Drupal Hosts Share your experience with Drupal Hosting!

Shared hosting is the most cost effective way of getting your site on the net. For a few dollars a month, you'll get an account on a server shared with dozens of other small sites. Unlike a dedicated server, you won't get root access, so changing the server configuration is generally not possible. On the upside, the server is managed by the hosting company, so you don't have to worry about keeping things running. For this reason, shared hosting is often the best choice for people who aren't familiar with linux.

Unlike dedicated servers or virtual private servers, there typically isn't any performance guarantee with shared hosting. Your experience will largely depend on who you're sharing a server with, and how proactive the hosting company is at managing their resources. A good hosting company will keep things running smoothly, moving users to new servers as load increases.

Typically, shared hosting plans come with large amounts of disk space and bandwidth. Some hosting providers even offer "unlimited" plans. This is only possible because the hosting companies know most people only use a tiny percentage of what they're actually given. If you need lots of space or bandwidth, shared hosting is definitely the cheapest way to get it, but watch out for CPU limitations: Most providers will ask you to move to a VPS if you're using more than 10% of the CPU on a regular basis.

See also: Dedicated Servers and VPS hosting.