The owners of local and small businesses, and entrepreneurs, know that a website is an essential tool for spreading their message over the Internet, as well as in the process of building a brand. However, the website hosting costs that can incur are often an insurmountable obstacle for business owners with low budgets for their online presentation and marketing.
Before we dig into stressing useful benefits of shared hosting, let’s briefly explain what shared hosting actually is. Shared hosting, as its name implies, is a server where users virtually share the resources of a single web server with multiple users, that is, with multiple websites. Imagine the server as an apartment building. Each website represents a separate apartment within that building. The hosting provider maintains the servers and takes care of their security, stability, speed, availability, etc. On the other hand, users are the ones responsible for setting up and managing their websites.
Since shared hosting, in many cases, has a lot of users and resources of only one server, it’s actually ideal for websites that aren’t too demanding and that don’t have too much traffic that could burden other websites on the same server. Let’s get back to the metaphor of a building. If there’s water leaking in the apartment above yours, you’d also be at risk, and your ceiling would be full of moisture. Website owners on the shared servers need to be honest and responsible neighbors and take care of each website on a given server. In contrast, more demanding websites are placed on other types of servers such as VPS (Virtual Private Server) or dedicated server.
If you’re starting from scratch, that is, you have just created a website for your business, shared hosting is the right choice. Why? Because it’s an excellent solution for users with websites that don’t require too many resources. The most crucial benefit of shared hosting is the efficient use of server space. This type of hosting will allow you enough space and bandwidth to run the website. You always have the option, if your business develops later. Therefore, the online content develops as well, to use other types of hosting and customize it according to the needs of your website.
Shared hosting plans are also at the disposal of those website owners who have content that doesn’t comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This rule that was implemented in 1998 sets specific guidelines on what can and can’t be posted on websites to respect DMCA. In the same way, it’s clear what can and can’t be hosted. Some providers, who belong to the group that runs DMCA ignored hosting located offshore, are ready to battle to prevent your website from going off the air; their specifications and ways of protecting your website are listed here. Shared plans of those web hosts allow hosting of multiple websites but with a little catch: to be entirely sure that the content of your website won’t be removed, you’ll need to purchase advanced shared plans, VPS, or dedicated plans.
The good thing about shared hosting packages is that all server setups and maintenance are the responsibility of the hosting company. However, there are a few risks. For example, pages on your website may load too slow, which means losing potential clients or users. This happens when one of the websites you share hosting with consumes more resources on the server, causing your site to load slower than usual.
The slow loading of your website is, unfortunately, a very common problem on shared hosting servers. However, for the owner of a new website that has low traffic flow to their website, the benefits of shared hosting can far outweigh any of the above disadvantages. Here’s why:
1) Affordability
Shared hosting packages, as we already mentioned, have minimal prices for services of this type of hosting, which is an excellent ratio between the price and quality of service. Shared hosting packages usually cost only a few dollars a month. One thing is for sure – shared hosting remains the most affordable option for owners of small websites and businesses.
2) Efficient Technical Support
Compared to VPS and dedicated servers, shared hosting is cheaper. We have already explained this. However, while it’s cheaper, it doesn’t mean it lacks efficient technical support, on the contrary. With shared hosting packages, you can have fast and efficient tech support, sometimes even 24/7/365.
3) Ease of Use and Maintenance
Easy to get service availability with almost all hosting providers on the market, low cost, ease of use (which means easy account opening and website setup), and maintenance make shared hosting a convenient option for most websites, blogs, small business websites, and e-commerce websites. When opening a new shared hosting account, you’ll usually get basic cPanel tools for running a small website such as Softaculous, Bitnami, or Cloudron, which include several scripts, like WordPress, Wix, PrestaShop, Magento, etc.
4) Speed and Ease of Migration to Another Server
If you opted for shared hosting at the beginning of developing your business and, in the meantime, your website has reached a certain level of monthly traffic as well as the space provided on your disk, you can expand or migrate it to another type of hosting at any time, depending on what suits the needs of your business best.
