Differences and comparison between Shared, VPS, and Dedicated Web Hosting

Starting your website is a crucial part, but choosing a web hosting service for your website is even more crucial. Since different types of web hosting services make it confusing to choose the right one for you. You may not know the difference between Shared, VPS, and Dedicated web servers. In this blog post, you will get to know the differences and comparisons between shared, VPS, and Dedicated Web Hosting. 

These three plans are totally different from each other. Has different specifications and is differently usable to users. In this simple guide, we will explain what Shared, VPS, & Dedicated hosting plans are and list out the differences between them so you can easily determine which one if right for you.  

Shared, VPS, and Dedicated web hosting plans  

Shared Hosting  

This web hosting is the most basic and cheapest plan you can ever get. As you can easily guess the name “Shared hosting” is a service that is shared by many other users as well. All residents are in the same location and must share the available resources with everyone. Like in the apartment you must share a pool, parking lot, and playground. In shared hosting, you have to share resources like RAM, Storage, and bandwidth with others as well.  

VPS Hosting  

VPS Hosting is basically like a condo and is a level-up of shared hosting. While you are living in a condo, you still share things but ultimately you are responsible for maintaining your own property and repairs inside the condo. However, there are significantly fewer residents per building.  

On a virtual private server, all resources are shared. The overall CPU time and memory are shared across all accounts on the machine, but at the same time, portions of those resources are always dedicated to each account. This allows for more power and flexibility than being on a shared account.  

Dedicated servers 

A dedicated server is the most expensive web hosting service you can get for your website. Dedicated hosting is more like owning a house. With Dedicated web hosting, you will get access to all the resources available on the machine and no one else’s account resides on the machine. Dedicated hosting is a perfect hosting solution for big enterprises.  

When should you move on?  

Web hosting plans start with the basic plan of shared hosting. Shared hosting is a great choice for small businesses as you can host all sorts of applications on them and there are plenty of email accounts to go around. But if you compare it to other web hosting services you may want to move on to them. However, here are some facts to know when should you move on from shared hosting.  

Growing business –

when your family grows then your apartment can definitely not handle it. This is the time when you think of moving out. Similarly, in Shared hosting, if your website gets more customers. you may need to upgrade to VPS hosting for more CPU and Memory. Upgrading your services will allow more customers to visit your website without any downtime. And your website will easily handle all the new traffic coming to your site.  

Customization –

In your apartment, you want everything that you like but can’t do it because many other sharing may have objections. But what if you move on to a condo, you will get to do whatever you want. Painting or decorating it as your wish. If you require software that is not available in shared hosting, upgrading to managed VPS Hosting will allow you to install any software that you would like. 

Great for Mid-size businesses –

Managed VPS Servers are great for mid-sized businesses because you have a virtualized private server that you can set up and tweak exactly the way you want. A Managed VPS Server is not like a dedicated server, however, so you are still on a server with other users and your actions can negatively affect them. For instance, if you have a very busy website, dominating the server’s CPU time and memory could cause performance issues with other users on the same server.  

Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting 

There are differences between the most expensive and the cheapest web hosting services. There are many differences between both the services in terms of performance, customization, security, and most importantly pricing. Here are some facts that will tell you the difference between Shared and dedicated servers.  

Server Performance  

One of the major downsides of shared hosting is that the server shares resources across all users housed within it. This can sometimes lead to a “noisy neighbors” situation where your hosting experience is diminished by the resource-intensive actions of other users on the same server.  

Furthermore, a dedicated server will have faster response times and greater reliability than shared hosting. Since it is not impacted by the operations of other users on the server. This is due to having a dedicated server with resources that are only available to you.  

Customization  

A shared hosting service must limit the software installed by multiple users. If not, something malicious could be uploaded that could affect your server’s security. Broken scripts can cause every site on the server to go down. On the plus side, less customization means a much easier learning curve. A dedicated server gives you more room to customize. You can install optimized software that meets your company and customer requirements. Without worrying about restrictions or impacting another company’s websites.  

Security  

If someone else on your shared server suffers from a hack, your server and all sites on it can suffer performance degradation. In addition, your site’s security could become compromised, particularly if you allow financial transactions on your site or store private customer information. 

On a dedicated server, you do not have to worry about other users compromising the entire server. Additionally, you can increase your security by installing hardware and software firewalls as well as powerful security tools that require root-level access not available on shared hosting platforms. 

For example, on a dedicated server, you can modify port settings, make custom firewall rules, or enable DNSSEC just to name a few. 

VPS Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting 

While there are many subtle differences between VPS hosting and dedicated server hosting, here are a few examples of how they differ. 

Speed 

While users on VPS platforms are partitioned into discrete virtual environments, they all still share the same physical hardware and can only access a fraction of the total system resources. 

In dedicated hosting, all system resources are available to the user by default. Having access to these resources improves page load times and increases website responsiveness. It is important to remember that the faster a page loads the more likely a visitor will stay on your site. 

Price 

Generally speaking, VPS hosting is going to cost much less than any dedicated plan. The reduced cost is due to the shared nature of VPS hosting. This is important to keep in mind when considering your web hosting budget. 

Dedicated hosting, by contrast, can be quite expensive due to hardware costs and data center operations. For this reason, dedicated servers are best suited for large-scale applications such as eCommerce businesses. 

Scalability 

When it comes to expanding your site or increasing the amount of storage you need, a VPS is often the superior solution. Since VPS platforms are managed virtually, upgrading your storage can be done by allocating additional resources from the existing pool of memory. With dedicated hosting, you will need to physically add additional drives to the server. This costs money and time and can cause downtime on your site as the hardware is installed.