Shared services mean that mistakes made by any other client on that machine are very likely to damage you. Also, without root access, you are often stuck not b

Shared services mean that mistakes made by any other client on that machine are very likely to damage you. Also, without root access, you are often stuck not being able to set a configuration well. For a hobby site, or a sandbox, shared hosts are fine and cheap. I would never deploy a real web application on one though. Many places will sell you a Xen VPS slice for $20-30/mo.