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What is Shared Hosting? Definition & Guide

What is shared hosting? It’s a hosting solution especially popular amongst small and medium sized businesses. In this blog we’ll talk about how it works, which benefits it provides, and what differentiates shared hosting from fully managed hosting.

Shared Hosting Definition

What does shared hosting mean? Shared hosting is a model of service that rents space to multiple websites. They all share a single web server which implies costs are also split.

This type of hosting tier can host hundreds of users, and each of them has access to features such as monthly traffic, disk space, email accounts, databases, FTP accounts, and other additional features offered by their host.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is one of the most common, but also the cheapest and the most basic hosting solutions out there. Here you rent space on a hosting server, but also share it with plenty of other sites alongside yours.

What is shared web hosting in terms of everyday life? You could compare it to renting an apartment. You have your own apartment (website), but also share certain resources and the building (server) with other tenants. 

This is the cheapest option for hosting — so prepare to get the least flexibility, security, and performance.

How Shared Servers Works

All the websites you see on the Internet are stored — or so-called “hosted” — on a server. That’s a type of computer that operates the websites on the Internet and allows them to be publicly available to users.

So, let’s say you start by typing the address of a particular website into your browser. The browser uses the URL to find out where this site is stored and requests information about it from the server.

The server then gives you all the necessary data, after which the web page you’d searched for appears in your browser. That allows you to interact with the website by clicking on links you find there, navigating to other pages, opening the files, filling out forms, etc.

So, what is shared hosting, and, more importantly, how does it work?

With a shared hosting plan, a single server keeps all the files for multiple sites at once. That also means it’s responsible for providing information about them, which is the opposite solution to a dedicated server — one that hosts just a single website.

5 Shared Hosting Features

What is shared hosting good for and which features do you get with it?

1. The Basics: Traffic & Disk Space

When you want to start a website, you need a certain amount of disk space for things like databases, media, and code files.

When you find a place to store the files on your website, you want to allow your visitors to access the data, which is where bandwidth comes in. Picture it as a tunnel — the wider it is, the more information can go through. Plenty of hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, but they limit traffic speed.

Pay attention to bandwidth traffic speed when searching for a shared hosting solution since it can affect your overall website performance.

2. (Free) Backups

There are plenty of situations where you can accidentally lose your data, like in the instance of cyber attacks, physical issues, system errors, and more. You can’t predict them, which is why it’s very important your shared hosting package includes backups too.

That way, you can restore your site and all the data pretty quickly, without having to build and recreate it all from scratch. Some companies offer free backups, while others charge them additionally. You can have automatic or manual backups.

3. Pre-Installed Applications

The majority of host companies include many different additions into their shared plans such as extra-fee services, unlimited options, pre-installed applications, and so on. You can easily get confused because you won’t know which features you really need.

To keep it simple, focus on the pre-installed apps. We’re talking about specific widgets that will help you establish your site pretty quickly as well as control all its features more efficiently. 

4. Control Panel

The control panel is one of the most essential and basic apps your hosting plan should include. Life gets way easier with this one because you’ll be able to manage even those complex server processes through a very simple and convenient interface.

One of the most popular control panel solutions is called cPanel. However, some hosting companies will offer you alternative options such as Webmin, Virtualmin, Zpanel, or a special control panel they’ve customized themselves (which may not always end up as such a great solution as it sounds at first).

Control panels mostly have some pre-installed add-ons and apps. That means you can easily switch important features on with just one click. For instance, you can manage some ecommerce functions like shopping carts or payment instruments.

5. Uptime

Uptime is time when a computer — or in this case, your website — operates online and when visitors can access it without any technical issues. It’s mostly listed in percentages from the overall expected uptime, which is 24/7. If your web project is not so big that it requires 100% uptime, you may be fine with the level of 98%.

Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

Pros

  • It’s cheap. When you share a server with other users, you pay for a small portion of the entire server cost. This is why shared hosting costs less. Small to medium-sized businesses looking for low-cost solutions may opt for shared hosting. It’s also for those lacking a strong technical background to deal with dedicated servers.
  • No administration difficulties. If you’re struggling with the administration work for your server, a shared hosting plan could be a good solution because in most cases the web host takes the responsibility for that part as well as maintaining the hardware.
  • You can easily set up and manage multiple sites. Shared hosting is a simple and easy-to-use solution. Even beginners that are new to the hosting world can immediately start with it. The host company will set up the shared server as well as install all the software features you need. That way, you don’t have to configure the server or do any other complicated work by yourself. The company will monitor the servers, deal with security issues, and cover many other technical features or issues that occur along the way.

Cons

  • Slow on busy days. Shared hosting providers put restrictions on the server resources to avoid a single site overuse. That means if your site suddenly starts getting much more traffic and becomes popular, it can go down. That’s bad news if your site experiences an influx of traffic — such as on Black Friday or if your site suddenly goes viral.
  • It’s vulnerable to security questions. If someone hacks a single site on a server, that potentially threatens other websites that share it too. If the server gets hacked, every website goes down with it too. That means you don’t have to do anything wrong, but you can still end up at risk. Of course, shared hosting companies try to prevent this from happening by isolating websites, but it’s not 100% protection.

Shared Hosting vs Managed Hosting

Shared hosting is a setup where you share resources with other users on the same server. Since more clients use one physical server, the costs of shared hosting are pretty low.

Managed hosting is when you’re the only one using a single server. It costs more than shared hosting because the hosting company takes care of all specific requirements of your website and covers the technical side of it.

What to Look for When Choosing a Shared Hosting Provider

  • Efficient communication. You need a support team that will always be there to help with your questions and technical problems. They need to provide you with experts that are able to quickly fix any hosting issue that may occur along the way. Because after all, hosting support is important.
  • The hosting provider has to understand your needs. There are numerous host companies out there, but not each of them will provide you with what you want. Before you start considering any of them, try to set the budget, goals, and other components of your plan to understand which type of hosting would fit you best.
  • You need to be able to upgrade your server. Even if you take a pretty good shared hosting plan, you will still have limits to resource availability. When your site grows bigger and you start getting more traffic, a shared hosting plan will not be enough. In that case, it’s better to have a host that will allow you to upgrade your plan rather than finding a new host and migrating your website.

Extra tip: It’s better to go with a trusted company, especially if you’re a beginner. Shared hosting is an easy-to-maintain and cheap solution for new and small websites. Companies that have been on a market for a longer period of time have scalable hosting plans — starting from cheaper shared hosting to more expensive solutions.

Consider Hosting With Hostdedi

What is web hosting with Hostdedi and what benefits does it provide?

  • Scalable hosting plans. That means you can start with a basic option and upgrade it in the future due to the requirements of your business.
  • 100% uptime guarantee. With Hostdedi, your website will work 100% of the time without interruptions. Of course, there are always unpredictable exceptions such as malicious attacks or cPanel problems that can cause disruptions. However, Hostdedi will make up for the downtime you experience. If your website is down for 2 hours, you’ll get a 20-hour hosting credit.
  • Fast servers. Hostdedi owns over 25,000 servers in 3 data centers which is why they provide excellent performance and server speed. They also use advanced technologies that allow them to lower the memory consumption of the server, provide better security, and improve load balancing. 
  • Free domain and free migrations. The Hostdedi support team is there to help you with the whole migration process, no matter the reason.
  • Professional support team. If you have any questions or technical difficulties, feel free to contact Hostdedi’ award-winning expert support team that’s available 24/7/365.

The Hostdedi support team is also there to advise you on further steps when your business gets bigger. They’ll help and direct you when you decide to take a step further and get another hosting package that will allow you to get the most out of your website.

Try Fully Managed Hosting with Hostdedi

When your business becomes more popular and gets more traffic, running a website can be quite demanding and time consuming — which is why you’ll want to consider a managed hosting plan.

Managed hosting includes many different options, including WordPress (the most popular), Managed WooCommerce, and Managed Magento. Unlike shared hosting, here you get a whole server to yourself. The hosting provider is there to handle all the technical issues and backend aspects of your site, so you can focus on content and core business.

