What exactly are shared web hosting services? The simple answer is that a shared web hosting service is a web hosting hosting service (like BlueHost.com) that places a fairly large number of sites like yours and mine on 1 web server. So basically what’s going on is that even though our sites are separate and have our own domains, we are also “sharing” this particular shared web hosting server with others, and also all the available resources it needs to operate.
Shared Web Hosting Positives
There are a number of “pros” for using shared web hosting:
Shared Web Hosting Is Inexpensive
Why does shared web hosting save you and your small business or church money? Simply because you are also splitting the expenses of the shared web hosting server with many other sites. The bottom line is shared web hosting is a lot more affordable than the alternatives, which would be a dedicated or virtual dedicated or private server.
Shared Web Hosting is Fully Managed
This means your shared web hosting company will keep up the maintenance and updates, and provide technical support for its users. This is a huge benefit for those who do not have the time, knowledge or resources (like many small businesses I know) to do this. In this sense it makes huge sense to go with shared web hosting. The average cost of a reliable shared web hosting package is less than $7.00 per month. You will be paying at least ten times that amount for a dedicated server.
Shared Web Hosting Entails Use of a Control Panel
A shared web hosting control panel may come under different names such as cPanel, Plesk, H-sphere or some other name. Even if you know very little about web design and upkeep, you can do some cool stuff through control panels with a mere click of the mouse. For example, this site uses Wordpress as the way I set up this site. How did I do this? I simply went into my control panel and (through Fantastico) uploaded Wordpress right to my server with one click of the mouse. No mess or hassles. No technical know-how was needed. See the advantage of using shared web hosting with a control panel?
In our next article on shared web hosting, we will share some of the innate negatives of using this kind of web hosting. Are you using a shared web hosting service? Please help other and share your experiences with shared web hosting.
Top Cheap Shared Web Hosting Providers:
Bluehost
Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting
Host Monster
HostGator
IX Web Hosting
IPOWER
Go Daddy
LunarPages
DotEasy