Shared Hosting
The pros and cons of a shared web host
Shared hosting has a number of benefits, which is why it's far and away the most popular type of web hosting service on the market today. While it is an ideal, cost-effective service for many individuals and small businesses, a shared web host may not be the solution for all. Here's a quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting to help you make the right choice.
The pros:
Shared hosting is generally cheap: This is a huge advantage to many. A shared web host, by its very definition, shares its servers and services among many websites, allowing it to keep costs down. If you sign on with a shared hosting service, your website or websites will share a server with a number of others. You will have control over your account and site, of course, but root control belongs to the web hosting provider. Because the server, disk space and data transfer are shared, your price per month should be nice and low.
Shared hosting offers all you need - in most cases. Face it; most websites don't need more than the resources offered by a shared web host. We all might like the sound of "root access" and "root control" and huge amounts of disk space and so on, but they're not really necessary for personal websites, small businesses, most organizations and even the majority of e-commerce sites.
Managed servers: Because the shared hosting company maintains your server, it will also take care of any problems that arise. Support is key in a shared service. For many who do not want the responsibility of managing their own server - or for those who are beginners and simply don't have the know-how - a shared web host is great for this reason as well.
The cons:
Limited resources: This may not be a huge issue if you sign on with a good shared hosting provider - but it can be a huge one if you are not. Because you share a server and other resources with other websites, sudden spikes in traffic to those sites can affect your own site's performance. When you pick a shared web host, make sure there's good customer service and uptime guarantees. These should help mitigate these sorts of problems.
Lack of control: For experienced web developers and site managers, a shared host may not offer the complete flexibility and root control you want. Control can come at a price.