When it comes to starting your new business, and you want the mass from different sections of the world know about it, opening a website is the best way of doing that. Not only that, but the internet is also the best way to show your creativity or anything of that sort. Launching your website might not be difficult today for the plethora of options available, but it is after all not as easy as the push of a button if you want to do it the right way. The first step of launching a website is to get a domain name, which perfectly describes, what your website is all about.
Well, for the sake of convenience, I am considering, you have already got your domain, and is looking for the appropriate hosting that meets your needs. Choosing the correct hosting as per your requirement might not be as easy as giving the money to the company for your favorite domain name. Hosting is the sweet home for all your contents on the website, and you will never want, they fight among themselves and eventually spoil your website. Jokes apart, the better the hosting, better will the traffic handling, more control over your website, and at the end of the day, it can even lead to better ranking.
Well, I am here to do a basic comparison between shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting, and will also talk about which one you should go for, to avail the best value for money.
Sharing is caring. That’s what we learned in our school days. A similar thing goes for shared hosting plans, as well. In shared hosting plans, a server houses all the resources, and it is shared equally between the websites the server is hosting. It means, an equal amount of processing power, RAM and memory are assigned to the websites hosted by the server, and all the websites on the same server will be assigned with a part of the resources, which is available to the server. Such a server runs on a single operating system, and all the websites sharing the server will experience that good and bad sides of it.
Shared hosting plans are quite affordable, but the users do not have enough control over it and require some technical know how to set up, in most cases. Among the other disadvantages, shared hostings are prone to security issues, and can reduce the uptime of your website, if there is some faulty script made to run by others website admins sharing the same server resources. This happens, as the resources might be shared, but all the websites run on the same operating system or platform.
What is VPS hosting?
If you are looking for reliability and do not want to pay a premium for a dedicated hosting plan, VPS hosting is the one you can go for. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. In VPS hosting as well, the resources of a single server are shared by multiple websites, but there is a cache, which dramatically makes it better than shared hosting. In the case of a VPS hosting, you can assign the resources to your website as per your requirements. Unlike shared hosting, the resources will not be shared equally among the websites hosted by it, making it more flexible for the admin of the website to change the resource consumption as per the requirements from time to time.
While working with a VPS hosting, each of the shared section for a single website acts as an individual virtual computer and thus the name, which is completely independent of the others. Just in case of any problem, each virtual computer can be rebooted manually without disturbing the uptime or activity of the other websites hosted by the same server. Thus, in case of a VPS hosting, each shared section is a virtual computer, and it is managed with a help of a software called hypervisor that separates the software environment from the others running on the same physical hosting.
What is Dedicated hosting?
Dedicated, as the name suggests is about assigning all the resources available in a server, to a single website without the interference of other websites. Hope that is enough to sum things up about a dedicated hosting.
As all the resources of a computer are truly dedicated to a single website, the cost associated with getting a dedicated hosting is really high, but it also offers an unmatched performance, justifying its name. It isn’t a good idea to choose a dedicated hosting unless you really need the power of it, to best utilize your money.
Now coming to the most important part. A comparison, and which one should you go for. Hope that will help you in getting the best value for money for your new website.
Chances are there if you are going to start a new website, it is a judicious idea to choose one between this two.
As I already said, VPS and shared hosting are almost same, with the difference lies in the fact, you have more control over the resources in case of a VPS hosting, compared to that of a shared hosting. Apart from the flexibility VPS hosting offer, VPS is more secure compared to that of shared hosting as the mistakes done by others on the same server is not going to affect your website in any way.
Not only that, VPS being a dedicated virtual computer to just run your website, you also have the root access to change some settings, or use a new operating system to host your website altogether. While in case of a shared hosting, all the websites are hosted by the same server, with a particular directory assigned to you, only for your website. Thus, you get very limited room to play with your website settings.
VPS vs. Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting is no doubt the best, as you actually have access to all the resources, which is available to the server. But dedicated hosting is quite costly for the premium service it offers. If you do not have the money to get a dedicated hosting, a VPS hosting is like getting the best of both worlds. You do not need to pay that premium for it, but is getting access to a complete virtual system to host your own lovely new website.
Which one to go for?
Well, now the pros and cons of each of the hosting plans are pretty clear to you. There isn’t any doubt, dedicated hosting is a winner, but VPS hosting is a balanced played, which most can afford. So let’s find out when you actually need a VPS hosting plan.
If you have started your own website, and you have hosted it on a shared hosting, it will be good for the first few days. But once your traffic starts growing, and your visitors push the traffic limits of the shared hosting plan, it is time to get a VPS hosting. This can undoubtedly help you deal with the traffic surge as you can enhance the storage, RAM, processing power and other necessary parameters as per your requirements.
Are you planning to host a website, which runs some application that is not supported by the shared hosting provider? It might happen in many cases as the shared hosting provider run an operating system which might not support your desired application. In such a case, VPS hosting can be your solution as you can install your own preferred operating system as per your requirements, and run the application which you need without any hassles.
If any other website running on a shared hosting become vulnerable to some threats, chances are there, the same threat can also affect your and other websites residing on the same server. Chances of that are less in case of a VPS hosting plan as your website is virtually hosted on a separate computer, which might or might not run on a different operating system, making it very difficult to exploit your website, unless it is a targeted attack.
So that is it. At the end of the day, VPS hosting is the winner, if cost-effectiveness, flexibility, security is taken into consideration. Even if you are planning to start your own website, and is having money to afford something better than a shared hosting, choosing a VPS hosting hardly has any chances to disappoint you.
Hope the information was helpful for you. Do you have anything to add? Feel free to comment it down below.
Check out hostedincanada.com for Canadian Shared, VPS and dedicated hosting!
Dean