Continuing on from last time, today we explain the entry plane to hosting, in the form of shared hosting.

Shared

To me, shared hosting is like renting a bed in a hostel. All rented accommodation has beds, a roof, utilities however in even the best hostel, most of these are shared amongst many people.

Yes, you may have your own bed (in which you can do what you please) however many other factors are out of your control. In my last post, I likened the choice of "room" to the underlying infrastructure of hosting. In this scenario, you have a shared:

Room

Utilities

Conversely you have shared:

Hosting Space

Access to power, resources, compute etc

And what to security? Just like my experiences in hostels, yes if you watch your possessions 24 hours a day, more likely they will be fine. However, given the constant changing "guests" in the room, this may prove difficult if you take a nap! Equally you cannot just lock the door.

Importantly you do have your own bed, hence why this is the entry to hosting. Usually of a fixed size, you can still choose how you sleep on it (comparable to your Operating System, since you are choosing your literal system of operation), how many pillows you have - you get the idea.

From personal experience, both literal and logical "noise" will affect the performance of your sleep/hosting and that is shared hosting's greatest weakness - other factors affecting you.

There are some big name providers for shared hosting and although they can suffice for small family projects/groups, nearly all business will aim away from this type of hosting. Saying that, since like a hostel you do meet a lot of like-minded people, quick deploys of CMS' like Wordpress do have a place for smaller projects.

Lastly let us not forget the price of a hostel - comparable pennies compared to a full rate hotel. Most also have a web-based control panel that eliminates the need to understand how to run the actual server.

Shared hosting can start from FREE all the way to a couple of hundred pounds a year.

Through my partner network, you can have a look at:

I will be writing a rough guide on each provider soon, however call me if you want guidance.

Please feel free to contact me over this material and although you are free to re-post this, please link back to the original site/credit please!

Next time, we tackle Reseller Accounts and their comparative real world examples.

Mitch - Managing Director, Root Provider.