Which Web Hosting is better for you: VPS Hosting or Dedicated Hosting?

When you have a website you need to decide on the right hosting plan for launching the site. Virtual private server hosting refers to a physical server which has been compartmentalized. This partition gives rise to many virtual servers, each capable of functioning on its own. In dedicated hosting, on the other hand, a client can lease an entire server for its own use exclusively. VPS hosting is believed to be the middle path between shared hosting plans on the one hand and dedicated hosting plans on the other. But, whether or not it is the best solution for your business is something that you need to look into before signing up.

When you find that your site is attracting a lot of web traffic, you need to upgrade your hosting plans, especially when you may have bought shared hosting plans to start with. For businesses looking to upgrade their hosting plans, there are two key choices, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

Is VPS hosting the best decision for your business?

Hosting plans are not only about choosing the right server; this decision must take into account both the server as well as the nature of services like security protocols and software upgrades, malware scans, server monitoring etc which are part of the package. So, to be able to decide between VPS hosting and dedicated hosting, you need to consider some important factors like server hardware, management services in the plan and how this hardware is used.

When you choose dedicated hosting plans, you can have only one user for the whole hardware; but for VPS hosting, there may be multiple users using the same server hardware. Dedicated hosting is like having your own desktop and you are the owner of all the hardware. So, you have complete access to all the resources too. In VPS hosting however you have hardware which is shared by other users. Every user has a definite amount of RAM, CPU etc which can be upgraded seamlessly when needed. Each user also has a distinct operating system and is free to install custom software, scripts or applications. Virtualization technology is used to divide the resources optimally among the various users.

How the hardware is being used is what is different for dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. Both hosting solutions can give you super fast servers and services like routine security audits, automatic malware scans and removal. But, since server resources are shared, VPS plans are lower in cost than dedicated plans.

In terms of security, it is believed that dedicated hosting offers better security. The VPS servers are known to have a certain weakness in the form of the hypervisor. This will handle management of each of the virtual servers but at times, there are virus attacks which are strong enough to bypass this hypervisor and affect all virtual server accounts. In terms of configuration too, dedicated hosting may enjoy an advantage. Being the only user, you can have complete control over server configurations. Besides, dedicated hosting is also known to offer better performance compared to VPS hosting as resources do not have to be shared.

As far as cost is concerned, when your business cannot generate enough money to afford dedicated hosting, VPS hosting services is the next best choice. Security risks of VPS servers are very less and instances of viruses bypassing hypervisors are rare. You cannot decide that performance wise the virtual servers are inferior because not all dedicated servers turn out to be speedier than virtual servers. Speed wise too; dedicated servers are known to outshine VPS servers only when there are huge traffic volumes.