If you are entering the world of website ownership, or are simply wondering whether the service you currently host your website or service on is still the best solution for your needs, then understanding the differences between the common types of web hosting is important. By choosing the right type of web hosting, you can offer a better service to your users and will not have to worry about things like loss of service, users being unable to access services because you’ve exceeded your bandwidth, or not having enough space for all of your content.
The Emergence of Cloud Hosting
For larger sites and things like SaaS (software as a service) web services, having a dedicated server to host the site was historically the best approach – rather than using shared hosting (where many sites share server resources), which was typically a cheaper option used by smaller business sites and blogs. This all changed when cloud computing gave new options for hosting, one of which being a virtual private server (VPS).
Here, we look at what a VPS solution is, and why it offers benefits above those offered by a dedicated server for most larger websites and web based services:
What Is A VPS?
A VPS is a virtualised server which offers the user the same experience as having their own dedicated server, but is not tied to physical hardware. Where in a traditional dedicated server environment you would hire the server itself and the host would run it and do any maintenance on it, with VPS you are hiring the virtual server and the underlying hardware comes from a cloud – that is, resources are allocated as needed from a range of physical servers in real time.
From your end as a website owner, you are still managing one single server, but none of the limitations of using a single piece of physical server hardware apply.
What Are the Benefits of VPS Hosting Over Dedicated Servers?
There are a number of reasons why VPS is often the better solution.
From a business perspective, it is generally cheaper, as you are only paying for the resources you actually use and the hosting company can assign the resources of their physical servers far more efficiently – in a traditional dedicated server set up each site is reserving all of the resources of its physical server at all times, which is more costly and less efficient.
Another significant benefit is the inherent resilience and redundancy of this kind of set up – a server hardware failure will not bring down your site.
Takeaway
If you are currently using a dedicated server or were considering using one for your next website, then it can be a very good idea to do some investigation into the option of using a VPS solution instead, such as VPS hosting from Best Web Hosting. This could potentially keep your costs down and your site up, and offer the best solution for managing your website or service.
