Shared Hosting is bad for Businesses. We have all seen the adverts on TV or heard the adverts on the Radio, they go along the lines of: “You can get a domain, hosting and email for your business for just £1 a month”. These hosts are great for personal blogs and testing (to a point), but should never be used by big Businesses – especially not online traders or shops.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is where a company hires or uses their own single Dedicated Server or VPS for all users (or a set number of users). The server automatically creates a single linux user with allocated space and domains – based on the options you choose when you sign-up. There is no setup time or input by an employee at the company – most run themselves. Because the server is being shared by multiple users, your domain could be on a server with 3,000 other domains. The limited server bandwidth is also shared across those other users / domains, so the sites on it may be extremely slow – especially if all those domains are in use at the same time. This also means, your email accounts are also on the same server as thousands of other domains and users. I have seen shared hosting start-ups using VPS servers before now with 99% load on the server.

Why is shared Hosting Bad?

Shared hosting is not always bad per say, but for businesses it is not ideal for a number of reasons. It may look like a good deal on the TV or on a advert, but in reality this is what you are getting:

1. Shared server with thousands of other domains on a single IP
2. Shared email server with thousands of other domains and users
3. Limited email box size and number of addresses
4. Email blacklists- if one person spams on your server, spam lists will block the IP – which means everyones (all domains on the server) emails will be dropped. This is extremely bad for all businesses.
5. Limited site space
6. Free Domain – which is usually owned by the hosting company – this is a big problem if, or when you want to move
7. Slow bandwidth all be it unlimited
8. Non-secure connection between your site and your customers

Email Problems:

I have seen this so many times from both small businesses and people using shared hosting for their blog and private email: “My server got blacklisted”. This is a massive problem for businesses of any size, if you are blacklisted it basically means that someone purchased hosting on your shared host and used it for spamming. There is a way to check if your server is blacklisted by checking the IP on blacklist sites, most sites will not disclose to you why the server was blacklisted, and most will not remove the server from the list; unless the owner of the server contacts them and assures them that spamming will never happen again. You also have limited control over spam incoming, if there is a spammer on the same server as your domain (a domain list can be checked on a specific server), the server will send the spam straight through locally.

Why Shared Hosting should never be used for Online Shops:

Online shops need to have TLS to be able to even function, without a secure connection between your customers and your server you are basically running something that is Illegal and your company will be liable for. All open source web applications and banking services specifically state in their terms: the site must have full TLS. I have seen online shops before running on shared servers who have had to pay a considerable amount of money to sort this out because a customer contacted the said money transfer bank (PayPal etc). Bank services like PayPal are getting considerably tough with companies that do not comply with their rules now. This may even result in the termination of your account.