If you have heard that shared website hosting is the best thing on earth, then you should prepare yourself to be sorely disappointed, as this article outlines the many disadvantages of shared hosting.
Whenever you are attempting to set up a small business webpage, you will be offered a variety of hosting options that will seem highly appealing.
Shared hosting plans often appear rich in features and functions, whilst remaining incredibly cheap. Thus, it is easy to see why so many people buy into shared hosting plans to host small business websites.
However, you will soon realize that your website will operate slowly for virtually no reason, especially the more that you engage with it and add to it.
Certain aspects of the website may also stop working entirely, without any warning. Thus, the support and security that is sold as part of these packages is never guaranteed. This is the unfortunate truth of shared hosting.
Whilst shared hosting may appear great initially, it can actually become the reason why your small business website doesn’t engage any new traffic or customers, which is the key reason why you will have set up a website.
What Are The 10 Disadvantages of Shared Hosting?
As mentioned, shared hosting has far more disadvantages than advantages. These are as follows:
Limited Resources Available
Your website is not able to use a vast amount of resources if you have opted for a shared hosting package.
Thus, whenever you try to add some additional resource or functionality to your webpage, you will encounter numerous errors due to this lack of storage space and resources.
Sluggish Modality
One of the most common complaints that people have about shared hosting providers is that their websites operate slowly and sluggishly.
The main reason for this is because there is a distinct lack of resources provided when you are operating your website via a shared hosting provider, and thus, this inhibits your website’s overall functionality.
Your Website Might Not Work On Busier Days
In order to avoid your website from being overwhelmed by an influx of traffic, you should avoid using a shared hosting provider.
This is because, in order to avoid a single website from overrunning the server’s resources, shared hosting companies will implement controls that freeze a website if it starts to use a vast amount of resources on the server.
Remember, a website that uses shared hosting is sharing a server with thousands of other websites. Thus, any website can impact the performance of another.
Thus, if your own website suddenly becomes popular, it can actually crash due to the sudden influx of traffic.
This is one of the biggest disadvantages of using a shared hosting provider, and is one of the main reasons why you should avoid them entirely.
If any of the websites on the shared server are hacked, then all of the other websites are under threat of becoming hacked also. Thus, your website is undoubtedly at risk of being hacked within a shared hosting environment.
Whilst many shared hosting providers will attempt to isolate websites that have been hacked to avoid this impacting other websites on the server, this is not always the case.
Poor Support
Despite the fact that shared hosting providers will state that they offer good and easy support networks, this support might not be in depth enough in order to run your website efficiently.
If your website encounters an issue, these providers may not be able to tackle that specific issue. In fact, they will generally just restart it. They may be utterly clueless in regard to the reason why it is not operating properly.
Many of these customer support workers are actually reading from an FAQ script, as opposed to being technical wizards.
Thus, any larger issue that you encounter will require external help which can cost a large amount of money. This lack of strong support is a key reason to avoid shared hosting packages and providers.
Bad Neighbors On The Network
If your website functions on a server alongside thousands of other websites that receive good traffic, then your server will slow down accordingly, which will impact your customer’s ability to access your website.
Thus, your website won’t just slow down because it has become popular, it will also slow down whenever another website on your server increases in popularity.
Limitations On Installations
Shared hosting providers only offer a limited list of external software that can be used and installed on the server. Thus, if you need to add anything external, you will not be able to do so unless it is listed, which limits your options drastically.
No Root Accessibility
Whenever your website becomes increasingly more advanced or popular, you may feel that you need to obtain root access to the server. However, the vast majority of shared hosting providers do not provide this option as part of a shared hosting package.
Additional Cost Of SSL Certificates
The initial cost of a shared hosting package is undoubtedly low. However, as soon as you attempt to add additional features or functionality, you will need to spend more money.
A key example of this is SSL certificates. The vast majority of shared hosting (see also ‘What Is Shared Hosting?‘) providers do not provide SSL certificates, unless you pay for them. This will cause your website to display a ‘not secure’ warning message.
You can obtain these certificates for free via companies like Let’s Encrypt. However, you will still be asked to pay for them when you are using a shared hosting provider.
If you add this additional cost to the initial price of choosing a shared hosting package, then the cost becomes a major disadvantage of choosing shared hosting for your website.
Limited Unlimited
Shared hosting providers will spend a lot of money on advertisements and they often sell these under false pretenses. They will boast that they offer unlimited emalls, storage, and bandwidths etc.
However, you will realize that this is completely untrue. You will usually be delivered with a warning as soon as your email receives numerous emails or your website has a large influx of traffic.
Whenever this occurs, you can be banned from the server itself. Therefore, there is nothing that is unlimited about using a shared hosting provider.
Conclusion
To conclude, there are numerous disadvantages of using a shared hosting provider. I have outlined the top ten disadvantages of purchasing a shared hosting package above.
Whilst these packages may seem appealing initially, the cons far outweigh the pros.
Whilst they may also seem like the cheapest and most accessible option, you will experience far more problems in the long term when opting for a shared hosting package.
The level of support that is offered alongside these packages is as limited as their overall technical functionality and storage space.
You also run the risk of becoming banned from the server if your website achieves an influx of traffic, which is counterproductive to small businesses that are aiming to expand whilst using a shared hosting service.
Hi, my name is Ollie Wilson and I have been a keen blogger since I was a young teen. I was growing up with the rise of YouTube and bloggers, and the people I followed influenced me to start blogging. They were making a lot of money from their blogs, and I wanted that too!
I’ve now had this blog for almost a decade. In that time, I’ve learned how to monetize it to start earning money, which servers are the best for each blog type, and how to optimize your domains.
Now it’s time to share my knowledge and help others create their own successful blogs, just like I wish I had when I was creating my first blog. It can be daunting when you first set up your site, but with my advice, you’ll have a great looking blog in no time. Let’s get started!
