It is almost impossible for a company to manage its business and its website at the same time. Both require great attention, time and expertise. Thus, companies usually seek professional help from Internet hosting service providers that have the capacity to store various pieces of information from the website and have constant Internet connectivity.

Virtual hosting is one of the methods these service providers employ in providing small and large-scale businesses and individual websites a home in the net. Using a single server to host a multitude of domains or web sites does this. One server may provide a home for a hundred domains or even more, depending on the size of the server and the space each domain occupies.

For your small business e-commerce site, a 3GB storage space in the server is big enough. This can cost you from $3 to $5, depending on the companys additional services, such as domain name registration, domain name renewal, add-on domain hosting and email hosting.

There is no difference in the ways that a virtually hosted web site and a dedicatedly hosted web site are hosted. But since you own only a part of the web hosting companys server, you pay less compared to a dedicated hosting service. However, since you share the server with many other domains, you do not have an exclusive access to all features and resources of the server.

Although virtual hosting is an inexpensive and efficient way of web hosting, it has some drawbacks. Among them is the servers failure to host several secure websites that run security protocols such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or are encrypted when transmitting data across the net. Examples of this are those sites that contain confidential information like credit card numbers.

Usually, before the domain name is sent to the virtual server, the SSL handshake occurs. When a connection is made, the server cannot determine the encryption key it will use. Furthermore, since the server hosts many other domains, it is difficult to constantly upgrade the software used in the server. Servers that use old version software may not have good filtering features.

It is hard to find a completely secure virtual hosting company, but at least find one that is highly dedicated to securing their hosted sites. Find time to shop around first, compare and contrast features and services offered by each company before you narrow your list to one.