To all the business owners out there, do not ever purchase or host your business website on a Shared Web Hosting. Why? Read below:
What is Shared Web Hosting?
It’s a kind of web hosting in which the server owner/administrator rents a piece of server to many clients through hosting control panels and virtualization software. Every client that has purchased a monthly or yearly subscription gets to host domains/websites. Shared Hosting are often advertised with unlimited bandwidth usage and domains. The yearly subscription costs about 40 to 100 USD depending on the providers and their server’s location.
Why you need to avoid Shared Web Hosting for your Business website?
Shared web hosting may be cheap and may sound good for your business website but in reality it isn’t. The shared hosting providers oversell their web hosting subscriptions using promotional coupons and offers. While surfing the internet you might have seen ads such as, “Host your Website 70% Off, Free Domain, Unlimited Disk Usage, Bandwidth etc.” It’s a marketing slogan with ridiculous terms hidden in fineprint.
The price seems very tempting 70% discount with free domain or $60 an year? No way!
1. 70% off may be true for first month or year
Then the recurring subscription charges will be double or tripled of initial amount. Remember, they save your credit card information for automatic renewal.
2. Free Domain?
The normal .com domain registration costs about $10 with free whois lookup privacy. Now, when you go through signup process of shared web hosting, the charge 10$ for whois privacy protection. So the domain was never free.
3. Unlimited Bandwidth/Domains/Disk usage?
Hosting a website domain on a server requires bandwidth, storage , processing power (CPU/Ram/HDD) . The providers use the word unlimited to attract the customers but its actually limited. If you go through the terms and services of any shared web host, you’ll find FAIR USAGE POLICY (FUP) that mentions certain CPU usage, Domains, disk storage can’t be used for file mirrors including the other limits. Not following the FUP will lead to suspension of your hosting account blah blah. Also, if you host a dozen domains, any website with at least 100 users active or a discussion portal (forums script). Your account will be in danger. Remember! Nothing is unlimited.
Since the shared web hosting is distributed between multiple users. If one user on a server runs a CPU intensive script, the websites of other users will suffocate or suffer downtime which is very common. On the other hand, the shared web servers are over flooded with hundreds of domains/requests. A single website takes average 10 seconds to load which is a huge disadvatange if you are competing your rival website or trying to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to your site. The technical support of shared hosting are unreliable as well. It takes more than 12 hours for a CSR to reply to a single support ticket. It can take days for a severe issue to resolve.
Final Verdict:
Every kind of web hosting has its perks, ups and downs. Shared hosting can be good for a small website/blog for a professor/teacher with small readership, where he can share his views, notes and presentations to his students. If you are aiming to host a business website or a discussion forum, a file mirror or something that has more than 100 active users at a time. I advise you not to go for shared hosting. Go for a small dedicated server, if that’s not possible go for a VPS.
PS: I suffered 500 Internal Server Error (downtime) while writing this.
You are right. I got the same problem with shared hosting yesterday. My android app is not working properly. Can you suggest with hosting company and plan is better for Android app with a lot of users?