Advantages and disadvantages of the Shared Hosting model

Most shared hosting offers are aimed at private web page operators, as well as small and medium-sized companies that want to offer their services to a predictable number of users. This group, in particular, benefits from many of the advantages of this model. On the contrary, a shared server will not meet the needs of larger online projects, such as online stores with a large volume of visitors. For these types of websites, IONOS offers powerful dedicated servers as well as cloud-based alternatives.

Advantages: since the costs of the server resources are divided among the different users of the web hosting platform, it is possible to find shared hosting packages at very attractive prices. Unlike a dedicated server, a shared server does not involve administration costs of the physical machine. Its maintenance, repair and updating are the responsibility of the provider. In this way, users can concentrate solely on carrying out their projects. In addition, most shared hosting providers offer their customers a large number of configuration tools. IONOS shared web hosting packages allow centralized management of your web space and installation of the most popular open source applications is just a click away.

Disadvantages: Inevitably, shared hosting comes with limitations in terms of hardware utilization. Since all the server resources are shared between all the web pages hosted, the users of this hosting model can only take advantage of a part of the overall performance of the server. The fact that one of the hosted websites has very high traffic will directly affect the capacity of the server and, therefore, the other projects hosted on the server. Depending on the tariff, users are promised a minimum capacity that guarantees the stable operation of their web pages. In addition, the access and management options of this hosting model are very limited. The hosting provider is solely in charge of the basic configurations of the physical machine, which has an impact on the operation (correct or incorrect) of all the projects within the shared server. In this way, the shared hosting model differs significantly from virtual and dedicated servers, where, as a rule, the user has root access.