Benefits and Drawbacks of VPS Hosting Explained

There are three most popular services including shared hosting, VPS hosting & Dedicated server provided by web hosting companies. Among them, VPS hosting plays an important role. People often confuse whether it can meet their needs. To make a smarter choice, it is very important to know the pros & cons of different hosting technologies.

Shared hosting is when multiple websites are hosted on a single server, sharing the resources with all the users. It is preferable for newbies and small businesses as of its low cost. On the other hand, Dedicated server is when a whole server and its resources are used by a single website to handle large traffic but it costs more. In this case, VPS hosting always located between these two forms.

Now we come to the point of what is VPS hosting?

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and comes with a certain amount of disk space, memory, processing power & bandwidth. It's a physical server containing dozens of smaller virtual servers. It is divided into multiple servers and each has its own IP address and it can run its own operating system. So, the customers have full root access to their servers.

So, How can VPS be beneficial for your business? To know this, you must have a look at the benefits and drawbacks of it.

Benefits of VPS Hosting:

To have more control over their environment, many users have a preference for VPS hosting as they can't do so in a shared plan. A shared server may disable some PHP functions including show_source, system, shell_exec, passthru, exec, popen, proc_open that you need to execute. So, to avail of these, you must upgrade your plan to a VPS server. VPS acts like a dedicated server but there are budget constraints to move to it.

More Control Over The Server & its Customization

A customer gets full root access while using a VPS server. The server control panel and operating system are provided to the users to control their servers with no restraint. You can also customize the various server applications as this will not affect the other sites. You can access and edit all of the files and also can use root to install and uninstall programs on your server.

Besides, users may have requirements to install some applications they actually need including Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, PHP etc. In shared hosting, they are not permitted to do that where on VPS hosting you will be allowed to install the application you want.

Cheaper than a Dedicated server

VPS hosting is less expensive than a dedicated one. A user enjoys various features of Dedicated hosting in virtual technology that makes use of economies of scale to provide best of class hardware and software solutions.

Privacy & Security

In VPS hosting you've full privacy in using your operating system as you are not sharing the Operating System with any other websites and none can have access to your files.

It is relatively secure. The main server is protected from the most known DDoS attacks.

Server Resources

Each website is provided with a dedicated amount of server resources in the VPS hosting. That means, your site performance does not depend upon other websites and whatever they do.

Drawbacks of VPS hosting:

Expensive than shared hosting

Users have to share the same server with others in VPS hosting but the price is still far higher than Shared Hosting. This is a key inconvenience to VPS.

Requires Technical Experience

In comparing with shared and cloud hosting, VPS server requires more technical knowledge to manage and maintain. Again comparing to a dedicated server, it is less demanding for the users.

Less Powerful than Dedicated server

Performance is largely related to the server’s hardware specifications. If a VPS cannot satisfy your needs then, dedicated server is your next option as it will always have a performance advantage over VPS servers.

Resource Overselling

In the VPS server, your resources may not allocate properly. This is because your web hosting service provider may have oversold its space that causes server issues and will affect all other sites on that server.

Why VPS?

Overall, VPS is a reliable hosting service from various perspectives. You are able to get in a dedicated package without paying such a high price in a VPS hosting environment. It is a bridge between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Its main advantage is the ability to have complete control over the hosting environment. There are a few issues you may experience if your vendor does not handle VPS properly.

A Little Judgement

If you are serious about your website or online business then you should definitely upgrade your plan from shared hosting. Choosing the right host ensures that you are included in the security and good uptime as per your need. There are many companies that provide support and management services to assist with administrative tasks. MyLightHost - web hosting service provider always helps to move to more powerful options as your website grows. Their custom technology makes it easy to upgrade your account to VPS servers in just a click to successfully run your business.

I am Sharmin Islam working as a marketing officer at MyLightHost, a Web hosting service provider