Your website can bring in new customers while you sleep. This alone makes it one of the most important aspects of your business that deserves your undivided attention. However, it won’t power itself. In other words, you need a reliable web hosting plan that suits your needs. At this point, you’re presented with a myriad of options to choose from, ranging from dedicated servers, business-class hosting and shared web hosting.
To avoid confusion, we’ll be focusing on the latter, analyze its advantages, and give you some food for thought on why you should consider this type of hosting plan. Let’s start!
For instance, you may decide to launch your very own casino website that hosts video slots and other gaming titles others can connect to and play online. Depending on the traffic you receive, shared hosting is likely enough to power the front-end of your website (the part where you present your casino’s offerings), but not quite powerful enough for the purposes of hosting the games themselves. In practice, this becomes a question of resource distribution; so when choosing a hosting package, always keep in mind what you’re going to be using it for.
But then again, not all of the providers are made equal in this regard. Will your website incorporate a mechanism to accept payments? Whether you’ll be hosting an eCommerce store, an online casino, or a private membership website, please bear in mind that your potential clients have security concerns that tend to make them reluctant to share their payment details. To maximize your chances of landing a sale, it’s imperative to address these concerns and remove any obstacles that stand in the way of winning over their business. Displaying certificates of trust, using encryption to protect sensitive user data, and making them know you regularly scan your website is a must.
A good support team will also help you perform the much-needed maintenance procedures without interfering with your workflow, all of which is indicative of a good and reliable shared hosting provider. Remember, you’re the entrepreneur, not a tech whiz. So you should be given the breathing room to focus on what you’re good at instead of mingling with the technicalities, and that’s where a dedicated customer support team comes in.
Once this is done, you’ll be able to enjoy cool features like drag-and-drop website builders that will make website editing easy to comprehend for all skill levels. So if you’ve already prepared all of the content in advance, you’ll get it up and running in no time. And if you require any changes at a later date, you’ll more than probably be able to make them yourself, due to how user-friendly modern CMS solutions tend to be.
So if you start noticing that your website can no longer hold its own under a massive downpour of visitors, you’ll know it’s time to upgrade. But if there’s anything that can be described as a first world problem, this has got to be it (and once it occurs, you’ll be more than happy to be dealing with it).
Photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images
To avoid confusion, we’ll be focusing on the latter, analyze its advantages, and give you some food for thought on why you should consider this type of hosting plan. Let’s start!
Shared web hosting is affordable
In the competitive world of today, cost reduction tops the priority list of several business owners. As it so happens, shared hosting fits the mold perfectly; not only is it affordable, but balances the resources used in an optimal fashion to give you the best of both worlds. The trick behind the seemingly low price tag is that the server’s resources are equally distributed among the many websites that are relying on them. So unless you’re running a website that processes a million requests per minute, hosts graphically demanding games, or runs functions of indescribable complexity, shared hosting is a budget-friendly option for powering even a business website. For the rest, dedicated hosting could be a better fit.For instance, you may decide to launch your very own casino website that hosts video slots and other gaming titles others can connect to and play online. Depending on the traffic you receive, shared hosting is likely enough to power the front-end of your website (the part where you present your casino’s offerings), but not quite powerful enough for the purposes of hosting the games themselves. In practice, this becomes a question of resource distribution; so when choosing a hosting package, always keep in mind what you’re going to be using it for.
You get a whole team of watchdogs to ensure that everything is running smoothly
Ideally, you want your website to be accessible night and day. Even something as little as a second of downtime could lead you to losing a potential customer who doesn’t have the patience to wait around and is likely to wander off elsewhere (possibly right into the arms of your competitors). Therefore, you need someone to watch over it to make sure it stays up. Despite the fact that shared hosting plans are inexpensive, you still get a whole team of watchdogs to monitor its uptime and act upon the first sign of a problem.Protection against malware and rock-solid encryption
While this depends on the hosting provider you’ll be working with, some will even go as far as to offer you a malware protection package. This means they’ll regularly scan the contents of your website for the presence of malware and viruses and notify you when something fishy is brewing. This is typically accompanied by a script that makes automatic backups at specified intervals, so you can restore the fully-working and non-infected version of your website at any time you see fit.But then again, not all of the providers are made equal in this regard. Will your website incorporate a mechanism to accept payments? Whether you’ll be hosting an eCommerce store, an online casino, or a private membership website, please bear in mind that your potential clients have security concerns that tend to make them reluctant to share their payment details. To maximize your chances of landing a sale, it’s imperative to address these concerns and remove any obstacles that stand in the way of winning over their business. Displaying certificates of trust, using encryption to protect sensitive user data, and making them know you regularly scan your website is a must.
Customer support is available 24/7
Unless you’re a proficient web developer yourself, 24/7 support can be an absolute lifesaver when you need to get an issue resolved as soon as possible. When tweaking your website or installing a new plugin, there’s a slight chance of accidentally misconfiguring something that results in your website crashing. Therefore, you need someone to help you revert the problematic change and restore your website’s functionality without losing precious uptime.A good support team will also help you perform the much-needed maintenance procedures without interfering with your workflow, all of which is indicative of a good and reliable shared hosting provider. Remember, you’re the entrepreneur, not a tech whiz. So you should be given the breathing room to focus on what you’re good at instead of mingling with the technicalities, and that’s where a dedicated customer support team comes in.
Shared hosting comes with easy installation and user-friendly website editors
Whether you need to install Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, or another CMS of your choice, don’t make the mistake of thinking that one-click-installation solutions are exclusive to higher-end hosting plans. While certain providers are still lagging behind in this regard, any shared hosting provider that’s worth its salt will offer an intuitive and user-friendly script that will install these for you at no additional charge. And if not, the customer support team should have no problems with taking care of it for you.Once this is done, you’ll be able to enjoy cool features like drag-and-drop website builders that will make website editing easy to comprehend for all skill levels. So if you’ve already prepared all of the content in advance, you’ll get it up and running in no time. And if you require any changes at a later date, you’ll more than probably be able to make them yourself, due to how user-friendly modern CMS solutions tend to be.
The perfect solution for your blog hosting and small business needs
Many small business owners and bloggers prefer to start small, and shared hosting makes perfect sense if this describes you. Since you won’t be getting a flood of traffic to your website in the early stages of your online presence, it’s the perfect starting point to build your career. Once your website starts growing, upgrading to a more robust package can be done in a mere couple of clicks and won’t interfere with your uptime either!So if you start noticing that your website can no longer hold its own under a massive downpour of visitors, you’ll know it’s time to upgrade. But if there’s anything that can be described as a first world problem, this has got to be it (and once it occurs, you’ll be more than happy to be dealing with it).
Conclusion
Based on the points made above, shared web hosting is the perfect solution for more than 90% of small business owners and bloggers. The monthly renewal fee is somewhere along the lines of purchasing a single cup of coffee, so it should not be a barrier to entry. And once your business grows to the point of requiring more server resources, upgrading is as easy as pie.
Photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images
