About Shared Website Hosting - What is it good for?

There is a huge market in shared hosting because it is cheap and because it is cheap and don't forget, it is also cheap.

There are really no benefits of shared hosting besides the fact that it is just the cheapest option for anyone that needs a website.

In fact it is the worst possible hosting plan you can choose, for so many reasons such as:

• Low security and High risk of hacking

• Poor server performance

• Low system resource allocations

• Poor support (due to low prices competition)

• Requires FTP access and knowledge of building websites

• Requires outside website building software

Low security and High risk of hacking

Unfortunately when 100 or more people share the same server the security goes right out the window.

Host allow unlimited FTP accounts and the users create their own access points for other users. So users with the name John and password also john get set up all the time. Of course hackers know this and run automated hacking programs against servers with commonly used user names and passwords and can usually hack into a server within a few minutes.

You also have 100 or more webmasters installing software and writing their own programs. Poorly written programs are the number one reason that servers are hacked. Attacking vulnerabilities in a users code and gaining access to the server.

Of course once the hacker has accessed one account, they have access to all the account, because it is a shared server.

Even the most basic programmer can write code to access other accounts, read data files from other users or just take over the server for their use and delete all the other websites.

Of course the last thing a hacker wants is to draw attention to the hack, so they don't usually delete everything but rather they add some quite code to the server to monitor information that they want, such as email addresses for spamming or passwords for identity theft.

In any case, if you are on a shared hosting plan with open FTP access for anything more than a personal home page or a static 5 page information website then you are crazy. Because it is just a matter of time before you are hacked, whether you realize it or not.

What many people do not realize is that it is not even that difficult to hack a shared server. In fact, most hacking is done from within the server.

What that means is that hackers simply sign up for a shared hosting account for $2.99 and they have instant access to everything granted by the host themselves.

Think of it like this. If you hire a new employee that intends to steal from you and give them the key, then you surely understand what is going to happen.

Now, if your store is adjacent to 6 other stores and the employee only need to punch a hole through a thin piece of Sheetrock to get access to the other stores, now everyone is at risk based on your mistake.

The risk of being on a shared server is just too great for anyone that needs their website, stores or collects any type of information on their website. And certainly for the purpose of ecommerce, shared hosting is just not even a responsible option.

Poor Server Performance

With all the websites on a shared server to keep the price low, you risk constant overload of resources. With each server only capable of supporting a limited number of simultaneous connections and that number is often lower than the number of accounts on one machine it is common to run out of resources and see messages like "website not available" or "server busy, check back later".

For people that can't afford more than a few dollars for a website they just accept this as "they get hat they pay for".

But for any business, this is just not going to work. Because people see that message when trying to get to your business website and they assume you are not a good business.

Your customer is not blaming the website host, they are blaming you for having a shitty website and that reflects poorly on your entire business and reputation.

That is just a fact of shared hosting.

I have compared this often to living in an apartment with 2 parking spaces and 10 guest spaces shared between 20 apartments. If one of the neighbors has a party the same day as you and each of you have 10 guests, there are not enough parking spots for everyone. So what happens? They have to go home? There is no way the can stay without a parking space.

If you are on a shared server, you run the risk of people not being able to see your website, slow delivery times and overall poor server performance based on what other websites are doing at the same time.

Low system resource allocations

To prevent total server crashes due to one website, host will often allocate a system resource limit. That means you can only use maybe 5% of the total memory or CPU time on the server. If a program exceeds that, the program process is terminated.

So lets say, Joe is trying to checkout from your cart and the cart needs 6% of the CPU to process the order. When it exceeds 5% the system closes the program and Joe is sitting waiting for a response that is never going to come. Essentially, the cart can't work under those restrictions. Not because the programming is bad, but because your website is not allowed to use the necessary resources so that other websites don't stop working while Joe checks out at your store.

These limits severely limit what you can and cannot do with shared hosting.

Poor Support (due to low prices competition)

Worse than programs being shut down is the fact that you don't even know why programs are not working. Is it the coding? The programmers fault? Who knows?

When you call support, if you can even call support in your hosting agreement they can't help you because they don't support what your programmer or outside vendor does.

And when you tell them the shopping cart that you are using was part of the hosting, they will tell you that it is an open source program offered free and not one of the services that they provide.

To keep costs low, they have to limit support to getting access or servers being operational. Beyond that, you are pretty much on your own when it comes to your website.

So many people go out and buy a solution that lets them manage an online store. Some vendor that wrote a cheap shopping cart for $100 or less. Then you call that vendor and they tell you it is the hosting companies fault and the hosting company blames the vendor and so on... never getting resolved.

If you are not an expert, these shared plans are not good solutions for you.

Requires FTP access and knowledge of building Websites

Unless you understand FTP and using outside software to build websites, upload files and images and manage all the content, then these are poor options for you.

They don't have online content managers or website building tools.

So webmasters install CMS or content management systems like Joomla or Drupal which are little more than complex tools to replace the windows based FTP and SFTP programs needed to manage content.

So to manage any type of website on shared hosting servers you need to understand more than just the website, you need to have a complete understanding of file paths, how they affect a website and be able to manage complex directory structures on the server to make sure all resources are allocated correctly.

Don't understand any of that? If you want to use shared server, start learning about it.

Requires outside website building software

Then when you go to build your website, you will need outside software like Adobe Dream weaver to build the actual pages before you upload them ad the files into the servers.

Now you are faced with leaning how to build pages using professional software that people spend years leaning to use.

None of it is easy because it was no made to be easy, it was made to be CHEAP!

And they accomplish the cheap part very well often offering space for less than $3 a month.

At pageBuzz, we totally avoided that market because it is a downward spiral. Companies always slashing prices to be more competitive and cutting services to meet those low prices.

But 99% of the people don't understand FTP and need support. The want a website builder, not just a website.

So at $20 a month for pageBuzz hosting, you get all of that. You get:

• No open server access
• Increased security
• ecommerce programming
• Website building tools
• Image editing tools
• Drag and drop page editing
• etc, etc, etc....

While we are still hosting websites, we do it very differently than our competitors and anyone that has tried to build a website on shared hosting will know all too well what a problem that really is and why it is sooo cheap.