What is Shared Web Hosting?

Shared web hosting is the most common form of web hosting and is what the majority of web site owners start out with. In a nutshell, shared web hosting refers to a service where one large capacity computer, called a web server, is shared between many customers. By far the biggest advantage of shared web hosting is the fact that it is cheap. Because web hosting providers can store many web sites on one server, their costs are low and they can therefore pass through better pricing. Another advantage of shared web hosting is the server is generally already pre-configured with the most popular options, features and tools.

A distinct disadvantage with shared web hosting is the fact that because you are sharing server resources with other sites, should one site on the same server experience a spike in traffic it could very easily cause the other sites access to slow down considerably. Shared web hosting can also be less flexible as requirements for special features are generally not allowed or if your site causes unbalanced strain on the server's resources your provider could ask that you upgrade to another type of web hosting or worse, suspend your site and bring it down.

Because shared web hosting is the most common form of web hosting it is generally not specified, but instead just referred to as web hosting or web site hosting. Many companies offer shared web hosting only, specialize in it and do not offer any other types of hosting. Some web hosting providers are better than others in maintaining that resources are shared equally among all users and that server capacity is not peaked.