Shared hosting is the only option for many small-to-medium businesses. You don’t need to manage a server, as you might with dedicated hosting, and shared hosting offers most of the features of a dedicated server at a fraction of the cost. However, it’s worth knowing the risks and problems with shared hosting, and doing your best to minimise these with a good choice of host.

A major problem with shared hosting is overcrowded servers. Unlike a dedicated server, which is occupied by your site, data and applications alone, shared hosting, as the name implies, involves the sharing of a server with other people’s sites – sometimes hundreds of them. The fact that it is shared with other people over whom you have absolutely no control leads to various security issues. With hundreds of people having access to the same server, it is likely that the motives of one or two of them will be less than scrupulous. You might well find that, with a bit of looking, you can access other people’s data on the server, and that means that they have access to yours too. Sensitive information such as email lists, or software which you sell on your website, could then end up in the hands of others.

Another problem is that other people’s sites might hog a large proportion of the available bandwidth, slowing down your site along with everyone else’s. You will also find that shared hosting offers a lower uptime guarantee than dedicated hosting, because there is always the possibility that an inexperienced webmaster’s badly written script could crash the server and result in downtime.

You might also wish to ask your host if they have any adult sites on their servers. Not only are adult sites real bandwidth guzzlers, but often, with shared hosting, IP addresses are allocated dynamically, meaning that you may sometimes be sharing an IP address with a site that is filtered out by search engines as containing adult content. This could result in a serious drop in traffic to your site, as well as a smear on your reputation. You might also share an IP address with a site which has been banned from search engine results because of spamming. There is some disagreement about whether search engines discriminate in this way, but it is not worth risking your search engine results, so ask your prospective hosts if they host any adult sites.

Shared hosting may well be your only option, but make sure you ask plenty of questions when you are choosing a host, so that you can choose one who takes your security and service seriously.

Author: Natalie Catchpole

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