Creating and maintaining a website is vital for business owners. No matter the size or type of your business, an online presence is essential in this internet-connected, social era. Whether you’re the CEO of a multinational company or the owner of a small mom and pop bookstore, a reliable website can attract customers to your business, increase sales through online orders, or simply keep them up to date with new developments. Without an online presence, your business essentially doesn’t exist on the World Wide Web, which means you’re leaving potential customers and money on the table for more resourceful competitors to grab it.
Websites are also important for the optics. Businesses without a website can come across as contactless or even untrustworthy. You don’t want your business to fall into either camp. Even the smallest business should have one, which means you have to choose a web hosting service to set it up and maintain it. If your website has modest needs and you’re working on a similarly modest budget, consider shared web hosting services.
With that in mind, these are the best shared hosting sites we have tested. Read on for our top picks followed by what to consider when choosing the right shared hosting services for your website.
Is shared hosting good?
Unlike a dedicated hosting server that runs a single site, a shared web hosting server hosts multiple sites. The Advantage of Shared Hosting? It’s cheap web hosting. In fact, sometimes it is free web hosting. Shared web hosting is extremely wallet-friendly; In most cases, you can host a website on a shared server for less than $10 per month. Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
The downside of shared hosting? Possible website instability due to your website sharing server CPU resources with other websites. For example, if you share a server and one of the websites on that server experiences a spike in traffic, your pages may load slowly or not at all. Still, shared web hosting is an extremely affordable way to get a website up and running.
However, not all shared hosting plans are created equal. Sure, all web hosting companies will let you store files on their servers, but they offer varying amounts of monthly data transfers, storage, and other features. The way you pay (monthly vs annual payments) can also differ radically. Most shared web hosts offer multiple plans that represent their low, medium, and top-tier products.
Of course, you pay more for a higher-level service, but you get more features. Web hosts usually give you a discount if you sign up for a multi-month plan.
What you need to know about shared hosting
The blurbs above focus on the web hosts that boast the best shared hosting plans of all the services we reviewed. Many shared web hosts offer unlimited monthly data transfers and storage, so other factors can help you decide which service is best for your business. Note, however, that if you’re counting on “unlimited,” be sure to read the fine print to make sure there aren’t any pitfalls. Make sure your definition of unlimited matches that of the hosting service.
Then there is the operating system issue. Do you need Windows Server? Linux server? Best shopping. When it comes to server operating systems, Linux is usually the default option. Still, some services offer a choice of Linux or Windows hosting. If you have certain server-side applications that require Windows, such as B. SQL Server or a custom application written in .NET, you must ensure that your web host has Windows hosting. But don’t be intimidated by the idea of a Linux host. For more information, see Linux vs. Windows: How to Choose the Best Server OS for Your Website.
Today, most web hosts offer a graphical interface or control panel to simplify server administration and website management. Instead of typing in the command line, click on easily recognizable icons.
There are some specs that you might not find when browsing a web host’s website. For example, many web hosts do not list the amount of RAM offered by their shared hosting plans. In such cases, you can expect the total RAM to be less than 1GB. Some web hosting services offer shared premium plans that offer 1GB of RAM or a little more. If you want reliable performance under pressure without spending hundreds of dollars a month, look into Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. Signing up for a VPS plan will give your future website a significant amount of computing resources.
You also want a web host with responsive 24/7 customer support. Forums, knowledge bases, and tutorials are useful tools, but there’s nothing like getting on the phone (or at least in a web chat) with another human being.
On the other hand, if you want to start your own web hosting business but without the frustrations that come with it, look into reseller hosting.
What is the difference between shared hosting and WordPress hosting?
An alternative form of shared web hosting is WordPress hosting. This option is for people who want to build their websites based on the popular WordPress content management system (CMS) but don’t bother with a lot of backend stuff like updating the apps, plugins, and CMS and the Enabling automatic backups. Managed WordPress plans usually come with security features designed to protect the CMS from bad guys.
Some web hosts only offer managed WordPress as one of their many hosting plans. Others specialize in WordPress hosting and do not offer additional hosting plans.
Shared hosting availability
All of the above features are valuable to the web hosting experience, but none match the importance of website uptime. If your website is unavailable, customers won’t be able to find you or access your products or services.
We recently upgraded our review process to include more formal uptime monitoring, and the results show that most web hosts do a great job of keeping your sites up and running. If they don’t, they suffer in our rankings. Even if they get everything else right, sites with uptime issues are not eligible for top ratings. All Services are subject to ups and downs, sometimes for reasons beyond their control. Those sites that don’t address the issue will be penalized accordingly.
Which is the Best Shared Hosting Service?
Launching a website isn’t easy, but our chart gives you a solid foundation to start your journey from. Ready to Pick a Great Shared Web Hosting Service? Click on the links to read our in-depth reviews of the best services in the category.
If you’re just starting out with web hosting, be sure to check out our tutorials, How to Build a Website and How to Register a Domain Name for Your Website. The best courses to learn how to build websites is another informative place to start.
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