Shared Hosting Vs VPS Hosting Vs Dedicated Hosting (Image courtesy- creativedesigntrends.com)
So which is really more beneficial – shared web hosting, virtual web hosting or cloud web hosting? No matter if you refer to a particular section of web hosting as shared hosting or, perhaps you choose the more old school term, virtual hosting, it’s nevertheless the same concept whereby you pay to utilize or rent a certain part of a server’s functionalities and storage. Shared hosting is easily the most standard route for businesses to host their websites simply for the fact that it’s a huge step forward from paying somebody to use their server services to buying and maintaining all the technology linked to your own set up. VPS and dedicated hosting too has their own merits and demerits. Let’s compare the features of all the three in detail-
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is typically one of the most affordable, and applicable options to people in the initial stage or for those using smaller websites that would not generate massive amounts of website traffic. There exist multitudes of possibilities when it comes to choosing a provider. A company which allows other people to hog up your fair share or, who overloads a server with lot of clients may perhaps literally cause your web site to come to a screeching halt. Even a sluggish loading website will send your website visitors go elsewhere.
Another possible pitfall to be familiar with in shared hosting is the harmful presence of your server neighbors whose unscrupulous content or spamming methods could get your flawlessly legit website blocked. The top web hosting companies are aware of web site content and take care of the issue, while free of charge web hosting companies are famous for not checking content and developing into a haven for spammers and also phishing systems.
In addition to keeping a close eye on usage rates and content, a good shared server web host ought to provide security measures, redundancy, reliable and updated hardware and software, and if possible, 24/7 customer support, or at best monitoring.
Advantages of Shared Hosting
1) The cost is by far one of the biggest advantage.
2) In addition to this, sites stored on shared hosting will typically offer more storage space and will be hosted on servers with highly redundant hardware.
3) Also, absolutely no sysadmin skills are needed.
Disadvantages of Shared Hosting
1) Most of the weaknesses of shared hosting are directly related to their advantages. Considering the fact that shared hosting servers host 100+ websites on a regular basis, your site is always dealing with other sites to get CPU time.
2) Shared hosting doesn’t scale very well to high traffic. A lot of this is due to the finite limit on shared resources.
3) Lack of support.
4) Back-ups are easy to do, but still require effort.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
VPS hosting can often be considered a step up from shared hosting. Once it’s time to start supporting heavy traffic and custom applications, a number of businesses make the switch to VPS hosting after experiencing the limitations of the shared hosting infrastructure. With VPS hosting you get your own installation of Windows that you can manage, typically administration access is given and you can then install additional software. This really is a big drawing factor for many people as you can install applications and do more superior items when you have control over the environment.
Benefits of VPS
1) Good amount of disk space and bandwidth.
2) Root access to the server, with flexibility to install any applications and software.
3) Ability to setup and configure the server.
4) Ability to run scripts to create a service on the web server.
5) Easy upgrade of plan.
Drawbacks of VPS
1) Usually requires self-management, and therefore deeper sysadmin knowledge.
2) Single point of failure (it is still just one server).
3) There is certainly a possibility that the hardware used on the host system will not be as redundant as the shared environment; nevertheless, this differs from provider to provider.
Dedicated Server Hosting
Obviously, the next step after VPS hosting is dedicated hosting. Boasting many of the exact same advantages as VPS with the additional benefit of more resources readily available, but, the drawback is cost involved.
Benefits of Dedicated Hosting
1) What-you-see-is-what-you-get.
2) Absolute Control.
3) Assured Reliability through SLAs.
4) Going with a dedicated server is going to grant you access to much more computing power than what is possible with a Shared or VPS plan.
Disadvantages of Dedicated Hosting
1) Manage your own backups and security.
2) Can be outdated and expensive to maintain.
3) Hardware Upgrades require downtime.
