VPS vs Shared Hosting 2022
Finding the right kind of hosting solution for your site can be an uphill task. This becomes even more difficult if you don’t have a clear understanding of the differences between different types of hosting.
Just do a quick online search for different types of web hosting, and you can see that shared hosting and VPS hosting are commonly offered by all hosting service providers.
Now, the question is, which of these hosting services should you choose for your website? Will it be wise to opt for shared hosting, which is typically the cheapest hosting type available out there? Or should you go for the slightly more expensive VPS hosting?
If these questions sound overwhelming to you, and you want expert advice to make up your mind, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re going to make a comparison of VPS vs shared hosting based on the parameters that are essential for your website and its performance.
Before we delve deeper into VPS vs shared hosting comparison, let’s have a quick recap of what each of them entails.
As mentioned earlier, shared hosting is the cheapest type of hosting solution ideal for small and personal websites. Here, a single server is simultaneously used by many users. Although shared hosting comes with several limitations, the host is responsible for all technical configurations, security, and maintenance tasks. This means you don’t necessarily need to have any kind of technical knowledge.
VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is a superior option to shared hosting in almost every aspect. Although one physical server is used by all the users in VPS hosting, there’s an allocated set of resources for each user. Here, every user has a dedicated virtual partition, so they can always use the resources allocated for them. Typically, the cost of VPS hosting is slightly higher than shared hosting.
| Features | VPS Hosting | Shared Hosting |
| Resource Allocation | Dedicated virtual partition between each user | Single server can be used by hundreds of users simultaneously |
| Performance | Better performance | For better performance required more resources |
| Security | Highly Secure | Less Secure |
| Reliability | Highly reliable | Less reliable |
| Configuration | Somewhat Technical knowledge required | Less to no technical knowledge required |
| Managed Services | Present | Present |
| Control | Highly controllable | Less controllable |
| Scalability | Highly scalable | Less scalable |
| Customizability | You can install whatever application you want | Limited |
| Pricing | High | Low |
Now that you have brief overviews of the two most popular types of web hosting, let’s start the VPS vs shared hosting battle.
1.Resource Allocation
With shared hosting, one single server can be used by hundreds of users simultaneously. This means its resources such as memory and storage space are used by all the websites on it. As a result, if just one website consumes too much of resources, all other sites may become deficient in resources. For example, if the server comes with 20GB of memory, just a single site can eat up 90% of it.
VPS Hosting
In VPS hosting, the hosts maintain a dedicated virtual partition between each user and allocate a pre-defined amount of resources to each of them. So, you don’t need to compete for resources, and hence, there’s no need to worry about other users eating up an excessive amount of resources, which may impact you.
Drawing on the above example, if there’re ten users on the server and each of them is allocated 2GB of memory, each site can comfortably use whatever memory it needs from it. Under any circumstances, no user will be able to exceed its allocated 2GB memory.
Moreover, web hosts generally provide more resources with VPS hosting packages than shared hosting ones. Even if you choose a standard VPS hosting plan, you’ll usually have more disk space, bandwidth, and RAM than those of a standard shared hosting package. As a result, you’ll get seamless support of a greater amount of resources whenever you need them.
2.Performance
As you already know, more resources directly translate into better performance. As one of the key characteristics of shared hosting is the availability of limited resources, you shouldn’t expect a great performance from your site when using it.
Additionally, if another site on the server uses up an excessive amount of resources, the chances of your site’s performance going down is quite high. However, if you need a standard level of performance and things like cost-effectiveness and ease of maintenance are your priorities, you may opt for shared hosting.
VPS Hosting
When it comes to performance, VPS hosting will always stay much ahead of shared hosting, simply because of the availability of resources allocated to each individual user. In fact, this is one of the biggest VPS vs shared hosting differences because of which many users prefer the former over the latter.
If you need to manage multiple sites or have a site with high traffic demands, it’s strongly advisable that you go with VPS hosting. Moreover, according to research, the expectation of 47% of customers is that a website should load within a maximum of two seconds. If your site doesn’t load within this timeframe or demonstrates poor performance, it can greatly affect your bottom line.
