Things You Can’t Do With Shared Hosting – But Can With A VPS

When starting any website, the most common solution would be shared hosting. This one is not that expensive and lets you start rather quickly. Many hosting providers offer pretty efficient shared hosting solutions, which include convenient services like cPanel or Plesk, that provide you with a good way to start your online presence. However, the keyword is “start”, since as you proceed and your business evolves, this means that the traffic of your website is getting more and more intense and you probably need more capacities to run more powerful applications. This is when you’ll start noticing the downsides of shared hosting, as your site always competes with lots of other users for resources, and when these are running short, your web presence will experience performance troubles or even crash. Furthermore, if any of the sites hosted on the server gets hacked, then the rest of the sites get “under attack” as well. And the bigger your site is, the more risk you are running when there is a data leak.

To sum up, when renting shared hosting, sooner or later you’ll feel the urge to switch to something different. And most probably, the best option here will be Linux VPS hosting. Therefore, in today’s article, we want to share with you some features that are exclusive to VPS.

Your site’s performance doesn’t depend on others

Unlike the case of shared hosting, the users of VPS get a fixed amount of resources allocated to them. This is provided by the very nature of the VPS: virtualization technology. That means, that, although all users share the same physical machine, for each of them an independent system is running. This one has its own operating system and a well-defined quantity of resources. This quantity can be rescaled later on, upon the request of the customer for additional payment, but as long as your VPS is running, you may not worry about your neighbors. Apart from ensuring stable performance and saving your website from any downtime, VPS saves you from the inevitable risks of using shared hosting provided by the fact that all customers on a shared server share the same IP. That means, that if any of the neighboring websites is involved in any doubtful activities and gets blocked, the same destiny may wait for your innocent website as well. With VPS this problem will never be the case.

More security

If we have a closer look at security issues, then we’ll find the following risks of using shared hosting. If among any of the websites that are hosted on one shared hosting there happens to be a hacker, this one can easily break through his neighbors’ protection and get the data of their websites. Otherwise, performing this kind of intrusion won’t be of trouble for the hacker, even if he doesn’t have a site on the same hosting: it’s just enough that there is at least one site with poor protection – once it is hacked, the rest of the sites are running the same risk as in the previous case. To sum up, by using shared hosting you are putting up with a constant danger of getting hacked eventually, even if you a trying to do your best with security measures. This fact will be especially troublesome for e-commerce since this kind of website deals with hundreds of financial transactions each day, and in case of a breach, the sensitive data of your customers may get at risk, resulting in vast financial losses. That’s why spending some more money on a VPS now will save you money in the future.

Cost

That we started the discourse on money, let’s continue it in the following section. It’s worth mentioning that by opting for a VPS, you’ll face a great number of possible packages to meet the needs of any business – which is not the case with shared hosting where usually one option with fixed charges is offered. With VPS you choose, how many resources you may require and pay for them. Once your business gains momentum or, vice versa, experiences a period of calm, you can scale up or down available resources, in or decreasing the payment sum respectively. Very flexible. As for maintenance charges of VPS, they are also lower than those of shared hosting.

Growth

Taking into consideration the possibility of scaling your VPS up and down in a very flexible way, this brings to you much more control over your growth – adjust resources anytime and feel secure planning your business.

Customization

With VPS hosting you’ll get access to much more customization options than with VPS. This is provided by the high degree of independence from other users that is precluded by VPS – you have your own virtual machine and you can set it up according to your needs, with root access and the possibility to install any software you need. By the way, you can also choose how you want your server to be managed (unmanaged VPS), whether you feel confident enough to do it yourself or you are ready to pay someone to do it for you (managed VPS). 

Conclusion

Shared hosting might be a good way to start your business. However, most businesses sooner or later grow out of the shared hosting features and need more capacities and security to continue prospering. If you were not sure, whether you need VPS or not, we hope, that this article has made things clear for you. If you have already made up your mind to rent a VPS, check out a European VPS provider called HostZealot. See you next time and have a nice day!

Johnny McKinsey
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