How Shared Hosting Can Benefit Your Business
Unless you’re running an enterprise-level business with high traffic volumes, a shared server generally represents the most cost-effective website hosting option. It’s a common misconception that shared hosting is designed for startups, or websites with negligible traffic volumes. In fact, the arguments in favor of small-to-medium firms sharing a server with other companies are fairly compelling.
Shared Hosting For The Win
Other than from billing and account documents, there’s no way for you (or your customers) to tell whether site’s hosting is shared or dedicated. You’ll have a bespoke CMS login, a dedicated IP address, and exclusive control over every component file and folder. Nonetheless, system resources like bandwidth will be shared among various clients. Successful web hosting companies distribute server space between companies in different industries and time zones, spreading demand evenly throughout a typical 24-hour cycle.
The biggest benefit of shared hosting is the cost savings created through economies of scale. Being able to implement a security protocol across ten sites simultaneously is far more efficient than having to perform each update separately. The considerable expense of server purchase is divided between multiple clients, helping to justify the cost of round-the-clock tech support and constant maintenance. Comprehensive services at reduced per-user costs will sound tempting for businesses with small margins, tight budgets or strong competition.
Get Much, Much More
At WestHost, we’re able to host a website of up to 50GB in size for just $8 a month. You can upload a product database and enjoy 1,000GB of monthly bandwidth – sufficient for most small-to-medium brands. Another advantage of shared hosting is the ability to move up a subscription level as your needs evolve, rather than preemptively paying for resources that may never be required. Our Preferred package comes with 2,500GB of bandwidth, supporting as many subdomains and MySQL databases as any brand could need. Meanwhile, our flagship Enterprise package offers unlimited bandwidth, email addresses and subdomains.
Shared servers are especially popular among companies with multiple websites, such as partner brands or country-specific platforms. After all, it’s a small world out there. WestHost is part of an international family of businesses, and our colleagues at UK2 were recently voted one of the five best shared hosting providers. Described as “a good all-rounder hosting outfit”, the TechRadar review praised UK2’s diverse range of plans and impressive tech support. The review also acknowledged the quality of service our family of brands provides, which should be near the top of any priorities list when choosing a web hosting partner.
Ecommerce And Beyond
As online shopping replaces real-world stores, and as everyone’s digital footprints expand, websites are often the only public-facing part of a business. If that website is offline, or takes a long time to load, consumers will abandon it and search for alternative providers. Page abandonment harms search engine rankings, which are responsible for 80% of new site visits. Having an instantly accessible website can literally make or break your business, which is why choosing a dependable (yet affordable) web hosting partner is such an important decision…