VPS vs Shared Hosting Archives

Most website owners start out using shared web hosting. In time, as their site grows and demands more resources and functions, they may need a more powerful hosting option. A virtual private server (VPS) is generally considered as the stepping stone between shared hosting and a dedicated hosting setup in which your website runs on its own server. Let’s break hosting types down using a simple analogy. Shared hosting is like living in an apartment; it’s cheap and can come furnished with everything you need to move in. The tradeoff is sharing facilities with many other people (sharing resources with the other accounts on the same server), and if you throw a massive party (have lots of traffic), building management will want to talk to you. A dedicated server is like having your own house with acres of land around it. All resources in the house are for your sole use and you won’t be bothered by your neighbors, even if you do throw a party (experience high traffic). VPS lies somewhere in the middle. It behaves like a dedicated server but with allocated system resources. Let’s equate VPS to a townhouse, it's bigger than an apartment (shared hosting) but you shared the property and certain services. What’s more, throwing a party (having lots of web visitors) is easier. Hosting isn’t the easiest topic to get your head around, but the foundations of what you need to know can be understood fairly quickly. If you’re looking to get Cheap VPS hosting and understand its alternatives but feel somewhat discouraged, stick with us. Whether you’re just getting started with a blogging site, or an individual site that’s started to slow down on your current hosting plan, VPS hosting might be the perfect fit. Let’s find out. VPS vs Shared Hosting Before we move on to VPS, let’s talk about shared hosting. Most site owners get started with a shared hosting plan. As a business or website grows it demands extra functions and more resources. Site owners look to upgrade to a more suitable hosting plan. VPS is the next logical hosting to look to when making the transition from shared hosting, but what is shared hosting exactly? Back to our housing analogy. We likened shared hosting to living in an apartment complex where the same location and resources are shared among the residents. With shared hosting, several residents (websites) share the resources of one building (a single physical server). This type of hosting is really affordable. Skilled professionals manage the shared hosting environment, a control panel is available for customers to manage their site. The main issue with this style of hosting is the available bandwidth and room that’s included. It’s more than enough for most new websites, but eventually websites will need something that scales as they grow. Another significant drawback to shared hosting is that this environment can’t handle traffic spikes very well. VPS hosting answers the problems of scalability and limited resources. This style of hosting is like owning a condo within a building that has fewer residents. A VPS is divided into numerous virtual cubicles within a server, and every account will get quantities of these allocated sources (a fraction of the server’s CPU, disk space, memory, and bandwidth for example) plus full root access. You still share the server (building) with other people, but you now have more control over your space, using it as you see fit.

What is VPS hosting?