Shared hosting is the training wheels of web hosting. It’s great for building your confidence and expanding your skills in a low-stakes environment, but after a while, you’re going to need an upgrade. You’re going to need VPS hosting.
If you’re wondering what on earth VPS hosting might be, you’re not alone.
Shared hosting and dedicated hosting are pretty self-explanatory. With shared hosting, your website shares a server with other websites, and with dedicated hosting, one server is dedicated to your website. But VPS hosting sounds a bit more complicated.
What is VPS hosting? How does VPS hosting work? What if you don’t know how to manage your VPS?
Fret not; all will be revealed. Let’s start with the first question:
Table of Contents
What is VPS hosting?
The first thing you need to know is that VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. With VPS hosting, one server is divided into separate private servers using virtualisation technology. This means that when you choose VPS hosting, you can enjoy the privacy and control of a dedicated server without paying for the premium dedicated hosting package.
Is VPS hosting different from shared hosting?
Shared hosting means that one server is shared among multiple websites. Dedicated hosting is the only kind of hosting in which all the resources of a server are dedicated to a single website. That’s why some people think that VPS hosting is pretty much the same as shared hosting, but that’s not true. VPS hosting is completely different.
With shared hosting, several websites share the resources of a single server. It’s kind of like living in a dorm with roommates. This is the cheapest kind of web hosting you can get, because the cost is spread among multiple users, and so are the resources.
With VPS hosting, one server is virtually divided into different private servers. This is more like living in a condo by yourself. You still share the resources of the server with other websites, but there are fewer websites on your server, which means there are more resources available for your website. And there’s more separation between your website and the other websites sharing your server. This means you have more control over your server, because your neighbours aren’t as affected by what you do to your own section of the server.
How does VPS hosting work?
With VPS hosting, one server runs different virtualised operating systems, with each operating system acting like a separate dedicated server.
VPS hosting makes use of a special piece of computing equipment known as a hypervisor. The hypervisor takes resources from the server and allocates a certain amount of resources to each website on the server. Because the resources are pre-divided among the websites, each virtual server can act as an independent unit. This means you never have to worry about any other website using up resources that you need.
You’re guaranteed the server resources that you paid for.
What are the benefits of VPS hosting?
There are lots of reasons users upgrade from shared hosting to VPS hosting and from managed WordPress hosting to VPS hosting. Here are just a few of them:
VPS-hosted websites won’t crash because of traffic spikes on other websites:
Websites on a shared server are more vulnerable to traffic spikes. Because all the websites share the resources of the server, when one website experiences a higher-than-normal burst of traffic, they suck resources from the other websites. This causes the other websites to load more slowly than usual. Sometimes, the other websites can even crash. This won’t happen with VPS hosting, because each private server is its own independent unit.
You have more control over your server with VPS hosting:
With VPS hosting, what you do with your server won’t affect the other websites on the server. This is why web hosts give you more control over your server when you have VPS hosting. If you want to, you can even change the operating system!
VPS hosting gives you full root access:
Having full root access means you can completely customise your server to the exact specifications of your website. The only other kind of hosting that gives you full root access is dedicated hosting, which gives you complete control over your server (for a higher price). You don’t get this level of control when you choose shared hosting.
Your site performs better with VPS hosting:
VPS hosting gives you more server resources than shared hosting, which means your site can support increased traffic without experiencing a drop in performance.
VPS hosting gives you more storage and bandwidth:
When you move from shared hosting to VPS hosting, you won’t believe how much more room you have to play with. You’ll be able to upload bigger, more complex images and higher-quality videos, and you can evevn incorporate more ads and support more web traffic. You can finally see your website the way you’ve always pictured it!
VPS hosting has many advantages, but this much control means you might also have more responsibility. (You can get out of doing any extra work, but more on that later.)
Do I want the semi-managed VPS service?
If you’re pretty tech-savvy, you’ll enjoy our semi-managed VPS services. With our semi-managed services, you get to customise your server whenever you want, and you can still experience some of the fun of managing your server. So, if you like playing around with your server and customising it yourself to suit the needs of your website, go ahead and get the semi-managed service!
Will VPS hosting work if I don’t know how to manage it?
VPS hosting gives you more control and more storage, but when your website is hosted on a VPS, you’re fully responsible for setting up the server, maintaining it, and running it. So, if you don’t know enough about the technology, you might be a little lost when it comes to things like software updates and security patches. If that sounds at all like you, you’ll want to stay away from our unmanaged VPS service.
If you want all the fun of having a VPS with none of the responsibility, you’ll adore our fully managed services, where we run your server for you. It’s a lot like having your own server admin.
Even if you’re one of our more tech-savvy clients, you might still want to choose one of our fully managed services, because it frees up your time to focus on your business and your website.
Wrapping up
If your website’s been running more slowly than usual, or you’ve been getting more traffic than you’re used to, VPS hosting is a lifesaver.
And if you choose one of our fully managed services, you get to set it and forget it. No more fiddling with technology when you could be focusing on growing your business.
Isn’t it time your website lived up to its full potential? Try one of our competitively priced VPS hosting packages to see if it’s right for you. But fair warning: Once you try VPS hosting, it’s kind of hard to force your growing website back into the cramped space of shared hosting.