Here, another important thing you need to understand is that performance issues can arise in both shared hosting and VPS hosting. However, with VPS hosting, you typically get an advanced level of customer support from technical experts. So you’ll be able to diagnose and resolve performance issues quickly.
But with shared hosting, you may not be able to get this type of support from the web host. The low-cost nature of shared hosting makes it very difficult for hosting service providers to offer top-notch customer support to every user.
3.Security
Although web hosts implement lots of measures to provide their users with a secured shared hosting environment, the chances of your site experiencing security issues are quite high. This is due to the fact that all the resources on the server are used by all the sites on it.
If just one website on the server experiences a security breach, all the other sites become vulnerable. And this can happen even if you choose cPanel shared hosting, which is the most popular type of shared hosting available out there. This is another major VPS vs shared hosting difference that compels many users to choose the former option.
VPS Hosting
When it comes to VPS hosting, it’s inherently more secure than shared hosting. As the resources are allocated, you don’t need to worry even if another site on the server gets affected. Moreover, you get more control over the security measures in the VPS hosting environment. If required, you may be able to install advanced software to increase your protection.
It’s also important to note that VPS hosting users, even those who choose cheap SSD VPS hosting, are often more experienced with hosting security measures than many shared hosting users. Therefore, the chances of VPS hosting users causing server vulnerabilities are also pretty low.
Additionally, if you choose managed VPS hosting from a reputable web host, you can stay assured of experiencing a more secure hosting environment. This is because these VPS hosting packages are typically managed by adept IT security professionals.
4.Reliability
When it comes to the reliability of a website, it stands for how often it’s up and running. This directly comes down to the uptime offered by the server that houses a website. This is mentioned as a percentage, and in general, a minimum of 99.9% uptime is considered standard.
Note that when the server experiences a downtime, your site won’t be available to your users. And if you own or run an e-commerce store or a business site, it can damage your bottom line to a significant extent. Although servers in both VPS and shared hosting environments can have uptime issues, users of shared hosting often experience more problems because of the presence of more users on the server.
VPS Hosting
As there’s a fewer number of users present on VPS hosting, the chances of experiencing uptime issues are relatively lower. In addition, it’s possible to customize and configure the partition to meet the specific needs of a website. This additional attention typically makes VPS hosting more reliable than shared hosting.
The presence of fewer websites on the server also reduces its chances of getting overloaded. As every user gets an independent hosting environment with allocated resources, there’re no occurrences of one site eating up more resources, which may affect the uptime of the server.
Also, VPS hosting providers typically use the latest tools and redundant infrastructure to maintain an exceptional uptime of their servers and provide an uptime guarantee. An uptime guarantee helps to ensure that you get a certain amount of refund in the case of any downtime above the specified percentage.
Finally, to maintain the uptime guarantee, VPS hosting providers typically employ expert system administrators to take care of the servers. This essentially leads to better support and in turn, improved performance of the server.
5.Configuration
With shared hosting, your chosen hosting provider will configure the shared server and install all the necessary software. It’ll also take care of the updates required and monitor the server to prevent downtime. In other words, you won’t necessarily need to have any technical expertise when you choose shared hosting.
It’s also crucial to remember that due to the limitations available with shared hosting, you won’t be able to configure anything even if there’s an urgent requirement. In that case, your only option will be to switch to VPS hosting.
VPS Hosting
The configuration of VPS hosting is a little more complex than that of shared hosting. VPS hosting is available in two different types: managed and unmanaged. If you choose a managed VPS hosting package, the web host will take care of all the necessary things like shared hosting.
However, with unmanaged VPS hosting, you’ll need to manage all the things by yourself. And it requires a significant amount of time and technical expertise. This is the reason unmanaged VPS hosting plans are generally opted for by experts and developers.
