Shared hosting is one of the most common and widely used website hosting products and services in which server resources are shared among several accounts or users of the hosting service.
Just as resources are shared, so are financial costs, so shared web hosting is affordable and easy to use for the majority of small and medium-sized websites.
In this web hosting lesson, we will explain how Shared Web Hosting works and its uses, as well as how to choose the best shared hosting service from the huge number of shared web hosting services on the market.
How co-hosting works
You must be asking: How does shared web hosting work, or how does it work?
As the name implies, shared hosting works on the principle of Participation.
There is no secret sauce or special technical or non-technical issues with shared hosting. A shared hosting user simply shares a server with other users. This shared hosting server runs a special program that manages the server's resources - processing power, storage capacity, RAM, etc. - which is set up, configured, and maintained by the web hosting company that owns the server and sells the hosting service.
Among the most prominent of these companies is Bluehost, which is one of the largest and most well-known shared hosting companies, and there is also the European Hostinger, which is interested in providing low-cost hosting and started its journey as a free web hosting company and still provides this service until now, but through one of its affiliates.
The shared hosting company manages and allocates resources to each account or group of shared hosting accounts individually according to the hosting package purchased by the account holder. Web hosts (companies) make sure that the accounts are isolated from each other as much as possible and do not interact with each other so that the accounts are not negatively affected by other neighboring accounts on the same server.
Co-hosting is like co-housing!
At What is the Best Hosting, we like to give examples that are as close to reality as possible. To give you a real-life example of shared web hosting, we want you to visualize housing for a moment and we'll explain the similarities between it and this type of web hosting.
A shared hosting server is like a residential tower that consists of a number of floors and each floor has a residential apartment "unit" or several apartments. In this example, a unit is similar to a shared hosting account.
Although each condo owner owns their unit outright, the actual structure of the property, the land on which it is built, and other resources and services such as the elevator, utilities, stairs, etc. are not assigned to a single owner, but are shared among the owners and residents as a commons.
Just as units differ from each other in terms of their space, location, view, amenities, etc. which results in differences in the price and cost of the unit, shared hosting accounts also differ in each shared hosting account's share of resources and the price of the service.
Just as a condominium owner can make some modifications and changes to his apartment as long as it does not affect the common property or the property as a whole. A shared hosting account holder can also make whatever changes they want to their Web Hosting account as long as those changes are within the scope of their account only and do not affect their other neighbors on the same server.
To ensure that the shared server runs smoothly and that accounts and users are not affected by each other, the hosting company takes certain precautions. Since accounts share server resources, shared web hosting imposes certain restrictions and usage rules on each hosting account to prevent all accounts from being disrupted by the downtime of a particular account.
Uses of Shared Web Hosting
The vast majority of websites run on Shared Hosting, which is the cheapest and most user-friendly web hosting service available and free from many of the complications that come with using a Dedicated Server or a Virtual Private Server (VPS).
Besides the low price, shared hosting is characterized by ease of use and control and often comes with an easy control panel such as cPanel, which is used by many well-known web hosting companies such as HostGator, which is one of the most prominent names in the market and also the oldest, as well as FastComet, which is a fairly new hosting that relies on providing cloud hosting managed using cPanel, and many other cPanel hosting companies.
Most shared hosting services are managed services, meaning that the hosting provider (the company) manages the hosting for users, including setting up the server and hosting in terms of hardware and software, protecting the hosting, continuously updating it, optimizing performance, and resolving errors and issues that may arise.
Managed Web Hosting also comes with a technical support service from the hosting company that responds to customer inquiries and resolves hosting issues, sometimes even going as far as fixing website errors. The most prominent examples of this are some WordPress hosting services that offer this level of advanced technical support to some customers.
For your information, WordPress is the most widely used website content management system (CMS) of all time, and more than a third of all websites are powered by it. The What's the Best Hosting team has published a comprehensive explanation of the WordPress program that we recommend you check out.
All of these factors and advantages have made using shared web hosting the most popular and widely used destination for anyone who wants to create a website online and wants the most user-friendly and affordable hosting services.
Shared hosting is not the only type!
Despite the many advantages of shared hosting and its suitability for a large number of users and sites, it is not the only type and is not suitable for all sites and does not meet the needs of all users.
As mentioned above, shared hosting is only suitable for small sites and not for large sites with tens of thousands of visitors per day or sites looking for the highest levels of security and performance. With resource sharing also comes the issue of bad neighbors who may affect the performance and security of your site hosted on the same server with them.
To familiarize you with the different hosting services, the differences between them, and the advantages and disadvantages of each type of hosting, the What is the Best Hosting website team has prepared and published a comprehensive guide with a comparison between the different types of website hosting services in detail, we recommend that you check it out.
How do you choose the best shared hosting?
Choosing a good hosting for your website is not easy, whether it's shared hosting, a virtual private server, cloud hosting, or any type of hosting. This was the main reason behind the creation of AfdalHosting, which is to help you choose the best hosting for your website easily and effortlessly, even if you don't have enough knowledge about hosting services.
All in all, when you're looking for shared hosting, these are the most important points to consider:
- Hosting server resources available to you
- CPU processing power, often measured in seconds or cores
- RAM (Random Access Memory)
- File Storage Space or Disk Storage Space
- Bandwidth Bandwidth
- Account Usage Limits
- Number of websites allowed to be hosted on the same account
- Number and size of databases allowed
- Number of email accounts and capacity of each mailbox
- Number of Subdomains Allowed
- Number of files allowed in Inodes
- Customer Service and Technical Support
- The control panel used, the ease of account management, and the ease of use of the hosting
- Hardware and software used in the server (processor type, storage media type, operating system, firewall, security software, etc.)
- Free gifts and extras with your hosting package (e.g. free backup, free domain reservation, etc.)
Despite the importance of these factors, there are thousands of hosting companies and most of them offer the same resources at almost equal prices. However, the only fundamental difference is the quality of the hosting service and whether or not you will actually get what the shared hosting company promises after the purchase.
Therefore, we at What is the best hosting, we try international foreign web hosting companies and test them for a long time and mention their advantages and disadvantages in the form of detailed reviews that you can find in the web hosting reviews section of our website.
We also compare the same service from different web hosts with each other and arrange them in the form of a list for each use and publish these lists and rankings in the Best Web Hosting section so that you have a list of the most prominent companies that provide the hosting service you are looking for with details of the smallest package from each company, the advantages they offer and the disadvantages that may guide you after purchasing.
Regarding shared hosting, we have prepared a list of the best foreign shared web hosting companies, the disadvantages and advantages of each company, and the price and resources of the smallest service packages in detail. If you have any questions, concerns, or need help, you can leave them in a comment below and we will respond as soon as possible.
