Cost-cutting strategy for an MVP SaaS is usually based on technical decisions. One of the first strategies early-stage SaaS founders consider is cheap Linux shared hosting because of how cheap, user-friendly, and available it is. But let’s consider the question: is shared hosting still an option for SaaS hosting and building an MVP?

That question comes down to how you interpret “viable.” On first impressions, NVMe hosting might be cheap, but it offers very little in terms of reputation, scalability, and performance, which hurts the reputation of your MVP.

Without further ado, let’s discuss why shared hosting is appealing and what the most significant disadvantages are in MVP SaaS development.

Explaining Shared Hosting

Shared hosting Canada describes the situation where multiple users are hosted on a single server. To put it simply, every user shares specific server component resources - memory, CPU, disk, and even bandwidth. Support for a large number of users is very cost-effective due to the fact that most hosting providers will optimize the infrastructure costs for hundreds, even thousands, of customers.

However, shared hosting comes with some drawbacks. Control, resource allocation, and performance isolation are limited for the user. There are no guaranteed computing resources like in a VPS or cloud hosting. In the scenario where another user on your server has a traffic surge, your app is guaranteed to be affected.

Here is where the limitations of shared hosting become apparent for SaaS projects.

What’s Needed for the SaaS MVP

A SaaS MVP is not a glorified landing page; in most cases, it includes signup, database interactions, real-time actions, user dashboards, and, in many cases, interaction with other APIs. All these require some processing in the back end, a secure environment, and high availability.

Also, advanced SaaS products require secure and reliable user data storage and access controls, including session- and token-based authenticators. Even in the MVP phase, the system must provide reliable speed and responsiveness, as the platform’s performance during testing can make or break the software.

At the very least, developers must have the freedom to modify and control the software needed to aid deployment stacks, background processes, manage server configurations, or software-controlled specific libraries. These can hardly be achieved in shared hosting.

Technical Limitations That Can Hurt Your MVP

Shared hosting can jeopardize the MVP experience in a multitude of ways.

To start with, database interaction is a case in point: it can be very erratic. Because the MySQL server is multi-tenant in nature, the responsiveness and performance of the queries are likely to be erratic. Even minor spikes from neighboring tenants can degrade responsiveness for your application.

To begin, there is little to no support for scalable back-end logic. Shared hosting does not provide the necessary infrastructure for message queues, cron jobs, or task runners. Most of the time, you are limited to one scheduled task every 15 to 30 minutes, which is far from optimal for any SaaS application with dynamic functions.

Third, the structure of the development environments is often limited. Shared hosts often lock in the PHP version, restrict certain folder paths, and limit custom runtime parameters. If your MVP is built in Node.js, Python, or Ruby, you're likely out of luck, as shared hosting is often incompatible.

This last one is also particularly troublesome for any MVP that deals with user data. In shared setups, your security is only as robust as your neighbor’s. If another application in your shared hosting environment gets hacked, there’s a chance the vulnerabilities in that application will be able to affect your application as well.

What’s the Most Acceptable Use for Shared Hosting?

That said, there are limited cases where shared hosting might be acceptable for SaaS MVPs. If your MVP is mostly informational or serves as a placeholder until real functionality is built out, then shared hosting does the job.

Additionally, for developing a client portal or an internal tool that does not have public exposure, shared hosting could save you money while allowing you to launch faster. This, however, is a short-term solution rather than a long-term strategy.

In these cases, it still makes sense to test the waters with a mixed strategy—putting your front end on shared hosting while your application logic runs in the cloud or on serverless functions.

Other Options for Deploying SaaS MVP

Due to increased availability of budget cloud solutions, VPS, PaaS (Platform as a Service), or low-cost cloud environments such as MilesWeb cloud plans, DigitalOcean, or Vultr are becoming easier to access for founders.

With these solutions, founders gain more control, performance isolation, and the ability to use modern development stacks. Infrastructure management is even abstracted on platforms, allowing developers to focus on coding and deployment pipelines.

Wrapping Up

Costing nearly nothing can sometimes be misleading. Shared hosting often seems like the best option to go for when launching a SaaS MVP. The technical debt can slow down your progress, limit your product's responsiveness, and ultimately hurt the user experience.

When designing a SaaS product, you should consider how users will interact with it as early as the MVP stage.

Your MVP will be better positioned for substantial validation, user trust, and sustainable growth only if you select the best hosting option. Your chosen hosting provider must be able to understand the intricacy (basic or ambitious) of your SaaS vision.