The Inconvenient Truth about Shared Hosting

The biggest disappointment with Shared Hosting is the vague promise of ‘unlimited’ resource which can ultimately end up in frustration because of the limiting realities of being on a shared server.  The purpose of this article is to explain how shared hosting works so that you have the full picture.

WordPress users flock to Shared Web Hosting because it is affordable and welcome’s the uninitiated with open arms.  Often used by individuals and small businesses to take their first steps onto the web, shared hosting is welcoming and easy to setup. The lure for small business is enticing: a few clicks, a credit card transaction, a one-click install and you’re on the web.

The way shared hosting works is that multiple companies share a large web server. The costs of running the web server are shared between all the users on the machine, which means that the resource cost can be spread amongst all the users.  It is an inexpensive way to host your website.  Purchasing your own web server can cost upwards of USD 150 per month, but in reality, for a small business, you’d only be using a fraction of the resource to host your website.  Instead with shared hosting, you purchase a ‘share’ of the site for a fraction of the cost – typically somewhere between USD4-10.

The biggest issue with a lot of the larger web companies is the marketing around shared hosting. Their promises of ‘unlimited bandwidth’, ‘unlimited domains’, ‘unlimited disk space’ sound very enticing, but in reality, these promises are empty and too good to be true. These companies hide behind acceptable use policies to throttle excessive usage of services and limit your capability.

Shared Web Hosting is made for small businesses with a single website and low amounts of traffic and functionality.  Websites with lots of plugins or membership features may not be suitable for this type of server.  Even sites with few plugins can find their service becoming throttled (slowed down) because of the way plugins are written. Badly written plugins can use inordinate amounts of server resource.

So basically you are limited to 1/1000th of the server resource, or whatever upper limit the hosting company puts on their server.  If everyone sticks to their allocation, then everything works well, but when things go wrong, everyone suffers. That’s why hosting companies are very strict on ‘overuse’ of resources. The first you’ll know about it is when you get a notice to say that your service has been throttled. Your site will either run slowly, or it will be taken offline until you fix the problem.  Neither good for your business or your sanity.

The idea with shared web hosting is to give you a starting platform, and then hope you will upgrade. As you begin to use more and more resources the expectation is that you will upgrade to Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Dedicated Servers to continue running your website.

In our opinion, there are two ways you can go when choosing shared hosting. The first is pick a big name and become another anonymous user in a colossal server farm, with impersonal support and impractical technical support when things go wrong.

The second option is choosing a boutique shared hosting platform like Asporea. What we offer is the opportunity to participate in shared hosting which is carefully and individually managed to ensure the best performance for all participants.  If it becomes time to upgrade, we speak to you about your options and why.  If you need help, we are there to understand your needs and provide technical advice. And most of all we don’t oversell our servers and burn our customers in the name of profits.

The advantage of using our hosting services is that we offer CPanel and one-click installation scripts so that you can access and manage your account, but you always have the flexibility to talk to one of our support agents for help when you need it.

Our hassle-free shared hosting plans start at $9.99/month and include all the features you could need to manage and run your website, online store or blog. Contact us for details about our shared hosting service, free website migrations and ask about our special introductory offer for blog readers.

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