Hostdedi managed hosting provides numerous benefits, including:

  • Even better speed. When you’re on your own server, you don’t share resources with anyone, which speeds up your website.
  • Easy-to-use and simple control panel. Managed WordPress hosting packages allow you to approach the control panel with a simple interface as well as manage multiple WordPress sites from one place.
  • Additional applications & features. SaaS systems, rich media eCommerce — amongst plenty of additions, Hostdedi is also the only company that gives a user the source code to fully customize their layouts and designs.

Start Your Hostdedi Hosting Today

For the limitless potential for your website and 24/7/365 support, explore Hostdedi hosting plans today. You get a free 2-week trial of fully managed hosting and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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What is Web Hosting? Beginner’s Guide to Hosting

Think of a website as one huge folder that contains tons of subfolders, documents, and files. That information must live somewhere, and web hosting provides a home for website and all its files.

While it does seem like things on the internet just come out of nowhere, the truth is everything on the web is stored in a specific location. For logistical reasons, your computer isn’t the place for your web and all the files to live. It probably couldn’t handle the traffic, nor is it reliably always available. Instead, you’ll need a hosting service that will take care of housing your website for you.

Figuring out your hosting is one of the first and most important things you must do when launching a website. This guide will help you understand more about web hosting so that you can pick a service that is right for your website. 

Website Hosting Definition

What is website hosting? At its most basic form, website hosting provides storage for and access to a website. Your web host gives your website a place to live and lets visitors come and see it. Web hosts often do more than just hosting, but as the term suggests, hosting is their main bread and butter. 

You can technically host your website yourself, but it is extremely technical and beyond most beginners’ capabilities. Additionally, you’ll have to invest in expensive server technology to meet the needs of visitors as your traffic begins to grow. Even experienced web developers rely on web hosting.  

How Web Hosting Works

With web hosting, your site and all the files (HTML, images, video, and more) that make it up live on a server set up by a host. When people go to your site, they’re requesting to see those files from that server. The server then sends that information over to the visitor, and what they see is your website.

Comparing the internet to a big city is one way of understanding what hosting is. Think of all the homes and buildings in the city as separate websites and the land that they are on as host servers. The streets, naturally, would be the connection between users and the sites. Users will travel the streets to your website where your host will open the door and let them in to visit.

Difference Between Web Hosting and Domain Name Hosting

Oftentimes, people may confuse web hosting with domain name hosting. The two are related, and many companies offer both services, but they are quite different.

  • Web hosts provide a place for your website to live.
  • Domain hosts provide a way for users to easily find your website.

To go a bit deeper, domain hosts manage names of addresses. Your site’s actual address is a series of numbers known as Internet Protocol (IP). The internet would be a lot more cumbersome to navigate if we used IPs. Domain names are much easier to remember. Most of us don’t even remember phone numbers anymore.

Web hosts are where you keep your site — web domain hosts are who you turn to when registering a domain.

7 Types of Web Hosting

Learning about what web hosting is means understanding the different types of hosting. As someone new to running a website, it might be hard for you to see the differences between each type.

These are the several types of web hosting services you can find.

1. Shared Hosting

With a shared hosting service, your website and several others share the same server. Going back to our analogy, it’s like you’re renting a bed in a hostel. There is a ton of shared common space. This option is especially appealing to those just starting out on the web as it’s relatively cheap.

Of course, with a lower price, you can face some issues. Shared hosting is not ideal for sites that get a lot of traffic as that can bog things down for every other website or application on the server, including your own site. However, if you’re just starting out, and on a budget, shared hosting is all you’ll need to get your site up. You’re also likely to get helpful tools like email support and website builders.

2. Virtual Private Server

A virtual private server (VPS) is a step above shared hosting. You still share a server with other sites, only now you have virtual dividers that give you your own space on that server. This time it’s more like you have your own apartment in a building and no roommates to share your space. With a VPS you aren’t sharing RAM and CPU with other sites.

