One of the more popular forms of web hosting is the affordable shared web hosting alternative. If you are a power user that needs complete control, this is not the hosting for you but for users that does not want to deal with any system administration it just might be the perfect hosting. Shared hosting most often includes a user-friendly control panel, with cPanel being the most appreciated and common.

A great deal of the today active hosting providers, ranging from small companies to the major players on the market, offers some form of shared hosting. This form of web hosting is funded in two different ways. It can be driven privately by letting the customers share the costs of running and maintaining a server. The other way it can be driven is via affiliate programs and PPC advertising.

There are two ways that shared web hosting can be accomplished: name-based or IP-based.

Name-based – This is also known as IP hosting and what it means is that a large number of hostnames are served on a single server with just one IP address.

IP-based – This type of hosting is frequently referred to as dedicated IP hosting. Every virtual web host has its own different IP address and the web server uses the IP address which the client uses in order to determine which website to show the user. This way a dedicated IP address can take advantage of it own SSL certificate instead of a shared certificate.

Most shared hosting packages include plenty of disk storage, unlimited traffic and free traffic. There has been some talk about shared hosting not being secure but we find that to simply not be true. One great thing about hosting is that it is often easy to let it grow at the same pace as your website. Simply expand your hosting when it is necessary.