What is shared hosting? Why do we not advise you to rely on it?

Shared hosting is considered the most common and least expensive type of hosting. It can be said that most website owners started their path with shared hosting, and many people started their path by creating a new website with shared hosting, but they faced many problems such as the slowness of the site, its constant downtime, poor customer service, and many other things. Of the disadvantages we will discuss in detail in today’s article.

But before talking about the disadvantages of shared hosting, we will explain to you the definition of shared hosting and how it works, so continue reading with us.

What is shared hosting?

Hosting in general is the place where your site files are stored and sent to the visitor when they enter your site. This place is known as the server and has fixed resources in terms of RAM, storage space, central processing unit (CPU), and bandwidth.

In shared hosting, the hosting company sets up one server with fixed resources, and more than one site is placed on the same server without any limits, so any site can obtain the entire server resources, so all sites compete for server resources and thus all sites affect each other.

Shared hosting is always the cheapest type of hosting in hosting companies, so it seems great at first, especially in terms of financial cost, but with some time you will discover that it greatly affects the success of your site and your customers, and in the following paragraphs we will explain to you the most important disadvantages that you may encounter when using Shared hosting.

Disadvantages of using shared hosting?

When you create a website and decide to use shared hosting due to the low financial cost or any other reason, or as a first step in starting your project, you will be exposed to many problems, so we will discuss with you the 9 most important disadvantages that will appear to you over time when using shared hosting after arranging them from most important to least. So that you are aware of the problems you may encounter in advance, and you have the final decision.

1- Reduced uptime

Uptime is the number of hours the server operates during the year, that is, the number of hours your site operates and the extent of its availability to receive visitors during the year. It is in the form of a percentage, and in most hosting companies it is 99.9% and can be relatively less.

The percentage of 99.9% means that your site will be out of service for eight hours, 45 minutes and 57 seconds per year, and that period is certainly not small, as you may lose an important customer and he will go to a competitor’s website.

There is a high possibility of this percentage increasing in shared hosting, because one of the sites shared on the same server can cause a problem that causes a malfunction in the server in general, which will affect the operating time of the rest of the sites.

2- Slow loading of the site

The loading speed of your site is one of the most important factors that affect the performance of your site, whether it is on the user experience itself, or on the ranking of your site in the Google search engine, as Google relies on site speed as one of the criteria for issuing search results, so we can always say that loading speed affects Doubly so on the site.

As we mentioned in the introduction, in shared hosting there is more than one site on the same server that uses the same resources, so one site can consume most of the resources, causing other sites to slow down.

3- Server resources are limited

Basic server resources for shared hosting are generally limited due to their low cost.

Therefore, when limited resources are divided among a large number of sites, each site’s share of the basic resources in terms of random storage memory (RAM), CPU, and storage capacity is very small, and even if the basic server resources are large, the share of each site will remain small.

4- Stopping the website without warning

Hosting companies follow a policy in shared hosting, which is to stop the site if it consumes a large portion of the server’s resources so that it does not affect the rest of the sites significantly, and in order to maintain the stability of their servers, but the major impact during that period is on the site itself, so you can imagine when your site succeeds and the number of Visitors stop the site!

Most hosting companies do not provide prior warning before stopping the site, but they send you a notice of stopping, and there are some other companies that send you a notification when 80-90% of the server resources are consumed and they stop the site with the second warning.

5- Poor security level

The weak security level in shared hosting is one of the most important problems that users may face, as your site can be hacked without any technical error on your part.

If a site on the server is hacked, all sites on the same server are also at risk of being hacked, and if the server itself is hacked, all sites linked to the server are also at risk of being hacked.

Some hosting companies try to solve this problem by completely separating website data, but most of the time they cannot separate them 100%.

6- Inability to access the root

Root means the software foundation of the server, through which programmers can adjust all server settings through it. Therefore, some site owners need permission to access and control it. This is prohibited in shared hosting, because any modification to the root can affect all the sites that are shared. You are on the same server, so hosting companies deny you this permission.

7- Imposing some restrictions on installed applications

Hosting companies provide a limited set of programs that can be installed on shared hosting, for example, WordPress or online stores .

But if you want to install a program or add-on with special programming on your website, you will find that it is not available, for example, adding currency conversion, tracking stock prices in Forex, etc.

