HostMonster Web Hosting Package

Shared hosting is the most common way of hosting a website. In general, a shared web hosting is a server shared by multiple users and websites. Hostmonster, for example, is a shared hosting providers. Shared web hosting is also known as virtual hosting sometimes. However, it shouldn’t be confused with virtual private server (VPS) as they are two totally different things.

How shared web hosting works?

As said, shared web hosting simply means multiple website hosted together on a same computer servers. The resources of the server – RAM, hard disk, processor, and Internet gateway – are all shared by the websites hosted on it. The number of websites hosted on a shared web host is basically unlimited. In most of the case, website on a shared hosting are sharing the server box with hundreds of other websites.

The logic behind shared hosting is simple – to minimize the cost of hosting a website without jeopardizing its performance.

What’s good about shared hosting?

Shared hosting is cheaper than all other hosting options. As the server resources are shared, the cost of maintaining the server are shared among websites owners as well.

Also, running website on a shared hosting requires less technical knowledge. The server is shared, thus all hosting accounts using it has no access to the server root folder. Shared hosting website owners simply spend less time and effort in maintaining their web server as the jobs are done by the hosting provider.

Disadvantages of shared hosting

Unfortunately, shared hosting does come with certain disadvantages. Some key cons with this type of hosting services are:

• For certain web host, shared hosting means limited disk space and bandwidth.
• Shared hosting = shared IP, you have little control to avoid your website IP from being blacklisted as spam.
• Root access is normally not available with shared hosting accounts.

Bottom line: Should you go with shared hosting?

Shared hosting is always the best options for starters and newbies in webmastering or blogging. A good shared hosting are reliable, affordable, and never short of hosting features that add values for their client’s websites. In case you are looking for an affordable shared hosting service, check out Hostmonster – they might not be the best but I think their price is reasonable and worth trying.

In case you are new to website hosting, you’ll first need to understand what are the types of hosting services available online.

In general, you’ll see ‘shared web hosting’, ‘reseller web hosting’, ‘dedicated web hosting’, as well as ‘virtual private servers’ (VPS) in most hosting providers’ offers.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common hosting ever used by individual webmasters and bloggers. A website on a shared hosting is hosted on a server that’s shared along with many other websites. Users pay a small amount of rental fees (hosting fees) to the server owners (shared hosting providers) and get to use the hardware owned by the providers. Such type of web hosting is always the cheapest and most practical for light weight websites.

Hostmonster, for example, is a shared hosting provider.

Dedicated Web Hosting

A dedicated hosting refers to the kind of server that’s used by one single website. You can either buy your own hardware (servers, network switch, etc) or rent an entire server from a web hosting company for dedicated web hosting. All computing powers and resources on a dedicated server are used by one website, this enables the website to work faster and more stable. It’s also worth noting that dedicated hosting is more secure when compare to shared hosting.

Hostmonster do not offers any dedicated hosting plan at the moment. In case you are looking for one, I suggest you to go with Hostgator as they are cheap, reliable, and have been operating for quite a while in dedicated hosting business. In brief, here are the pricing details for Hostgator dedicated hosting.

To learn more, visit Hostgator online.

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller hosting refers to web hosting companies that allow you to resell their hosting capacity. Generally, reseller hosting allows you create your own brand name and run your own hosting business by reselling what’s the company had been offering. A reseller hosting customers get, for example, 1,000GB storage and 1,000,000GB bandwidth for a certain price. These hosting capacity is then divided into smaller part and offered to the other end users – say 100GB disk storage with 10,000GB bandwidth.

Reseller hosting service is the perfect hosting plan for those who are looking forward to start their very own hosting company. It allows you to start small without the cost of computer hardware.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Virtual Private Server works like a virtual dedicated servers, where users get their own dedicated machine that’s sharing the same physical server with other websites. A VPS is the type of hosting that stands in between of dedicated and shared hosting. Websites running on VPS gets to run on its own operating system and is much stable than a shared hosting. Although it’s sharing the same resources with other VPS account, the private server can be boot and reboot independently.

Ever heard about ‘Overselling’? Well if you haven’t, there’s a informative website that you should take a look at: No OverSelling Hosts (www.noshosts.com) .

www.noshosts.com is the few websites that are busting the ‘overselling activities’ in web hosting industry. You can learn how to catch an overselling hosting company as well as shop for no-oversell-certified hosting companies.

What’s overselling anyway?

Quoting Wikipedia’s definition ,

Overselling is a term used in the web hosting industry to describe a situation in which a company provides hosting plans that are unsustainable if every one of its customers uses the full extent of services advertised. The term is usually referred to the web space and bandwidth transfer allowance.

This practice usually incurs little ill-effect since most customers do not use any significant portion of their allocated share. If a customer has a small, low-traffic site serving static HTML pages, few resources will be used. If a customer wishes to run a high-traffic, professional, or business website an oversold hosting account can be detrimental. In these cases, a shared hosting provider that does not oversell, a virtual private server or dedicated server is a preferred option.

"Overselling" is always a huge concerns for web hosting shoppers. Overselling allows web hosting companies to operate more efficiently. When done properly, overselling is in fact benefiting the customers with lower hosting costs and extra hosting features.

Some readings around www.noshosts.com:

• All about overselling
• Overselling bandwidth
• List of non-overselling web hosts