Things to Consider in Choosing Shared Web Hosting

What are the things you consider upon choosing web hosting?

How can you tell that this is the right web hosting for your website?

There are types of hosting you can choose from.

Shared Hosting, that allows multiple website hosts in a single physical server.

Dedicated Hosting where you can have an overall control exclusively in a server. Down from setting up to management and the provider will be responsible for the maintenance. This is ideal for large organizations or websites that get a higher number of traffics.

VPS Hosting or Virtual Private Server Hosting is one of the most popular hostings aside from shared hosting. It uses virtualization technology to provide you with dedicated (private) resources on a server with multiple users. Ideal for website owners who have medium-level traffic that exceeds the limits of shared hosting plans.

And Reseller Hosting that allows you, the reseller, to purchase a hosting provider’s resources wholesale and resell them to your clients for a profit. Ideal for web developers, web design firms or web hosting entrepreneurs.

Though if you are a start-up and have a low-budget you might want to consider choosing shared web hosting. As it is the most cost-effective way to get a site online for its cheap price.

And there are some important criteria to consider when you are about to choose between shared hosting providers, and it goes beyond just pricing. You should look for the following characteristics of a hosting package.

UPTIME

When you are looking for a shared hosting plan, make sure you have certain uptime guarantees. The absolute minimum you should accept from a host is 99%.

What does website uptime mean?

Website uptime is the time that a website or web service is available to the users over a given period.

The average uptime is 99.41%, meaning that each site may be down for as much as 52 hours per year.

Why is website uptime important?

Website uptime is important as if your site is down for a longer period it reduces your online credibility. Whether you have a simple website, eCommerce site, or slick web 2.0 online application – website downtime is toxic.

SPEED

Sites sharing a server don’t affect the speed and performance of each other using the shared hosting, but this can’t be said of many web hosting companies. Choose a shared hosting provider who has policies that govern fair-use to make sure everyone has access to a fair amount of resources.

What is Site Speed?

Site Speed can be described as website load time – how quickly users are able to see and interact with the content on your website.

Why does site speed matter?

Site speed affects conversion rate (the rate at which users complete a desired action). Not only do more users stay on fast-loading websites, but they also convert at higher rates compared to slower sites.

TRAFFIC

Factor your anticipated website traffic into your decision. It’s not easy to make projections about web traffic, but if for any reason you expect a large amount of traffic, shared hosting might not be suitable since you might be breaking their fair use policy.

Also, most of the shared web hosting provider does have limited traffic allocated per plan, so be wise on choosing your hosting plan.

“Plan for the traffic levels you’re getting now and factor in the traffic levels you hope to hit.” If you’re not migrating a site and you’re building a completely new one, you can change that first part to “Plan for the traffic levels you think you’ll get in the near term.” Basically, make sure you’re signing up for a hosting solution that won’t just suit your needs now but will also hopefully last you a few years. Site migrations aren’t exactly fun, so the less moving around you need to do, the better.

RESOURCES

Resources are always limited, this is the basic premise of the entire field of economics and applies to shared hosting. When choosing shared web hosting, check the fine print for what is within their fair use policy. It will cause problems for others if your site gets huge amounts of traffic if your visitors download masses of content, or a script causes the server to slow down for instance.

The web hosting resources most relevant to you will depend on the size on your site, what you use it for, and how much traffic it receives. Usually, you are most likely to encounter Solid State Drive (SSD) Storage, Bandwith, Central Processing Units (CPUs), and Random Access Memory (RAM) when looking for a new hosting plan.

Solid State Drive (SSD) Storage

A Solid State Drive (SSD) is a piece of hardware that is responsible for storage on a computer. All servers have one (or an alternative storage device), which means this resource is important to take note of no matter what type of hosting you’re interested in.

The capacity of your SSD determines the maximum size of your website(s). Estimating how large your site can get based on the amount of storage your hosting plan provides is not an exact science. Many different factors influence the size of your website, including media files and dynamic content.

The average web page size is just under 2 MB. 

Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to the rate at which a server is able to transfer data. In other words, it determines how quickly your website can display content to visitors.

