Dedicated Servers Vs VPS: Choosing the Best One for Your Business
Whether you run an online start-up, a small online business or a large one like an e-commerce store, the type of hosting you choose can make or break or business. Opting for the wrong one not only can severely damage your site’s performance, but may also result in a negative reputation forthe business.
When it comes to web hosting services for businesses, there are two top categories in the market: dedicated server hosting and VPS hosting. Here, the key question is, which one should you choose for your business?
To make an informed decision, it’s vital to have a clear comprehension of how dedicated servers and VPS function on different crucial parameters. To help you out, we’ve created the following dedicated servers vs. VPS comparative analysis.
Here, we’ll compare all the parameters that are vital for the smooth functioning of your website. But before delving deeper, let’s see the fundamental differences between a dedicated server & VPS.
Dedicated Servers vs. VPS: The Basic Difference
This block will give you an idea of the fundamental difference between these two types of servers.
Dedicated Server
Dedicated servers are built to provide the users with the maximum amount of dedicated resources for their sites. Even if you choose a cheap dedicated server, you’ll get a solid and powerful hosting solution. Here, the entire server gets allocated to you, so you can do whatever you want to boost your site’s performance.
VPS
With a VPS hosting solution, your site will use a server that has multiple users. But, despite using the same server, every VPS account gets isolated from the other. This means by choosing VPS hosting, your site will get a certain amount of dedicated resources. And if you opt for a cheap SSD VPS hosting package, you can rest assured of experiencing a significant improvement in your site’s performance.
Dedicated Servers vs. VPS Hosting Solutions: A Comparative Analysis
Now that we have a fundamental idea of dedicated servers vs. VPS solutions, it’s time to compare them to pick the right one.
Resource Allocation
The performance of a site largely depends on the resources allocated to it. With a lack of resources, it’s just impossible to achieve optimal performance of your site.
Here’s where a dedicated server and a VPS stand in terms of resources.
Dedicated Server
If you desire to get the maximum amount of dedicated resources, choosing a dedicated server will be your ultimate solution. No matter if your priority is RAM, storage, CPU/GPU power, or any other software and hardware,dedicated servers have got you covered.
VPS Hosting
Although a VPS hosting solution gives you virtually dedicated resources, you won’t be able to use the entire server. If your site needs resources more than what’s allocated to it, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be available.
Verdict:
If you want to utilize as much resources as possible, choosing a dedicated server will be your best bet.
Performance
Your site’s performance directly impacts the revenue and growth of your business. That’s why this is considered one of the top parameters in any dedicated servers vs. VPShosting solutions comparison.
Let’s see how dedicated servers and VPS hosting solutions can help improve your site’s performance.
Dedicated Server
Since the performance of your site is directly reliant on the server resources available to it, a dedicated server will help it deliver optimal performance. In fact, you’ll be able to install additional hardware and third-party software to boost your site’s performance.
VPS Hosting
With VPS hosting, the availability of resources gets limited due to the fundamental nature of resource allocation. You can always opt for more resources to improve your site’s performance, but it’ll depend on the availability of server resources. This means you may not be able to ensure that your site will always deliver its best performance.
You can also install third-party software and additional hardware within a VPS hosting environment, but again, it’ll be dependent on the resources allocated to you.
Verdict:
If you want to ensure the top performance of your site always, you should opt for a dedicated server.
Setup
Setup time often becomes very important for many business owners. And that’s the reason you need to consider this parameter when comparing dedicated servers vs. VPS hosting solutions.
Let’s see what these two types of servers have got for us.
Dedicated Server
Irrespective of the type of dedicated server you choose, you must be ready to give your hosting provider at least a couple of weeks’ time to finish the setup. As dedicated servers are custom-built according to the requirements of the customers, building them takes a good amount of time.
VPS Hosting
With VPS hosting, you can have your server ready within just one or two days from completing your purchase. Since your hosting provider doesn’t need to build the entire server from scratch, it just needs to activate your account to let you start using it.
Verdict:
If you have a strict deadline or desire to launch your site as quickly as possible, choosing VPS hosting will be the right thing to do. If you’re in no rush, then you may go with a dedicated server.
Scalability
For any online business, it’s normal to add more resources as it grows. Without adequate resources, it’s just impossible to maintain good site performance.
Here’s the comparison between dedicated servers and VPS hosting solutions in terms of scalability.
Dedicated Server
With a dedicated server, it’s significantly difficult to add resources. This is because adding resources to a pre-configured server is both a time-consuming and costly affair.
Therefore, if your site needs more resources within a dedicated server environment, you’ll most likely have to choose a new server with better resources. Migrating to another server is not only a time-consuming process, but it’ll also damage your site’s performance during that time period.
VPS Hosting
On the contrary, VPS hosting lets you add or remove resources within a few minutes. If you need more resources than the present ones, just contact the hosting service provider, and you’re done. If you want to remove resources, you can do it yourself with a few clicks of the button.
