Shared hosting is the most popular kind of hosting for one reason: It’s cheap. I’ve seen plans that go for as low as $1.99 per month, but most cost a couple of dollars more than that. Oh yeah, that’s cheap.

While you’ll pay a bit more for dedicated hosting, it’s well worth a look to go that route instead. The drawbacks to shared hosting are many:

  1. Service levels among shared hosting companies are not that great
  2. If there is a problem with your server your entire business is down until your hosting company’s maintenance crew gets it fixed
  3. Because you share your server with other businesses, you could be in the same neighborhood with a spammer or hacker and if they are caught it could affect your business for the worse
  4. Shared hosting can affect your page load times
  5. One shared hosting company is about as good as the next one
  6. Frequent down times can make it difficult for you to conduct business

Shared hosting is inexpensive for a reason. Because most small businesses don’t need a lot of server space, hosting companies can sell a lot of business on one server. The more neighbors you have on your server the more likely you are to run into an issue. And that’s why dedicated hosting is preferable to shared hosting.