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Choosing the right hosting plan can be complicated, and with so many types to choose from these days, most people have a hard time understanding the differences between them. A common question is the difference between web hosting and VPS.
Many websites start with a shared plan of web hosting, a type of hosting that is both cheap and easy. However, as your website content and traffic grows, you may need more resources and reliability, and a VPS can provide more room for expansion without going over your budget.
In short, web hosting means that your website shares the same server resources as many other websites, it is usually the cheapest option but offers limited bandwidth, management and performance. vps is a more advanced option with better customization features and performance, but may cost more.
If you still find it hard to understand, the layman's term is this.
- Virtual hosting: you share a server with other users, each with their own folder.
- VPS: A physical server (or servers) divided into multiple virtual servers, each user has a dedicated virtual server of their own, including dedicated processor, memory, disks, network, etc.
- Next, we cover the key points to consider when choosing web hosting and VPS.
- Server resources
Web hosting is often referred to as shared hosting, and as the name implies, you share server resources with other customers. In contrast, dedicated server users have exclusive use of a physical server, and VPS sits in the middle area: a physical server is virtualized into multiple virtual servers, providing you with dedicated hardware and entities that feel like real servers when in use.
Web Hosting VPS
When you share server resources with others, you face some limitations such as maximum available CPU, memory, disk, traffic, etc. You cannot use resources that exceed the limits. If your website does not require a lot of storage space or processing power, then this is not a problem.
With VPS hosting, you will enjoy more private disk space and higher overall resource availability. This is necessary if you want to expand your online business and provide a better user experience for your visitors.
- Performance
More resources means better performance, and shared hosting only gives you access to technologies that the server has already implemented (e.g. SSD, CDN, caching software, etc.). Often, VPS allows you to have better control over the performance metrics.
Web Hosting VPS
Other sites on the same server may affect your site's performance, a risk associated with economical shared solutions. However, if your needs are limited and you don't want to maintain your own hardware facilities, shared hosting may pay off nicely.
Not surprisingly, VPS hosting offers better overall performance and allows you more flexibility in configuring various applications, making it a better choice if you have high traffic or need to manage multiple sites.
- Security
From a cost perspective, web hosting offers great benefits, but it can have an impact on security issues. In fact, it will depend on the cost that the hosting provider invests in security, including operations, team, support, software, etc.
Web Hosting VPS
Although shared hosting is very secure, hosting providers cannot fully guarantee its security due to the existence of unknown vulnerabilities. The other side of the coin lies in the mixed neighborhood of customers, and when one shared hosting site has a problem, it may affect other sites.
Customer support will also be limited compared to VPS, but if your site does not require sensitive personal information from users, it should be no big deal.
VPS offers more powerful features to ensure the security of your website and, if your budget allows, better customer support services. If your website needs to protect your users' personal data, then you should definitely upgrade to a VPS.
- Pricing
Pricing in the web hosting industry is very interesting. After you purchase an affordable web host, it's easy to pay one fee after another for some additional features. Or, you can start a VPS instance for $2.50 (like Vultr) and never have to look back. Of course, this is only the extreme case.
While web hosting offers the best price and ease of use, VPS has a definite advantage in terms of scalability.
Web Hosting VPS
With web hosting, your costs already include the work associated with running and maintaining the server, making it the most affordable option in terms of pure price.
As with other paid services, more expensive prices offer more features, and so does VPS. If you want to improve the performance of your website or need to increase your online presence, then VPS can offer better customization and performance options.
- Server administration
In short, web hosting handles all the hardware-related work for you. You are responsible for managing your own VPS, unless you choose fully managed hosting: services such as service monitoring, bug fixing and security patching are provided.
- An unmanaged (Unmanaged) VPS is equivalent to a bare metal machine, with only a native operating system provided and all the software you need to install yourself. This type of VPS is suitable for professional developers and has a high degree of freedom.
- A fully managed (Managed) VPS already has all kinds of website building software installed, so you can build a website with just a few clicks in the background. This type of VPS is suitable for webmasters who do not know how to develop programs. The advantage is that you can focus on your own business and the hosting provider will help you solve all technical problems; however, the disadvantage is also obvious: it can basically only be used to build websites.
- Web Hosting VPS
- If you use web hosting to host your website, then you don't need to perform technical maintenance on the server. For many people (especially those without development experience), this is a huge advantage.
- Unmanaged VPS are more complex in terms of resource management and therefore usually require a specific system administrator to focus on maintaining the server. The benefit, however, is that you can customize the site and configure any programs and software needed, while improving stability and security.
- Scalability
This is probably the biggest difference between web hosting and VPS. If your website traffic is low, then web hosting is perfectly adequate for your hosting needs, but as the number of visitors increases, you may receive various internal errors with your website, and this is the time to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server.
Web Hosting VPS
While web hosting is a good option initially, you may face scalability issues in the long run. If you find that you are about to run out of storage space or that your website is slow to respond, it may be necessary to consider scaling up to improve performance.
VPS allows you to scale faster and easier, and you can add CPU, memory, hard disk and other hardware metrics at any time.
Best Web Hosting and VPS
With so many hosting providers to choose from nowadays, to save you time we've picked out some of the best web hosts and VPS for each category and we've listed 2 of them separately.
The most affordable web hosting
- Uptime: 99.97%
- Page load time: 383 milliseconds
- Lowest price: $1.45/month
- Money back guarantee: 30 days
- Payment method.
- Hostinger detailed review
Best Web Hosting
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Page load time: 514 milliseconds
- Lowest price: $3.95/month
- Money back guarantee: 30 days
- Payment method.
- SiteGround Detailed Review
The best unmanaged VPS
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Page load time: 537 milliseconds
- Minimum price: $2.50/month, $0.004/hr
- Money back guarantee: pay as you go
- Payment method.
- Vultr detailed review
Best Managed VPS
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Page load time: 684 ms
- Lowest price: $5.17/month
- Money back guarantee: 60 days
- Payment method.
- Hostwinds detailed review
- For more on web hosting and VPS, check out these two articles.
- Web Hosting Ranking
- VPS Ranking
Summary
The decision of which server to host your website on is important, and for most starting websites, a shared plan is more than sufficient. However, if you're considering a higher-end hosting plan, that means it's time to migrate to a VPS.
Here are some useful tips when you are planning to migrate to a VPS.
- Determine why shared hosting is not working for you, or why a VPS may be more appropriate.
- Determine which functions are most important to you.
- Comparing the prices and services of various hosting providers.
- Performing cost-benefit analysis.
- Forecasting long-term business trends Are you experiencing a major growth spurt?