Shared hosting is one of the most popular hosting types in the world. There are many reasons for that but the most important reason is that shared hosting is the cheapest hosting solution. The main idea about shared hosting is that your website will share the disk space, the bandwidth and all the server’s characteristics with other websites.

Shared hosting is surely not the best hosting solution but it is clearly the cheapest one. This is why many website owners choose it. It can be good for simple websites, especially informative ones that do not have a lot of traffic. On the other hand, for website that needs decent security and performances, you can’t choose shared hosting as your hosting solution.

The biggest problem with shared hosting comes from the lack of security. As there are many websites sharing the server, you can’t be sure that you will not suffer security breaches in the future.

It is clear that if you have a website that deals with sensitive or financial information you should avoid using shared hosting. The lack of control is a big problem for website administrators as they can’t configure the server for their own needs. This is normal because there are many websites sharing the same server.

Another important aspect that makes shared hosting a less than great solution is the performance one. You should be aware that many times there are certain problems you might have with shared hosting. For example, when the server is too busy due to being crowded, your customers might not see your website for a while. This is called downtime. If you are having a lot of downtime, your website’s reliability will decrease.

It is a well known fact that the attention span of Internet users is a very short one. Therefore, you should not lose potential customers just because your website is hosted on a shared server. There are other performance problems such as loading time and others which can be bad for your website’s image.

In conclusion, shared hosting may be appropriate for some websites and may not be appropriate for others. If you think about running a serious online business, you should think about serious hosting from the start. This means that you can choose between virtual private servers for small websites and dedicated hosting for important ones.

You want to get the best for your money and this is why you should not seriously consider shared hosting if you want to run a serious online business. It is simply not something you will be glad that you did.