Shared hosting or virtual hosting is when multiple websites share the same server. The advantage of using a shared hosting service is that it is highly cost-effective. Dedicated hosting plans where only one website is hosted on a server are highly expensive.
A shared hosting server will have hundreds of websites on it. The arrangement still works out fine and all the websites get the resources they need because most websites do not attract a large number of visitors.
Who can use it?
Well, shared hosting is more than enough to meet the needs of most websites. It is ideal for personal websites and small or medium-sized online businesses. It may not be the right option if you run a large e-commerce website that attracts millions of visitors every week.
How it works?
Shared hosting works on the basic assumption that most websites would not use a large portion of the disk space and bandwidth allotted to them. Most shared hosting providers will give you more disk space and data transfer than you will ever use. If all the websites on the server used their quota, shared hosting won’t work. In reality, however, few sites manage to exceed their quota. Most of them don’t even use even 10% of that. As a result of this, the service provider will have lots of free space available on the server.
The only real problem with shared hosting arises when a hosting service provider decides to oversell. If the service provider allows thousands of sites to be on the same server, all the sites will be slow because they will be constantly fighting with one another for memory and bandwidth. Fortunately, most web hosts are sensible enough to prevent such a situation from happening in the first place.
Reseller web hosting
Reseller hosting is a type of web hosting that allows an account owner to resell the hard disk space and bandwidth he has purchased to third parties.
The reseller purchases huge amounts of hard drive space and bandwidth from a large web hosting provider and then sells them to customers, usually for a profit. Some resellers rent a dedicated server from a web host. Others simply resell shared hosting services. Most resellers are web design firms or web developers. Most web hosts allow resellers to create their own service plans and pricing structures. Some even offer customized control panels and servers.
You can be a reseller even if you are not an expert on the technical aspects of web hosting. Most resellers simply forward software, hardware, and connectivity problems to the data center. However, they have to deal with other problems that their customers might experience.
Reseller hosting is suitable for small blogs and online businesses. Websites that receive high volumes of traffic shouldn’t opt for a reseller plan, simply because a reseller cannot give you more disk space or data transfer than what he has purchased. And because they host numerous websites, they will be forced to turn your site off if it consumes more resources than they can afford.