Virtual private servers are typically more expensive than shared hosting but should be able to handle a bit more traffic, and more customizations. VPS hosting is much more scalable than shared hosting, making it a better option for those who want to go bigger when the time is right. 

3. Dedicated Hosting

 Dedicated hosting gives your site its own server. This is like having a house all to yourself. You will not be sharing any of the space on the server with any other sites. All its resources are dedicated to you.

As you might expect, this is one of the most expensive website hosting options. It also requires a lot of technical know-how as you’ll be responsible for things like security and maintenance. On the other side of that coin, however, you get an extremely high level of customization, and you don’t have to worry about other sites’ traffic impacting your site’s performance. 

4. Cloud Hosting

There’s a good chance you’ve heard about the cloud. Everything these days seems to be on it, including websites.

Cloud hosting uses resources from several different services rather than just one dedicated server. This provides exceptionally reliable hosting as your site and its files live in multiple points. One server going down isn’t going to affect your site as it can pull resources from elsewhere.

Because resources are seemingly endless, cloud hosting is extremely scalable. That doesn’t mean you have to pay for all those resources all the time. With cloud hosting, you only need to pay for what you use. While this is a nice feature, it does make costs unpredictable. 

5. WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting refers to hosting services specifically designed and optimized for WordPress websites. It can take the form of several of the other types of web hosting, such as shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud hosting. 

Because of the optimizations, even shared WordPress hosting is fast and doesn’t quite suffer from slowness often associated with that hosting type.

Check out this guide to learn more about what managed WordPress hosting is.

6. Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is where a person or company buys hosting from one company and sells that space to others. You can look at this as subletting your house or apartment. This is often done by those who want to get into web hosting or even by web developers who want to offer hosting as part of their services.

7. Managed Hosting

Most website host services offer some form of managed hosting. This is where the hosting company takes care of a lot of the day-to-day management of the server and site. Managed hosting often comes with technical support, maintenance, software installation, updating, and more.

There are managed hosting options for all different types of sites, including managed WordPress hosting and fully managed WooCommerce site hosting.

What to Look for in a Web Hosting Service

Now that you have a better grasp on what web hosting is and what types of web hosting are available, you’re now ready to find one and get your site launched. As you look for web hosting services, consider these key factors.

Storage

When starting out, you probably don’t need too much storage, and even the most restrictive of shared hosting services will probably suffice. Still, if you have big growth plans, you might want to make sure you have the room to grow. Consider that even unlimited storage offered by many hosting services comes with some drawback

Bandwidth

When you’re choosing your hosting service, make sure you understand the bandwidth limitations they may have. This is the amount of traffic that can visit your site. To start, you probably don’t need to worry about this, but as you gain a larger audience, bandwidth could quickly become an issue. Know what your options are once this happens. 

Reliability

When your business is web-based, there’s really nothing worse than downtime. Every moment your site is not up adds up to potential revenue loss. Do a bit of research to get an idea of how reliable your potential web hosting service is. Find customer feedback, expert reviews, and stats when possible. 

Security

Security is a big deal with everything internet-related these days. Web hosting services know this, and all of them make it a point to focus on security at least a little bit in their marketing materials. Make sure security is as important to your web host as it is to you. 

Management

Like we said earlier, most website hosting companies offer managed hosting. Check with your potential hosts to learn just what they are offering to manage and for how much. You’ll want to see if they handle things like updates, backups, hardware maintenance, software setup, and more. 

Try Hosting With Hostdedi

Web hosting is a vital part of having a successful website. Choosing your host should not be done lightly. No matter what type of site you have, or the level of support you need, Hostdedi has a web hosting offering that’s right for you.

Learn more about Hostdedi’ fully managed hosting and find the package that fits your needs. Or, experience it for yourself with a free two-week trial.

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What is Managed Hosting? How it Works

Web hosting provides a wide variety of features, plans, plugins, prices, and added bonuses. Today we’ll focus on managed hosting — including its features, aspects that differentiate it from shared hosting, advantages and disadvantages, and what you need to consider when choosing a hosting provider.

What Is Managed Hosting?

