Virtual private server vs shared hosting has been a widespread debate lately. With the growth of digital media, more businesses are trying to expand their audience online. Therefore, there has been a massive boost in the number of websites. You’re ready to start your website and have a domain. What’s next? Getting a hosting service provider! This is where the confusion arises. Especially with an increase in hosting options, this confusion extends even further. Without a hosting service, no matter how good your website is, it wouldn’t matter. It would help if you made the right decision, as your business depends on how well your website runs. A website is a significant way of communicating with your customers, so it needs to be done perfectly.
Before you make your decision, a comparison must be made between private vs shared hosting. Should you choose an affordable option? Or go for a robust solution? You can choose between a virtual private server or shared hosting. A detailed account of both, along with their pros and cons, will help you understand better and make the decision easier. In this article, we will have a look at what VPS and shared hosting is. Their pros, cons, and the main difference between them.
With VPS hosting, you’re practically sharing a physical server with other users while having your virtual environment partitioned from other users. Therefore, whatever plan you choose, you will get a good number of resources. If you get a basic level plan, you get a good storage and bandwidth allowance. However, if you get a business-specific plan, you get a lot more storage with more bandwidth allowance.
With VPS hosting, you can be assured that other websites will not affect your site. This leads to better performance and fewer security issues.
A basic plan of web hosting offers the following features
Along with some other features as well. Moreover, you can increase the number of services you need as required. Your business can be scaled up as needed.
VPS hosting is the best option for medium to large-scale businesses or organisations looking to scale up. People running online stores or e-commerce sites gravitate more towards VPS hosting. The reason is simple. VPS ensures that the site performance is top-notch. A better site means higher conversion rates and higher search rankings. Moreover, although it is pricier, it offers much customisation according to your needs.
Shared hosting is very common and is offered by multiple web hosts. Shared hosting means your website is hosted on a server where other sites are also being hosted. Various things, such as disk space, memory, and other resources, are shared with other sites. You do not have a private environment. Moreover, as all resources are being shared, there are limited resources. However, it is offered reasonably priced with all the crucial features.
Features of shared hosting servers include
If you’re ever willing to upgrade to a better plan, you are given that option. This helps you if you require any additional resources.
Shared hosting will be the right choice if you’re starting with a website. The reason is simple: it requires no technical knowledge and is affordable. Go for shared hosting if you have a personal web portfolio or online portfolio. Then, as your site grows and you attract more traffic, you can switch to a more robust hosting plan.
Virtual Private Servers and Shared hosting are different in many ways.
The web host oversees handling all maintenance activities in a shared hosting server. This means the user does not have to know the website’s technicalities, which makes shared hosting ideal for beginners. It also leads to no use of other IT resources. As a result, you are free from much of the hassle.
VPS comes with a more complicated mechanism. A team is needed to have advanced level knowledge about handling website servers. In addition, proper administration skills would be required to maintain the server.
A shared hosting server may be accessible on the budget. However, it does compromise on the security aspect. As you share a server with multiple other websites, all your information and resources are also being shared. Moreover, the hosting servers do not promise good security. This means that if there were to be problems on other websites, such as malware or cyber-attacks, it would also affect your website.
With a VPS plan, security is guaranteed. Moreover, you can also enhance security by adding additional security apparatus.
With a sharing server, all the resources are shared with other websites, which means the resources are limited. The memory, CPU, RAM, disk space, etc., are divided among all websites that come under that server. Due to limited resources, performance will also vary.
With VPS hosting, you can be assured that your website performance will not be affected. In addition, the availability of resources can be discussed with the server, and you can increase resources as you scale up.
If you have a small-scale website with limited traffic, you’re good to go with shared hosting. The reason is that less traffic requires fewer resources. However, once your traffic increases, you may face many problems.
If you’re looking to scale, you should go for VPS as it allows you to customise your website according to your requirements and caters if you’re hoping to scale.
The performance can be low as resources are shared in shared hosting. There are limited resources that everyone is using collectively. You may have to wait for your turn to use resources. The performance of your website can be highly affected if the traffic on your page is high. Loading speed might decrease, making people quit a website and leading to traffic loss.
A VPS plan is recommended if you do not want to compromise on the performance of your website. It offers much flexibility, and you can allocate resources according to expected traffic.
VPS plans are expensive as compared to shared hosting. Although VPS hosting offers many benefits and ease, it can be out of your budget. So, if it is out of your budget or you have a website with little traffic, you can opt for shared hosting plans as they prove cheaper and offer all basic level requirements.
In conclusion, there are disadvantages and advantages of both hosting services. Your decision should be based on your needs and goals. You need to consider the features and costs of each service and make a wise decision. VPS is a more expensive option but offers better services with good performance and excellent security. On the other hand, a shared hosting provider is cheaper and provides all basic-level features.
It all depends upon the purpose of your website and the traffic you get. You must review the pros and cons before making the final decision. A website can make or break your website. Ironically, the wrong website can lower your traffic. So, if you do want to increase your traffic, you might have to invest in creating a good website that is fast and does not lag. A shared hosting plan may work fine for you if you have a small website or blog. However, if you’re running something big or looking to scale your business, you should consider getting a VPS plan. Sometimes, people get shared hosting at the start and later move on to VPS as they grow or scale.
