Shared hosting is currently the most popular type of web hosting available. Nearly all small businesses, and some intermediate to large web sites, and professional web sites are run on shared hosting since they require only a fraction of the resources of a complete web server. It would be expensive for these sites to all reside on their own server, which makes shared hosting the perfect choice.
Depending on the specific hosting plan, nearly all of the features available on a dedicated server should be available. Scripting languages such as Perl, PHP or ASP; databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, multiple email address, and a much greater amount of storage and bandwidth than with a free host should be available.
The downsides to having a shared host is lessened security, due to 10's to 100's of other clients on your server. Your site may also be slow if your web host has crammed hundreds of other sites onto the server, and you will usually be limited to the amount of email addresses, databases and domains you can host.
