Entry Level Hosting Explained

Once you settle on your domain name, it’s time to find a host to house your website. Shared hosting is the first tier and a great starting block for a new small business enterprise. In fact, until you get a little experience under your belt, using shared hosting as an option mitigates the losses you might experience from the hosting learning curve.
Like the name implies, shared hosting is an environment where numerous websites are hosted on a server. Instead of footing the bill for the entire pie, you are buying a single slice.
This allows you to bypass any financial barriers to entry since a good shared host typically charges $5 – $10 or so a month depending on resource usage. In an earlier post, I suggested selecting the lowest level of shared hosting with the ability to upgrade should your site grow and need more resources.
For example, I use both HawkHost.com and Sharkspace.com for shared hosting. With HawkHost, I selected the Basic Plan which requires a minimum 3 month commitment. I used a coupon code, june2010, in order to get the initial payment decreased by 40% to a total of $7.11 for 3 months of quality hosting. Subsequent months revert back to the $11.85 total. *** for the coupon code, just substitute the current month/year*** As you can see, $7.11 is a small initial investment to get your site on the web.
The downside to shared hosting depends on how your virtual neighbors conduct their affairs and how well you host monitors the environment. If a site on your shared server starts consuming huge amounts of resources, then your site will be affected. You’ll see slower load times and occasional outages. Hosts like HawkHost and Sharkspace do not oversell their servers and regulate resource intensive customers. Uptimes for both of these hosts are extremely high.
When you first start building your ecommerce store, resist the urge to upgrade to the highest tier of service. Get your feet wet with shared hosting. As your site grows and your resource usage increases, you can easily upgrade hosting packages on the fly.