Web hosting reviews

When most businesses first have a website developed for themselves, their web designer organizes web hosting for them on a shared server somewhere. During the years the website normally grows and gets more visitors. The company also learns that a shared hosting account has many limitations and sooner or later they often start investigating the possibility of upgrading to a VPS or a dedicated server. In this short discussion we will try to highlight some of the factors involved in a decision between VPS Hosting Vs Dedicated Server - How to Compare the pros and cons.

A shared hosting account is basically exactly what the name says: An account where your website shares everything on a server with many other websites. You buy a certain amount of disk space and data transfer per month and that is what everyone else on the server gets.

The number of websites on a shared server can run into hundreds and even be more than a thousand. The drawback of all this is if even one of those websites uploads a script that brings down the server, your website will also go down. If any one of them sends out thousands of SPAM emails which blocks the mail server, your email will also stop functioning.

The need for a VPS or dedicated server therefore arises from the need to have more control over what happens to your website. The abbreviation VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. In many respects this functions like a dedicated server. You get your own share of hard drive space, your share of memory and a fixed share of the CPU of the computer.

The major advantage of a VPS is that under most circumstances your website will be unaffected by what happens on the VPS next to you. You have your own RAM and CPU and what someone else does will not normally interfere with what you are doing.

A further plus of a VPS is that the cost is much lower than that of a dedicated server. It is still a lot more expensive than a shared hosting account, but you should save about 80% on the cost of a dedicated server depending on how much space and bandwidth you require.

One of the few disadvantages of a VPS is that it still runs on shared infrastructure. If something goes wrong with the main server, all VPS servers set up on that server will go down.

A dedicated server is the cream of the crop. Here you have full control over your own destiny. You can upload custom programs and your server will not be affected by what anyone else does. You have full control of your own email and website data.

The one reason why many small businesses do not go for the dedicated server option is because they don’t have the necessary technical know-how to manage a server themselves. Many web servers run on the Unix platform, which is a programming language with which most business people are unfamiliar.

You could decide to rent a managed server from a hosting company, however. In this case the hosting company will charge you an additional amount per month, in exchange for managing the technical side of the server and keeping software packages up to date.

The above analysis tried to outline the issue of VPS Hosting Vs Dedicated Server - How to Compare the pros and cons of the different options.

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