Advantages and Disadvantages of Shared Hostiing

[shiloh]

In shared hosting, you can get your website a domain name and be hosted by a server together with other websites (usually 80-120 websites, average of 100 websites), thus, called “shared hosting”.
Advantage:
1. Cost-effective. Cost is shared with others.
2. Advisable for small business.
3. Low to medium traffic.
4. Multiple Software sharing.

Disadvantage
1. Security is at risk due to many websites in only one server.
2. Limited traffic volume. (only low to med).
3. No control on software installation.

[aayushjindal]

Thanks shiloh for sharing the pros and cons of using shared hosting. You are right it one of the cheapest ways to host a website.

In my view, one of the biggest concerns of shared servers is that resources such as CPU and Random Access Memory (RAM) are shared with many other websites. This may cause down times and slow access to your website.
However, it is best suited for small companies and people who do not have any kind of technical knowledge.

[mariesheila]

Very well said shiloh and aayushjindal! I totally agree with your posts. Shared web hosting is indeed cheaper compared to a dedicated web hosting but I believe this will only work with small scale companies like what you two said. But will this also work to big companies with topnotch-IT experts who can look after their software systems and ensure security? I'm wondering, if this will also be feasible in this scenario.

[Apaullo]

Sheila do you mean if it is feasible to have a secured shared hosting of big companies? Well, first of all, when it comes to security then they might have advantage over their 'neighbors since it is being maintained by experts and they will have the guns to provide their software security. But performance wise, it is not a good idea for a big company to settle on shared hosting, remember shared hosting has limited resources to give since it is shared by 80 other sites. And being a big company, traffic will be heavy and images, heavy scripts will be loading every minute. That is why no big companies settle with shared hosting

[mariesheila]

Oh okay... So Apaullo you mean to say that it is OK for companies to purchase a shared web host as long as it is maintained by experts? Well, they can save some money if they go for a shared web hosting however they will need to invest in hiring the best software security experts. I agree that if the company is huge then they might be experience heavy web traffic, so I guess they're better off choosing a dedicated web host than shared web host then it would be more cost-effective on their part.

[Apaullo]

Indeed Sheila, big companies do not want their clients to 'wait' so they invest much on bandwidth and security both that a shared hosting type is limited with, so they choose the dedicated type of hosting where bandwidth is not an issue so is the security.

[mariesheila]

Yeah, share hosting would actually have bandwidth problems. But if they can't afford a dedicated web host then I couldn't think of any other way than choosing a shared host provider.

[Maximus]

The most crucial resource in every web-hosting service is the processing power and not the bandwidth . If you start a new web-hosting company , then you will understand really soon , that the first resource to be used-up is the processing power . You could have 100Tb monthly bandwidth quota with your server , but you will be unable to use it if your server CPU is already overloaded . When the server CPU is overloaded , the performance of every provided service is going to ``suffer`` . The same applies to the servers RAM consumption , but the first resource to ``go`` is always the processing power .

[Apaullo]

I agree, it all goes down to your hardware resources such as Processor power and the RAm, when these two is overloaded or too much processes going on at the same time, the performance of the WHOLE HARDWARE SERVER will suffer, thus all the software inside it will all suffer

[mariesheila]

Alright, thanks Max and Apaullo for clarifying that. I might have actually interchanged the meaning of the processing power with the meaning of bandwidth.