Does size really matters (In Shared Hosting Environment)?

Searching a needle in a haystack!

You finally decide to put your company or your own life online. First go on purchasing or downloading web authoring software, than you go own forums or web design tutorials website or even read a book or two.

Ok now you have some knowledge, it's time for you to search for inspiration. So you hit yahoo and search and go to your favorite website. You look at the design, layout and the color scheme. Saw something you fancy? Maybe the header catches your eyes and your mind now full of ideas! So next step, you install your web authoring software. Once install you start the program so eager to start working on your website.

After a week or two or even months later, after all that sleepless nights, after all that post on web design forums asking for help or ideas, now finally after all the work you are ready for you website debut. All that is left is to search for a web hosting provider.

Alright, you click on your browser and hit yahoo. You enter web hosting for your search criteria and hit search. Not to bad, the top 10 search result appears. Now you click on all 10 links and note each of them down by pricing, bandwidth, disk space, available support and the features that each host offers you.

Now you are done, you lie down on your bed along with your notes. Hmm, Host A seems not too bad you say. Hmm, Host B seems not bad either? So is Host C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J! After a few minutes, maybe hours you just push those notes aside and hit back to your browser!

Found my needle

You will never end your search by the abovementioned criteria! When searching for a web hosting package there is only two key criteria you want to consider "Reliability and Support".

Host A may offer you terabytes of bandwidth but can you afford to have your site inaccessible once every week or even every single day? Ok maybe you can if it's a non-critical, non-commercial website.

Would you want to wait for 24 hours before your email get answered for something as simple as a password reset or would you want your password email to you as soon as possible? A good and knowledgeable support is extremely important especially if you are new to hosting your own site. You need all the help you can get and get your answer in a timely manner.

Does size really matters; I mean does it really matter?

It depends on each individual needs. Your host may offer you lots of bandwidth and disk space, but you must ask yourself this "Do you really need it?" If you going for a static page or even a flashy flash website, most won't need no more than 5 GB of disk space.

Now than you ask "How about bandwidth, than?" Now again, if your hosting provider, state they will give you bandwidth in terabytes, you must first understand the nature of shared hosting. Let say you car lot allows you two salon cars to be park comfortably on your own land but one day you decide to get yourself a limousine and remember you still have that other two cars. Now your new limousine took up your car lot and you find yourself you ran out of space to park your other two cars. You decided to park you car on the roadside of an urban street. The next thing you know there would be cars honking and traffics build ups. Legally you are allow to park your car on the roadside but if it cause inconveniences to others, your car will be either be tow or ask to be park elsewhere.

This goes the same on shared hosting environment. If your site takes up to much CPU resource, you would be suspended temporarily or even get your site suspended for good and be force to upgrade to a VPS / Dedicated server or move to another hosting provider.

Conclusion

NO, size does not matter. It is a matter if you are able to use all the bandwidth or/and disk space without getting your account suspended. Reliability and a knowledgeable support is still the key to choosing your web hosting provider!