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15 Shared Hosting limitations.
Shared Hosting has its limitations no doubt. In fact, here is a list of them:
- More prone to hacking attacks.
- Malicious activity that affects the server, affects all the websites using that same server.
- Slow and sluggish.
- Limited resources.
- System crashes.
- Software limitations.
- Limited customer support.
- Available ports and connections are limited.
- Increased downtime.
- Bad neighborhoods.
- No root access.
- Additional payments for SSL certificates.
- Limited “Unlimited” plans.
- Storage limitations.
- Security.
In this post, I’m going to go over each of those limitations in a little more detail. Finally, I’m going to summarize why you should get Shared Hosting anyway, despite its limitations.
Shared servers are more prone to hacking attacks.
As a website owner or webmaster, you’re in a constant fight against hacking and hackers from breaking into your website.
You see this all the time. Whether it’s in your Google Analytics reports of huge traffic volume jumps caused by bots, or if you have any other built-in software, nefarious actors seem to be always trying to log into your site itself on the front-end.
Taking responsibility for your own website or websites is one thing, but many hacking attacks are done through the back door or back-end of your website through your hosting provider’s servers.
If a hacker gets in through the backdoor to your hosting provider’s servers, which you share with literally hundreds of other websites, that is beyond your control. This is a real possibility.
Any malicious activity that affects the server affects all the websites using that same server.
As I had mentioned above, because you share a server with literally hundreds of websites, if a hacker or any other malicious actor or activity is able to penetrate the server through one of the other websites hosted on the same server, then they can literally attack all the websites on that same server.
Whether that’s with malware or some other malicious activity.
Slow and Sluggish.
Because you share the same server with hundreds of other websites, you may find, especially with high traffic, that your website becomes slower and sluggish.
Your users will find that your posts and pages will load slower into their browsers.
This is because you are sharing one server with hundreds of other websites using the same resources.
Limited Resources Availability.
Because you have one server, resources on that server are limited because they are shared with hundreds of other websites.
There’s only so many server resources that can go around and be used at any one time. Some websites may use more than others, which will affect the performance of all websites hosted on that same shared server.
All of which you have no control over.
System Crashes.
Because hundreds of websites are sharing one server and using the resources of that server, usually close to maximum capacity, the chances of the whole system crashing are much more increased than if you had a dedicated server, VPS or even Cloud Hosting services, where your websites files could be distributed throughout many servers in the cloud for example.
But because you have a Shared Hosting plan, your website’s files are only on one server. Again with many other websites sharing the same server, so the chances of the system crashing is much higher than on those other web hosting plans.
Limitations on software you can install.
Sometimes you will want to add software to perform other functions that are beyond what your Shared Web Hosting Provider provides.
Even if you want to buy that software yourself, many times you would have to install it directly on the shared server through your cPanel dashboard for example.
Well, due to security reasons as well as simply space limitations, many hosting providers will not allow or severely limit the amount of software, if any, you can install in your files which are stored on their servers.
This can greatly affect the performance and growth of your website.
Limited Customer Support.
Because Shared Hosting is usually the cheapest type of hosting plan available, many Hosting Providers will spend tons of money advertising it and in the spirit of competition will drastically cut their prices in order to get as many customers as possible to join their Shared Hosting plans.
In the process, you will find that they cut many corners, one of which is customer support and service.
On many Shared Hosting plans, you rarely get to talk to a live, physical person.
You either need to communicate with customer support through their e-Chat system or on the very cheapest of Web Hosting plans, through email.
This hardly does you any good, if for example, your website crashes and you don’t know what to do. But as the expression goes, “You get what you pay for.”.
Available ports and connections are limited.
In Shared Hosting environments, where everyone is not only sharing a server but the same IP address, hosting providers do block some ports to help prevent security holes and other potential issues in their firewalls.
They also do this in order for them to monitor and control customers who are tempted to abuse different services that they may try to run through additional ports.
Most Shared Hosts operate a limited amount of services on a Shared Server like Webmail, cPanel, etc.
If you need other services which require more ports, then you would need to upgrade your hosting plan.
Increased Downtime.
Because of system crashes, system overloads caused by peak periods of resource use etc. you can expect that your website will experience some periods of downtime.
Now, if your website doesn’t get much traffic or is not too traffic dependent as far as revenue is concerned, then this shouldn’t be a problem.
However, if you are trying to grow and scale an online business, your traffic volumes are key and increased downtime can affect your bottom line.
Bad Neighbors Slow Down Your Website.
“Neighbors” in “hosting terms” means basically other websites hosted on the same server as yours.
“Bad Neighbors” can be spammers who share the same IP addresses with you.
These Bad Neighbors can affect your email opening rates, if you perform any email marketing campaigns, send out newsletters, etc. to your visitors, as well as whether or not your particular IP address will be put on a blacklist. Why?
