Most businesses today need to have a website. Whether it is used for marketing, lead generation, providing customers with information, or direct sales, it is an essential component of any successful business. One of the most important aspects of running a website is its hosting. Website hosting is how and where the actual data for your website is kept and accessed by visitors. Very few companies will self-host these days because it is difficult and inefficient.
Instead, almost all websites today are hosted by a dedicated hosting company. When working with hosting companies, you will need to choose what type of technology you need. For very basic websites that do not get a lot of traffic, shared hosting is the best option.
For extremely large sites or those that get a huge amount of traffic, using dedicated servers is the way to go. For many mid-sized websites, virtual private server, or VPS, hosting is the best choice. Learn more about what VPS hosting is and when it is the right option to consider.
What is a Virtual Private Server?
A virtual private server is a type of web hosting where one physical server is used to host multiple different websites. This is done by installing software that sets up multiple separate virtual environments.
From the point of view of the customer, each of these environments appears as a separate server, even though they are all on one physical server. This means that if your company website is on a VPS, you would have absolutely no interaction with other sites that are on the same physical server.
The biggest thing to keep in mind with VPS hosting is that you are assigned set system resources that are available only for your website. This is unlike shared hosting technology where all the sites on a single server will share all the system resources.
With VPS hosting, your site will not be impacted if another site on the same server starts experiencing huge amounts of traffic. If the same thing happened with shared hosting, your site could experience slowness or even downtime due to the heavy traffic on another site on your server.
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Is VPS Hosting Right for Your Company?
In general, VPS hosting is used for websites that get to popular or to large for a shared server to handle. They are also popular for sites that want to be certain that their site will not go down due to the activity from another site on the same server. There are many advantages to using a virtual private server, but there are also some downsides to be aware of.
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Benefits of VPS Hosting
- Isolated Environment – Your website will be isolated in its own environment so it will not be impacted by other sites on the server.
- Affordable – VPS hosting is far less expensive than a dedicated server.
- Control of Virtual Server – Unlike shared hosting, you will have a much greater level of control over the settings on your VPS. You can often choose what software version you use, what databases are available, and much more.
- Dedicated Resources – Good quality hosting companies will provide you with dedicated system resources when you sign up for VPS hosting. Some companies provide a set level of dedicated resources and then compliment that with some extra shared resources to help deal with spikes in demand.
- Stability – VPS hosting is typically going to be a lot more stable than a shared hosting environment. This applies both to uptime and the average response time of your website.
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Downsides to VPS Hosting
- Still Sharing a Server – While you have your own virtual environment, you are still sharing a server with other sites. This puts some limitations on your options for growth.
- Some Restrictions in Place – You will have a lot more options than with shared hosting, but you still typically cannot select your server operating system and certain other things.
- Added Point of Failure – In order to run a VPS it is necessary to have software in place to create the virtual environments. While very rare, a problem with that software or a security vulnerability at this layer could cause a problem.
- More Expensive than Shared Hosting – VPS hosting is typically a lot cheaper than dedicated servers, but it is almost always going to be more expensive than shared hosting.
Changing Hosting Types is Easy
If you are trying to determine what type of hosting is right for your business, VPS solutions are definitely going to be one of the best for most situations. That being said, you should not worry to much about making this type of decision.
This is because if you decide that whatever hosting package you sign up for is not meeting your needs, migrating to a new type is not difficult. As long as you are remaining with the same hosting company, you can usually move from shared to VPS to dedicated servers without downtime or other issues. In fact, good hosting companies will perform this type of migration for you, so you don’t need to worry about a thing.
Whenever shopping for web hosting, the most important thing you can do is seek out a hosting provider that has an impeccable reputation. There are thousands of hosting companies out there, some of which have really questionable services. Finding a top-tier hosting provider will help ensure that no matter what type of hosting technology you use, it will work properly. They will also be there to help you with all your need.
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