Shared Hosting vs VPS Hosting
Shared hosting and virtual private servers are among the world’s most popular ways to put a website in front of customers. Both methods can serve as the ideal hosting solution for different use cases. Understanding the virtues of both methods will help you deploy a website that offers your visitors top performance at any traffic level.
What is web hosting/server?
In essence, a web server is a computer with network connections and attached storage. A data center may contain hundreds of thousands of servers linked in a network, with that network in turn linked to the internet. For storage, a server may use spinning platter disk drives or much faster — and more expensive — solid-state drives.
As with every modern computer, a server’s central processing unit features multiple processing cores. Devoting more CPU cores to computing tasks typically completed those chores in less time. Web servers typically come equipped with at least 64 gigabytes of random-access memory, dwarfing a typical home computer’s RAM.
A web server’s mission is to transmit data between your website and its visitors. Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred back and forth each month. A terabyte, one trillion bytes, is the typical bandwidth measuring stick.
The majority of the world’s websites take advantage of shared web hosting. With this method, a provider allocates slices of a server’s resources among a group of customers. Running a web server is not cheap, but allocating a server among 20 to 50 customers allows a provider to host a website for a few dollars per month. For websites with modest monthly traffic, this arrangement is an ideal solution.
Shared hosting works remarkably well most of the time. The exception happens when a traffic spike hits one member of a server’s share group, drawing down resources for the server’s other customers. These reduced resources in turn lead to sluggish performance across the group. Beyond annoying site visitors, poor response time can damage a site’s Google search rank.
Elite shared hosting providers can handle occasional traffic spikes without degrading performance for customers who share the same server. Nonetheless, at some point, a website’s traffic growth or CPU demands may yield consistently unsatisfactory responsiveness with shared hosting. Happily, another host method offers a cost-efficient solution.
With a virtual private server, customers also share a server’s computing resources, but the resemblance ends there. A VPS account offers each user a guaranteed amount of CPU cores, memory and monthly bandwidth. These three factors greatly affect the quality of user experience when traffic begins to climb. In short, VPS accounts allow quality control for high-traffic websites.
For comparison, a shared hosting plan provides access to about one-half of a CPU core, depending on traffic. An entry-level VPS plan usually guarantees exclusive access to at least one entire CPU core and room to grow up to eight cores. This extra processing power allows a VPS-hosted site to muscle through more demanding web applications and deliver more responsive performance to users, even during high-traffic periods. The jump from a top-tier shared hosting plan to an entry-level VPS offers dramatic performance improvements for a modest
With a virtual private server, customers also share a server’s computing resources, but the resemblance ends there. A VPS account offers each user a guaranteed amount of CPU cores, memory and monthly bandwidth. These three factors greatly affect the quality of user experience when traffic begins to climb. In short, VPS accounts allow quality control for high-traffic websites.
For comparison, a shared hosting plan provides access to about one-half of a CPU core, depending on traffic. An entry-level VPS plan usually guarantees exclusive access to at least one entire CPU core and room to grow up to eight cores. This extra processing power allows a VPS-hosted site to muscle through more demanding web applications and deliver more responsive performance to users, even during high-traffic periods. The jump from a top-tier shared hosting plan to an entry-level VPS offers dramatic performance improvements for a modest per-month price increase.
Smooth Moves
All VPS plans require customers to select a tier with adequate bandwidth for their site’s traffic. Website owners happy with their provider’s shared hosting service can choose a managed VPS plan, allowing the host to continue handling the site’s management and security tasks. Managed VPS plans allow for near-seamless transitions from shared hosting.
Granular Control
Many website owners require specialized applications to serve their audiences. Unsurprisingly, these owners also need fine-grained control of all aspects of their site’s deployment. For these customers, an unmanaged VPS plan makes sense. Unmanaged plans cost less than the managed alternative and retain all other VPS advantages. Scaling up to higher bandwidth or a more powerful CPU is relatively inexpensive with unmanaged VPS plans.
With an unmanaged account, the site’s control panel decision rests with you. cPanel remains the web’s most popular control panel, but rival DirectAdmin is winning converts with its lower resource footprint. If you aim to migrate a DirectAdmin installation to a new host, ensure that your new provider offers full support.
Conclusion
If your website is just at a starting level and has a limited budget, then Shared Hosting is the option you should choose. Going further, if you have a good understanding of the web servers and know the application or website you are hosting requires fairly dedicated resources, a reliable network and, most crucial, stability, then you should get started with the VPS Hosting.
KnownHost has been web hosting since 2003. We already have pretty much an idea about handling and managing the web servers. Serving a wide range of services from Shared Hosting to fully managed Dedicated servers, you can entirely rely on us undoubtedly. Still, if you’re looking for the perfect consultation, do not hesitate to Contact us.