Managed hosting is a model where a service provider handles the management, setup, administration, and overall support of a server. When you choose a managed hosting service, the hosting company makes sure your sites and applications are running all the time – and they fix things that go wrong along the way. 

Understanding the Different Types of Hosting Services

Managed hosting is not the only type of hosting available. There’s also shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, and more.

In simple terms, shared hosting would be like staying in an apartment building. You have a place to live, but you share it with many other tenants. It’s less comfortable than living in your own house.

Think of VPS hosting as owning a condo where you may end up sharing certain resources with your neighbors but you’re mainly responsible for your own property.

Top 10 Questions to Ask a Cloud Hosting Provider >>

Cloud hosting, on the other hand, equates to staying at a hotel or renting a room. In other words, it’s not your permanent home, but you have a place to stay. Dedicated hosting is when you own a house, which means others don’t have access to your resources.

In the end, a managed hosting company is your best bet. It’s like having a property manager to take care of all the work that needs to be done. That way, you can relax and focus on other things — like your business.

How Managed Hosting Works

A managed hosting service is a system combining support and technology.

To establish a hosting deal, you don’t need to own a physical server. You don’t rent it from the hosting company — you get space within the colocation site or data center. However, you are the owner who’s in control of all software and hardware settings.

The hosting company has a professional team of experts you communicate with — and they help you quickly react, upgrade, or downgrade certain features. In other words, they will take care of all the technical stuff so you can focus on creating the content and running your business.

Managed Hosting Features

The main aspect that makes managed hosting different from other dedicated hosting options are management services they provide.

Managed hosting companies are in charge of software and hardware setup and configuration, together with monitoring, updates, technical support, and maintaining the system. Managed hosting solutions can mostly be customized to meet the specific requirements of your business.

However, they cover general features like:

  • Technical support for dealing with problems. Managed hosting companies employ system administrators, technical staff, and network operations engineers specialized in a wide variety of technologies. They invest in their employees to stay up-to-date with the latest tech solutions which results in long-term customer satisfaction and better service for your business.
  • Security services. Security standards are crucial for both big and small websites. A managed hosting provider covers services such as intrusion detection, virus and spam protection, vulnerability scans, physical security (safeguarding data centers), etc.
  • Disaster recovery and (automatic and manual) backups. You need to make sure your data is saved even if your site goes down due to unexpected disruptions. A good company makes sure your data is saved by providing you automatic or manual backups, together with disaster recovery procedures.
  • Automatically managed updates. They allow customers to keep their programs updated without checking and installing the newest updates manually. The software should check for available updates, and install them without your intervention.

Pros and Cons of Managed Hosting

Pros

  • Time saver. When someone is taking care of maintenance and managing, you can spend more time focused on your business
  • Reduced risk. Hosting support is important. You get highly specialized technical support that’s always available and ready to help when issues arise.
  • Flexible up-to-date technology. A professionally managed hosting service keeps up with the latest technology and updates so you make the most out of your business and don’t lag behind.
  • Excellent performance and high speed. Regular shared hosting is made for basic site needs. It can also implement software and plenty of unnecessary modules that will slow down your site. Managed hosting solutions, on the other hand, provide only features you need for running your site and special plugins used there. This significantly speeds up the site and boosts website performance.

Cons

  • Price. Managed hosting services will cost you more than a shared hosting option. Keep in mind that with shared hosting, you don’t get the same level of support — just the basics.
  • No access to own servers. One of the disadvantages of a managed hosting service is that companies don’t allow their clients access to the control panel — since they manage your site for you.
  • No email hosting. If you want a plan with the option of hosting both your site and emails, a managed hosting solution alone won’t be enough.

Managed Hosting vs. Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is an option where your website “shares” resources with others on the same server. It’s a self-managed solution that comes in handy for beginners with brand new websites. Shared hosting offers a decent amount of resources for personal websites, start-ups, or local business needs.

When is it Time to Leave Shared Hosting & Upgrade to Managed WordPress? >>

Shared hosting is popular because of the prices. Since plenty of people are sharing the same server, costs for individual users are kept low.

