Is Shared Hosting A Good Choice For Bloggers?

Today, the easiest and most common way of sharing your thoughts with the world is via a blog.

The most basic thing that you will need is to buy web hosting to host your website and make it available to your potential visitors on the internet. Choosing the right web hosting can significantly impact your success in the digital world

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared Hosting, as the name suggests, is one where a single server is shared by multiple websites. All the server resources from CPU to RAM are shared between the customers based on their individual website hosting plans. You will also get access to features like email accounts, databases, FTP, and more. Shared Hosting is the easiest option to take your website online with minimal efforts and the least possible costs.

Before choosing the hosting service, you should determine whether you have monetary objectives from the blog, or it is simply a hobby. If it is only a hobby, you may find free platforms like WordPress.com attractive to your pursuit. For beginners, with monetary objectives, Shared Hosting could be an ideal option to test the waters and remain cost-effective. After a few weeks or months, if you find that Shared Hosting is not the best fit for you, you can either choose an upgrade or opt for a dedicated server.

Is Shared Hosting A Good Choice For Bloggers?

For new as well as established bloggers, the hosting service provider plays a key role in the success of blogs. Following are some considerations to look for while choosing the web host for blogging –

Uptime – If your blog site crashes, your reputation and your traffic take a beating. Uptime should, therefore, be closest to 100% (Just a marginal allowance under 0.5%).

Speed – You would expect your blogs to load fast to gain higher ranks by search engines and also to retain as well as delight your visitors.

Customer support – Customer support by the hosting service provider should be top class, and experts should always be available to resolve potential issues.

Security – A control panel access that allows you to perform regular updates and server maintenance is vital.  An SSL certificate, if offered by the web hosting service provider, will ascertain better security and even help in the SEO.

Considering the above requirements, Shared Hosting is the perfect option for bloggers who wish to thrust into an online presence with easy-to-use, affordable and safe hosting services. The reasons for this are –

1. Affordable plans – As all the server resources, including RAM, CPU, and Bandwidth are shared among multiple users, the maintenance costs also get distributed. This offers bloggers an excellent hosting plan at low costs. Multiple Shared Hosting providers also offer additional services like multiple domain hosting, site builder software, SSL certification, etc. with the Shared Hosting plan.
2. Good Customer support – The web hosting provider is responsible for maintaining the server systems. As there are multiple websites on a single server, most of which lack in-depth technical knowledge, Shared Hosting providers offer extensive technical support and prompt grievance resolution to the users. Bloggers can opt for plans with 24*7 dedicated customer service and technical support to ensure seamless hosting.
3. Easy to upgrade – If your blog starts receiving a higher number of visitors, you can always upgrade to a dedicated server, Cloud Hosting, or VPS hosting. However, to begin your blogging career with these hosting plans would be an overkill and wasting financial resources on something that may not even be required. Instead, starting with the Shared Hosting plans and maybe upgrading them as you progress is the ideal path for bloggers.
4. Easy to Use – A good Shared Hosting provider will offer its users with user-friendly site builder software, an interactive control panel, linking of the domain name with hosting account, multiple email accounts, ready statistics, marketing tools, etc. This makes using a Shared Hosting platform easy for bloggers with even limited technical skills and knowledge.

Shared Hosting ensures a rapid set-up, faster support and maintenance. It is comparatively user-friendly than VPS or cloud hosting. As we have seen earlier, it is the best affordable hosting option for beginners and semi-established bloggers. Unless you start receiving lakhs of visitors per month, Shared Hosting will be a good choice for you. Thus, Shared Hosting is the most convenient way to test the waters as you will save money while getting all the resources needed to run a blog successfully.