Like the typical middle child, Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting often gets overlooked compared to its cheaper sibling, shared hosting, and its powerful older brother, the dedicated server.
On the one hand, you’ve got the affordability and ease of use of a shared hosting plan, ideal for novice webmasters or those looking to start a business on a budget, whilst on the other, you have the increased reliability, performance and flexibility of your own dedicated server plan.
Yet in its role as a solid compromise between the two, to skip over VPS when looking for the best website hosting for your new site is often to deny yourself the benefits of both.
What is VPS hosting?
VPS works on the same fundamental principle as shared hosting:
Taking one big server and partitioning it off into individual plans.
The big difference is that, not only are there fewer partitions, but those which are created are run by their own operating system and come with their own resources such as bandwidth and disk space allocation, greatly reducing the risk of some high-traffic website on the same server causing issues for your site.
In that regard, they function more or less the same as a dedicated server, just without all the expense or technical complications.
Speaking of which, here’s just a few advantages of a VPS hosting plan.
Cost-effective
You may have been considering an investment in a dedicated server, only to be put off by the cost.
This is where a Virtual Private Server really comes into its own. Plans typically cost much less than an actual dedicated solution, though you still get most of the benefits that you were looking for.
Greater Control
If money is a serious concern for you when picking out a hosting plan, you’ve probably been looking at shared options, but find yourself dissatisfied with the level of freedom and control you’ll have over your account.
You want to be able to install what you like, when you like, to reboot the server when required and take advantage of root access, all things that a shared plan doesn’t offer.
Increased performance and reliability
With more resources at your disposal and fewer websites based on the same physical server, your website will generally perform better than with a shared plan, benefiting from less downtime and quicker loading speeds at peak times.
Worried about a surge in traffic or large files dragging your site down at critical moments?
VPS works well to alleviate those fears and provide all the performance and reliability you could hope for.
Managed services doing all the hard work for you
Many people who opt to buy dedicated hosting have IT resources at their disposal to help them set up and maintain their server on a regular basis.
If this doesn’t sound like you, VPS offers a viable alternative with managed service plans, meaning all you have to worry about is running your site whilst your hosting company handles all the maintenance on your behalf.
Scalable to suit you
Planning to start off relatively small but envision your site growing over time, requiring more resources as a result?
You don’t necessarily need to take the just-in-case approach of paying for more than you initially need at the beginning. Your hosting VPS can expand to meet the increasing needs of your site, so you only pay for more resources when you really need them.
Combined, all of the above make VPS creates an ideal solution for those who want the power, performance, and freedom of a dedicated hosting server, but either aren’t ready or lack the budget, to make that investment.
Do you have more questions for our experts about VPS hosting? Get in touch on Twitter @WebDesignDIY or join in the conversation on Facebook and we may answer your burning questions in an upcoming post here on Web Design DIY.
