What Is Shared Hosting, VPS, & Dedicated Server

What Is Shared Hosting

what is shared hosting

Shared hosting is always a perfect solution for your first website building or small to medium usage online platforms. It is also a good option when you are going to kickstart your website in a beta phase to investigate the actual traffic flow as well as resource consumption you might requiring in establishing the real one.

Why? because it only costs you a low price to host your website and most of the web host providers will provide you with a trustable and complete web hosting facility as well as features. Besides, shared hosting allows the upgrade of resources and quotas such as bandwidth, data transfer limit as well as storage space for your website.

Advantages of Shared Hosting

  • Cheapest among the web hosting solution available.
  • Easy to manipulate, simple control panel designed for new kick-starters.
  • Upgradable, in terms of resources and bandwidth quotas.
  • Complete, have all the basic features to host a small to a medium-size online platform.

Disadvantages of Shared Hosting

  • Low performance, as compared to other web hosting solutions.
  • Limited resources are allocated to your online platform.
  • Shared facilities and features, such as anti-virus applications and firewalls.
  • Low customization, most of the settings configuration is fixed and standardized.

When You Should Choose Shared Hosting

  • Small to medium range website.
  • Testing a site to estimate the actual traffic flow and resource consumption.

What Is VPS

what is vps

VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a great option and cost-effective solution when comes to advanced, medium to big web hosting. It guarantees a certain degree of website security, scalability, resource allocation for you to run higher resources consuming website.

VPS partitions the server environment and allocates a larger storage space, resources, and services to each individual. As each VPS is a virtual partition, it is independently separated from the server environment.

Advantages of VPS

  • Cost-Effective, by allocating more resources at a lower price as compared to a dedicated server.
  • Scalable and Upgradable, resources can be increased and reduced depends on requirements.
  • Customizable, having all the basic features for web hosting but allow more customization.
  • Multi-functional, a VPS is suitable for multi-purpose web applications such as websites, e-commerce platforms, or function as email servers.

Disadvantages of VPS

  • Technical requirement, you might be requiring some technical basics to utilize your online platform in VPS.

When You Should Choose VPS

  • Medium to large range website.
  • E-Commerce web application.
  • Complex interactive web platforms.

What Is Dedicated Server

what is dedicated server

A dedicated server will be the more expensive solution among these three solutions, it is because a dedicated server allocates the whole server dedicated to your own usage. This means that sharing your resources with others will not happen by any means.

A dedicated server is always related to large websites, email servers which require an enormous resource to run. It is good for you to own and run your server on-premises, but it is better for you to outsource it to web host providers as it saves your costs in terms of time and resources in the long run.

Advantages of Dedicated Server

  • Dedicated as like you own a server.
  • Security is promised by eliminating the risk in terms of security by eliminating infection from other users.
  • Powerful, you enjoy all the benefits, resources and performance to your online platform as well as other usages.
  • A multi-functional, dedicated server is also capable of performing multiple functionalities with powerful performance.

Disadvantages of Dedicated Server

  • Expensive.
  • Complexity, higher flexibility, and scalability will eventually require higher technical knowledge to manipulate it. However, you can get a professionally managed service from the web service provider.

When You Should Choose Dedicated Server

  • Enterprise website, web application, email servers as well as other online platforms.
  • A large dense e-commerce web platform.

Difference Between Shared Hosting and VPS

There is a famous quotation that often ‘does the rounds’ at marketing agencies. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first three hours sharpening my axe’.

Choosing the right hosting to grow your business is important same as choosing the right place to construct your building. Do you think that your current shared hosting cannot keep up with the demand of your website?

Yes, it is time to move up your hosting to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.

What VPS Gives You

By upgrading to VPS website hosting, you will gain many benefits. Those benefits include customization, better security, more privacy and the ability to handle a larger amount of website traffic.

However, If you are looking to grow your business, but just are not ready for a dedicated server yet, VPS is definitely a great alternative. VPS come with full root access, giving you ultimate control and flexibility.

For example, If you start using e-commerce web platforms (OpenCart, Magento, or other customized shopping carts) on your shared web hosting, it is a good justification for you to improve your hostings’ security. Moreover, VPS gives you the features and functionality of a dedicated server without the cost of building and maintaining one.

If you need to host unlimited domains, have complete control of your environment and run your own applications, then you will benefit from having a VPS. Overall, VPS is ideal for startup businesses, web portals, eCommerce, web designers, application developers and game serving.

Is There Weakness on VPS

From the perspective of theory, VPS hosting is an optimal means to experience the services of a dedicated server. Although, VPS hosting has higher costs than shared hosting.

In terms of administrative and maintenance, handling a virtual private server does require a strong set of expertise. It includes technical skills, training, and competence in managing them.

Managed VPS is when your VPS provider takes care of all these headaches. But on the other hand, in unmanaged VPS you need to take responsibility for your server all by yourself.

Options of VPS

If you worry about waiting hours or even days for a VPS to be set up, Instant VPS is a new optional function. It provides you fastest setup that you can get your hosting.

The setup takes no more than 1 minute to install, (sometimes it is lesser than 60 seconds) and it is fully flexible.

Conclusion

Upgrading to VPS web hosting will be one of the biggest and most beneficial things that you can do for your website. This will not only enable you to have more freedom over your server but will also give you more benefits.

Those will help you to improve and make your website efficient. With VPS, you get a cost not too far removed from shared hosting.

The interesting thing is, with a level of control and flexibility similar to a dedicated server. That is an ideal compromise that allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Indeed, If your business starts to grow, your hosting plan should grow with you.

Difference Between VPS and Dedicated Server

Shared Hosting vs VPS vs Dedicated Server

what is web hosting

You might be going to establish an online platform for sharing your ideas, enterprise businesses or e-commerce purposes. It is always a good idea to seek an experienced hosting provider to host your websites, online platforms as well as informational blogs.

It saves your cost, resources and time to operate and manage your online platforms. However, you may come across terms like Shared Hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Server) and Dedicated Server.

All of them are solutions in hosting your online platform, but the suitability for these three solutions varies for several reasons. Such as what online platform you are going to host, how many resources your online platform is going to consume and how much visitor traffic you expected will be visiting your online platform.

Choosing the right web hosting solution is important to optimize your business performance with the minimal expenses possible.

As a summary, we can conclude the comparison between these three solutions as follows:

  • In terms of cost: Shared Hosting > VPS > Dedicated Server
  • In terms of performances and resources allocated: Dedicated Server > VPS > Shared Hosting

Which One Should You Choose

Imagine you are on a vacation, and you are taking a flight to your desired destination.

Shared Hosting is like you are traveling in economy class, you share the area with many other passengers, you might have limited space around your seat (Low storage space, resource allocation), and you also need to share on some public facilities such as restroom with other passengers (Shared features such as firewall and anti-virus application).

VPS will be similar to business class in the flight, although you still share the area with other passengers, there is less passenger sharing the area which provides you with more spaces and you will enjoy more privileges and it is easy for you to access those public facilities.

A dedicated server is like you are travelling by your private jet, you enjoy all the areas, personalized services as well as other premium features without the need to share those resources with the public.