Well, because you may be on a Shared Server with other websites who are “Bad Neighbors” and share the same or similar IP addresses.
Many spam filtration systems for emails filter out bad or blacklisted IP addresses.
So if you share an IP address on your shared server with known spammers you too will have problems with opening rates on your emails when you do an email campaign.
In another example of a “Bad Neighbor”, is when some webmasters will join a shared server through a Shared Hosting plan in order to infiltrate the web hosting companies servers for the sole purpose of doing malicious activity, like installing malware etc.
So the more websites that are on the same shared server, the higher the risks are that some of those will be “bad neighbors”.
No Root Access.
Shared Hosting accounts do not provide root access to the server for any users to perform any tasks. Why?
Because someone with root access can install and configure server-wide applications such as Apache or MySQL as well as edit any files on that shared server.
You can imagine all the security and other potential hazards that can cause.
Additional Payment for SSL Certificates.
Although most Shared Hosting plans now offer free SSL certificates or at the very least, allow their users to get the Let’s Encrypt Free SSL certificate, some Hosting Providers require their Shared Hosting users to pay an additional charge for SSL certificates.
You also should know that only the very cheapest of Shared Hosting plans will still require their customers to pay extra for an SSL certificate.
If this is the case, I would strongly suggest you change your Shared Web Hosting Provider and plan.
Limited “Unlimited Plans”.
Many Shared Hosting plans are advertised as “unlimited”. This means, at least in theory, that with your plan you can host an unlimited amount of websites through your cPanel dashboard in your hosting plan.
In many unlimited plans, the web hosting provider does not include any limits as far as resources, storage capacity, etc. that you can use.
Some web hosting providers who offer Unlimited Shared Hosting plans actually state that you can host unlimited websites, but will put limits on the amount of storage space and resources that you can use in total.
In fact, some Shared Hosting providers will simply advertise “Unlimited” and put those limits within the fine print of your agreement.
Either way, there is no such thing as “Unlimited”.
That being said, I have had an unlimited plan for some of my websites for years and have never pushed those limits.
Believe me, a web hosting provider will send you a notice if and when you do push those not clearly defined limits if you do.
If that’s a case you will either need to upgrade your web hosting plan or pay for the extra usage of resources.
Storage Limitations.
Shared Hosting plans which offer unlimited storage usually mean unlimited storage “Available”.
Although most websites, except for very large and resource intensive websites, will usually or even never, push those so-called storage limitations.
You should however, still be aware of what kind of data may push those storage limitations.
For example, if your website consists mostly of text then you will probably never push those limits.
However, if your website contains more resource rich data like high definition images, video, streaming or gaming types data and processing, then you will push those limits much faster than an average website with simple text and images.
Security.
Shared directory.
Shared Hosting servers all share what’s called a “directory” on the server.
If you, for example, have a dedicated server that one directory will contain your website or websites information.
This is fine and quite secure usually. However, on a shared server that one directory is shared with many websites.
So if a hacker is able to get access to the main directory on that one shared server, they can target all the sites within that directory on the same server.
Hackers can do this quite easily by running programs which identify any vulnerabilities on any of the sites within that shared server’s directory.
Vulnerabilities could be as simple as an outdated plugin or theme on one site for example.
Slow loading times.
If one or two websites get hacked within the same server, the hacker could run programs from those websites which use lots of resources and power.
This can slow your website as well as the others that are sharing the same server.
DDoS attacks.
When a hacker targets one website on a server through a DDoS attack, they will literally flood that website with thousands of Bots to that one website all at once and overload the shared server in the process.
In order to combat this, the server has to use up more resources to handle the extra traffic.
This can also slow down your website as it means there are less resources to devote to your website as well as others on that same server.
Shared IP address.
As I had mentioned above, if you are in a bad neighborhood with other websites who engage in spamming, this could affect your own email marketing efforts since you would share the same IP address with the spammers in your “Bad IP neighborhood”.
However, this can also affect your site if you are sharing an IP address with websites that are engaging in illegal activities as well.
Since these websites sharing your IP address will be blacklisted not only by email providers, but by search engines like Google, who will blacklist your site as insecure.
Firewalls will also prevent users from accessing your website as well.
Shared Hosting Limitations, and why you should get it anyway.
Despite all the limitations that Shared Hosting plans have, there’s usually no cheaper Self-Hosted plan on the market.
Although Shared Hosting plans do contain limitations and risks, these are not as common as you may fear them to be.
That being said, you should still take as many precautions, especially security wise, as you can on your end. This includes installing proper security software in your WordPress dashboard, as well as other plugins which can change your login page access etc.
Finally, if you are just starting out with your first website or series of websites and want to be independent on an open platform like WordPress, then Shared Hosting despite all the disadvantages is still the best way to go.
You can always upgrade or even change Hosts if and when the time is right. That’s one of the main benefits of WordPress, the freedom to choose and change your Web Hosting options.
