Hi Nikita, 

I run a hosting company and i can tell you that unfortunately you will get different stories from different companies.   But here are the facts.    Any shared server plan that has a decent space allowance can handle Oxwall, and this is not because i am a leader, it is because its the truth.  A basic oxwall site within very little time will take up about 2 - 3 GB of space so you want an unlimited plan on a shared server, and it grows from there.  I currently have an oxwall site on a shared server that is almost 4GB and it loads fine.  

The reason that some hosting companies tell you that you cant run oxwall on a shared server is because either they did not config their shared servers properly, which is not rocket science and there are no real special config requirements, its just they did not do a good job at their config and think about things when they did this, or they just decided to config it that way on purpose to drive people to a different more costly plan.

One day yes you may need a vps or a dedicated server because as you grow your site and you tech experience you will be ready for that, once your site gets so big you will need to move to vps or dedicated for sure.  But there is no reason you cant do this on a shared server for the first few years or more until the membership is built.  It will run just fine.

If you were a server company you would want to try to fit as many clients on a server as possible and hope they did not take advantage of the space.  Then you come along and they know you are going to probably takeup a couple of gigs at least, and they tell themselves oh why let her do that, we can fit 5 clients in that space instead of just her.  So they tell you to get a vps which costs more, and for a new person is like tossing them to the lions tech wize.

A few things you will need to consider,  one of course is the hosting plan, make sure you get enough space and get something where you will not be charged for bandwidth, disk usage, or IO (input output)   some hosting companies are playing mind games and giving you free bandwidth and free disk usage but then slamming you with a bill on emails and IO usage. 

A respectable company will NOT play games with you and nickle and dime you.   Make sure you read the Terms of service and the fine print.  Also make sure they give you your release code (release authorization code or transfer authorization code) and your signin for the domain MWI which is a interface for the domain.  Many hosting companies like to not tell you about these things and then when it comes time for you to move they hold you hostage with that information. 

Its your domain and you have a right to that information, if they tell you sorry its company policy not to release that information, then that is a red flag and you should say adios muchachos... And keep shopping.   Also make sure that they list you on the domain as Owner, Administrator, and Billing contacts..  dont worry about the tech contact.  But those first three you need to verify via the MWI that your info is there.  When you go to xfer one day you will need to use those contacts and they should all be you or you will have to wait for someone else to approve. And you could get locked into a situation where the hosting company is holding your domain hostage in order to not lose the business, alot of them play this game.  One of them from my personal experience is greengeeks. Took me well over a month to do one xfer when it should take no more than 72 hours max. 

Also remember you dont have to use https now, but when you do get a vps or ded server you may certainly want to look into using https especially if you are handling payment details yourself and not a third party.  This will also cost you more because you have to purchase a ded ip, and also a SSL certificate as well as other extras that come with it.   

I hope that helps... and welcome to oxwall...

+1 Leon thanks :)

Also Nikita it never hurts to ask for a reference.   Some companies dont want to give out that information for privacy reasons which is fine and the right way to do that, but some customers have also given permission for them to give their name as a reference, so it never hurts to ask, just in case.  Also check to see if they have a testimonial page.

Also just fyi for others here, the last Cpanel update cause major down time for alot of people, it was suppose to be a seemless upgrade but it really caused havoc.  Seems somehow from my understanding it caused the drives to be unloaded so everything went down.  No data was lost that i heard of but it was a major headache for alot of companies.   So if your company tells you it is upgrading cPanel (in case they have not fixed the issue) just know that this could happen as well.

great!  if you have any questions just let us know, your not the first one that has been down this road and many are here to assist you along the way ;)

Hi Chris,  sorry about that, i was like 'he must have an old page'  then i remembered i put it on my profile.  Its fixed... :)   We used to be just USA and CA but we have since expanded.  Again sorry about that, and yes we do :)

Nikita what is your experience, do you have html, CSS,  php experience?

Just a quick note here, we (DDH clients) are moving to a new VPS sometime today so most all sites will be moved as soon as we tidy up a few things, but yeah sometime today.

Nikita be sure that your look very closely at this chart.

http://www.siteground.com/shared-hosting-features.htm