Even if you need to upgrade your existing hosting plan, it’ll be a seamless, effortless, and quick process. And there’ll be an almost negligible impact on your site’s performance.
Verdict:
VPS hosting is the clear winner here. It’ll give you much more scalability than a dedicated server.
Configurability
The more a server’s configurability, the better you can customize it to meet your business’s goals.
Let’s see what dedicated servers and VPS hosting solutions provide us with respect to configurability.
Dedicated Server
Most of the time, when you opt for a dedicated server, you get an empty server without any pre-installed software or an operating system. So, you can do almost anything with the server, meaning you get the maximum level of configurability.
However, it’s important to note that configuring a server successfully requires a good level of technical know-how, and it’s a time-consuming process. So, be sure to review this aspect carefully.
VPS Hosting
In most cases, hosting service providers offer VPS hosting packages with pre-installed software. This means you won’t necessarily need to have a good level of technical expertise to configure the VPS. Moreover, VPS hosting solutions usually come with a standard level of technical support from the hosting provider, reducing your headache.
Verdict:
If you desire to have the maximum configurability, ensure that your dedicated server or VPS comes with full root access. Just keep in mind that configuring a dedicated server will be significantly more difficult than a VPS.
Server Management
Server management plays a huge role in dictating how your site will perform. Although hosting service providers consider server management a top priority, it differs depending on your chosen type of hosting solution.
Let’s see where thisdedicated servers vs. VPS hosting solutions comparison stand in terms of this parameter.
Dedicated Server
Dedicated servers are available in two forms: unmanaged and managed. If you choose an unmanaged dedicated server, then the whole responsibility of managing the server will be on you. There’ll be no support available from your hosting provider.
Server management involves a lot of crucial activities. From ensuring server speed and security to maintaining optimal performance of its different components and a lot more, you’ll have to take care of everything. Since this is a highly time-consuming process, business owners often find it very difficult to manage it properly.
However, by choosing a managed dedicated server, you can fully concentrate on growing your business while the expert technical support team of your hosting provider takes care of the entire server management part.
VPS Hosting
When it comes to picking between amanaged dedicated server and VPS hosting, perhaps the biggest difference is that the latter comes with some degree of technical support, even if you choose an unmanaged plan. So, naturally, you won’t need to invest a significant amount of time and effort to manage your VPS. Also, since the main server is maintained by the hosting service provider, it’ll require less technical expertise to manage your VPS.
Similar to managed dedicated servers, if you opt for a managed VPS server, the entire server management will be your web host’s responsibility. It’ll be fully responsible for ensuring the server’s optimal performance.
Verdict:
Choosing a VPS will be your best option if you want to opt for an unmanaged server. However, if you wish to go with a managed server, you may choose either a dedicated server or a VPS based on your requirements as per other parameters.
Security
With the steadily increasing number of cyber security issues, maintaining the site’s security has become the number one priority for business website owners. Since these sites deal with sensitive information of the customers, a lack of security may lead to several irreversible damages to the businesses.
Here’s how a dedicated server and a VPS help to secure your site.
Dedicated Server
In general, your site remains more secure when hosted on a dedicated server. This is simply because it’s the only user of the server, and hence, the scope of getting affected by the activities of other users is absolutely zero.
VPS Hosting
While your site gets its own virtualized server in a VPS hosting environment, there remains a possibility of getting affected by the activities of other websites on the server. This is because you only get control over the resources that are allocated to you and not on the entire server.
Since other websites also share the resources of the actual physical server, it may lead to security breaches through them. Basically, within a VPS hosting environment, it’s just impossible to ensure that all the users follow the latest security best practices.
Verdict:
Although it isn’t possible to ensure that your site will remain fully secure always, you can surely take the security quotient to another level by choosing a dedicated server. A VPS hosting environment is also highly secure but it cannot compete with a dedicated server.
Pricing
Pricing is among the top parameters of any dedicated servers vs. VPS hosting solutions comparison because it dictates what your site will get to deliver its performance.
Here’s where dedicated servers and VPS hosting solutions stand in terms of pricing.
Dedicated Server
With dedicated server hosting, since you get to use the entire server, its price will be much higher than that of VPS hosting. No matter what kind of dedicated server hosting solution you opt for, you need to be ready to pay a large sum of money to enjoy the benefits.
VPS Hosting
The price of VPS hosting is much lower than that of a dedicated server. This is because your site gets to use a virtualized server with specified resources allocated to it.
Verdict:
There’s no winner in terms of pricing. If you have the budget and want your site to use the maximum amount of resources solely, you can opt for a dedicated server. If you want your site to deliver top performance with a relatively limited amount of resources, you should go for VPS hosting.
Dedicated Servers vs. VPS Hosting: Final Verdict
As the above dedicated servers vs. VPS hosting solutions comparison shows, both kinds of servers have their own advantages and disadvantages. So, picking the right one between them comes down to your budget and requirements.When deciding on the type of hosting solution, be sure to assess all the above parameters against your every requirement and future plans with the business.
