are fairly easy to use, although there are tradeoffs to CPanel.  Other hosts have developed their own control panels which are just as easy to use.
• Features -  The easiest way to learn about features on our site, and use the host finder to find hosts that have these features (coming soon). Common features range from website statistics all the way to special programs that make the setting up of a blog relatively easy. Even for something like websites stats, this can range from simple statistics (e.g. Awstats / Webalizer) to very powerful business analytics (e.g. Urchin). So many features, like FTP, are common amongs all hosts, so putting them on your shopping list really isn't necessary.
• Speed - When visitors arrive at your website, they want information quickly. In the event that your Shared Hosting provider takes its sweet time to load your page, you can kiss your visitors goodbye.  This can make a giant difference in the ability to keep or convert people to sales on your site.  Measuring speed is difficult since it varies by location, but you can check a handful of their client sites to get a rough idea of how fast yours might be. 
• Uptime - Although this, and "Speed" are near the end of our list, these are probably the most important, If your website is down, then your business is dead. No hosting company we know will tell you actual uptime stats, but the truth is, most companies have plenty of downtime during the course of a year. Reviews from others often will be useful in determining whether the host you are interested in has serious problems keeping their customers sites online. For example, if your site will generate $1,000,000 in sales, then your site being down for a single hour can amount to several hundreds of dollars.

If you are still unsure of your exact needs, the best way is to simply sign up for some of our the top rated hosts. Chances are, most of them will work just fine, with the exception if your site is going to be programmed in a way that it will only work with a few hosts (rare). Since so many hosting companies offer a month-to-month pricing, switching to another company is an option.