Could shared hosting alter my site's behavior?

[evansste]

I'm in the process of building, and debugging, my website. I have HostGator as my web host, and have signed up for their cheapest plan. Because it's the cheapest, I'm pretty sure I'm on a shared server.

I haven't yet officially launched my site, and so I don't really have any traffic. However, I have noticed that my site doesn't always work properly -- all of a sudden. Sometimes pages load, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I get timeout error messages, and sometimes I don't. This all happens even though I've made few changes to the way that my site is programmed. Could these problems be happening because I'm on a shared server? I don't have any traffic. It's just me visiting pages as I try to debug.

I'm certain that these issues are intermittent, and not due to my programming. Earlier today, everything was loading and working without errors. Then, all of a sudden, I start getting time-out errors -- This only happens sometimes. Could all of this be due to my cheap hosting plan, or is this unlikely because I don't have any traffic?

I don't want to switch to a dedicated server if this can't possibly be the problem. However, I also don't want to be getting errors all of the time if a dedicated server will solve the problem.

Thanks for your time and for any input that anyone may be willing to provide.

 

[Xversion]

Hello,

I think the problem is with the environment that your website is powered with.. are you sure whatever functions you may have (in PHP or in any other language), are supported by Hostgator? and have you contacted them? if not, please do so immediately and if they do not seem to fit your needs we here at Virjox Hosting have always got a solution for you

You can try our Web Hosting solution to see if it fits your needs, failure to do so we will arrange something more powerful maybe a VPS and what not a Dedicated Server.

Please let me know by replying or PMing me on what you would like to do and I will do my very best to assist you.

Thank You.

 

[evansste]

I think Hostgator was the problem since I ended up switching web hosts. I'm now hosting with AT&T, and the website is working fine.

With AT&T, I often have trouble navigating my control panel. However, I think I've figured out that it has something to do with my PCI WiFi card. All other websites load perfectly except for AT&T's control panel. When I use a different computer, their control panel loads fine.

I contacted Hostgator before switching, but they didn't offer any solutions. I had to figure out, on my own, that the problem was too many accounts on their server. After doing some online searches, I found lots of people mentioning this problem with Hostgator .

I'll keep your services in mind, should I choose to switch web hosts again. But for now, my website is working well.

Thanks for your response.

 

[ASmith1]

I woulds say it depends on the size of your website, if it is too big for the resources of a shared hosting environment then you'd need to upgrade to a VPS.

 

[Crayon1]

If your site does not respond quick or the server is to slow, then Google can't get to many pages from your site or it will be on longer time, so if you need to index more pages, you'll need a faster hosting server.