Advantages and Disadvantages of Shared Hosting Plans

If you are a businessman and you want to create a web store for your product, or you are simply an aspiring writer that wants to start a blog or website, one of the most important decisions you will have to make is choosing your web host. In this article, we will talk about advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting plans, but we will also cover some of the best web hosts you can find on the market and their features.

What Is Shared Hosting?

In order to create, upload and keep your website running, you will need to find a web host that will provide space for you to store all your files and documents. Web hosts provide a lot of additional services, but we will talk about that later in this article.

When it comes to the web hosting options, there are three alternatives – shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting. The one you will you choose depends on your needs, your website type and size, and, of course, your budget. In this article, we will cover only shared hosting plans and their advantages and disadvantages.

Shared hosting plan is a hosting service where multiple websites are stored in a single server. That entails sharing everything from bandwidth, FTP and email accounts to database and space, but also the computer processor, memory and the maintenance of the server fees. There are no limitations to the number of websites that can be stored in a single server. The number can range from tens to thousands. Thanks to the sharing of resources, sharing hosting plans are a lot cheaper than VPS and dedicated hosting plans.

Advantages of Shared Hosting Plans

Cost

One of the biggest advantages of shared hosting plans, and the most obvious one, of course, is a very low cost. They are usually available at extremely reasonable rates, which can be a great benefit to people that are on a tight budget.

Since you are sharing server space and many other features with other website owners, the web host is in the position to offer a very cheaper service. In fact, the cost per day can be as low as $0.08 on many servers due to the extremely competitive nature of the web hosting market. Even though you will be sharing space with other users, in most cases the space you get will be more than enough because there are so many web hosts that these shared hosting plans usually don’t have too many websites on them for you to feel like you are missing space.

Simplicity

Shared hosting plans are drawing the basic concept from managed hosting, which means that the host does the maintenance of the servers and related hardware in their own data center. That means that you won’t have to deal with complicated administration for servers, which is an ideal solution for those that don’t have enough technological knowledge and experience or manpower to run a server, as well as for those who simply don’t want to deal with all those issues and want to concentrate on other aspects of their business.

Customization and Convenience

There are many comprehensive tools like control panel and website builder software that allow users to customize their shared hosting experience and make the whole technological aspect easy to understand even for beginners.

Even though you share the resources with other users, there is still a webmaster that controls the website with control panel tools. This tool is actually very simple to use and very versatile which means that you will be able to customize it to some extent. Control panel tool allows users to manage various features like uploading images and other files, as well as observing website statistics.

When you combine these customization options with the extremely affordable price you get another benefit; convenience. With shared hosting plans, website management is very easy because it is managed by experienced professionals and experts so you will be able to dedicate most of your time to your more pressing business matters. In addition to this, you also can also have more than one email account on your own domain and more than one database as well.

Disadvantages of Shared Hosting Plans

Efficiency and Crashes

One of the biggest disadvantages of shared hosting plans is the efficiency. This comes from the limited amount of disk space and bandwidth that comes with sharing the server with other users. Even though this won’t present much of a problem if your website isn’t that large, but bandwidth is important if you have a big website with a lot of data.

This is a common problem that is similar to performance issues that arise when another member of your shared hosting plan experiences increase in traffic, especially if that comes suddenly. That can lead to a slower performance on your own website and slow loading of your pages can be really irritating to your guests and clients.

Another important issue that is among the biggest advantages is frequent crashes. That is understandable, especially when a web host has thousands of websites on one server, for example. In these situations, crashes will be a common thing and that can cause a lot of lost time for website owners that are part of those shared hosting plans.

Security

Safety is a very serious issue when it comes to shared hosting plans. In fact, the biggest security problem probably comes from web hosts allowing their clients to have too much freedom and power when it comes to managing their website and accessing the server. Only one mistake is often enough to cause a lot of problems for the server. That is why hacking is not so uncommon and many shared servers are actually very susceptible to hack attacks. Another reason that causes a shared hosting plan client to be particularly vulnerable to hacking lies in the fact that any hack attack that is performed on any website that is part of the plan will impact and affect every other website on this shared hosting plan.

Best Shared Hosting Providers

There are many web hosts out there, as we have already mentioned, and it might not be easy for you to find the right one for you in this variety of choices. For this reason, we will talk about some of the best web hosts that provide shared hosting plans.

