Understanding the different web hosting plans for your business can be slightly confusing. There are multiple factors involved, such as cost, bandwidth, site performance, security, and more. Couple those factors with a variety of “unlimited” hosting plans, and choosing a hosting provider can become confusing and stressful.
However, choosing a web hosting plan doesn’t need to be a stressful endeavor. You certainly want to make the right choice for your business’ needs, so getting the facts about shared plans is vital.
The following serves as your guide to shared web hosting plans to help you grow your website and be successful long-term.
Hosting Price
Bottom line is at the core of every business decision, including a web hosting plan purchase. Most small businesses, startups, and budding entrepreneurs will opt for shared web hosting plans since the cost is relatively low.
The price of shared web hosting plans is lower than dedicated hosting because your site shares a server with hundreds of other websites. It will normally cost no more than $10 per month, depending on the add-ons for the shared plan you choose.
However, the attractive pricing may come at a cost. Due to the sharing nature of the server, the performance of your site may not be the best. This depends on how big your site is and what sites you’re sharing a server with.
All About the Bandwidth
Bandwidth is another major factor in deciding if a shared web hosting plan is right for your business. If you have a lot of traffic, or if your site is large, you will need more bandwidth than a smaller, less frequented website.
Web hosting providers often calculate bandwidth by analyzing the amount of data your site has going in and out over a monthly period. It is important, to be honest with yourself about your data needs and traffic in order to decide on the type of shared web hosting plan.
Importantly, you should be on the lookout for web hosting plans offering “unlimited” bandwidth. This may not be the case since some hosting providers will limit your site’s bandwidth after a certain amount used per month. Read the fine print!
Do You Need a High-Performance Site?
Performance is absolutely important when deciding on a shared hosting plan. The performance of your site is what provides a stellar user experience. For instance, if your website is slow to load, you will lose potential customers to your competitors. Your web pages need to load within three seconds to keep a user engaged.
You also need to have an optimally performing site due to Google algorithms and analytics. If your website is slow to load, people will bounce out fast. This signals to Google that your site is serving up a poor user experience and Google will drop your SERP ranking accordingly.
A shared web hosting plan can impede your site’s performance, but this is not common. Unless you have hundreds of ecommerce product pages with tons of images, as well as sharing a server with a site that gets a lot of traffic, you should be fine with a shared hosting plan.
Security May Not Matter
Security of a shared server is slightly less intense than that of a dedicated server, for example. This is because your website is sharing a server with other sites. But this is a small caveat of choosing a hosting plan, especially if your site doesn’t store any user personal information.
For example, if your website is a simple blog site focusing on affiliate marketing that points to another site, like Amazon Associates, you may not need heightened server security. It all depends on your site’s business, industry, and user needs.
Exceptional Entry Point for Beginners
Shared web hosting can be highly beneficial for someone who generally doesn’t know much about scripting language or the different types of programming files. It is a set it and forgets its way to develop a website and get it launched without the major technical aspects slowing things down.
With a shared hosting plan, you can get your domain name, purchase a hosting provider plan, develop a sleek WordPress site, and launch, all in less than a few hours.
Get a Web Hosting Plan that Works for You
There is no shortage of web hosting plans available. From shared hosting to dedicated servers, hosting providers have plenty of options. There are even a variety of valuable shared hosting options that serve up different bandwidth options, disk space, pricing, and more. What are your hosting needs?