As ever increasing numbers of people, and businesses, begin to establish themselves online, an increasingly large number of hosts are becoming available. However, as with any other rapidly expanding market, it can be quite hard to determine which host is most suitable for your use.

Once you complete the process of domain name registration, you will necessarily turn your attention to web hosting options and alternatives. At the present time, a great number of individuals and businesses are turning to and utilizing shared hosting services when it comes to their Internet websites.

As with many other Internet based services, there are both pros and cons to engaging and utilizing a shared web hosting service. By having a basic understanding of the positive and negative aspects associated with shared hosting, you will be able to better ascertain whether or not dedicated hosting or shared hosting is the proper alternative for you or your business enterprise.

To start with, have a look at the different prices, as this may ultimately be a determining factor. Shared hosts are much less expensive then dedicated hosting, because you are only using a small part of the servers ability. I strongly advise against free hosting, for reasons of reliability, and so if you want good value shared hosting is the way to go.

Additionally, when it comes to shared hosting, more often than not you will be able to access reliable server administration and technical support. The reality is that when all is said and done a shared server operation depends on reliable customer service and technical support to stay in operation, to stay in business.

Plus, shared hosts generally have a good range of supplementary systems, such as integrated email and PHP support. This is good because it means that you don't need to have, personally, any expertise in website hosting or server management to run it. As you can see, shared hosting can be a big help.

There are, however, some negative aspects of shared hosting to consider as well. Maybe the biggest of these, is that a shared host will have less security, then is possible on a dedicated server. Because multiple individuals all have access to it at any time, there is a much increased risk of problems and security breaches.

Besides this, there is also the problem of limited resources. A shared host will not have all it's resources available, to all of its members, at all times, and this can be restrictive. If you're site is particularly high powered, you may find that the resources used by the others on the host has a detrimental effect, limiting what you can do.

Last of all, you do not have the ability to install software. On your own server, you can run anything you want, but on a shared host the fact that it is managed by someone else, is counterbalanced by your only being able to use what is provided. However, there are plenty of servers, so unless you want something very usual you shouldn't have to much difficulty finding one with what you want.

When all is said and done, the truth is that shared hosts are becoming increasingly popular. This applies not only to servers, themselves, but also to alternative forms of shared hosting such as exchange server hosting, windows web hosting, or even Virtual Private Servers (VPS). I hope I've provided a reasonably balanced summary, and given you something to think about here.