Using cheaper, shared, hosting can expose your website to risks that most people are completely unaware of.
For example if a domain contains the letters “sex” anywhere within it, is hosted on the same server as your website, you could be missing out on a lot of visitors.
This is because blacklists are created using IP addresses (the network address of your webserver). Blacklists are designed to help people avoid inappropriate or dangerous website and they prevent people visiting websites they list.
If your site shares the same server with another site containing the letters “sex”, which has been blacklisted, this will also prevent people from visiting your site.
You can check who is currently sharing your webserver using the instructions below:
- Go to https://viewdns.info/reverseip/
- Enter your website address in the format mydomain.co.uk
- Press “GO”
- See who is sharing your server
Most of the time the fewer other sites sharing your server, the better. There are however some huge companies, such as Shopify, who have more than 1 million sites of the same server (or more accurately IP address), but they have managed to stop this being an issue for their customers and are the exception to this rule.