Shared Hosting Definition
Shared hosting is a service that hosting providers offer so that you can get your site online.
How can people view your web site?
When you develop a site and you wish other persons to check it out, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a server. If you attempt to make the web site reachable on the web by shared hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it always up and running, which is why hosting services appeared.
How does shared hosting work?
Web hosting distributors offer you hard disk space for your web site on their powerful computers (web servers) and ensure uninterrupted website availability. When someone writes your web address (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can see the content of your website.
Types of web hosting
With the advancement of online technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to answer the different demands of web site possessors, among them shared web hosting services, VPS web server hosting services and dedicated hosting services.
Shared web hosting
Shared website hosting is the most commonly used form of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one hosting server is divided among lots of web hosting account holders who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and disk drive storage space quotas that they have been allocated. This type of website hosting is commonly less expensive - you don't have to purchase the whole web hosting server in advance, since it is divided among multiple users, and the hosting solutions provider can afford to offer much more affordable prices. It is also easier to use - the server is pre-configured with all the required software and the hosting supplier handles all server maintenance procedures and security updates for you.
The setback of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other persons and if a given website becomes very popular it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the sites on that web hosting server, but the majority of web hosting firms, including us at Green Lit Hosting, have protection systems in place that hinder that from taking place.
A description of a website hosting service
Since shared website hosting is the most common type of web hosting, most hosting firms and hosting users simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive competition on the web hosting market, the majority of hosting suppliers strive to provide cheap prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for instance, provide different hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your budget. If you choose the yearly billing cycle, you will obtain a gift - one cost-free domain name registration.
VPS hosting
VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated server hosting solution. If your web site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting package, a VPS hosting package is a suitable option. Virtual Private Server hosting clients still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual server web hosting users, but the physical server is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured almost like a real dedicated web server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a Virtual Private Server are not shared. Also, the virtualization software gives you much more freedom to configure your private virtual web server, but it also calls for a higher level of technical proficiency.
Dedicated Hosting
With the Dedicated Hosting solution, the customer obtains a whole web hosting server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated web hosting solution is the most powerful of all hosting solutions and offers plenty of customization possibilities - the dedicated server hosting clients can choose the hardware and software specs that will match their requirements. Dedicated resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated hosting package is an excellent choice for a heavy resource-devouring business site, for instance - you will not share the physical server's resources with anyone else and will have full root-level access. You will exercise complete control over the physical machine, which will enable you to implement any configuration modifications that you might need. The disadvantage of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical expertise is needed - unless you hire an IT specialist, it will be your responsibility to manage and configure the physical server. The dedicated web server hosting solution is also much more high-priced, because the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared among any other customers.
A web hosting tip for beginner users
If you are just starting to build your website and need a web hosting solution to start out with, the shared hosting solution persists to be the most reasonable choice. If your web site outgrows your shared hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your website files, since only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting package to a more powerful one at any particular moment without worrying about the number of days remaining before the expiration date. Furthermore, if you eventually reach the most advanced shared web hosting package and still require more resources (which is great sometimes - it means that your web site's popularity has risen!), there always is the possibility to move to a VPS web hosting server or a dedicated server web hosting solution without having to change hosting service providers.
Pro | Pro Plus | Expert | Starter |
Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
$4.50 / month | $9.00 / month | $12.85 / month | $3.50 / month |