What Exactly is Shared Web Hosting?

The most fundamental and popularly utilized form of web hosting is the web hosting service. It represents a means to host your website without having to know much about programming and managing a web server. In addition, it's also the cheapest type of web hosting and it's quite affordable for everybody. Still, what is web hosting?

What is web hosting?

As the name designates, the web hosting solution is a kind of service where lots of customers share the reserves of one and the same hosting server. This means that all server constituents such as CPU, hard drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are shared among the clients whose accounts are on that very same web server. This is usually made viable by creating different accounts for the separate customers and applying some limitations and quotas for each of them. Those limits are allocated in order to hinder the users from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the web hosting server from overburdening. Normally, web hosting users do not have root-level access to the web hosting server's configuration files, which principally means that they cannot access anything else on the server beside their own website hosting account. The web hosting features that each account may avail of are fixed by the hosting provider that possesses the web hosting server and by the given website hosting package. That results in the second vital question:

How are the shared web hosting servers shared among the customers?

Web hosting distributors that deliver web hosting accounts usually have different website hosting packages. Those plans contain different amounts of website hosting features and specs, which actually determine the limitations that a web hosting account will have. The customer may choose between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will suit him best. The web hosting plan will then define what limits the customer's account will include, once created. The prices and the features of the website hosting plans are specified by the specific web hosting provider. Based on the policy of the corporation, the web hosting solution can be divided into two groups - the free hosting solution and the popular shared service, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" corporations as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to announce, which one is more preferable, since they are quite different from each other and they really are determined by the marketing policy of the given provider and, of course, the needs of the given customer.

What is the distinction between the free and the classic web hosting service?

Of course, the essential difference between the free and the paid service is in the amount of resources that they provide. Free website hosting corporations are not able to maintain an immense amount of servers, hence, they plainly host more users on one single web server by reducing the amount of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only if the web hosting servers are supervised and administered properly, since the enormous amount of accounts may make the hosting server crash on a regular basis. Most of the free web hosting providers, though, overlook the quality of the service and as a result, it's very difficult to discover a free of cost hosting service that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting suppliers normally provide free technical support even to the free web hosting customers, because they want their sites to enlarge so that they subsequently migrate to a paid website hosting plan, which includes more website hosting resources. Such firm, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and eldest free web hosting companies worldwide.

On the other hand, established web hosting vendors like us, are able to maintain plenty of web servers and as a result, we may afford to provide much more powerful website hosting packages. Of course, that affects the pricing of the web hosting packages. Paying a higher price for a website hosting plan, though, does not automatically imply that this package has a better quality. The best services are the balanced ones, which offer a price that matches the real service which you're getting. In addition, we also offer a free bonus with the web hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with hundreds of free-of-charge website layouts. As a hosting corporation, we do worry about our reputation and this is the reason why if you go with us, you can be calm that you won't get tricked into paying for a solution that you cannot in fact make use of.

What should I expect from a web hosting service?

The web hosting solution is best for people who are looking to host a basic site, which is going to consume a small or medium amount of bandwidth each month. You cannot expect, though, that a web hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, since as your business grows, your web site will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to eventually move to a more powerful website hosting solution like a semi-dedicated hosting, a VPS hosting (aka a private virtual server, or VPS), or even a dedicated hosting. So, when selecting a website hosting company, you should also reflect about scalability, or else you might end up transferring your domain manually to a different distributor, which can create site problems and even prolonged downtime for your web page. If you choose Flexhosted Web Services as your web hosting provider, you can rest safe that we can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is essential and will save you lots of annoyances in the long run.