Smartphones and tablet computers run on an operating system called Android. Android was first released in November 5, 2007 with the foundation of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 84 hardware, software, and telecommunication companies. The consortium wanted to progress the open standards of mobile phone devices and this community of developers wrote “apps” (short for applications) that increased the functionality of such electronic devices. Today, there are more than 250,000 Android applications and these can be downloaded from third-party sites or online stores. An example of an online store is the Android Market, an app store run by Google.
Online stores that sell or promote downloadable Android apps generally have very high traffic levels. To ensure that these sites are operates well at all times of the day, every day of the week, these sites should be hosted by reliable host companies.
Information on the reliability of host companies cannot be obtained from the host provider's official website but may be gleaned through the rating and comments left on sites called web hosting reviews.
Web host reviews, an example of which is Blue Host Review, are independently run sites that give an unbiased evaluation of a company's products and services. The data on review sites, rating and client feedback, are from third-party reviewers who may have been or are still presently subscribers of the host provider. Host reviews can be found on the internet; These sites can be accessed by anyone at anytime, and are free of charge.
Shared hosting is often referred to as cheap, economical, budget, or personal web hosting. Any of these terms generally refer to shared web hosting. Shared web hosting is the most popular type of web hosting in the hosting market today with literally thousand of hosting providers in North America alone. Due to the low cost, budget web hosting is the hosting of choice for most personal and small business websites.
Shared web hosting refers to a server configuration where many web sites share a single server and all its associated resources including disk space, processing power, and RAM (memory). Costs are lower than other hosting solutions because the cost of server acquisition and maintenance is shared amongst all the websites on that server.
Terminology
Often though, you will not see a web hosting company offering "Shared Web Hosting." This is because shared hosting has some distinct disadvantages that the hosting companies do not want to advertise. That is why instead of shared, you will see terms like budget, or economical. The shared hosting packages offered by shared hosting providers are often given names like Starter, Personal, or Basic. Even words like Bronze, Silver and Gold plans usually indicate shared hosting plans. If the hosting plan does not specifically sat it's a VPS (Virtual Private Server) plan or a dedicated server plan, then it is most likely shared web hosting.
Platforms and Software
Shared hosting is available on both Linux and Windows platforms, though not all hosting providers offer both. Some websites require one or the other depending on the server technologies used to develop the website. For example, ASP.NET is a server side scripting language used to develop database driven websites. Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) is a Microsoft database product. If you want to use these on your website you need to use Windows hosting because they are not supported by Linux. There are, however, equally powerful solutions for developing database driven sites on Linux such as PHP and MySQL, the core of many open source content management systems (CMS) like Drupal and Joomla.
Is Shared Hosting Worth the Cheap Price?
For most people and small business shared hosting is the right way to go, especially for a start-up business. The higher cost associated with a VPS plan or a dedicated server is not justified and the performance from a shared server is quite acceptable for most people. It is not the fastest or most robust service, but it is an acceptable solution that allows people to establish a web presence quickly and economically. Many web hosting companies offer online site builders with hundreds, or even thousands of templates that allow you to build and launch a website with little or no technical expertise. The important thing is to choose the hosting service that supports the technologies you or your developer will use to develop your website. If you are going to build the website yourself, then ask some questions before signing up with a provider to make sure the customer support is there to answer your questions and provide assistance should you need it when building your site with their online site builder, and to answer any other questions you may have.
Benefits of Shared Web Hosting
• Economical
• Easy to use
• Quick set-up
• Self-managed
Drawbacks of Shared Web Hosting
• Performance
• Less secure
• Less robust
• Shared IP address so ecommerce service must use a shared SSL certificate, or pay more for a dedicated IP address to handle encrypted ecommerce transactions
• Self-managed