What is Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting?
Web Hosting is a service that allows a user (private, organization or company) to "Upload" a Website to the internet and make it accessible to all users of the Internet. But what's the difference between the various types of servers such as Shared, VPS and Dedicated?
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Website Hosting is an online service that allows individuals and companies to have a website constantly posted on the Internet, without having to incur the cost of similar equipment ( e.g. servers, fast internet, etc) or the need to service a large number of external connections and bandwidth. This is undertaken by web hosting companies that offer space on their servers and part of their network connection.
Most web hosting companies offer at least these three types of hosting to cover the needs of their customers. These are Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. Let us explain below each type of hosting.
What is Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the cheapest hosting service of the three but lacks a lot of resources. It is suitable for small blogs or for companies that wish to have an internet presence without caring if they get traffic or sales through that channel.
Shared hosting is basically a dedicated server, whose resources are distributed to additional users. These users have their websites hosted with you on the same physical machine.
The service is provided with controlled and protected use of resources by each user, but precisely because the total resources of the server are shared, this solution serves sites that do not present very large requirements to their natural resources.
Such cases are blogs, gallery sites, corporate websites, e-shops that do not have very large product base, forums with mediocre user base, and sites that are built with one of the most famous CMS, as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or with some eCommerce application such as Magento.
What is VPS Hosting
VPS is a small Virtual Server that provides more power and control than a Shared Server (and less than a dedicated server). VPS Hosting cost's significantly more than shared hosting buy it is cheaper than dedicated hosting whilst providing many of the same benefits.
- It is designed for the customer who wants more power and control than shared hosting, but is not yet ready for a dedicated server.
- It gives you total control over your applications.
- No VPS is allowed to use all server resources; resource usage are limited for each VPS instance. The server hardware (RAM, CPU, I / O, Bandwidth) instead of staying idle is utilized by any VPS that needs additional resources.
What is Dedicated Hosting
A dedicated server is the ideal solution for those wishing to have the maximum capabilities and the highest performance from a server. Unlike a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that is divided into sections, the Dedicated Server is single and dedicated to your website only.
With a Dedicated Server you enjoy among others.
- Full root access
- Full Web Host Management (cPanel or Plesk)
- Linux operating System (Centos)
- Even higher speeds and processing power
- Absolute autonomy and exclusivity management
- Even larger storage space
- Absolute protection and data assurance
- Fully managed (full management and support)
- Instant upgrade to RAM, storage space etc
By reading this article, we hope you understood the difference between the three types of hosting in order to make an informed decision.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via the comments section below.
