What is the difference between shared web hosting and free web hosting?

Hi There Friends,
I am very confused and can't understand what's the difference between free and shared web hosting. There are a lot of free hosting providers and I have heard that those providers have same ip address for all hosted websites. That's why it's not recommended by experts to use free hosting. But what about Shared Web Hosting, is it same as free hosting. I mean do they also have same ip addresses for all sites or not? Please share your opinion!
 

RDO Servers

Active Member
Hello Rizwan,

You're right, there are a lot of ways to get free web hosting. Just remember the old saying "you get what you pay for"!

Providing fast, secure, & reliable web hosting servers cost money, lots of money. If a company if offering this for free, how are they staying in business? The same can be said for the super cheap $1/mo hosting plans!

They do this be either adding advertising to your websites, or providing sub-par hosting, redundancy, and or support.

If you need to host a super simple website, that has no real importance, then free web hosting may be a good option for you.

However, if you need something fast and secure, with a company that provides quality tech support, then I would think again!
 

Hostlumina

Active Member
Fully agree with RDO.

It is not cheap to have servers, maintain servers, secure them, optimized, staff, and server software.

Non critical websites with no sensitive data, free hosting might do it if you are happy with what they offer. Just make sure to always have a back up.:)
 
Hello Rizwan,

You're right, there are a lot of ways to get free web hosting. Just remember the old saying "you get what you pay for"!

Providing fast, secure, & reliable web hosting servers cost money, lots of money. If a company if offering this for free, how are they staying in business? The same can be said for the super cheap $1/mo hosting plans!

They do this be either adding advertising to your websites, or providing sub-par hosting, redundancy, and or support.

If you need to host a super simple website, that has no real importance, then free web hosting may be a good option for you.

However, if you need something fast and secure, with a company that provides quality tech support, then I would think again!
Thanks for your kind opinion. I am going to make a professional website and as per your saying it's not good to rely on free hosting. I should buy paid hosting for my website.
Once Again Thanks for Your Quick Response.
 
Fully agree with RDO.

It is not cheap to have servers, maintain servers, secure them, optimized, staff, and server software.

Non critical websites with no sensitive data, free hosting might do it if you are happy with what they offer. Just make sure to always have a back up.:)
Yes I am also agreed with you friend. Having a backup is always important, In case if we are making a professional website. In my case it's extremely important and that's why I will buy premium hosting. Thank You for Suggestions.
 

David Ewen

Member
Agreed with all. The free websites tend to be used by a large audience of people who tend not to hold mission critical data. Using forms in Google to store on Google drive is one way to have a backup and take in data from a website. An example is lead generation. This data can than be downloaded or moved to a secondary location. Google Drive is password protected and satisfies sufficient security (It is Google after all). But for a level of comfort there's nothing wrong with downloading the Excel data and storing on another platform like DropBox or other cloud computing environment to save on resources if so desired.

Yes I am also agreed with you friend. Having a backup is always important, In case if we are making a professional website. In my case it's extremely important and that's why I will buy premium hosting. Thank You for Suggestions.
 
Agreed with all. The free websites tend to be used by a large audience of people who tend not to hold mission critical data. Using forms in Google to store on Google drive is one way to have a backup and take in data from a website. An example is lead generation. This data can than be downloaded or moved to a secondary location. Google Drive is password protected and satisfies sufficient security (It is Google after all). But for a level of comfort there's nothing wrong with downloading the Excel data and storing on another platform like DropBox or other cloud computing environment to save on resources if so desired.
Yeah! It's a good idea to backup files on cloud sharing websites such as drop box.But we don't know how long they will run. If somehow they stop their service we have to lose all data. Therefore Google Drive would be the best option for this.
 

RDO Servers

Active Member
Yeah! It's a good idea to backup files on cloud sharing websites such as drop box.But we don't know how long they will run. If somehow they stop their service we have to lose all data. Therefore Google Drive would be the best option for this.

Personally, I prefer keeping my own backups and not relying on a 3rd party service.

All of our accounts are backed up nightly to another one of our servers, in a different data center.

You can easily send backups to a remote location via ftp. A small shared hosting account can even be used for your backup space, if the host allows it.

As long as your not trying to send and store very large amounts of data, most hosts should allow it. Just be sure to ask them first, so that everyone is on the same page.
 
There is no real difference between Free & Shared hosting other than the following:

- Free Accounts generally have less resources assigned to them.
- Free Hosting Servers typically have 5-6 times more accounts on them, possibly more
- Free Hosting is intended as a marketing method, get you in for free, then send you to the paid company when you complain
 
Free generally has advertising on it and poor performance. Shared usually has better performance and more tools and flexibility.
It's really a good definition of free and shared web hosting. :)

There is no real difference between Free & Shared hosting other than the following:

- Free Accounts generally have less resources assigned to them.
- Free Hosting Servers typically have 5-6 times more accounts on them, possibly more
- Free Hosting is intended as a marketing method, get you in for free, then send you to the paid company when you complain
I agree with you! I have faced this incidence with one of my free hosting providers. They told me to join their affiliate premium hosting provider.
 

Storm

Active Member
Most of the free hosting plans are just junk and they do not give you much resources so your site will usually run slower than shared hosting. Plus the free hosting services will sometimes have ads on your site or their name in the footer. That can make your site look cheap. As cheap as shared hosting is these days I would rather use shared hosting than free.
 
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