Shared Hosting Existence

[tarunap]

How will Shared Hosting Maintain its Existence in the Hosting Industry.?

Share your personal thoughts.

 

[MrRapidHost]

It will always be there, not everyone can afford a vps/dedicated server and not everyone can manage a vps/dedi.
Also for small sites its never worth it to use a bigger service.

 

[professorrosado]

What is the "real" drawback to shared hosting in comparison to VPS or cloud based?

 

[AbeloHost]

AbeloHost

I think you mean "real" drawbacks

1) It's a shared IP. Your shared neighbors can negatively influence the reputation of the IP. Also, if one of the neighbors attracts a DDoS attack, without proper DDoS Protection, the IP might get nulled and everyone's site on that IP will be down.
2) The resources are shared. To keep a story short, your shared account won't be able to handle a lot of traffic. Even if it does, a sensible hosting provider will tell you to upgrade to a VPS.
3) Shared hosting is often done on HDD drives rather than SSD drives.

 

[RDO Servers]

RDO Servers

1. You can also have a dedicated IP on a shared hosting account.
2. Although shared hosting is, by definition, shared resources, if your host uses Cloudlinux/Cagefs, and doesn't oversell the servers, there is no reason for concern here.
3. VPS's and Dedicated servers also often use HDD's. Lots of hosts put shared customers on SSD.

Shared hosting will survive just fine. The large majority of sites on the internet, do not need a VPS or dedicated server. Shared hosting is cheaper and easier to manage for the average user.

When coffe shops became popular, did grocery stores stop selling coffee? Of course not. Both have their own unique purpose and market share.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

Actually, in reality, there are more drawbacks to a VPS than there are to Shared Hosting. First, in response to AbeloHost:

1. Sure, it's a shared IP. However, with the main issue being that Arin has annouced they allocated their last IPv4 block, there are NO MORE IPv4 addresses to be assigned to ISPs. Therefore, it is going to become more and more difficult to get access to address space, as well as more expensive (Expect price increases on all VPS/Dedicated servers to a range of about $5-10 per IP). It is the hosts responsibility to maintain servers and ensure that abuse complaints are handled in a timely manner, therefore making sure that IP address space remains clean. Additionally, any host that does not provide DDoS Mitigation and instead just null-routes addresses is a host that you should not interest yourself in. With DDoS Attacks becoming more common in the industry, especially ones upwards to 50Gbps, it is becoming a mandatory requirement of providers to have proper infrastructure in place to protect customers against these types of attacks with little or no downtime or packet loss associated to the service.

2. Sure, the resources are shared, but believe it or not the resources are more heavily shared in a VPS environment. FOR EXAMPLE! A provider may put 100-2,500 cPanel accounts on a specific piece of hardware before considering stability, and ensuring that the servers have optimal performance for the customers. Now, take that same piece of hardware (lets say an E3-1231v3 with 32GB of memory) and put VPS on it instead. Now, you can fit an average 50-75 instances on that node, and each instance has their own software and configurations. Depending on usage during peak hours, if these VPS were idling then you would receive great performance for each instance, however, that's not always the case. Lets say that 30 of those VPS have 100 cPanel accounts on them, you've not already surpassed the 2,500 mark on the Shared server, let alone the fact that on the Shared server there is only one instance of the operating system and control panel running.

Yes, I offer VPS, and yes, I do recommend them still under many circumstances because the measures that my company has in place to prevent the above... However, I see time and time again people choosing to go with a $5 VPS company that offers so much for so little with customers expecting the world from them. Do your research!

3. Depending on the circumstances, sure, a lot of shared hosts might use HDD in Raid-10 configuration giving a boost of speed and performance. SSD storage is expensive, and if you're looking at a $1 host and expecting SSD drives then look elsewhere or raise your budget. Keep in mind that most traditional websites won't use IO that a SSD provides, and really only websites with excessive database transactions will notice the difference. In this case, a host might store the MySQL directory on a separate SSD drive providing a SSD Cached environment. Either way, don't focus on SSD being a selling point when selecting a provider, consider the level of support and reliability of the service as the primary factors. If a website surely needs the performance of an SSD drive, then maybe it's time for a dedicated server?

 

[professorrosado]

So then, is it advisable to start off using shared hosting and move up to either expanded hdd, ssd or VPS whenever a site begins to peak its resources? Which is the best solution for peaking resources - expand the hdd space or upgrade to ssd or VPS?

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

Believe it or not, the least common peaked resource in a shared environment would be disk usage. The average account will use less than 1GB of storage, mid-ranged accounts will use 1-4GB of storage, and the upper range will be 4-8GB of storage. That being said, a host that utilizes SATA or SAS drives in a Raid-10 configuration will have an abundant supply of storage, and as such with a proper setup "Unlimited" hosting becomes logical. (Unlimited hosting isn't actually unlimited, it's just limited by other resources other than space and bandwidth).

Once you start peaking your other limits such as RAM/Concurrent Connections, then depending on your rate of growth there are 3 options.

1. Rate of growth is slow, upgrade to the next tier Shared Hosting account (even unlimited hosts will have 3-4 tiers with different allocations/prices) for more resources.

2. Rate of growth is steady, business is generating the revenue to cover costs of a VPS in the $30-40+ range, and you either have the knowledge of managing a VPS/Dedicated Server OR are willing to pay extra for someone to manage it for you.... If so, time for a VPS!

3. Rate of growth is FAST, or you have a website that is resource intensive and has even outgrown a VPS.. Usually by this stage you will have progressed through a VPS with 4-8GB of RAM; time to upgrade to a Dedicated Server!