Shared Web Hosting

What is Shared Web Hosting?

Shared web hosting offers web site owners a cheap way to host their web sites. Shared web hosting allows web site owners to use a small part of a web server to show their website, instead of using an entire web server.

Shared web hosting divides or 'partitions' each server into sections. The resources for each server, such as the RAM and CPU, as well as all maintenance, are shared between users that use the same shared hosting.

Shared web hosting is the most common form of web hosting available today. Shared web hosting is cheap and easy.

How Shared Web Hosting Works

Every shared web hosting company provides system administration to operate the web servers and individual websites within. Since multiple users share a physical server stored in a data center, the company takes care of any maintenance, and many customers find not having to deal with hardware preferable.

To run the web servers, most providers use Linux or Unix-like operating systems with Apache HTTP server software. The most popular alternative for web servers is Windows Server OS, which includes IIS (Internet Information Services) by Microsoft.

On the user side, you sign up for a web hosting account and register a domain name. Once you are a subscriber, you are allotted room on a server, designated for your website, with a set amount of storage space and bandwidth. Bandwidth basically represents the amount of visitors your site can allow.

Shared web hosting also gives users control panels for configuration and back-end operations such as file transfer. Control panels allow you to set up and control your shared web hosting much easier than complex command lines. Control panels function as an all-inclusive construction area for your website. More advanced users can transfer files to their server with FTP clients.

Shared Web Hosting Providers

There are literally thousands of shared hosting providers, and that's just in the US. Some shared web hosting services are quite comparable, and some have very different options.

The largest server companies are not necessarily the best hosts, and neither are the smallest companies the best hosts. You may be able to find better deals with large companies, but often, customer service is more reliable with smaller shared web host providers.

Shared Web Hosting Plans

Plans have a wide range of prices and feature options depending on the hosting provider. For the most part, there are personal or individual plans and larger plans for small business websites.

A personal shared web hosting plan will start around $6-8 a month, with a $5 or so domain name registration fee. Depending on the company, there are discounts for buying 2-3 years of hosting, up front. Sometimes, you can also get your domain name for free.

Keep in mind that you pay for web hosting as well as an annual domain name fee. Domain name registrars are required to pay an annual fee for every domain name to registry operators and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). So you pay for the service of hosting your website's data on a company's server as well as the 'title' of your URL in the official Internet registries.

Shared web hosting providers list their plans in charts to give you an idea of the offered features. A basic plan comparison can look something like this:

As you can see, the more expensive plan offers far more space and bandwidth, anticipating more traffic and activity on the website. A small business website probably needs the higher amount, while a personal website rarely exceeds the lower limit here. The best plan very much depends on what content you plan on putting up.

In the event your website becomes the next best thing, you can always purchase additional bandwidth.