It’s vital to note that the cost of managed hosting packages is significantly higher than that of unmanaged plans. However, if you need to hire a technical expert or system administrator to maintain your unmanaged VPS hosting, the final cost may be similar or even more than the cost of managed VPS hosting.
6.Managed Services
If you run a personal website or blog or a small website, you may never need to have managed hosting services. Although shared hosting services are managed by expert professionals, they manage the server as a whole, not to benefit any particular site. If you want to have managed services coupled with greater technical support and high-quality assistance, shared hosting may not be the right option for you.
VPS Hosting
Many hosting service providers offer managed VPS hosting to help their customers focus only on their business. With managed VPS hosting, installing and configuring applications and monitoring them won’t be your responsibility at all. Also, you’ll get around-the-clock expert technical support to resolve security and performance issues instantly.
While the cost of a managed VPS hosting package will be significantly higher than that of an unmanaged VPS hosting plan, the difference will be worth paying when the growth of your business or revenue is at stake.
7.Control
If you want to gain more control on your site, shared hosting may not be the ideal option for you. This is because you’ll only get standardized server setups. If you’re happy with it or don’t want to get involved in server management tasks, you can always choose shared hosting. But again, similar to what we mentioned in “configuration,” if you need to have more control, you’ll have to switch to VPS hosting.
VPS Hosting
With VPS hosting, you gain full root access to the server. You’ll get unrestricted access to the server, which means getting complete control over it. No matter if you want to install your own control panel, operating system, or other software to improve site performance or security, you can freely do that.
8.Scalability
Scalability is another consideration in VPS vs shared hosting comparison. Your choice between VPS vs shared hosting comes down to your future requirements from your site. If your site just gets a couple of hundred visitors each week, and you don’t have any plans to increase this traffic significantly, choosing shared hosting should be a good decision.
VPS Hosting
If you plan to grow the traffic to your site, meaning you want it to cater to the requirements of thousands of visitors each week, you must choose a VPS hosting package. Unlike shared hosting, where a sudden spike in traffic may make your site show error messages, VPS hosting can scale up with your requirements.
This is the reason you should choose VPS hosting, even if you run a small business site. Of course, you’ll need to pay slightly more, but that’s always better than losing customers and hurting your bottom line.
9.Customizability
Apart from having more control over how your site runs, sometimes you may need to customize the hosting environment and install additional applications for different purposes. As mentioned earlier, with shared hosting, you’re only limited to the setups provided by your web host. As a result, even if there’s an urgent requirement, you may not be able to do anything but switch to VPS hosting.
VPS Hosting
As you get root access with VPS hosting, you can install whatever application you want to, as long as you’ve got the required server resources allocated. If you don’t have the required server resources with your existing VPS hosting plan, you can always switch to a better plan with more resources almost instantly.
10.Pricing
In almost all circumstances, you can expect to pay less for shared hosting. As the server resources get distributed among many users, the cost gets split as well. If you’re solely focused on the price point, shared hosting will be the ideal and most economical option for you. Moreover, you won’t have to think about the expenses of running and maintaining the server.
VPS Hosting
While VPS hosting is slightly costlier than shared hosting, it comes with a lot of advantages as well. Right from more disk space, bandwidth, and RAM to full root access, advanced security measures, and more – you get many benefits by just paying a few extra bucks.
As you can see, in the VPS vs shared hosting battle, VPS hosting is a clear winner. Apart from the cost aspect, shared hosting cannot anyway match VPS hosting.
If you’re still having a dilemma about how to use the above VPS vs shared hosting comparison to decide on the right type of hosting, start with defining your objectives and future plans with your site. Once the objectives are defined, thoroughly go through every parameter we discussed in the above VPS vs shared hosting differences.
First, try to figure out which of these parameters relate to your requirements the most. Then see whether it’s shared hosting or VPS hosting that’ll help meet your requirements with regard to each parameter. This process should help you make a final decision.
However, keeping all considerations and parameters in mind, it’s always advisable to go with VPS hosting. This is because there’s clearly no point in damaging your site’s user experience, its performance, and your reputation just to save a few extra bucks.
