VPS, Shared, or Dedicated Server – Key Considerations for the Right Move

Jul 26,2021 by Manoj Yadav

No website can be made easily accessible to general public unless it is backed by the service of web hosting. Since there are multiple hosting options, one needs to understand attributes of each type of hosting such as shared, dedicated and VPS hosting.

Factors that impact a hosting decision

Cost efficiency is one of the most sought after features of web hosting. However, the right hosting solution should also enhance site’s responsiveness in addition to assurance of an incessant uptime for uninterrupted online visibility.

Reputed web hosting services companies go one step further and guarantee dedicated technical support on round the clock basis. Considering the large spectrum of features that need to be assessed, choosing the right provider of an appropriate hosting solution can be a complex task.

If you think that your website is ready to be up and running just by designing it and assigning a domain name, then you are grossly mistaken. The real task lies ahead because the site needs support of a hosted server to store its files. These servers come in three flavors including shared servers, dedicated servers and Virtual Private Servers.

Hosting service providers enable storage and serving of your site’s files whenever these are requested by your visitors. In order to ensure instant availability of the web pages and other content of your site, you need to get associated with an efficient and reliable hosting service. Let us find out the distinct features of web hosting services by considering different versions of hosted servers.

Shared server hosting

Shared servers surpass other servers in terms of popularity and as mentioned earlier, their popularity can be attributed to economy of a multi-tenant environment. Many businesses, including large and small enterprises belonging to diverse verticals can derive amazing benefits from shared hosting. Affordability and easy accessibility make shared hosting the most preferred web hosting for new or small enterprises.

Users of shared hosting are forced to share important server resources such as bandwidth, disk space, database, and CPU among others. The multi-tenant arrangement of a shared server distributes expenditure among all users and results in reduction of individual hosting costs.

Shared server hosting also takes care of management and administration of server and operating system. This facilitates users to focus on their business activities without having to worry about complex technical aspects of web hosting.

However, users of shared hosting suffer from limited resources and lack of control over server administration. Shared hosting is also not an ideal alternative for websites that need custom control and implementation of high end security measures. You will have to look for more resourceful alternatives including Virtual Private Server hosting and dedicated server hosting to support business growth in terms of traffic and need for installing specific applications.

Virtual Private Server hosting

Tired of restrictions of a shared hosting solution? VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting is the right solution for expanding resource availability and improving custom control on the hosting environment. VPS hosting is almost similar to a dedicated server hosting in terms of resource availability and root access to vital resources of servers.

Considered as the next logical step after shared hosting, VPS hosting assures performance enhancement as well as greater power. Users of VPS hosting need not be concerned about annoying activities of neighbors unlike shared hosting environment while enjoying freedom of hosting in the scalable and supportive ecosystem.

Virtual Private Server hosting is usually preferred by businesses that are on the fast growth track or enterprises with specific need for running complex applications in a secured and private environment.

Popularity of VPS hosting can be attributed to the following distinct features offered by Virtual Private Servers:

Website can aim for a better performance with reduced load on server
Adding or removing resources is a breeze in a scalable VPS ecosystem
Users can run or implement individual security policies, thanks to root server access
Cost efficiency is enhanced due to resource customization

However, a Virtual Private server lacks in terms of space availability as it is being shared by other users on the same physical server. One must also do an in-depth research while finding the VPS service provider that does not restrict resource availability.

Dedicated server hosting

If you need to experience the flawless freedom and unrestricted power of hosting, then there is no alternative to a dedicated server hosting. Dedicated server can only be compared with a private yacht or a private jet that is designed to be used by a single individual and built to accomplish every specific desire of the owner.

Performance related issues or resource restrictions will be things of the past if you move to dedicated hosting from either a VPS or a shared server environment. In terms of its limitations, a dedicated server needs to be backed by a diligent team of software professionals. It is also advisable to keep one more server on stand-by mode if the main server suffers from unexpected downtime.

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