Shared hosting
Don’t worry, this isn’t a blog about body snatching parasites! We’re giving you the Thirty Six Digital guide to shared hosting, and why it’s so important to make an informed decision BEFORE you move your website over.
Firstly, what is web hosting?
Nice and easy one. If you want your website or web application to be published on the internet, you need hosting. After all, those graphics, videos, and text needs to be stored somewhere! No hosting, no access. Unless of course, it’s just for your viewing pleasure, but we’d consider that pretty rare.
Wait, so what’s my domain?!
It’s the online address of all that stored data. You have to purchase a domain BEFORE creating a website and deciding where it should be hosted.
Ok, so back to shared hosting. How much is it?
Ah, now we’re getting to some of the interesting questions. If you did a Google search today, you would find hosting deals of around £1.49 per month. Bargain right? Wrong! If the price of the hosting service is low, it means that you are most likely on a shared web hosting plan, on a shared server with tens of thousands of other websites. The old adage of “you get what you pay for” is definitely appropriate here.
If you share your website storage with others, you run the risk of poor performance, cross contamination, cyber attacks and a huge impact on your SEO. Why? Because you do not get given a dedicated IP address (amongst other things of course) . These servers are a primordial soup of data, dodgy deals and headaches. Sounds oozy.
So, what are our top web hosting tips?
- Consider cloud hosting – in the UK only!
- Do your research before making a decision
- Aim to choose hosting services that are connected to your maintenance package
Hang on, what is Cloud hosting?
NOTHING gets past you!
You’re probably already using cloud based services for your phone data or accountancy software – in fact, cloud based services are EVERYWHERE! These are virtual servers that run on demand, are easy to scale (as and when needed) and extremely reliable. You can have a dedicated cloud server with its own unique IP address, without having to worry about the space of housing physical hardware.
It’s definitely something we recommend!
If you’re investing in a complete rebuild of your website, do it right from the start. If you’re currently using shared hosting and would like to consider an alternative, let’s have that conversation.
