Shared Web Hosting

Many people wonder what shared web hosting is, and we plan on answering this question for you so you feel comfortable hosting your web site with BrataHosting. A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service refers to a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. Each site "sits" on its own partition, or section/place on the server to keep it separate from other sites.

This means that many web sites can share the same web server (the hardware) and this allows the hosting company to pass on the cost savings to their clients. Instead of each client paying for their own physical server (a dedicated host), each client shares in the cost of the server and thus pays a much lower fee for their shared web hosting services. Depending on the size and power of the web server, an average of over 100 web sites can "live" on one shared web hosting server. This is why BrataHosting can pass on hosting savings on to our clients.

Shared web hosting typically uses a web-based control panel system, such as cPanel, Ensim, DirectAdmin, Plesk, InterWorx, H-Sphere or one of many other control panel products. Here at BrataHosting we use cPanel for all of our clients. It is a very popular control panel that gives you full access to manage files, emails, spam filters, add-ons, and access logs. There are many features contained within cPanel so you will never feel you are missing anything.

Shared web hosting can be accomplished in two ways: name-based and IP-based, although some control panels allow a mix of name-based and IP-based on the one server.

Name-based Shared Web Hosting

In name-based virtual hosting, also called shared IP hosting, the virtual hosts serve multiple hostnames on a single machine with a single IP address. When a web browser requests a resource from a web server using HTTP/1.1 it includes the requested hostname as part of the request. The server uses this information to determine which web site to show the user.

IP-based Shared Web Hosting

In IP-based virtual hosting, also called dedicated IP hosting, each virtual host has a different IP address. The web server is configured with multiple physical network interfaces, or virtual network interfaces on the same physical interface. The web server software uses the IP address the client connects to in order to determine which web site to show the user. The primary reason for a site to use a dedicated IP is to be able to use its own SSL certificate rather than a shared certificate.

We hope this gave you some information about shared web hosting that you may not have known before. Take a look at the shared web hosting plans BrataHosting has to offer and reach out to us if you have any questions.