What Does Shared Hosting Stand for?

Shared hosting is a service that web hosting distributors offer so that you can put your website on the Internet.

How can people find your site?

When you make a site and you wish other people to view it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you attempt to make the website reachable on the World Wide Web by shared hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it always online, which is why hosting services came into being.

How does shared hosting work?

Web hosting companies offer you storage space for your site on their powerful computers (web hosting servers) and guarantee uninterrupted Internet connection. When somebody types your domain (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can have a gaze at the content of your site.

Web hosting varieties

With the advance of Internet technologies, several types of web hosting services have come into existence to meet the different needs of web site possessors, among them shared website hosting services, VPS web hosting services and dedicated web server hosting services.

Shared hosting

Shared web hosting is the most common type of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one hosting server is shared between plenty of shared hosting account owners who are restricted by the CPU, bandwidth and web storage space quotas that they have been allotted. This form of web hosting is typically cheaper - you don't have to buy the whole server upfront, since it is divided among lots of web hosting clients, and the web hosting solutions provider can afford to provide much more moderate prices. It is also easier to use - the web server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting supplier handles all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.

The negative side of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the server's resources with other shared hosting account owners and if a given website becomes really popular it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the sites on that hosting server, but the majority of hosting vendors, including us at Nelson's Hosting, have protection systems in place that obstruct that from occurring.

A definition of a web hosting service

Because shared web hosting is the most commonly used type of web hosting, the majority of hosting service providers and hosting users simply call it hosting or website hosting. As there is a big competition on the website hosting market, the majority of hosting service providers try to provide low prices and bonuses with their services. We, for example, provide different hosting packages and two billing options - monthly and yearly, based on your funds. If you pick the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a present - one cost-free domain registration.

Virtual private servers plans

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The Virtual private servers hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated server web hosting solution. If your site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared hosting plan, a VPS hosting server is a good choice. VPS web server hosting clients still share the hardware resources of the physical machine with other virtual server web hosting account holders, but the server is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own dedicated resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated web server. The upside is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a virtual web server are not shared. Furthermore, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your virtual private web hosting server, but it also presupposes a higher degree of technical expertise.

Dedicated Server

With the Dedicated Server solution, the client gets an entire dedicated server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated server hosting solution is the most powerful of all web hosting solutions and offers tons of configuration possibilities - the dedicated hosting users can choose the hardware and software specs that will answer their demands. Dedicated resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated server hosting plan is a perfect option for a popular business site, for instance - you will not share the dedicated hosting server's resources with anyone else and will get complete server root access. You will exercise full control over the machine, which will enable you to implement any configuration changes that you might require. The weak side of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical proficiency is required - unless you engage an IT pro, it will be your obligation to administer and configure the dedicated web hosting server. The dedicated hosting solution also costs far more, since the cost of the dedicated web server isn't shared between any other clients.

A hosting advice for novices

If you are just starting to develop your website and are searching for a hosting solution to begin with, the shared hosting solution remains the most relevant option. If your site outgrows your shared hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and requires no migration of your website files, because only the features of your account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any particular time without worrying about the time left until expiration. What is more, if you finally reach the most advanced shared web hosting package and still need more system resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it indicates that your website's popularity has grown!), there always is the possibility to switch to a VPS web hosting platform or a dedicated web server hosting platform without the need to swap web hosting providers.