Is your company using a shared hosting platform such as Bluehost, GoDaddy or HostGator? If so, do you have extra protection via backups or Sitelock? 

As websites and technological updates flood the digital era, ensuring your company is keeping up can be an expensive task. Using shared hosting is a great inexpensive alternative for new businesses who might be on a tight budget. Shared hosting launches hundreds of websites from a single server, meaning their bandwidth, memory and CPU power is shared. 

This means that even if one website on the shared server is breached, the hacker would have access to all websites on said server, including yours. Hackers can even purchase hosting to become your neighbor, start accessing data and disturb your server. With so much to consider, let’s take a look at the top 6 dangers of shared hosting: 

1. Slow Load Time 

Website performance may be affected as a result of sharing resources with other websites. All the websites sharing that same IP experience the heat of a DoS in the case that an external attack targets the entire hosting service.

2. Shared IP Addresses 

Since the majority of websites hosted on the server share an IP address, any undesirable content that has an impact on blocklists, penalties, and search engine rankings will also have an impact on your site. Even if your site only has safe and lawful material, it may suffer if the shared server hosts sites that could be seen as being in “bad neighborhoods.”

3. DDoS Attacks 

If other websites on the same server are seeing a surge in traffic, your website may start to load slowly. A hacker will program thousands of malicious bots and devices to flood a website with traffic in order to bring it down. An example of a DDoS assault (Distributed Denial of Service).

The website under attack may start consuming more server resources to handle the sudden increase in traffic. This will inevitably result in your website having fewer resources available, which will slow it down and negatively affect how well it performs.

Your website is merely collateral damage and not the attack’s intended target.

4. Data Loss Possibilities 

Although small site owners may choose a backup system where data is kept on a local server, every site owner should have backups saved off the server. All of the sites that are hosted on the server could lose data if it has a breach or crashes. Site owners should keep at least one backup copy offsite because backups kept on the server would also be lost.

5. The Shared Directory 

Each folder on a WordPress website holds the files, content, and other information specific to that website. On your web server, this folder is included in a structure known as a “directory.”

One directory containing the files for one website will exist on a dedicated server. However, with shared hosting, a single directory containing the folders of numerous websites will exist.

Even if your website uses a different domain and contains different information, it is inextricably tied to the other websites on your server due to the shared directory.

As a result, if a hacker gains access to this primary directory, they can attack any website hosted by the same server.

6. Lack of Customization 

There will be fewer customization possibilities available because the hosting is shared. Customization includes strategies for DDoS mitigation and website data backup in addition to design and user interface.

So, while shared hosting may be the only feasible solution for your company, there are other good hosting solutions out there. FBUX’s managed hosting via Flywheel ensures nothing will be slowing your website down, you’ll have automated backup and your site will experience the highest quality of performance and security!

Go to https://fbuxconsulting.com/services/ to find out more about our service offerings and how we can help protect your company against the dangers of shared hosting.