8- There is no private IP for your site

There is a dedicated IP for each separate server, but in shared hosting you find a group of sites on the same server, and therefore all of those sites share the same IP, and this affects your website in the long run, for example if one of the sites shared with you is blocked. The same shared hosting from a specific country due to a problem it caused, your site will also be blocked from that country because you have the same IP as the other blocked site.

Unfortunately, this problem is one of the problems that is difficult to discover, and it requires you to continuously monitor the movement of visitors within your site until you discover any blocking or error that occurred. When you contact technical support, they can discover the problem, disconnect the site causing the problem, and assign a new IP to the server.

9- You cannot use a private SSL certificate

An SSL certificate is a security certificate that keeps the information and security of your website visitors. Hosting companies offer a free SSL certificate with most shared hosting services.

But if you want to use an advanced SSL certificate, you will find that it is also not available, because a private SSL certificate needs a private IP as well, and as we mentioned in the previous paragraph, all sites in shared hosting have the same IP, and you will be forced to use a free SSL certificate. Which is considered lower quality.

Who uses shared hosting?

I do not advise anyone to rely on shared hosting completely, but it can be relied upon in the following extreme cases:

The budget available for your website is low and there is no possibility to increase it
If you have a small website consisting of a few pages
Your website is not used commercially or does not target visitors, for example, a site to display your previous works
If you want hosting in order to try out a specific site, or to train on it in general

Is there a company that offers good shared hosting?

Unfortunately, all hosting companies offer shared hosting with the same advantages of low cost and disadvantages discussed in the previous paragraphs, but there are some companies that try to reduce these disadvantages as much as possible and provide the best possible user experience, and there are a few companies that are distinguished by the following:

Shared hosting price starts from $2.99 per month.
Server uptime is 99.98%, and it offers a guarantee of refunding the monthly subscription value for every hour that your site is down, if the server uptime rate drops below 99.9%.
The average server speed is 291.67 milliseconds, and this is considered a good speed, as the recommended speed from Google is 200 milliseconds, and you can reach it through some WordPress plugins.
It offers servers that are characterized by the fact that the number of sites participating in the same server is very small compared to other servers, so you find it faster and at a relatively higher cost, and this is a fundamental reason for us choosing that company.
It provides you with a strong protection system that periodically scans your site and detects loopholes and errors, and technical support resolves them completely without your intervention, in order to secure your site and the server itself.
It provides excellent technical support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you can communicate with it via live chat, email, phone call, or internal site tickets.
I skimp on SSD storage in all shared hosting plans, which are three times faster than HDD storage.
It supports most major content management systems, for example, WordPress, OpenCart, and Joomla, with the ability to install them on the hosting with one click, so you do not need technical experience in order to deal with hosting.
The ability to add an unlimited number of websites and databases and use an unlimited number of subdomains and professional email addresses as well.
A full money-back guarantee if you do not like the hosting, and it also offers a guarantee for the duration of the contract period with a discount on the duration of use.

There are a few companies that offer the following features in shared hosting. If you find a company that provides it, it may be an acceptable solution for shared hosting, but it will still contain some of the disadvantages that we talked about at the beginning of the article.

The best alternative to shared hosting

I expect that after reading the previous paragraphs, you will confirm that shared hosting is not completely suitable for you, and you will start searching for the best hosting that may suit your site.

You will find more than 7 different types of hosting, but we will recommend virtual servers (VPS), which is shared hosting, but its resources are divided between sites using virtual private server technology, and thus the sites will not affect each other in terms of usage.

Likewise, most hosting companies allow you the freedom to control your private part, in terms of the ability to access the root, restart the server, or allocate a private IP for you and thus use an advanced SSL certificate.

The main reason for us choosing virtual hosting (VPS) as your alternative is that the cost of virtual hosting is not significantly higher than shared hosting, as the price of virtual hosting starts at 5 US dollars in most hosting companies.

In this way, we have reached the conclusion of today’s article after we have explained to you the definition of shared hosting and its working mechanism, and the most important disadvantages that you can encounter when using it, as well as the best alternatives that you can rely on. If you have a question or inquiry about a specific part of today’s article, do not hesitate. Contact us via website messages or comment below the article