By far the most cost effective way to get your website on the internet these days is to use what is called shared hosting. Shared hosting is where a net hosting company rents you a certain quantity of disk space in which to store the files that make up your website and allow you a certain quantity of bandwidth (ie. the data transfered between your site and your guests browsers) in exchange for a monthly fee. Typically speaking, the more you pay the more web space and bandwidth you will be given.

There are even deals around where you are offered ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth for a ridiculously little sum of money each month. A lot of individuals are happy with what they get, but , many others have discovered when really trying to use substantial amounts of space or bandwidth that if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is!

One of the features of a shared hosting account is that, as it’s name implies, you’re sharing the disk space and bandwidth with tons of other users. As I’m sure many can appreciate, when an application is thrashing your hard disk on your own PC, or using up a lot of memory, then your PC slows down dramatically and can appear to grind to a halt at times. Well, this situation is just about the same with shared hosting. You’ll find yourself on a server with other users who have memory or CPU intensive applications, or popular sites that have tons of visitors, which means lots of disk activity. The end result is that the responsiveness of your web site suffers.

An additional downside with shared hosting is that you may be unaware of who exactly you’re sharing with. If you discover that your site drops suddenly in Google that could be because you have done something Google does not approve of. Alternatively it might be that the IP address you are sharing with all the other sites on your server has been recognized as a source of spam or malware.

So what is the solution?

Well many folks are happy with taking the risks associated with shared hosting, but for others some type of cheap dedicated hosting provides a low price answer to their problems. You may need to determine if you wish Linux server hosting or Windows server hosting, but that decision ought to be driven by the applications that you wish to run, as they can probably be Windows only or Linux only.

A virtual dedicated server is the following step up from shared hosting and will cost you a touch more money. With a virtual shared server you still will not have a physical server all to yourself, but you will have much more control over your hosting environment and you will eliminate nearly all of the issues associated with shared hosting, and you will have your own IP address. For the little amount extra (it can be usually around $twenty - $30 per month extra) that a virtual dedicated server costs this is a worthwhile investment.