What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is a service that web hosting providers offer so that you can put your site on the web.
How can people reach your web site?
When you develop a website and you wish other people to observe it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a hosting server. If you attempt to make the site accessible on the web by shared hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it up and running all the time, which is why hosting services appeared.
How does shared hosting work?
Hosting service providers provide you with disk space for your site on their high-powered computers (web hosting servers) and ensure continuous website accessibility. When someone types your domain name (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web hosting server where they can have a look at the content of your web site.
Hosting types
With the development of web technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into existence to meet the various expectations of web site possessors, including shared website hosting services, VPS server web hosting services and dedicated hosting services.
Shared website hosting
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Shared website hosting is the most widely used form of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where a single web server is divided between plenty of shared web hosting account owners who are restricted by the CPU, web traffic and server disk drive storage space quotas that they have been allocated. This type of hosting is typically less expensive - you don't need to pay for the whole web hosting server in advance, as it is divided between lots of web hosting account holders, and the web hosting services provider can afford to provide much lower prices. It is also much easier to use - the server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the hosting solutions provider takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.
The setback of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other web hosting users and if one website becomes really popular it may influence (and slow down) all the other web sites on that web server, but the majority of web hosts, including us at Prime Host, have protection platforms in place that impede that from happening.
A definition of a website hosting service
Because shared website hosting is the most commonly used type of web hosting, most hosting distributors and hosting customers simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is an enormous competition on the website hosting marketplace, the majority of web hosting suppliers strive to provide affordable prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for example, offer different web hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your budget. If you choose the yearly billing cycle, you will get a present - one free domain registration.
Virtual private servers
VPS is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Server. The Virtual private servers hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated server hosting solution. If your website grows beyond the resources offered by your shared web hosting plan, a VPS server plan is a suitable solution. VPS web hosting account owners still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual server hosting account holders, but the hard disk space is split up using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own guaranteed system resources and can be configured practically like an actual dedicated hosting server. The advantage is that the CPU and the memory on a private virtual web server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology offers you much more freedom to configure your VPS, but it also presupposes a more advanced level of technical knowledge.
Dedicated Server
With the Dedicated Server solution, the client obtains an entire dedicated server and can use all its system resources. The dedicated server web hosting solution is the most robust of all website hosting solutions and offers tons of configuration options - the dedicated web server hosting customers can pick the hardware and software specs that will meet their demands. Dedicated resources and guaranteed performance are among the reasons why a dedicated server hosting plan is an excellent solution for a heavy-content corporate portal, for example - you will not share the physical server's resources with anyone else and will be given root-level access. You will exert full control over the machine, which will allow you to implement any server configuration modifications that you might need. The setback of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical know-how is required - unless you employ an IT professional, you will be responsible for managing and configuring the server. The dedicated web server hosting solution is also much more high-priced, because the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared between any other users.
A website hosting tip for beginner users
If you are just starting to create your site and are seeking a website hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the wisest option. If your website grows beyond your website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and requires no migration of your website files, because only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting plan to a more powerful one at any particular time without having to worry about the number of days left before the expiration date. In addition, if you finally reach the most advanced shared website hosting plan and still need more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it suggests that your web site's popularity has increased!), there always is the option to migrate to a private virtual web server hosting solution or a dedicated web server hosting solution without having to change web hosting service providers.