Selecting the right host can be daunting – unless you are comparing your options by price (which you shouldn’t be doing). A lot of consideration goes into deciding if you are to end up with an option that suits your business model perfectly, or not. If you are wondering which hosting option to choose – whether VPS or shared hosting, this article will guide you in making the right choice.
We asked an expert from KnownHost.com, a leading hosting company, to tell us the difference between the two options. From his nuggets, we came up three key differences between shared hosting and VPS hosting, and here they are:
Performance
If you are keen on making your clients happy, then top performance is non-negotiable. According to Kissmetrics, about half of web browsers expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less and tend to leave it if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. Again, 79% of online buyers who find the site’s performance to be an issue say they cannot return to purchase something from the site and about 44% would inform their friends about their poor experience buying online. The bottom line is, your website needs to be fast enough to serve its intended purpose.
Shared hosting: since it is a shared plan, the performance of your site can be affected by other websites and will be restricted to less performance than even a modest VPS. But if you have limited performance demands and don’t want to go through all the maintenance stress, shared hosting could be your best shot. Small or new site owners often start here and then go upward when required.
VPS hosting: VPS hosting delivers better performance than shared hosting, because of the bandwidth it provides. It gives you more flexibility to configure your applications. However, you will need to have a system administrator to maintain your server. In most cases, a VPS server will be ideal if you have multiple sites to manage or experience high traffic demands.
Server resources
Shared hosting lets multiple sites use a single server. VPS hosting, on the other hand, mimics a dedicated server within a shared hosting environment. Ideally, it borders both the dedicated and shared hosting.
Shared hosting: although no account affects the other’s experience your resources (RAM, CPUs and disk space) are limited. Meaning, your site won’t use the resources beyond the maximum permissible. Shared hosting is an excellent choice if you do not need a bigger processing power or space.
VPS hosting: VPS gives you more resources and greater private disk space. It is a perfect option if you are planning to scale your business and need to provide your users with a better experience that surpasses the shared hosting standard.
Security
Shared hosting is highly affordable, but isn’t as tight when it comes to safety. Often, in the end, it boils down to the hosting provider you are working with and the measures they have in place.
Shared hosting: although it is considered safe, it is still possible for a security breach to happen because of the shared aspect. If one webmaster makes a mistake, it can affect your site and result in chaos and other problems.
VPS hosting: you can protect your site with strong safety features that are unique to VPS hosting, which makes it a more secure option.