If you ask how to set up your own website, you will get many answers. Some may ask you to set up a free hosting account, while others give you a link to a specific service that allows you to create a website through an online wizard.
Some people might even recommend a good shared hosting package to start with. Of these options here, shared web hosting costs money and serves as an inexpensive way to set up a reliable personal website or blog.
About shared hosting
Shared hosting is one of the web hosting packages that appear frequently among web hosting providers. Hosting providers only need a single server to accommodate multiple customers as they all share the server’s resources.
Multiple websites can be hosted on this one server. The most popular hosting providers may have dozens of servers for shared hosting purposes.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that even if shared hosting offers unlimited domains, it lets you use unlimited bandwidth. If your website or websites end up using too much bandwidth, you will need to create another account or upgrade to VPS hosting or a dedicated server (I had to upgrade to VPS).
Common Features Between Shared Hosting Plans
The most common feature of a shared hosting plan is the low price. Most shared hosting plans should be under $10 a month for a year or two. The cost per month should be even lower if longer term plans are chosen.
Server capabilities should be more than enough for personal websites and blogs to handle a significant amount of traffic. The overall website performance should be greater than any free web hosting provider, but much lower than a dedicated hosting plan if there are many visitors active on the site on a daily basis.
However, shared hosting is not the recommended choice for hosting downloadable or streaming content such as music and videos. There may not be bandwidth limitations, but downloaders will not use the full resources of the server as the server may have other active websites.
Additionally, if you use database-driven scripts like WordPress, you’ll consume more hosting resources than a simple HTML website.
Many hosting plans may also offer support for PHP and databases like MySQL. This allows various scripts to be installed, from forums to e-commerce sites. Because shared hosting plans are generally inexpensive, these plans serve as a good starting point for budding communities, and the overall reliability is much better than free web hosting plans that can offer this type of support.
Specific hosting features to look for
The fact that shared hosting plans are so cheap and use few resources makes this type of hosting very competitive. Just about every web hosting provider offers an attractive shared hosting package to encourage people to try things out and hopefully upgrade in the future.
That is why it is very important to find a hosting company that gets a lot of positive feedback from customers. Checking out hosting review sites that anyone can contribute to can give you a better idea of the hosting provider’s reputation. It’s normal for shared hosting plans to be unstable at times, but the most important thing is how the customer support team handles the situation. A good overall support always means a good company to trust.
In particular, look for the following:
- 24/7 technical support
- Simple scripted installation like the one-click WordPress install
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited subdomains
- reputable brand
If you’re hoping to build a thriving forum community or want to get thousands of visitors to see your site, it’s also a good idea to look at the upgrade options for a shared web hosting plan so you have a smooth transition without changing web hosting company.
