Any 21st century enterprise, irrespective of its size, can’t compete without strong digital presence. A website provides a solid platform to any business owner for showcasing their products and services. While this has become an established fact, people often become stuck when planning their website’s hosting structure.
Web hosting can be split into two major types: shared and dedicated.
Pros & Cons Of Shared Web Hosting
As the name implies, shared web hosting involves operation of multiple websites serving different businesses on the same underlying hardware/software. In contrast, dedicated web hosting means you are allotted a particular server, which can be utilized as per your own needs. An extension of dedicated web hosting is collocation that allows you to place your own server inside a third-party’s data center.
By far, shared web hosting is the most popular choice, due to its simplicity, abundance of established infrastructure and economic efficiency, especially for beginners. At the same time, there are some risks involved. Read on and find out more about the pros and cons of shared web hosting for your business or personal website.
Pros Of Shared Web Hosting
Affordable
This is the number one reason as to why individuals and small businesses go with this option. When the resources of a single server are shared among different clients, it makes operation very economical for the service provider. This translates into low operational costs. As a ballpark, almost 3000 shared hosting accounts can be operated on each dedicated server.
But does sharing of resources mean sub-par performance? Not necessarily. If you’re a beginner and have limited resource requirement, shared hosting will suffice your needs. Only when the number of visitors to your website, along with their upload/download activities increase will you notice a difference.
Another cost-cutting feature of shared web hosting is the maturity of underlying infrastructure. Web hosting companies offer control panels and associated tools for operating the website, with some even offering dedicated services.
This makes the entire operation easier, especially if you can’t afford a full-time human resource for management of your website.
Convenience
Ease of use is a major driver for shared web hosting plans. As stated earlier, you don’t need a vast trove of technical knowledge to get your website up and running. There is stiff competition among hosting companies, each striving to provide you the greatest among of services at the lowest price.
For instance, web hosting companies usually take care of PHP/SQL packages, providing control panels such as cPanel, even assisting you during the setup.
Popular software such as WordPress or an Online Store can be installed through services such as Fantastico, which is part of the toolset offered by hosting companies. Furthermore, if you require a resource upgrade, it can be achieved through a couple of clicks. This comes in handy for small businesses who have limited initial budget but still want to compete in the online landscape.
In comparison, setting up a dedicated server requires anywhere from hours to days, while initial offering usually includes an OS on the machine. You have to take care of all software, as basic as cPanel to advanced ones. Assistance during configuration will have an extra fee attached.
Customer Support
For web hosting providers, the shared architecture is easy to document and get their team on-board with. On the other hand, dedicated servers have customized requirements and may sometimes require specialized knowledge. Since shared web hosting follows a pre-built template, service providers can align their customer support teams easily to help clients experiencing any technical difficulties.
Furthermore, they also maintain comprehensive online documentations, how-to guides as well as forums, making it easier for newcomers to troubleshoot problems.
To learn more about shared web hosting providers, I have rounded up an awesome guide on some of the fastest web hosts in Australia that won’t break the bank!
Cons Of Shared Web Hosting
Lesser Resources
Shared architecture is a double-edged sword. Since your website will run on the same set of resources as hundreds or thousands of others, it will get lesser resources and bandwidth. Once your website gets popular and you start bulking up its functionalities, you may face customer complaints regarding sluggishness. At this point its usually a good idea to migrate to a dedicated server.
The service provider may have initially allotted you a certain set of resources, but this doesn’t mean they will be available to you at all instances. For instance, when your website runs at full capacity, it will affect other domains on the same server, and vice versa.
This is the essence of shared web hosting as it is usually assumed by service providers that at no instance will all hosted websites run at full capacity.
Security Concerns
Antivirus and firewall protection are usually handled by the service provider, which to beginners is another hassle neutralized. But the effects are far reaching. When one of the websites on the server decides to run a script, which may be malicious, it has the potential to spread to all domains.
There have been recorded instances where hackers have gained access to a particular website by attacking vulnerable domains on the same server. Cyber espionage has become extremely common, especially ransomware. If your website holds vital trade secrets, then it is recommended you move to a more secure dedicated platform.
Poor Customization
Even though shared web hosting platforms come with a plethora of software packages, they offer little customization if you decide to think out-of-the-box. Furthermore, the packages will run in a pre-configured mode and little flexibility will be offered as far as their customization is concerned.
This is both good and bad, as it prevents unauthorized changes from taking place but at the same time limits the creativity of the website.
Most hosting companies offer a way around it, such as Bluehost that offers two plans, basic and advanced. The latter offers features such as static IP assignment, which is otherwise not available.
Dedicated web hosting does take the lead in this scenario. On top of the basic hardware resources and Operating System, you can install different type of packages and run them in various configurations. But as stated earlier, this requires a dedicated team which will drive up costs.
Conclusion
It can be seen from the pros & cons that going with shared web hosting is largely dependent on your business’ requirements. If you are a new entrant and want your website to serve as a hub of information for your customers, then shared hosting is the way to go.
As your customer-base widens and traffic increases, you can opt for more advanced plans, before finally switching to a dedicated environment.