This information will (hopefully) help you make an informed decision about whether or not your business needs a VPS compared to a shared hosting account.

Who Might Need a VPS

  • Small business owners who don’t want to share web server resources with other business owners.
  • Website operators who need to customize the settings on a server to meet their specific website/application needs.
  • Website operators who require more email and file storage space.

Shared users receive a piece of the available space (quotas), but VPS users can use as much space as their VPS has allocated.

  • Small business owners who have simply outgrown the limits of a shared hosting plan.

VPS Technical Benefits

  • Virtual private servers are isolated, virtualized operating systems contained within a larger physical server
  • Virtual private servers offer all the benefits of a dedicated server, but with the ability to pay for only what you need
  • Your website files, database, and server resources (such as memory and CPU) are isolated
  • Your server does not need to share resources with other users on the same system
  • VPSs can accommodate special requirements/modifications that aren’t possible in a shared system
  • Classic magnetic hard drives (HDDs) vs. solid state drives (SSDs):

HDDs store data on “platters” and use a “spindle” to rotate the platters to access data. While HDDs are cheap and good for storing large amounts of data, the time it takes to lookup data pales in comparison to solid-state drives (SSDs). Solid-state drives (SSDs) store data on flash storage (like a large USB stick drive), and they don’t have any moving parts. When you need to lookup data, the SSD can lookup information instantly without having to move any mechanical spindle heads (like HDDs).