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By far the most affordable way to get your website on the internet these days is to use what is called shared hosting. Shared hosting is where a net hosting company rents you a certain amount of disk space in which to store the files that comprise your website and permit you a certain amount of bandwidth (ie. the data transfered between your site and your guests browsers) in exchange for a monthly fee. Typically speaking, the more you pay the more web space and bandwidth you’ll be given.

There are even deals around where you are offered ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth for a absurdly tiny sum of cash every month. A lot of individuals are pleased with what they get, however many others have discovered when actually trying to use large amounts of space or bandwidth that if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is!

One of the features of a shared hosting account is that, as it’s name implies, you are sharing the disk space and bandwidth with lots of other users. As I am certain many will appreciate, when an application is thrashing your hard disk on your own PC, or using up a lot of memory, then your PC slows down considerably and can seem to grind to a halt at times. Well, this situation is pretty much the same with shared hosting. You’ll find yourself on a server with other users who have memory or CPU intensive applications, or popular sites that have tons of guests, which means heaps of disk activity. The end result is that the responsiveness of your website suffers.

An additional downside with shared hosting is that you will be unaware of who exactly you are sharing with. If you discover that your web site drops suddenly in Google that might be for the reason that you have done something Google does not approve of. On the other hand it may be that the IP address you’re sharing with each and every one the other sites on your server has been identified as a source of spam or malware.

So what is the answer?

Well many folks are OK with taking the risks associated with shared hosting, but for others some kind of cheap dedicated hosting provides an occasional price solution to their problems. You will need to come to a decision if you would like Linux server hosting or Windows server hosting, but that decision should be driven by the applications that you need to run, as they can almost certainly be Windows only or Linux only.

A virtual dedicated server is the next step up from shared hosting and can cost you a touch more money. With a virtual shared server you still will not have a physical server all to yourself, but you will have far more control over your hosting environment and you’ll eliminate just about every one of the problems related to shared hosting, and you will have your own IP address. For the small amount extra (it will be typically around $twenty – $30 a month extra) that a virtual dedicated server costs this is a worthwhile investment.