Bandwidth is maybe the most important web hosting resource to understand when choosing a plan. You can have massive amounts of storage space, but it won’t matter if you have low bandwidth. Your data will transfer slowly and too much traffic could still overwhelm your server.

Central Processing Units (CPUs)

CPUs handles all the various requests and processes your server has to carry out in order to make your site available to visitors and carry out the various functions it provides to them.

Traffic surges and high volumes of scripting requests for large or complex sites can overload your CPU(s) and cause downtime for your site. Generally speaking, your site’s traffic volume and the number of dynamic elements it includes are the best indicators of how many CPU cores you need.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

RAM refers to short-term memory your server uses when processing multiple requests at one time. While the CPU does the actual processing, RAM is responsible for holding the necessary data. Running out of RAM can result in a 500 Internal Server Error on your site.

Sites that receive high levels of traffic include a large number of dynamic elements, and/or use a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla will likely need more RAM than others.

Use Pingdom tools to check the approximate size, speed and performance of your website.

LIMITED CUSTOMIZATION

If you have any special technical requirements, this might not be the plan for you. You aren’t allowed to use customized software. For example, if you need to run an alternative operating system like FreeBSD, or PostgreSQL script for your database, you’ll need your own server, if your shared hosting plan doesn’t offer these.

The best option, in this case, will be a virtual or physical server as most use MySQL and PHP since most popular CMS engines and blog builders are designed to work with them.

SUPPORT

Just because this style of hosting is inexpensive, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect support. Look out for a host with support agents working around the clock and available by the means you will find most helpful, such as phone, email or live chat.

Above all else, you must keep in mind that you’re sharing. You share a server with many other customers, all of whom have, ideally, small sites. Since these sites are relatively lightweight, they don’t require many resources so the server won’t feel the strain of hosting them all together.

The style of hosting might be the same but the features provided differ from host to host. Choosing web hosting, choose a host that provides the features that you need, to narrow down your options.

CONTROL PANEL

Make sure your host includes a control panel with their shared hosting plan. It’s basically a web-based interface allowing users to manage their server settings from the comfort of their web browser.

ONE-CLICK INSTALL APPLICATIONS

For seamless integration with services like WordPress CMS or a website builder such as Weebly, go with a host that offers easy install facilities.

Here are some hosts that ALLWEBHOSTINGHERE personally recommended.

1. Namecheap

Namecheap offers two main channels of security: WhoisGuard service to WhoisGuard domain owners and a wide variety of SSL certificates to protect your site’s visitors.

Ideal for an online beginner who wants to start small and spends less. Small Businesses who want to get more power and control. And Large Businesses that want to invest in maximum power.

Not only the pricing is super affordable, but you’d never even had the need to reach out twice to their customer support. Every issue you had was usually solved right away. Even though their support staff takes time, and you have to be patient, they always get the job done. (Add me to the list of satisfied customers)

They can or you can migrate your website from any hosting for FREE!

Stellar Plan includes:

• 20 GB SSD
• 3 Websites
• Domain Name – FREE TLDs available
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free website builder
• Domain name and privacy protection
• Free automatic SSL installation 
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Recommended Stellar Plus Plan includes:

• Unmetered SSD
• Unlimited Websites
• AutoBackup
• Domain Name – FREE TLDs available
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free website builder
• Domain name and privacy protection
• Free automatic SSL installation 
• 30-day money-back guarantee

2. Bluehost

If you are starting your website and don’t have a big budget or if you have a low traffic website. Bluehost serves the best for beginners and intermediate website developers. Packed with (combo) domain and hosting plan and some exciting and reasonable deals. The plans include some really good advantages.

Easier to organize content and make it multiple designs.

Basic plan includes:

• 1 Website
• 50 GB SSD Storage
• Custom Themes
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Free Domain – 1 year
• Free CDN Included – powered by Cloudflare CDN
• Free SSL Certificate – powered by Let’s Encrypt

Its recommended plan includes privacy and security features.

