If you operate a small business website and have become dissatisfied with the overall performance of your shared hosting service, perhaps it’s time to upgrade. If your small business budget can’t handle the cost of a dedicated server, a suitable option would be a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Shared Hosting

A good analogy for shared hosting would be people living in an apartment. The residence share common space with their neighbors. You cannot customize anything, but you share maintenance cost and responsibility with your neighbors. Shared hosting is the most commonly used method of hosting and is usually the least expensive type of hosting service.

Advantages Of Shared Hosting

• It’s a good option for smaller websites and it’s easy to maintain
• Plans are usually inexpensive
• Technical maintenance of the server is provided by the hosting company
• You can demand for extra storage space
• Virtualized software can be installed

Disadvantages Of Shared Hosting

• Your website performance may be affected by other websites hosted on the shared server
• Depending on the hosting company, customer support may be limited
• Possible security issues that effect the common shared server can effect your website
• You may face long term scalability problems

VPS Hosting

There are two types of VPS hosting solutions: managed and unmanaged VPS services. Managed VPS hosting services are similar to shared hosting. Your hosting plan will include skilled technicians who will handle issues that may arise with your host server. Managed VPS hosting servers are the most useful way to go if you’re not very tech savvy or don’t have the staff to handle technical issues that can arise with the hosting. You may also decide on Managed hosting if you’re a business owner who just desires to focus on operating their business rather than concern yourself with server functionality so that your clients can reach and use it.

Unmanaged VPS hosting requires that you have a knowledgeable technician who is capable in resolving issues that may occur on your server.

While unmanaged VPS hosting is frequently less costly than managed hosting simply because you’re not paying for the technical support, you do however have to make sure you’ll be able to handle technical issues that may occur or you might find yourself with a non-functioning website for hours or even days which ultimately means that will pay much more in lost business than if you would have had used a shared or managed VPS hosting plan.

Advantages Of Unmanaged VPS Hosting

• You can upgrade or downgrade your service
• You have more space and bandwidth which enables you to do what you like
• You own the server, so you can configure anything you wish
• This methods allows for easy scalability and backup
• You can perform custom firewall configurations for applications

Disadvantages Of Unmanaged VPS Hosting

• It is usually costly, so be aware of cheap offers
• You need a dedicated system administrator to take care of the server
• Certain applications require delicately as they may have issues running in a virtualized environment

When Should I Move From Shared Hosting To VPS Hosting?

If you’re asking this question regarding your online business website hosting service, then perhaps it’s time to consider upgrading from a shared server to a VPS hosting plan that you either are comfortable taking care of yourself or opt to have a great hosting company manage it for you. If most of the situations below apply, then moving to VPS hosting could be the right choice for your business:

• You feel the need more control of your hosting server
• You plan to send more emails
• You looking for better performance and stability
• You want to expand the existing performance level

Darrel Carpenter

Darrel Carpenter
DIRECTOR OF DEVOPS

Darrel brings to the table 10 years of education, more than 20 years of engineering experience, and 3 decades of tireless tinkering. He is our Systems Administrator, Network Engineer and builds all the infrastructure that powers our client’s websites, emails and more. In his off time, he enjoys writing about writes about servers, content management systems, cloud computing, web hosting, and more.