Most shared hosting plans provide simple and easy-to-use features. For instance, you get a user-friendly control panel where you can make an email account, upload your site files, and add the databases that certain services need.

It’s suitable when:

  • You have a limited budget and only want to do things on your own. Price is certainly a legitimate concern, especially if you’re just starting or want to run a small website where you’re comfortable with managing it. You’ll need to cover things like backups, updates, and general server maintenance — depending on your host.
  • You don’t expect to have a web traffic boost. When you’re sharing resources and server space, you may experience slow speeds and lags, which shouldn’t be a problem if you don’t expect big amounts of web traffic on your website.

In terms of everyday life, think of shared hosting like taking public transportation. It’s cost effective, but can be packed at times and the route from point A to point B can take longer.

5 Real Differences Between Cheap Hosting and Good Hosting >>

Managed web hosting, on the other hand, is like taking a taxi. It will cost you more, but you’ll be more comfortable and get better and faster service.

Managed hosting solution is a better choice when:

  • You are not able (or don’t want to) maintain your website. If you want to work on expanding your business and constantly creating new content, you’ll need a reliable team that will cover all the technical features.
  • You need specific technical support for your website that can react fast. When you have a complex site with large amounts of traffic, you want to have a team that will help you solve all the potential issues as soon as possible. 

What to Look for When Choosing a Managed Hosting Provider 

Before signing on with a hosting company, be sure to check:

  • If the communication is professional. Even the best products can fail if they’re not supported by a professional team that will help you out with any questions or confusion you may have.
  • If the managed hosting company has its own hardware. If not, it means they either resell servers from another company or rent it. The first option here is usually more common. This can be a problem because your host won’t have:
  • Custom solutions. If you need some extra features or want to customize the setup, you’ll have to search for those somewhere else.
  • Spare parts. If the hardware goes down, they’ll need a whole new server, which means your website will be offline until they migrate it which may last for hours or days.
  • On-site support team. With no data centers, the company will use a third-party host to provide the support team — which can be lower quality and less efficient for finding solutions to your problems.
  • If the company is experienced with aspects crucial for your business. You want a host that will be able to deal with the specific niche you’re targeting and all the specific needs of your business. Ask about all the things you want to know. Specify your goals. Talk about applications, the CMS, and frameworks to make sure you’re collaborating with a team that knows what they’re doing.

Consider Managed Hosting With Hostdedi

Managed hosting is usually associated with WordPress, since it provides the flexibility and customization to shape your website the way you prefer. But there are many managed hosting options — including Managed WooCommerce and Managed Magento, for example.

Either way, running an online business can be pretty demanding, which is why you will, at some point, feel the urge to hire someone to handle the technical, backend aspects of hosting so you can stay focused on core business.

Now that you know the benefits of managed hosting solutions, learn some of the features you get with Hostdedi fully managed hosting:

  • Easy-to-use control panel. With a managed WordPress hosting plan, you get an approach to the proprietary control panel with a simple interface and the ability to handle more WordPress sites from one place.
  • Excellent performance and speed. Hostdedi owns more than 25,000 servers in their 3 privately-owned core data centers which provide exceptional speed and performance of their services. They provide expert network monitoring 24/7 which, amongst other things, helps to maintain the next important feature.
  • 100% Uptime. Hostdedi puts a lot of effort into keeping 100% uptime. Of course, the company outlines exceptions such as scheduled network, software, or hardware maintenance. Hostdedi even gives 10 times credit for the overall downtime the user experiences. For example, if your site is down for 1 hour, you’ll get a 10-hour hosting credit.
  • Professional support team. Hostdedi has specialized support staff, trained to help with all the problems your website faces along the way. They will provide you with useful information and helpful tips as well as guide you through the process of setting up your site.
  • Free migrations, no matter the reason. Not only that — the support team will help you throughout the entire process and make it all easier for you.

Get Started Today

For 24/7/365 support and limitless potential for your online business, explore Hostdedi hosting plans today — or start your free two-week trial of fully managed hosting.

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