There are different types of hosting present on the market, and one can be confused: how to choose the most optimal one? How can I decide between shared hosting, VPS and a Dedicated server? This article will help to clear up the differences of hosting planes, which will give you the understanding of what hosting type you need.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting provides Hosting Plans for business class. To consider an example, this is something like living in an Apartment Complex. All inhabitants are concentrated in one place and have to share available (and not unlimited) resources, like parking lot, laundry, playground and other facilities. The same way all shared hosting accounts take pieces of pie, sharing resources available on the server: memory, storage space, CPU time, etc. Of course, there are hundreds of plans with different opportunities and characteristics.
VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting offers hosting plans of 4GB, 6GB, and 8GB. That is similar to having a Condo. Although you still have to share your property, your own territory is managed and repaired on your own from the inside. There are some benefits, though, as having less residents and your own parking space. Virtual Private Server allows you not to share resources with everyone. Yes, overall CPU and storage space are divided between all accounts, but everyone gets his own portion. With this, you get more efficiency and flexibility than shared server users.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated Hosting is the same as having your own house. All the resources on the machine are entirely yours, being always available. There are no other accounts/residents on your machine/property, and no one else can tap into your resources.
Server Resources
Now it’s time to consider when bigger facilities are required. When do you need to move to a Condo or purchase your own house?
No matter which type of hosting is selected, a website is placed on a web server. When people open your site and its pages, server’s memory and CPU are applied altogether to send a requested page. Sometimes a website may use too much memory or CPU for these pages to be served, which will be the sign that your account needs to be upgraded.
Moving from Apartments to a Condo
Switching from shared hosting to VPS
Shared accounts work well for the majority of users owning small and medium scale sites. It allows hosting various applications, there are lots of e-mail accounts that can be used. But, it’s time to think about a larger territory when:
Your family grows bigger, and a small apartment is not enough to locate all the members. Condo may supply you with additional “rooms”. Thus, if a website gains a lot of popularity, upgrade from shared hosting to VPS may be appropriate for getting more memory, CPU and other resources for your account. Improved characteristics help handling all traffic load on the site.
Customization of your property is something that may not always be permitted if you don’t own the apartment. Want to change furniture or paint walls black? Being a Condo occupant, you have such an opportunity, and may transform the space inside just as you like, selecting as many decorations as needed. If you need software that is not provided by shared hosting, upgrading to VPS makes it possible to run any applications and programs that you would like.
Time for one’s own family Home?
When VPS Hosting must be upgraded to Dedicated Hosting
Continuing comparing hosting to apartment rent, we can say that condo provides a lot of control but not complete control. For instance, if you decide to organize a night party, other residents will hear the noise and would most probably complain or conflict. If your girlfriend or a friend wants to move in with you, there is no place to accommodate both of you and no opportunity to build up another room. Condo served good for some time, but it’s still not enough for a whole family to reside with too much activity going on around. This is the high time to purchase a single family home, with all extra space and rooms, huge parking space for your cars and a back yard where your children can play with your dog.
VPS Servers is a perfect solution for medium size business. You get a virtual server that may be adjusted and set up the way you need to. The number of websites hosted is unlimited. The only restriction is resources, such as CPU time and memory. Yes, it is not a dedicated server, you still have to share it with some other users. It means that if your website is too busy, its functioning may still affect other users, causing performance issues because of much CPU time and memory used. It also means that if your script is unoptimized, it may go out of control, disrupting site and the whole server as well. That, in turn, may probably result in downtime for other users of the server.
Which role does server administration play?
All shared servers are monitored 24/7 by server administration that takes care of the server and makes sure that everything works properly. If they notice some incorrect user behavior or other suspicious actions, they involve themselves and resolve the issue. If they notice that server’s resources are not enough to provide proper site functioning, other alternatives such as a dedicated server are offered.
Take a look at the extensive range of Web Hosting services by Inxy.com from which you can choose the one best suited to you.
