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What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting, sometimes called shared services or virtual hosting, is simply when multiple web sites share the same server, thus reducing the cost for everyone.

With a shared hosting account, your site will usually be on a server with hundreds of other web sites. That may sound like a lot, but it usually works out extremely well because most sites don't generate enough traffic or use enough resources for it to become a problem.

Share hosting is suitable for personal sites, small businesses, and even medium sized businesses if their hosting needs fit within the parameters of a small business.

Most shared hosting providers offer substantially more disk space, data transfer, and email accounts than most people or businesses need. If every site used their quota, shared hosting would not work. But since few do, it actually works out quite nicely.

Because most people and businesses don't use most of the features they have available to them, using feature lists to choose a web host doesn't usually narrow the field much. What should be the criteria used to choose a host is harder to measure, so most people end up making uneducated choices and hope for the best.

If you visit my hosting selection criteria page I share with you what I think are the most important things to check into when opening a hosting account. My free ebook, How to Choose a Good Website Host goes into even more detail.

The only real problem with shared hosting is if the web host oversells. Overselling means the host has put too many sites on one server. A good server usually has at least a gigabyte of memory, but if thousands of sites have to fight it out for memory, CPU cycles, and bandwidth, it means all the sites will be slow. Fortunately, any good host will prevent this from becoming a problem in the first place.

This site, and all my sites are currently using shared hosting. Here's my list of the Best Shared Hosting companies. I haven't had any problems with overselling. If you stick with a good hosting provider shared hosting will most likely work well for you too, allowing you to host your website for very little cost.

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Free PDF ebook...

How to Choose a Good Website Host

How to choose a good web host.
Current Version: 1.8

Download: Right-click Here and choose Save Link As (Firefox) or Save Target As (IE), or similar wording if you use another browser.

Description: This FREE guide to choosing a good host explains the criteria I use to choose a hosting services provider. It includes giveaway rights if you want to share with your own website visitors or friends.

hosting 101 Shared hosting is perfect for 99 out of 100 website owners. Very few need anything more. hosting features explained

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