What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is a web hosting service where multiple websites reside on a single physical server and share its resources, typically managed through a control panel.
Shared hosting is a web hosting model in which many websites are hosted on one server. Each customer has a portion of the server's CPU, memory, and disk space, but no customer has full control over the server. The hosting provider uses a control panel, such as cPanel or Plesk, to allocate resources and manage accounts.
When a visitor requests a website, the web server software (often Apache or Nginx) identifies which domain belongs to which account based on virtual host configuration. The server processes the request and serves the files from that account's directory. Since resources are shared, heavy traffic on one site can affect others, leading to potential performance degradation.
Shared hosting is typically the most affordable option and is suited for small websites, blogs, and beginners. It sits below virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated hosting in terms of performance and isolation. Most shared hosting plans include a bundled suite of software like PHP, MySQL, and email services, all managed through the control panel.
Key facts
- Multiple websites share the same physical server's CPU, RAM, and storage.
- Managed via a control panel such as cPanel or Plesk.
- Limited root access; server configuration is handled by the provider.
- Prone to resource contention from 'noisy neighbors'.
- Lowest cost hosting tier, ideal for small-scale or personal projects.
How it works in practice
Related terms
References
More in Hosting Types
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Bare-Metal Cloud
Bare-metal cloud is a service model that provisions dedicated physical servers on demand via API, giving users direct access to hardware without a hypervisor.
Burstable Billing
Burstable billing (95th percentile billing) charges customers based on the 95th percentile of their traffic, sampled every 5 minutes over a billing month, discarding the top 5% of data points.
Cloud Bursting
Cloud bursting is a hybrid cloud deployment that automatically scales an application from a private cloud to a public cloud during demand spikes.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting provides on-demand access to pooled compute, storage, and networking resources that can be scaled up or down as needed, typically billed per use.
Colocation
Colocation is a service where a provider rents physical space, power, cooling, and network connectivity in a data centre for customer-owned servers and hardware.
Dedicated Server
A dedicated server is a physical machine leased exclusively to one customer, offering full hardware control and no virtualization overhead for high-performance workloads.
Hypervisor
A hypervisor is a software layer that creates and runs virtual machines by abstracting and isolating physical hardware resources for multiple operating systems.
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is a service where the provider handles server administration, including OS maintenance, security updates, backups, and application support, allowing clients to focus on their core business.
Overselling
Overselling is a hosting practice where providers allocate more resources (bandwidth, disk, CPU) than physically available, assuming customers won't all use their maximum simultaneously.