Hosting Options – Shared Hosting
In my last post I reviewed some of the options available for hosting your website. Today I’m going to discuss the most popular option, shared hosting.
Shared hosting means the computer that is running your software is also running many other websites. This requires some restrictions on what each site is allowed to do in order to prevent conflicts and problems. Most standard Content Management Systems do just fine with this arrangement.
So why can you find shared hosting for under $5 a month from some provider plans and for more than $30 a month from others? The short answer might be that you get what you pay for. A more complete answer is that the price depends two sets of specifications and policies: those features that can be described on a web page and those that might not be visible or obvious to you.
The features that can be described on a web page usually include variations on the following list.
Feature Differences in Hosting Plans
- Bandwidth
This is how much data you can transfer to/from your web hosting account a month. Some plans limit to you to a few hundred GB per month while others allow a few thousand GB or even unlimited transfers. - Storage
You need to store you website files on the web server. The amount you can store on the server hard drive may be as little as 10 GB or the plan could allow you unlimited storage. Unlimited storage probably has a limit but, within reason, you should be able to store a lot of data and files. - Number of Databases
Most, though not all Content Management Systems require a database to run. Whether you want a blog, photo gallery, forum, wiki or company site, you will probably have some form of CMS which will need a particular type of database to make it run. If you want to run multiple applications from your site, you will need more databases. For example if you want to run Joomla (CMS) and WordPress (Blog) and MediaWiki (Wiki) and SMF (Forum) then you would need four databases – one for each. Also, if you are going to host multiple domains or sub domains from a single account, each will require its own set of databases for it database driven web applications. - SFTP and console access (SSH)
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and is used to upload your web files to your server. SFTP is secure FTP and is preferable to standard FTP if you are worried about security. SSH is a secure console access, only for *nix sites. It allows you to manage your site from the command line. I prefer hosting providers that allow these secure access methods. One of the advantages to the SFTP is some sites throttle your upload speed and time out your connections sooner if you are not connected by SFTP. - Control Panels (Plesk, CPanel)
Control panels provide a simple, visual method of managing your account. They provide tools such as a file manager, database manager, domain manager and so on. Not all control panels are as user friendly as you would like. I think CPanel has a done a good job and you may prefer an account that uses it if you are a beginner. - How many domains can be hosted
Some site allow multiple domains to be hosted from the same account for no additional costs over your first domain. Of course you must already own the domain name or register it with your provider or registrar. - How many sub domains can be hosted
If your site is hosted at the domain mysite.com (www.mysite.com) then blog.mysite.com and forum.mysite.com would be sub domains. You don’t have to register sub domains once you own the domain name. Many hosting plans allow you to create an unlimited number of sub domains. Usually these are just subdirectories you designate on your site. Search engines treat them as separate web sites. - SSL Certificate
SSL Certificates provide secure access to your website (https://…) and are essential if you are doing eCommerce or any other sensitive transactions on your website (storing passwords of users?). Depending on your needs you may need to purchase a dedicated certificate and get a dedicated IP address for your site. - Installation Scripts (Fantastico, SimpleScripts)
Open source web applications are essentially scripts (programming) that runs your website. Because many newbies have trouble uploading and installing these applications in their hosting account, hosting providers often feature automated installation of popular software from a control panel interface. Two of the most popular providers of these automated application installers are Fantastico and SimpleScripts.
Hosting Plan “Features” that are not obvious
You can read through the features of different hosting plans you find on the web and make a decision based on the choices available, as described in the preceding list. But some of the above features have implications which you might not be happy about. These are some of the hidden factors.
How new are the computers running your website? You probably don’t know. But faster processors and more memory usually result in better performance.
What about hosting policies for your provider? What is the maximum number of accounts hosted on the same computer? The more accounts hosted on a single machine the more likely your site will have performance issues. Unfortunately, this is information that isn’t provided in the specifications for the plan.
Then there are the features such as unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited domain hosting, unlimited sub domain hosting, unlimited number of databases and unlimited number email boxes. All this sounds great. And the price is probably fairly low as well. But if you and everyone else with an account are taking advantage of all this unlimited capacity do you think it could affect performance? The hosting company knows that most people don’t take advantage of these features. But if your site is sharing a box with a few other users who also take advantage, it’s possible your site’s performance will suffer.
If you look at some of the more expensive shared hosting plans you might notice that at least some of them are also more restrictive. You may get only 3 databases and 3 domains and a 100 GB storage and so on. Restricting features might lead to better performance. Unfortunately, none of these difference is a guarantee of better performance. A lot simply depends on the business philosophy of the hosting company. Is the hosting company trying to provide you with the best hosting they can or are they instead trying only to make as much profit as possible without regards to the service they supply.
Conclusions
I’ve used a variety of shared hosting providers for my clients. I have rarely had significant problems. But occasionally a server does not perform as well as it should. Other sites on the same plan at the same hosting company, and running essentially the same software have no problems. Luck is involved. Worst case, if the hosting company won’t take care of the problem, I move the site to another provider. The cost of hosting at these companies is small compared to the value of the project.
What should you look for? The most important thing if you know what software you will be using is to make sure the plan you get supports the software requirements.
Be aware though that some software is more difficult to setup in a shared hosting environment. Examples of software which your plan may say it supports but in fact could be a problem are Perl and Python. These scripting languages may be supported at a basic level but often configuring advanced support is difficult under shared hosting.
