Choosing the right hosting package can be a difficult task, especially if you are not a technical person. There are three main options to choose from — Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Hosting, and Dedicated Hosting. Often businesses will just choose the lowest-cost option, which is shared hosting, but we all know that you get what you pay for, and lowest cost is not always the best value.
Below are 5 benefits of virtual private hosting and why I think more companies should consider moving their web sites to a virtual private server (VPS).
Speed – Is your website taking too long to load? If so, it’s likely because your hosting company has overloaded their shared servers. The Content Management Systems that many of today’s websites are built on store all web page content in a database. Every time a web page loads, it must first pull the content out of the database, which requires more resources than your older HTML websites did. As more businesses move from HTML to WordPress and other content management systems, these resources are being stretched too thin, causing your website to run slower.
Case in point: When Web Image Designs was running on a shared server, it took roughly 10-12 seconds to load the home page. The same exact website was moved to a VPS. Now the home page loads in under 2 – an astounding 500% increase in speed!
Security – VPS hosting is inherently more secure than shared hosting because, with each website having its own operating system and independent files, administrators are empowered to set up secure configurations. With shared hosting, multiple users share all resources, including the operating system, making it easier for hackers to exploit a system vulnerability and access others’ data.
Scalability – Although shared hosting promises “unlimited” storage space, that’s just not true. In reality, you’re allocated a certain amount of disk space. Memory needs to be divided among all websites using the server. With a VPS, your capability and capacity can easily be increased to meet additional demands, such as more memory or disk space.
Isolation – As the saying goes, one rotten apple spoils the bunch. With shared hosting, a high-traffic website running on the server could affect your site’s performance, or even worse, a poorly-coded application could potentially take down the entire server and all websites running on it. In contrast, Virtual Private Servers offer private, isolated environments where your website will not be affected by the performance or code of someone else’s site.
Greater Control – If you use shared hosting, your hosting company decides on your server settings based on what will meet the needs of the majority of users. These settings may not be adequate for your own site’s needs. With VPS, you have control and can configure the server settings to meet your website’s specific requirements.
Yes, it’s true that Virtual Private Hosting costs slightly more than shared hosting (though significantly less than a Dedicated Server). But if you were to ask me, I consider the vast improvements in speed, security, scalability, and control to be well worth the nominal price increase.
Not to mention, if you want to position yourself to support heavy traffic and custom applications, VPS hosting is the most logical way to bypass the limitations of a shared hosting infrastructure.