• Unlimited Websites
• Unlimited SSD Storage
• Custom Themes
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Free Domain – 1 year
• Free CDN Included – powered by Cloudflare CDN
• Free SSL Certificate – powered by Let’s Encrypt
• Free Office 365 – 30 days
• Free Domain Privacy
• Free Automated Backup – 1 year

3. Hostinger

Hostinger uses its own custom Hpanel dashboard. their panel is very easy to use without sacrificing any functionalities whatsoever. It’s clean, very well designed, and very intuitive. You know that their UX designers put in a lot of effort in creating this dashboard because everything feels like it belongs without a single icon feeling out of place. It’s so well designed that a complete beginner has no trouble in navigating through their menus.

They understand the importance of good support and they will do their best to keep their customers happy. Their team is very responsive, well trained, and very patient. You can ask all the stupid questions you have and they’ll happily answer.

Its Single Shared Hosting Plan is the ideal solution for beginners:

• 1 Website
• 10 GB SSD Storage
• ~10 000 Visits Monthly
• 1 Email Account
• Free SSL ($11.95 value)
• 100 GB Bandwidth
• Managed WordPress
• WordPress Acceleration
• 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
• 2 Databases
• GIT Access 
• Weekly Backups
• Cloudflare Protected Nameservers 
• 24/7/365 Support 
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• DNS Management 
• Access Manager 
• 2 Subdomains
• 1 FTP Account
• 2 Cronjobs 

The Premium Shared Hosting is a perfect package for a personal website.

• 100 Websites
• 20 GB SSD Storage
• ~25 000 Visits Monthly 
• Free Email 
• Free SSL ($11.95 value) 
• Free Domain ($8.99 value)
• Google Ads Credit
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Managed WordPress 
• WordPress Acceleration
• 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
• Unlimited Databases
• GIT Access 
• SSH Access
• Weekly Backups
• Cloudflare Protected Nameservers 
• 24/7/365 Support 
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee 
• DNS Management
• Access Manager 
• 100 Subdomains 
• Unlimited FTP Account 
• Unlimited Cronjobs  

4. SiteGround

Siteground probably isn’t as good as they used to be (or that is what people say for some reason), but the customer service is great and almost anything is better than any web hosting.

A great hosting solution for all your WordPress project – both new and established ones. The service they provided is stable, secure and super fast, thanks to the special tools they’ve developed in-house for WordPress users.

Its StartUp plan includes:

• 1 Website
• 10 GB Web Space
• ~ 10,000 Visits Monthly
• Unmetered Traffic
• Free SSL
• Daily Backup
• Free CDN
• Free Email
• Managed WordPress
• Unlimited Databases
• 100% renewable energy match
• 30-Days Money-Back

Their Best Seller GrowBig Plan includes:

• Unlimited Websites
• 20 GB Web Space
• ~ 25,000 Visits Monthly
• Unmetered Traffic
• Free SSL
• Daily Backup
• Free CDN
• Free Email
• Managed WordPress
• Unlimited Databases
• 100% renewable energy match
• 30-Days Money-Back
• On-demand Backup Copies
• Speed-boosting Caching
• Staging
• Add Collaborators

Sidenote: Be sure to review the visitor restrictions when selecting a package with Siteground.

5. Dreamhost

Dreamhost pricing is affordable and cheap. They even provide free web hosting services for non-profit organizations and offers a Let’s Encrypt SSL in addition to Cloudflare integration.

Anytime you had a problem or even a simple question, you’ll need to chat with one of their support people and had your problem solved instantaneously. They’re incredible understanding and support you’ve got from them is worth the extra cost.

They don’t really have the traditional cPanel. They have their own panel that you’ll find super useful and interactive. It helps you re-organize a lot of things when you first started out.

Shared Starter includes:

• 1 Website
• Free Domain included 
• Unlimited Traffic 
• WordPress Pre-Installed 
• NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations 
• NEW WP Website Builder 
• Fast SSD Storage
• Free SSL Certificate
• Add Email as low as $1.67/mo

Shared Unlimited includes:

• Unlimited Websites
• Free Domain included 
• Unlimited Traffic 
• WordPress Pre-Installed 
• NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations 
• NEW WP Website Builder 
• Fast SSD Storage
• Free SSL Certificate
• Unlimited Email @ Your Domain

CONCLUSION:

Choosing web hosting is quite tricky unless you know what to look for. If you know what to look for, then don’t compromise on quality. Those few dollars per month aren’t worth the trouble.

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