How do hosts decide on the name of the package, I mean how do they know it's a shared or semi-dedicated? Or is this all purely a marketing thing?
Say Namecheap.com say that in their Business plan they have only 50 accounts on the server, doesn't this automatically mean it's a semi-dedicated plan? http://www.namecheap.com/learn/webho...eb-hosting.asp

The different that I can think of that would suggest a semi-dedicate hosting is that they would tweak everything exactly to your liking, including installing libraries, additional software, tweaking settings on Apache, PHP, or on other system daemons. I'm guessing why namecheap called it business instead of semi-dedicate is that they don't do those stuff and you are paying for less accounts per server

What I have seen is...the term Semi-Dedicated is used when a host puts VERY LESS number of sites on a server & sells those accounts for much higher price (about 4-8 times higher). These accounts are STILL the same as shared hosting account...but they will now get bigger chunk of resource allocation due to less number of accounts per server.

Do you think 50 accounts on the server is a lot? There are servers stuffed with 10-20 times more accounts.

There is no definition of where semi-dedicated starts. The whole term is a marketing concoction, and could just as well have been called "shared hosting on steroids".

Do you think 50 accounts on the server is a lot?

It's not, but the deal largely depends on the server specifications.

Originally Posted by ldcdc

There is no definition of where semi-dedicated starts. The whole term is a marketing concoction, and could just as well have been called "shared hosting on steroids".

Looks like the new type of hosting packages is emerging

Originally Posted by zappanet

Looks like the new type of hosting packages is emerging

semi-dedicated packages has been around for a few years now. From my personal observation, semi-dedicate packages is harder to find now if compared than a few years back.

Originally Posted by J-G-Ju

semi-dedicated packages has been around for a few years now. From my personal observation, semi-dedicate packages is harder to find now if compared than a few years back.

I was referring to hosting on steroids, dude.

Semi dedicaed is the same as shared web hosting... If you are looking for the next level for your web hosting needs I would recommend having a look at the VPS solutions which are on the same price range.

Originally Posted by ~ServerPoint~

Semi dedicaed is the same as shared web hosting... If you are looking for the next level for your web hosting needs I would recommend having a look at the VPS solutions which are on the same price range.

I may be wrong, but the OP wasn't looking for hosting services, he was just interested in the difference between shared and semi-dedicated types of packages.
I think that some time before semi-dedicated plans offered resources of a dedicated server at the price of shared.
Say in the plans of Jaguarpc.com you can have 6 times more resources in semi-dedicated plans tham in shared.

As for Namecheap.com Business plans, I think they are typical shared, but their pluses are free dedicated IPs and free SSL certificates that Namecheap.com offers to clients.

Semi-dedicated sounds somehow obsolete, I think it's just a matter of the name.
Some companies who used to offer semi-dedicated cancelled it and switched to vps instead.
I think that shared/reseller packages are the optimum type of packages for a domain name registrar, as Namecheap.com is firstly and mostly involved into domaining business.