When it comes to choosing a hosting provider be it either for your blog or business website, it’s fair to say that you as an owner have plenty of choice.
There are thousands of providers with their own unique service packages aimed at owners planning to open up different types of websites. In a way, however, the option to choose from thousands of websites can be an overwhelming one as well.
This especially true, if you’re not that tech-savvy and you don’t know the benefits and drawbacks of choosing a certain hosting type.
Luckily for you, however, we’ve written this article with the goal of explaining the two of the mostpopular hosting types – Shared and VPS hosting, since we’re sure you’ll consider them if you’re a beginner website owner.
First of all, what is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is a hosting type that refers to a hosting plan where your website has to share resources dedicated to a server with other neighbouring websites. This includes disk space, CPU among other things.
Naturally, this also means that Shared Hosting is by far the cheapest option for hosting them all, however, there is the fact that resources are in fact limited, since you and the other websites on the server have to work amongst yourselves to share them.
While it is a good option for beginners, one could argue that being too dependent on other websites is certainly a negative thing, since if one gets too crowded, neighbours will be affected as well.
What are the advantages of choosing shared hosting?
- It’s very simple to create your first website
- Your goal is a website for a small or medium-sized company and you won’t need much resources
- You have a limited budget to spend on hosting.
- You’re not very familiar with different aspects of web development.
Positives of Shared hosting
- Very beginner-friendly
- Doesn’t need technical knowledge to operate
- By far the least expensive hosting options
Negatives of Shared hosting
- Errors and downtime occur if high traffic
- No root access and limited for the back end
- Often a very limited amount of resources.
Ok, so what’s VPS hosting?
VPS hosting is a different type of hosting subscription than shared hosting packages.
While you still share space on the same physical server, each website here has its own virtual space, which means that you are completely isolated from your neighbours and you won’t be affected by any fluctuations in traffic, exceeded resources and so on.
Naturally, VPS is a more expensive option than the regular shared hosting option.
A key difference here is of course the virtual partition of each user, making sure that each website has an equal amount of resources and the website doesn’t get influenced by their neighbors.
What are the advantages of choosing VPS hosting?
- You have a decent budget and plan to invest into your website and its hosting
- You have a plan to expand your website
- Also you think your website will experience high traffic in the future.
Positives of VPS hosting
- You get more memory and bandwidth
- Much easier to scale up
- Access to root settings
- Stability and independence from other websites on the server
Negatives of VPS hosting
- Costs a bit more than shared hosting
- Requires more technical knowledge to operate.
What are the differences between VPS and Shared hosting options?
Choosing the right hosting option can be quite a challenging task, especially if you have no idea what you’re doing at first. Luckily for you, we’ve prepared the main information you have to know when choosing either a VPS or Shared hosting option.
So, let’s start with the very basics of both of these options.
To explain the difference between VPS and Shared hosting we will use a simple analogy involving property.
Shared hosting could be thought of as someone renting a room in an apartment. You have your own space, it’s a little cramped and dependent on others, but on the other hand it’s the cheapest option. The same goes for your website, even though it’s renting a space on the server, it occupies a very small part of it.
VPS hosting
For VPS, your website could be thought of as a whole flat in a huge house, with more rooms, convenience and flexibility. All of this of course, comes at a higher price. While you get much more control, it’s important to note that you’re still sharing space with others nonetheless.
Typically, shared hosting is the best choice for people looking to have a static website that aimed at simply informing visitors about something, and one that doesn’t expect to receive a lot of traffic.
While you won’t get the extra traffic, security or any additional features for the matter, you’re likely to not need them at all.
Meanwhile VPS is a bit of a different animal. For startup business and online stores, there’s no better option for these kinds of websites. You’ll get increased resources, security, performance and other features for a fairly minimal rise in price in comparison to shared hosting plan.
VPS hosting is a step up, and ideal for small businesses, online stores, and larger personal sites. You’ll see an increase in features, security and performance, all for a very reasonable rise in cost.
VPS hosting is also an option that’s better for businesses that plan to grow in the nearby future. Let’s you’re a startup now, but plan to scale up in the future. VPS can be better for that as also the provider has to increase your plan bit by bit.
When should I upgrade my hosting plan to the next level?
If you’re already taking part in a shared hosting plan. You’re probably thinking hard about when to upgrade your plan to the next level, that is VPS hosting.
Before you do upgrade, ask yourself a few important questions:
- Will I sometime in the near future host a number of websites on my account? (subdomains for example?
- Do I plan to grow and receive additional traffic in the future?
- Do I want to have more management freedom when it comes to my server?
Regardless of your end goal, VPS and shared hosting options have their own positives and negatives and it’s up to you to make those final decisions.
Conclusion
We could say that what hosting plan you choose for your website largely. It depends on what your expectations for it are. If you plan to start and grow a business, you may start on a shared plan, but we largely recommend focusing on VPS hosting if you have ambitions for the website.
However, it’s clear that both hosting options have their own positives and negatives.
To end this text on a high note, we present a short summary of the features you get with both hosting plans.
- Resources and safety: your website gets more resources with a VPS plan. You separated from others better. Meanwhile, a shared hosting space means that you get a cheaper plan, but less of the resources that you might need. Plus a VPS will require more technical knowledge to run.
- Administration: VPS allows better control of your server than that of shared hosting, however, shared hosting is easier to manage.
- Scalability options: VPS is a much better option for future upgrades if you plan to for the future.
- Prices: Shared hosting is by far the cheapest if you plan on saving money on hosting, but they are identical in many cases.
At the end of the day, both of these options could work depending on what you want to achieve with your website. It’s up to you to evaluate the positives and negatives.
Prepared with the help of hostens.com.
