Top Five Drawbacks to Shared Hosting Services

Although shared hosting is the most popular type, there are also many drawbacks which cause hosting customers to look elsewhere. With other types of hosting available such as dedicated hosting, multiple domain hosting and co-location hosting, customers have many options.

Depending on the need of the customer, shared hosting might be a good choice. On the other hand, as sites expand and consume more storage and bandwidth, the move from a shared hosting service might be the best choice.

The top five drawbacks include:

1. A reduced level of security
2. Limited resources
3. Website can go offline if too resource intensive
4. Lack of permission to install programs and software
5. Lower quality

One of the primary drawbacks of shared hosting is a reduction in the level of security offered by the provider. Since the server is shared with numerous other websites, the risk of security threats greatly increases. Although there are measures to decrease security issues, the server has a greater chance at being a target which decreases uptime.

Another concern for customers is the availability of resources. As the site is first created, the basic hosting plan offers plenty of storage and bandwidth. However, as the site and other sites on the server grow, they require more resources. If a website develops a good deal of traffic, it affects all other sites on the server since the resources are shared.

This often leads to receiving a restricted service message. If a website is too resource intensive, due to the number of other sites on the server, it could become deactivated and go offline. This is extremely detrimental to business.

Additionally with shared services comes a lack of permission to install programs and software. The server is run by a company so they usually don’t grant the authority to install any program. Each program can affect their other customers linked to that server.

Finally, another significant issue with shared hosting services is the lower quality offered to the customer. There will be more problems than other types of hosting due to the fact that everything is shared. This also will significantly decrease the speed of the connection, especially during high traffic periods.

Although shared hosting services are the preferred method because they offer extremely inexpensive packages; this isn’t the only reason to choose a host. There are many drawbacks to this method of hosting that can have a significant effect on business.