When it comes to purchasing web hosting, you will find numerous options. Among those options, shared hosting and VPS hosting hold a prominent place. These are some great options available for anyone who wishes to buy web hosting. However, there are some significant differences between them as well. You need to understand what those differences are to decide what to buy. This article on the difference between VPS and shared hosting will help you.
What Is Shared Hosting?
Before you learn the difference between VPS and shared hosting, you should know what they are all about. As the very first thing, let’s deep dive and figure out what shared hosting is all about. To better understand shared hosting, you should look at the situation where you live in a shared apartment. You will be sharing the parking lot, backyard, and even the swimming pool with people who share the apartment with you. Likewise, shared hosting will allow you to share your disk space, CPU, and memory with other people who have hosted their websites on the same shared server.
Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting option available for you to consider. However, you will have to live with limited bandwidth. For example, your website will get slow when you receive lots of traffic. You can enjoy the swimming pool of your apartment when it is not crowded. But when everyone starts using it, you will not be able to use it. That’s precisely how shared hosting works.
Physically, a VPS hosting server has only one physical server. However, each user on the server will have access to specific resources. Therefore, you can make sure that the activity of another website on the server will not create any impact on you. VPS hosting will provide you with dedicated virtual protection. You can also make sure that the resources are always available whenever you want them. However, it is essential to remember that VPS hosting is quite expensive compared to shared hosting. Still, it is a cheaper option than dedicated hosting.
VPS hosting is pretty much similar to being the owner of a penthouse. Your building will have multiple houses, but you will not be sharing the amenities with anyone else.
What’s the Difference Between Shared Hosting and VPS Hosting?
Let’s now focus on the difference between VPS hosting and shared hosting. Make sure that you pay close attention to these differences to get the most out of the hosting plan that you get.
1- Security and Performance
It is essential to be mindful of the security of your server at the time of hosting a website. Both shared hosting and VPS hosting can be relatively secure. However, it would help if you also focused more on their differences.
If there is an error in any other website hosted on the same server, your website will also be impacted. For example, malware can get into the server from another website. Then you will have to deal with the negative consequences as well. On the other hand, you will also be impacted when the other websites hosted on the same server consume too many resources.
It will be possible for you to overcome such problems with the assistance of VPS hosting. That’s because you are provided with access to partitioned servers. You can use them to ensure that each website works according to your expectations. However, it would help if you still had an excellent technical understanding to take complete control over the VPS. If you don’t manage your VPS host accordingly, you will have problems.
2- Resource allocation
VPS hosting will provide virtual resource allocation to you. Therefore, you don’t have to worry too much about the server resources. No other website on the same server will be in a position to eat up the resources that are given to you. This will help you to keep peace of mind at all times.
When it comes to shared hosting, you don’t have any control over resource allocation. That’s because any other website on the server can consume the resources allocated to you. This can sometimes be challenging, especially when other websites on the same server eat up all your resources.
3- Control
If you are looking forward to taking control of your server, you will need to focus on VPS hosting. That’s because you will be able to gain root access to the server with VPS hosting. If you have the technical know-how, you can do configurations to the server. For example, you will be able to install your preferred OS on the server. On top of that, you will have control over the security and performance of the server as well.
When it comes to shared hosting, you will be provided with standardized server setups. You cannot manage the server tasks at all.
People who don’t have any technical knowledge of server administration may look at shared hosting. You don’t have to worry about technical maintenance on a shared hosting plan. The shared hosting services provider will do everything and offer the server to you. Hence, you need to go ahead with using it. The server maintenance team will take down the server for maintenance at their preferred time.
Server administration becomes quite complex when it comes to VPS servers. That’s because you should have technical knowledge on how to manage it. However, you will still be able to gather basic knowledge and proceed with configuring and customizing the applications. You have the chance to do all this with the root access that you are provided with.
5- Scalability
VPS hosting is relatively easy to scale up when compared to shared hosting. Shared hosting is the best option that we can recommend for the short-term hosting needs of a small website on the internet. However, you will still have to face problems when going ahead with it for a longer time. The shared hosting server will restrict your business growth.
You don’t have any such problems with VPS hosting. VPS hosting allows you to scale up easily and quickly. If you can predict the growth of your website, you can proceed without a problem. This will deliver an excellent return to you on your investment.
Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting option available for you to consider. For example, you can get a shared hosting plan for under $2 from some service providers. However, you will only get what you pay for. For example, you will need to share all the resources with other people while using the shared hosting plan.
Even if you have to pay more for VPS hosting, you can justify the additional payment. That’s because you can access dedicated resources on the VPS hosting plan. When you compare VPS hosting vs. shared hosting, you will need to pay special attention. With the VPS hosting plan, you can also get more bandwidth and storage space.
Now that you know about difference between shared and vps hosting, let’s find out When do we need shared hosting or VPS
If you want more control over your hosting plan, we strongly encourage you to focus on VPS hosting. You will have better overall control over resource allocation with the VPS hosting plan.
We can also recommend VPS hosting for people who are mindful of security. Even though both options are secure, you can overcome some potential security risks by using VPS hosting. When it comes to performance, VPS hosting is the clear winner. That’s because VPS hosting is allocating dedicated resources to you. Therefore, you can expect to receive a good uptime and bandwidth. Even if resource-consuming websites are hosted on the same server, you will not have to worry too much about them. That’s because those websites are not in a position to create any impact on your website.
When it comes to scalability, VPS hosting is a clear winner. It can provide all the support you need to grow your website. However, we can still recommend shared hosting for the people who are still mindful of the price. That’s because it is the cheapest option available to you.
Conclusion
Now you have all information, and you can decide whether to go ahead with shared hosting or VPS hosting. Make sure that you choose to pick an option out of these. Then, you will be able to enjoy hosting your website there.