By far the most affordable means to get your website on the net today is to use what’s referred to as shared hosting. Shared hosting is where a net hosting company rents you a certain amount of disk space in which to store the files that make up your web site and permit you a certain amount of bandwidth (ie. the data transfered between your site and your guests browsers) in exchange for a monthly fee. Typically speaking, the more you pay the more web space and bandwidth you’ll be given.
There are even deals around where you are offered ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth for a incredibly small sum of cash every month. Lots of individuals are happy with what they get, but , many others have found out when actually attempting to use substantial amounts of space or bandwidth that if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is!
One of the features of a shared hosting account is that, because it’s name implies, you are sharing the disk space and bandwidth with tons of other users. As I am certain you can appreciate, when an application is thrashing your hard disk on your own PC, or using up a lot of memory, then your PC slows down significantly and will seem to grind to a halt at times. Well, this situation is just about the same with shared hosting. You’ll find yourself on a server with other users who have memory or CPU intensive applications, or popular sites that have heaps of guests, that means tons of disk activity. The end result is that the responsiveness of your web site suffers.
An additional drawback with shared hosting is that you’ll be unaware of who exactly you’re sharing with. If you discover that your website drops suddenly in Google that could be because you have done something Google does not like. Alternatively it could be that the IP address you’re sharing with all the other sites on your server has been recognized as a cause of spam or malware.
So what’s the answer?
Well lots of people are happy with taking the risks associated with shared hosting, but for others some kind of cheap dedicated hosting provides a low value response to their problems. You will want to determine if you need Linux server hosting or Windows server hosting, but that call should be driven by the applications that you would like to run, as they can almost certainly be Windows only or Linux only.
A virtual dedicated server is the next step up from shared hosting and will cost you a small amount more money. With a virtual shared server you still won’t have a physical server all to yourself, but you’ll have much more control over your hosting environment and you will eliminate virtually every one of the issues associated with shared hosting, and you will have your own IP address. For the small amount extra (it will be usually around $20 – $30 a month extra) that a virtual dedicated server costs this is often a worthwhile investment.
