If you have to ask how to set up your own website, you’ll get plenty of answers. Some may ask you to set up a free hosting account, while others may give you a link to a particular service that allows you to create a website through an online wizard.
Some people may even recommend a good shared hosting package to get you started. Of these options here, shared web hosting costs money and serves as an inexpensive way to set up a reliable personal site or blog.
About shared hosting
Shared hosting is one of the frequently appearing web hosting packages from web hosting providers. Hosting providers only need a single server to accommodate multiple clients as they will all be sharing server resources.
Multiple websites can be hosted on that server. The most popular hosting providers may have dozens of servers for shared hosting purposes.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that shared hosting, even if you have unlimited domains, will allow you to use unlimited bandwidth. If your site(s) end up using too much bandwidth, you’ll need to get 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 less than $10 per month for a year or two. The costs per month should be even lower if longer-term plans are chosen.
The features of the server should be more than enough for personal websites and blogs to handle a substantial amount of traffic. Overall site performance should be higher than any free web host, but much lower than a dedicated hosting plan if many visitors are active on the site on a daily basis.
That said, shared hosting is not the recommended option for hosting downloadable or streaming content like music and video. There may be no bandwidth limitations, but the downloaders will not use all of the server’s resources, as the server may have other websites active.
Also, if you use database-driven scripts like WordPress, it will use more hosting resources than a simple HTML website.
Many hosting plans may also offer support for PHP and databases like MySQL. This allows you to install various scripts ranging from forums to e-commerce pages. Since shared hosting plans are cheap in general, these plans serve as a great starting point for emerging 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. Almost all web hosting providers offer 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 has a lot of positive customer feedback. 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 what matters most is how the customer support team handles the situation. Good support in general will always mean a good company to trust.
Specifically, look for the following:
- 24/7 technical support
- Easy scripting installation, like one-click WordPress installation
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited subdomains
- renowned brand
If you’re hoping to build a thriving forum community or plan on getting thousands of visitors to view your page, it’s also a good idea to check out upgrade options for a shared web hosting plan so you can have a smooth transition without changing hosting companies. Web. .