BlueHost offers shared hosting plans, but you can also use it if you want to go with VPS or dedicated servers. It is also one of the best web hosts that offer WordPress hosting at reasonable rates. When it comes to shared hosting, there are many different options, but BlueHost doesn’t provide month to month options for shared hosting. You will instead have to sign up for the annual plan. You will also get discounts if you sign up for multiyear plans. For example, if you sign up for a 3-year plan you will pay only $3.95 per month. That is actually one of the biggest benefits, since BlueHost has a great balance of price and features.

Shared Hosting Packages

With the Basic shared hosting plan that is priced at $3.95 per month for a three-year contract, you will get a free domain name that you will own for the entire time you stay with BlueHost. You will also receive free domain name transfer, 100GB of space for storing your website’s files and folders, unlimited data transfers on a monthly basis and you will be able to host one website.

The Plus package costs $5.95 per month for a one-year contract; you will also get an anti-spam tool in addition to unlimited storage space, mailboxes and websites.

The Prime plan usually costs $14.99 per month for a one-year contract and includes a dedicated IP address, website backup, two anti-spam programs and an SSL certificate. For a limited time, you can get this package for only $5.95 per month with a three-year commitment. Click here for details!

Features

• If you use BlueHost, you will be able to use many building tools, as well as tools that allow you to filter spam and manage email. There are also tools that allow you to gather website statistics and to manage your domains.
• You can create up to 100 email address with BlueHost, even with the basic plan. Upgraded plans allow you to create unlimited number of emails. Also, you will have no problem to set up an email account in BlueHost.
• When it comes to security features, BlueHost is a very nice surprise. There are three anti-spam tools, but there is also a hotlink security. You will also be able to design filters for email accounts, you can protect files and folders and directories with a password, or create blacklists for various IP addresses.

You can find more information about BlueHost in our detailed review.

InMotion Hosting also offers a wide range of hosting plans. The company advertise their shared plans, as business shared hosting. Currently, they offer 50% discount  on their Launch plan that makes your monthly fee amount to only $3.99 per month if you pay upfront for two years. This small package includes a free domain name and allows hosting 2 websites.

Features

Advantages of InMotion  business shared hosting plans are numerous, but we will name a few that stick out:

• cPanel web hosting – This feature allows you to have a total control over your account. This enables you to install custom scripts, include new domains and new email addresses, without any problem.
• BoldGrid – this is an amazing extensions to WordPress, which allows you to design your website as you want, without the need of touching the code. This is perfect for beginners, but more experienced users can also benefit from such powerful tool. For more features, please take a look to our BoldGrid review.
• Money-back guarantee – You will get a money back guarantee that lasts for 90 days, which means that you can try this web host out basically without any risk.
• Free advertising credits – Every new hosting plan on eHost gets $100 in advertising credits for Google and Yahoo or Bing. You can use this money to generate more traffic to your website.
• Excellent speed and performance
• A very stable web host that rarely crashes – check out uptime and performance test here.
  

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Last, but not the least on our list of best web hosts is iPage, a web hosting service that is quickly becoming more and more popular. It has a lot of potential and some amazing features, and it offers numerous web hosting plans, including shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers and WordPress hosting plan. However, iPage doesn’t offer monthly shared hosting plans, and the minimum contract time that you can choose is one year. There are also contracts available for two and three years of shared hosting. The price for a one-year package is $11.95 per month, and there are, unfortunately, no discounts available if you decide to go with a longer-term option.

Features

• Drop and drag website builder – There are many other options available for building a website with iPage, but this option is the safest choice for people that don’t have a lot of tech knowledge.
• E-Commerce – iPage provides an online store as a built-in feature, so if you plan to create a website on which you will sell your products, iPage is the right choice for you.
• Security features – iPage provides anti-malware surveillance for your emails. There are also SSL certificates available to purchase on a yearly plan for $31.99 per year.
• Customer service – This web host has one of the best customer services available, and you can contact them at any time of the day or night, via telephone or chat.
• Money-back guarantee – iPage offers a 30-day money back guarantee for their web hosting package.

In our in-depth iPage review, we’ve covered more features and we discuss about the pros and cons of this company.

Conclusion

We have now come to the end of our article and we hope that you now understand better how web hosting works and what are the biggest benefits and drawbacks of shared hosting plans. We also hope that our coverage of some of the best web hosting services will help you to make your decision easier and faster, without having to analyze too many web hosts and their features, especially when you take into the account the sheer size of the web hosting market.