In today’s digital world, a website is essential for any business or individual to showcase their brand or share information with the world. However, simply creating a website is not enough – you also need to ensure that it is visible to others. This is where web hosting comes into play.
Web hosting involves uploading the necessary files of your website onto a web server. Typically, web servers are purchased from and hosted by providers who offer web hosting services for a monthly fee.
One type of web hosting that is becoming increasingly popular is VPS hosting, or virtual private server hosting. In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about VPS hosting, including how it differs from other types of hosting, and its advantages and disadvantages.
VPS HOSTING VS SHARED HOSTING VS DEDICATED HOSTING
The most basic type of web hosting is shared hosting. With shared hosting, multiple websites are stored on a single server. While shared hosting tends to be cheaper and easier to manage, it can negatively impact website performance due to the shared resources.
Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, involves renting an entire physical server for your website. This option provides the most power and control, but also comes with a higher cost.
VPS hosting falls somewhere in the middle of these two options. It involves creating a virtual server with resources dedicated to a particular website. Although the physical server space is shared between different sites, each site has its own unique “virtual” partition with a set amount of computational resources dedicated to it. This maximizes site performance while saving on storage space.
How VPS Hosting Works
VPS hosting works by creating a virtual layer on top of the server operating system, which separates the server into multiple components, each with its own virtual “walls.” Each user can install and run their own virtual operating system independently of others, just like having a private dedicated server. The separate virtual server means you have dedicated computation resources, such as RAM, disk space, and CPU cores that are not shared between users.
Benefits of VPS Hosting
Guaranteed Resources: With VPS hosting, each user gets a determinate amount of virtual resources allocated, which means that no matter what the traffic on other sites is, your virtual server will have its own pool of computing resources to draw from. This ensures consistent performance and faster load times for your website.
Better Performance: Having your own dedicated pool of resources also means your site will perform more consistently and not be affected by the traffic on other parts of the server. This translates into faster load and response times for your website.
Flexibility: VPS hosting adds an extra virtual layer to the server so each user can run their own OS separately from others. This means you have greater flexibility on the kinds of programs and software you install. VPSs also give admins root access, which gives you 100% control over software configurations.
Multiple Domain Hosting: VPS providers offer plans that let you host multiple sites on the same virtual server. To learn more benefits about VPS, check out my best VPS web hosting guide Australia. In there you’ll find some great international and local VPS providers.
Drawbacks of VPS Hosting
More Expensive: VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting. However, it is not as expensive as dedicated hosting, though it is significantly more expensive than shared hosting.
Limited Server Space: Although VPS hosting gives each user more space on a physical server, it is still possible for the VPS provider to oversell their server space. If there are too many virtual servers running on the same server, then you can see performance drops as you would with shared hosting.
Limited Support: Running a VPS server requires some technical know-how, so those who are not web-savvy may have a hard time handling a VPS server. VPS hosting often comes with less customer support than shared hosting.
Conclusion
VPS hosting is a good option for mid-sized websites that need more server space and resources than shared hosting can offer, but without the cost of dedicated hosting. With its guaranteed resources, better performance, flexibility, and multiple domain hosting capabilities, it’s no surprise that VPS hosting is gaining popularity among website owners. However, it is important to note its drawbacks, such as the higher cost and technical expertise required to manage it.