The most fundamental and regularly used variety of website hosting is the shared site hosting solution. It represents a means to host your site without having to be much informed about programming and running a web server. What's more, it's also the most inexpensive form of web page hosting and it's very affordable for everyone. Still, what is shared web space hosting?
What is shared webspace hosting?
As the name suggests, the shared web hosting solution is a form of service where lots of users share the system reserves of one and the same web hosting server. This suggests that all web hosting server elements such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, NICs etc. are distributed among the clients whose accounts are on that same web hosting server. This is mainly made viable by setting up different accounts for the different clients and fixing specific limitations and usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are fixed so as to hinder the users from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web hosting server from overburdening. Normally, shared web space hosting clients do not have complete root-level access to the web hosting server's config files, which principally implies that they do not have access to anything else on the hosting server apart from their own shared web space hosting account. The web hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the hosting company that possesses the server and by the given web site hosting plan. That gives rise to the second essential question:
How are the shared hosting web servers split among the users?
Web hosting vendors that furnish shared web space hosting services typically have diverse website hosting plans. Those plans offer different amounts of hosting resources and specifications, which actually fix the limitations that a web hosting account will include. The customer may select between the different shared hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will fit him best. The web site hosting plan will then determine what limits the client's account will have, once opened. The prices and the specifications of the web space hosting packages are fixed by the actual web hosting vendor. Depending on the policy of the vendor, the shared webspace hosting solution falls into two types - the free web hosting service and the popular shared solution, most recently very famous among "cPanel web hosting" traders as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to claim, which one is better, since they are very different from one another and they indeed are subject to the marketing tactics of the specific provider and, of course, the demands of the particular user.
What is the contrast between the free of charge and the classic shared hosting solution?
Of course, the major difference between the free and the paid solution is in the quantity of features that they offer. Free web hosting corporations are not able to keep a great number of hosting servers, therefore, they merely host more users on one web hosting server by decreasing the amount of resources provided by the accounts. This will be efficient only in case the servers are supervised and administered properly, since the huge amount of accounts may cause the web hosting server to crash again and again. The majority of the free hosting vendors, however, ignore the quality of the service and as a result, it's quite tough to find a free site hosting solution that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting providers normally offer free customer support even to the free web hosting customers, since they want their web portals to expand so that they subsequently migrate to a paid hosting account, which offers more website hosting features. One such company, for example, is Freehostia, which is among the largest and oldest free website hosting firms in the world.
On the other hand, established shared web hosting distributors like FreeHostia.com, for example, may afford to maintain a lot of web hosting servers and hence, they may afford to provide much more powerful webspace hosting packages. Of course, that reflects on the pricing of the hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a web hosting service, however, does not necessarily mean that this plan has a better quality. The best solutions are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that matches the actual service which you're getting. The top-notch site hosting corporations that have been around for quite a while are exhibiting their prices and plan specs in a realistic fashion, so that the client may be aware of what indeed he is obtaining. What's more, some of these offer a free bonus with the site hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with hundreds of free-of-charge web templates that are offered by 'FreeHostia.com'. Such hosting distributors do look after their good name and that is the reason why if you select them, you can rest calm that you won't get swindled into paying for a package that you cannot in fact use.
Shared Hosting Plans by FreeHostia.com
| Features | Chocolate | Watercircle | Lovebeat | Wildhoney | Supernatural |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost Per Month |
$0.00 per month
|
$2.95 per month
|
$4.95 per month
|
$7.95 per month
|
$9.95 per month
|
| Disk Storage | 0.25 GB | 0.5 GB | 12 GB | 35 GB | 90 GB |
| Monthly Bandwidth | 6 GB | 12 GB | 150 GB | 400 GB | 900 GB |
| Hosted Site Names | 5 | 10 | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Parked Domains | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| E-mail Accounts | 3 | 100 | 300 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| FTP Accounts | 1 | 2 | 6 | 18 | 25 |
| InnoDB | |||||
| Node.js | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Memcached | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Money Return Guarantee | |||||
| Web Service Continuity |
What should I anticipate from a shared site hosting solution?
The shared web hosting solution is best for individuals who are looking to host a standard web portal, which is going to generate a small or medium amount of traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, though, that a shared web space hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business expands, your web page will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more feature-rich web site hosting solution like a semi-dedicated, a VPS hosting (aka a private virtual hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server hosting. So, when selecting a web space hosting provider, you should also ponder about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up moving your domains manually to a separate distributor, which can cause web site complications and even prolonged downtime for your web page. So, going with a web space hosting vendor like 'FreeHostia.com', which can present you with the required domain and hosting services as you grow, is crucial and will spare you lots of difficulties in the future.