Understanding Your Site Needs – Shared, VPS, or Dedicated Hosting?
TweetI’d bet that most sites on the web today are low-traffic sites that can easily be served on cheap shared hosting accounts. That’s not a criticism by the way, because that statement refers to most of my own sites too. I’m perfectly happy using shared hosting for most of my sites. There comes a time in many site owners lives, however, when they realize that their best site has outgrown shared hosting. With any luck, one of your sites will get to that point as well, and you’ll be faced with a couple of choices. Do you upgrade to a full dedicated server (which is usually very expensive) or could the site run well on a server that is somewhere between shared hosting and dedicated hosting? For many, the answer is to choose VPS web hosting, which is usually a good choice for the site that has outgrown shared hosting but isn’t bringing in enough income yet to justify dedicated hosting.
When I first reached the point where I needed to move from shared hosting to something bigger and better, I kept seeing VPS being bandied about as the right solution, but it was hard to find out what VPS really *was*. I already knew that I couldn’t afforded a dedicated server, so I was fairly certain that the mid-range VPS solution (Virtual Private Server) was what I wanted, but I felt like I was stepping into that decision with blinders on. (In fact, I was, but it didn’t take long after making the decision to figure out what it all meant).
So, I think it’s a good idea to give a brief description of the differences between shared hosting, vps hosting, and dedicated hosting. Then, if you need to make the move to something bigger/better than your current shared hosting, you’ll at least have enough information to start research on what you need.
Shared Hosting – The Low End
Benefits:
- Cheap. You aren’t risking much money on a site that may never make you a dime.
- Fully managed by host. You don’t have to worry about keeping the hardware or software upgraded, or manage the server in any way. The host takes care of it all.
Drawbacks:
- Shared Disk Space, Ram and CPU Resources. Your site is sharing those resources with many other sites (usually a few hundred, sometimes many more than that). If there are enough resources left for whatever your site needs to display, it gets it. If those resources have been used up by someone else’s site, tough luck, kiddo. This is usually the reason your site ends up outgrowing shared hosting. Once it becomes popular and is getting bucketloads of traffic, there will never be enough resources on a shared server to allow your site to work properly.
- Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions. Shared servers, for security purposes mostly, must restrict your access to certain features that would normally be available to you on other types of hosting. These restrictions may vary depending upon the host, but things at the server level such as SSH access and the ability to add custom server configurations are often restricted from shared hosting. These restrictions usually don’t affect most sites, but if your site needs it, and your shared hosting restricts it, that’s an ugly problem to have.
Dedicated Hosting – The High End
Benefits:
- No Shared Resources. All of the server’s resources are yours and yours alone. Only your site(s) live on this server, so no resources are being taken away from you to give to others.
- Completely Configurable To Your Specific Needs. The dedicated server is yours to mold however you wish. Need some new web gizmo running on your server? No problem. Just install it and use it. You can think of this server as being just like the computer you have at your desk. It’s yours. Do what you want with it.
Drawbacks:
- Expensive! Your site needs to be bringing in enough income to justify the high price of going with a dedicated server.
- Requires technical skills to manage. You’d better have a good working knowledge of running a web server, because you’ll be responsible (in most cases) for running this one. If you’ve never done it before, you’re in for a shock. It’s a steep learning curve for the newbie. Some dedicated plans come fully managed by the host, but you can be sure your expensive plan just got a lot more expensive if you add fully managed service to the plan.
VPS Hosting – The Middle Ground
Benefits:
- Dedicated RAM & Disk Space, Shared CPU. While a VPS server will still share the CPU resources amongst your site and the other sites on the server, your site will get its own dedicated RAM and disk space. This is a big improvement over shared hosting.
- Server-Level Configuration. Just like a dedicated machine, you can configure the server however you wish.
- Burstable Memory. On at least some VPS plans, you get burstable memory which allows your site to be able to handle sudden traffic spikes (such as the Digg effect). The most painful thing to watch is a site that hits the front page of Digg but shuts down because it can’t handle the load. Burstable memory is designed to help alleviate that problem.
- Scalability. Like a dedicated machine, a VPS gives you room to grow. As your needs change, you can add more databases, expand to ecommerce, or add new sites. The VPS will handle most sites’ needs until they become powerhouses.
Drawbacks:
- Usually requires more management on your part. Although you won’t need the level of skills that you’d need for a dedicated plan, you’ll probably find that you’ll need to learn a few more things than you ever thought you’d know about running a web server. Many VPS plans come with semi-managed service, which means that some of the management is done by the host; leaving some of the management left to you. In general, the host will usually handle all the hardware and server software management, and you’ll need to handle any custom software issues. This threw me for a loop the first time I moved to a VPS plan. I recommend getting as much information as possible from the host as to what you’ll *really* be doing behind the scenes. You need to know if you can really handle the management tasks or not. This is not something your grandma can generally handle, so keep that in mind.
- Not Cheap. Ok, but that’s really only a slight drawback, as it really isn’t all that expensive either. More than likely, if your site is to the point where it needs to upgrade from shared hosting, it’s probably bringing in enough income to handle the added hosting fees. So in my mind, this is a non-issue.
Armed With Basic Knowledge
Now that you have a general idea of what a VPS is all about, you can start to research properly. Don’t upgrade with blinders on like I did. Have an understanding of what the move from shared hosting to a VPS plan will mean, and your experience of the upgrade will be better.
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Tags: dedicated server, Shared web hosting service, Virtual private server, web hosting
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Hi Donna,
Shared hosting are often servers packed with sites. However these servers are often very high end, and some hosts allows you to burst if you have sudden peaks in CPU or memory use. What I did not realize the first time I moved to a dedicated server was that I no longer had the ability to burst. So for a dedicated server you need to plan for sudden peaks in resource usage.
While having a managed dedicated server is very expensive, you do not have to become a server administrator to run your business. I am certain that paying the extra fee for full server management and having the techs install new software and advice on usage saves money you in the long run.
While VPS plans guarantees you a certain amount of RAM, it typically less than 1GB. It is not a lot.
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Hey, sorv, I agree that having a managed server is very likely worth the extra expense, but of course, you do have to be able to actually afford it in the first place.
But definitely, if I had my preference, I’d want to know that there were experienced folks that I could rely upon to manage things for me. VPS plans usually do have a RAM limit, but it’s still usually a good in-between measure when shared won’t do, but dedicated isn’t possible. Good to hear from you, btw, haven’t spoken with you in a while. Hope you’re well.
Yes, one of those 50-100$/month VPS plans should cover the needs for most sites. You might want to mention those “reseller” plans, that are a good option for those that owns a lot of low traffic sites.
Yes, it has been a long time. I have been “upgrading” myself. It took longer than expected.
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We have a dedicated server at work and it’s super fast but would be completely overkill if I were to host my blog on it.
I think dedicated would definitely be more for ecommerce, news sites and blogs that are simply huge like smashing magazine.
VPS looks great because of the flexibility and being able to scale even more than shared.
Don’t forget also that you could also balance out your costs if you ever decided to do reseller hosting on your server. Been mulling the idea of hosting websites for a few clients but then again it would come with headaches.
Thanks for clarifying the differences Donna; so tired of a lot of tech speak that it’s great just to hear a real world explanation.
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I’m glad my real world explanation helps. I get tired of all the tech speak too. And like you, I’m not terribly keen on the headaches that would come with client hosting, but it’s definitely a good idea for some.