Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting plan in Zimbabwe and around the world. When choosing a hosting provider, many people will face the dilemma of whether they should choose the shared hosting, dedicated servers, or virtual private server. The size of the market often confuses people, many hosting providers offering different shared hosting plans and features. This post tends to address the important shared hosting features you need to know about.
But, before we start explaining the features and comparing web hosting features in Zimbabwe. Let’s look at what is shared hosting and how it compares to other hosting solutions like dedicated servers, and virtual private server.
Shared hosting service refers to a web hosting service where many websites or application resides on the same server. If you choose a shared hosting plan, then your website will share a physical server with other websites. People prefer shared hosting because it is cheap and easy to manage. Your hosting provider is responsible for the everyday running of your servers and all you have to do is to make sure your website is secure.
But, there’s a problem if you want to have more control over what you’re developing. Many shared hosting supports only PHP, and if your website has extensive use of other software not supported by PHP, then you’ll have a problem trying to run your website.
There are many shared hosting providers in Zimbabwe which range from freelancers to big companies. And you have to do is find a shared hosting service with the best features such as databases, software, root access, email accounts, or even the control panel that comes with the hosting.
Here is the question you should ask yourself when finding a good shared hosting provider in Zimbabwe,
How to choose a good, affordable and effective web hosting partner in Zimbabwe
And i’m going to answer that in a very precisely.
How to choose a good web hosting provider in Zimbabwe
Now, you want to create a website and are ready to find a hosting provider. The first thing you should do is to plan what and how your website will expand into. Hosting providers advertise what they have and can convince you to use their platform, but, as a web developer, or an analytic business owner in Zimbabwe, you have to consult your web developers or masters and let them explain to you why you’ll need the features a hosting provider is offering or why you don’t need them.
Every website has a set of software used to develop it, it can be PHP, Java, Python, or JavaScript. Each of those programming languages or features is needed in order to deploy and run the website on a live server. When choosing a hosting provider, you must know that all the required software is available by default in your cPanel or siteworx. To sum up the features, lets look at the important shared hosting features you need to be aware of from the beginning:
Here are the most important features you should know and look for in every shared hosting provider.
1. Pre-installed Apps
Many shared hosting hosting providers or solutions comes with cPanel. And cPanel comes with pre-instaled softwares like:
- WordPress
- Joomla
- Laavel
- Python
- NodeJS
2. Disk Space and Bandwidth
Not surprisingly, disk space is very important when considering to subscribe for a shared hosting. And bandwidth is also a very important part of every website. To begin with, let’s define what bandwidth and disk space is.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount or size of data you’re allowed to transfer to and from your web server instance. Bandwidth is usually metered per month and so if your hosting provider offers 15GB per month of bandwidth, it means people will be able to download and or upload files, pages and images of up to 15GB from your server instance.
Disk space
Disk space or storage is the maximum amount of data a disk can hold.If you’re given a 1GB disk space. Then, it means all your website file, databases should not exceed 1GB.
If your website is python based or nodejs, then you’ll need to work with the terminal to run commands. Many shared hosting in Zimbabwe do not offer shell access to their clients by default, You have to find a request each time you want to access it which is not convenient. But some web hosting solutions in Zimbabwe e.g. Zimhero offer the shell access by default which means it’s easy to run the python or node js commands without asking for permission.
4. Customer Service
Every service is good when the customer service is good. A website needs monitoring and sometimes a developer will run into problems that need quick advice. Many companies in Zimbabwe don’t offer good,24/7 customer service, that’s a problem for many web hosting companies. I advise you to research the reputation of your web hosting provider’s customer service before you subscribe. Good customer service is always the most important thing in hosting because of the technicalities of websites and coding.
Why Zimhero is your best web hosting partner
When it comes to shared hosting features, Zimhero has everything a web developer needs when developing their website. Zimhero made sure that all web development stacks such as shell access, different types of databases (MYSQL & POSTGRESQL), nodejs, and python apps are all available for developers to use.
Here are the reasons why you should choose zimhero.
- Enabled shell access
- Python already installed
- NodeJs already installed
- MySQL and PostgreSQL
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited email accounts
- Fast servers
- Exceptional customer service
