What is Shared Hosting?
Shared Hosting by definition is hosting a number of web sites on a single web server. This is by far the most popular and cheapest form of web hosting. Majority of websites will need only a fraction of resources available on a web server, so it makes perfect sense to share the resources between a large number of web sites. A typical web server will be shared by few hundreds of websites, making it extremely cheap compared to any other form of web hosting. A shared hosting service would on an average cost less than $10, where as even a small dedicated server would cost hundreds of USD per month.Another advantage the comes with shared hosting is that all the overheads and server management will be done by the hosting company itself, making life easier for the customers. So the bottom line is, unless you have hundreds of thousand page views a day or need host critical application and data, shared hosting is the way to go.
Given below is a list of top shared hosts, hand picked by us based on a number of criteria like reputation, market share, uptime and so on. Read the reviews for complete information about the host and make your own decision.
Top Rated Shared Hosting Services
HostMonster  HostMonster has been in the hosting industry since 1996. They own and operate their own data center. The infrastructure is pretty good and they have been providing quality hosting over the last 10 years. At $5.95 per month(paid for 2 years), they offer more features than many of the premium hosts. Definitely they offer cheap web hosting and quality support. For more info, read detailed HostMonster review. |
| Hostgator Hostgator, founded in 2002 is one of top shared hosting companies. They are consistently ranked among the best by most of the review sites. Hostgator doesn't do anything spectacular, they just provide excellent hardware and good support. Our top cheap web hosting choice- ideally suited for both small business sites and personal web sites. For more info, read detailed Hostgator review. |
| Bluehost Bluehost, one of the oldest web hosting companies has gone through a lot of changes in the last few months. They have increased the space, bandwidth and no of domains per account to match the best offer in the industry, while keeping the price low. Now they offer unlimited domains and resources to justify the same. If you are looking to host multiple domains and want the assurance of a reliable host, blue host is a great option. For more info, read detailed Bluehost review. |
IX Web Hosting  IX Web hosting is one of the top 10 hosting companies in US, in terms of size. According to third party estimates, they host over 494,000 domains. They own over 1% of US market share. Their plans are relatively cheaper and offers excellent value for money. Excellent option for small businesses, since they provide different class "C" IP address for add on domains. They also have a sister concern named hostexcellence, which offers packages similar to ix web hosting. For more info, read detailed IX Web Hosting review. |
| LiquidWeb Liquid web, started in 1997 is one of the well known names in web hosting industry. They are one of the leading managed dedicated server hosts, with own top of the line data centers with excellent connectivity. They also provide top quality shared hosting which is priced above the average, still affordable for serious web masters. For more info, read detailed LiquidWeb review. |
| Lunarpages Founded in 2000, Lunarpages has a reputation of being one of the top shared web hosts. Their prices are reasonable and they offer good customer support and high uptime. Lunarpages offer extreme amount of space and bandwidth, taking overselling to the next level! They also offer windows hosting. Another favorite for small business web sites, who may need good amount of bandwidth and good support. For more info, read detailed Lunarpages review. |
| Dreamhost Dreamhost is one of the top 15 shared web host on the web, hosting nearly 1 million domain names as reported by independent third party analysts. If we exclude domain registrars who act as hosts and domain parking service, Dreamhost is probably the biggest specialist shared host on earth. For more info, read detailed Dreamhost review. |
| StartLogic Startlogic is a leading web hosting company, with years of experience in the field. They provide both windows and Linux shared hosting, in addition to the VPS and dedicated servers. Their price is pretty affordable and they offer enough space and bandwidth to satisfy most needs. For more info, read detailed StartLogic review. |
| GoDaddy GoDaddy, world's largest domain name registrar is also one of the largest shared hosting service provider. They also consistently appear in top performers list by Netcraft. While they are one of the best choice for domain registration, their shared hosting is a mixed bag, extremely low price sometimes not being able to justify poor support and features. For more info, read detailed GoDaddy review. |
How to Select Shared Hosting
A few points to remember while selecting a host that meets your requirement.Control Panel
Most shared hosts offer a web based control panel to manage your site. Few of the most popular control panels include cPanel, Plesk, Ensim, DirectAdmin etc. Some shared hosts like godaddy would be using their custom control panels. While it doesn't make much difference for beginners, we recommend going with a host that uses a well known control panel. cPanel is our top recommendation, being the most powerful and offering features like fantastico script installer etc.
Dedicated IP Address
Dedicated IP address is offered as a special feature by some of the hosts, while some charge a small fee for the same. Unless you are doing critical jobs like accepting credit card online and need SSL, there is no real need for a dedicated IP.
Add-on Domains
Most shared hosts allow more than one domain to be hosted on the same account. These days, some of the even small hosting packages offer unlimited add on domains. If you own more than one site and would like to manage them together, this is a very nice feature and could save you lot of money.
Windows or Linux?
Most beginners tend to think that windows is going to be user friendly, but the truth is just the opposite. When it comes to shared hosting, Linux is the clear winner and almost all shared hosts offer Linux based packages.
Unlimited Bandwidth?
Gone are the days when shared hosts used to offer few MB space and little more bandwidth. In this age of overselling, hosts could offer you anything between 100GB to unlimited bandwidth. Same is the case of storage space, even though they add thousands of sites on a 300GB server! We recommend not paying much attention to bandwidth and storage claims. If you use too much of resources, host will invoke their CPU usage policy and show you the door. Shared hosting is for reasonably sized sites with reasonable traffic. Period.
Backups
Most shared hosts have a back up system in place. It could be daily back ups or weekly backups. But they never take responsibility for the same. It is your responsibility to back up your site. Use your control panel and backup at least once in a week.
Support
Support should be one of the major areas to consider, while selecting a host. Your hosts should have 24/7 tech support on phone and if you live in another country, look for instant messenger support as well. But ticket system is equally important and a decent host should not take more than three hours to reply to tickets. Big companies like godaddy and 1and1 normally is generally not great in this area whereas smaller shared hosting companies like hostgator give more detailed support with personal touch.
Price
Who doesn't want their shared hosting cheap? Average price of shared hosting has come down a lot in last 10 years or so. These days most shared hosts charge around $5 to $10 per month for a cheap shared hosting package. There are hosts that charge anything between $10 to $50 for a basic hosting package, but really there is no need to pay that much unless you are looking for something very special. On the other side, there are free hosts as well, but they are never known to be reliable for any kind of serious work, other than testing a script or something.