VPS Hosting: If You Want to Upgrade from Shared Hosting What You Need to Know?
My Technology Guide is steadily emerging as a popular website and we are getting a good amount of traffic from both search engines and other referring sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc. When we started, we were new and had less traffic, good enough for a shared server that we are using. Even though the shared hosting plan that we are now on, can handle our current traffic but we are thinking about the future. Ultimately, one day we have to move to a more advanced plan. So, we went to the quest to find out what type of hosting will be suitable for us. We found that we are having two options, either move our website to a dedicated server or get a virtual private server (VPS in short) and host our website there. During our quest to find the ultimate suitable hosting plan for us, we found a lot of interesting facts and figures.
We found the main differences between Shared/VPS/Dedicated hosting:
| Shared Hosting | VPS Hosting | Dedicated Hosting |
|---|---|---|
| Allows multiple customers to share the resources of one server. Shared RAM, Shared Disk Space, and Shared CPU. | You get Dedicated RAM and Dedicated Disk Space, but you will get Shared CPU. | Completely your machine. Everything is dedicated for your website. You will get your own dedicated RAM, Disk Space and CPU. |
| You are limited to customizing your user settings only and NO Server Level Customization available. | It allows Server Level customizations. | Server level Customization are completely allowed. |
| You don’t have to worry about any server level software as they are all Pre-Installed by the host. | You are free to install Server Level Software (OS, cPanel, LAMP, etc) but pre-installation varies by host. | Server Level Software (OS, cPanel, LAMP) pre-installation varies by host. |
| Full Customer Support is usually provided by all host | Support varies among different host | Support varies among different host |
| Hosting fees are very less, usually under $10/month. | Hosting fees varies largely depending upon VPS configuration and host. Starting price usually $35/month and more. | Hosting fees varies largely depending upon server configuration and host. Starting price usually $100/month and more. |
What does VPS offers that shared hosting doesn’t and is it good enough for us?
Server level customization: A VPS is just like a dedicated server in terms of functions that it offers to its users. VPS hosting offers features like root SSH access, administrative control, flexibility to install custom software and applications, etc. You get all this but at an affordable price compared to a dedicated server. As a user you can get your own virtual environment with dedicated amount of server resources which includes RAM, HDD space, etc for your own usage. The control it provides is perfect for users who need total control and needs the ability to configure the server the way they like, and install custom software when needed.
Burstable memory: Burstable memory acts like a reserved resources and comes into play only when your website needs it. It comes to rescue a website and save it from getting offline when the website gets a sudden rise in traffic due to several reasons. Downtime for any website is very costly as you lose valuable traffic and the revenue that you might have earned from it.
Scalability: You can scale the VPS configuration according to your needs and the traffic patter and pay for only what you use. Thus VPS hosting provides more flexibility.
Will VPS is what we are looking for or What kind of Site would benefit from a VPS hosting?
This is the most important question that we asked ourselves. Obviously, after reading the article you must have already understood that VPS hosting is really a boon for websites that are becoming popular and cannot fit in shared hosting any more and neither can afford dedicated hosting. It is also a boon for e-commerce sites with multiple, large databases (which have to host large product catalogs, customer database, etc), sites getting high amount of traffic, running multiple websites, sites with dynamic content (say blogs running on WordPress platform), growing sites that are becoming popular, etc. So, if your website needs more resources not available in shared hosting plans, while the requirement is not large enough to get dedicated hosting, you are definitely the one who needs VPS hosting.
