Best Shared Hosting Services in 2024
We have compared and tested 42+ providers to summarize the best shared hosting services across all major platforms in the following list.
Shared Hosting
A2 Hosting
Add to compare
A2 Hosting is known for its high-performance shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting solutions, making it a prime choice for businesses and individuals seeking speed and reliability.
In top 3 for
Cons
Very limited server locations
DreamHost
Add to compare
A major player in the web hosting industry, DreamHost offers an extensive range of services including shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. With its user-friendly approach, it's an ideal choice for beginners and businesses alike.
In top 3 for
Pros
Unlimited plan offesr great value for money
Perfect for beginners
Namecheap
Add to compare
Beyond its domain registration prowess, Namecheap offers affordable shared, VPS, and cloud hosting solutions, ideal for budget-conscious startups and personal websites.
In top 3 for
Pros
Comfortable solution when also managing multiple domains
Hostwinds
Add to compare
Hostwinds offers robust tools to help build attractive, functional websites. It's a top choice overall, with stellar reseller and VPS hosting plans for small and large businesses.
In top 3 for
Inmotion Hosting
Add to compare
Inmotion Hosting provides shared, VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting services, catering to businesses of all sizes seeking reliable and responsive hosting solutions.
In top 3 for
Pros
Cheap
90 days money-back guarantee
Python, Node.JS, Ruby and GIT version control
- If a provider offers general hosting and WordPress hosting separately, we ranked only the general hosting plan. This is because general hosting is cheaper and has better features, while it can still be used to host a WordPress site.
What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting services refer to web hosting where the physical resources of a single server are split between multiple websites. This comes with lower costs and means that all sites on the server have different domain names but the same IP address.
Simply put, your website data is stored on a server along with the databases of other websites. Each site has its file directory, and the users are not permitted to modify the root or other folders. System resources such as RAM, CPU, etc. are distributed on-demand, but each website utilizes a fraction of them at any given time.
On the other hand, every user of the shared web hosting server can access all features offered by the provider and can upgrade the resources such as more disk space, increased traffic limit, and more depending on the structure of the pricing plans.
What Are the Advantages of Shared Hosting?
Cost Effectiveness
One of the main reasons to use shared hosting is that it’s very cheap. The expenses of a hosting company are spread amongst many customers, which makes shared hosting services the most affordable solution for each particular user.
Flexibility
If you host a new or small website, a shared hosting plan can be a good start. You can easily upgrade it as your website grows. A clear indicator of the moment you need to scale up is when your site registers a repeatable growth in visit counts.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Typically, web hosting companies don’t enforce monthly bandwidth limitations for shared hosting services. However, if you require a lot of bandwidth and overload the server, it may harm other domains, and the provider will indicate that you need to upgrade your hosting plan.
Managed by Hosting Provider
The best shared hosting providers take the burden of maintaining the server off your shoulders. The host takes care of hardware and software updates and ensures that administrative tasks function correctly. The technical support team handles regular server maintenance, network outages, DDoS protection, etc.
Multiple Domain Hosting
If you plan to have several websites in one directory, shared hosting makes this easy. Just remember to ensure all your domains are associated with your account.
What Are the Disadvantages of Shared Hosting?
Low Site Speed
Speed is one of the major issues of shared hosting plans. It’s due to many websites utilizing limited resources of a single server. If a popular site happens to be hosted on a server, it will naturally require more resources and affect all the other websites.
In most cases, with shared hosting plans, you should be prepared for a slower site speed and performance compared to other hosting solutions.
Security Issues
The fact is that shared hosting is vulnerable by nature. Hackers can break into one domain and potentially access the entire server and thus all websites hosted on it.
The best shared hosting providers ensure domain isolation, which means that if a particular site is hacked, others don’t get affected so easily. Of course, we made sure that all hosts on our list prioritize high-security measures.
Here you can find out more about how we measure security for web hosting.
Lower Uptime
Server crashes are a common pain point of shared hosting services. This again is due to the nature of this hosting type. Server crashes occur when hosted websites require an excessive amount of RAM and CPU; for users that means that websites hosted on that server become unavailable.
Therefore, ensuring that the hosting provider you choose offers an uptime guarantee between 99.90% and 99.99%, so your website will not go down for more than nine hours per year.
10 Best Shared Hosting Services
- 1
- Shared Hosting
- 2
- Shared Hosting
- 3
- Shared Hosting
- 4
- Shared Hosting
- 5
- Shared Hosting
- 6
- Shared Hosting
- 7
- Shared Hosting
- 8
- Shared Hosting
- 9
- Shared Hosting
- 10
- Shared Hosting
Should You Use Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is best for personal use and small businesses that do not expect high traffic volume and want to save as much money as possible on hosting. Usually, within pricing plans, providers specify the number of visits your website can safely handle per month. This number can go up to 30,000 visitors which is more than enough in most cases.
If you are confident that shared hosting is the right solution for your business needs but have difficulty deciding which provider to choose, try our Comparison Tool to compare your options.
If you are still in doubt and want a personalized recommendation on the best web hosting based on your requirements, check out the Finder Tool.
Kyung Y.
Updated: Oct 29, 2024
Software engineer with a weakness for collecting too much data. I live for web hosting and cloud computing. If I’m not online, I like to go fishing and create weird things with my 3D printer.
FAQ
Will my site speed drop if I host several websites on one shared hosting account?
It depends. If you are using the same hosting plan which allows you to host multiple websites, then it can happen because the more websites you have on a single hosting plan, the more resources your websites share and thus compromises site speed. That’s because the resources of your server are limited by the hosting provider, and you will limit them even further by hosting multiple websites.
Is the physical server location important?
If the target audience of your business lives in a particular country, you should ensure that the server is located closest to that area to provide better site speed.
If you run a global business with clients worldwide, the server location should be set according to your primary target group and enhanced using a CDN to better distribute your website.