Shared Hosting or VPS?
The answer of this question is rather easy. First, we have to know what shared Hosting and VPS is and what are their positive and negative sides.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular service offered by the hosting companies. Your website is being hosted on a dedicated server with hundreds other websites. You have access to your website through Control Panel – usually CPanel or Plesk and you have some sort of limitations regarding the services you use (disc space, bandwidth, inodes etc.)
The Shared hosting is suitable for people who are just starting their websites or don’t have the knowledge to run a VPS or afford a managed one. Shared hosting is suitable for entry level websites with low traffic .The reason behind this is that your website is hosted with many others and they are all fighting for the same resources. Also, if you require custom server environment shared hosting is not for you. One of the pros for using it is that Hosting companies provide support for their clients through tickets and telephone calls. As for the VPS this is only available for the managed versions.
VPS (Virtual private server)
A VPS is a standalone instance with its own dedicated resources which you don’t have to share with no one. The two most popular and used pieces of Software for virtualization are OpenVZ and Xen.
The Hosting providers are offering two kinds of VPS – unmanaged and managed ones. In the unmanaged version you get only the VPS with the installed Operating System. Some of the providers are also offering prebuild solutions like LAMP and LEMP. It’s your own duty to support and manage your VPS instance. In order for you to be able to manage the unmanaged version you’re going to need extensive knowledge in Linux LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) or LEMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL and PHP).
When you order a managed VPS you get a working instance of your virtual server and the support that comes along with it. You receive a Control Panel so as to be able to administrate your VPS and to manage your websites. This makes the managed VPS a better option for users who need the added power and convenience of a VPS and who don’t have the knowledge to administrate a VPS on their own. The managed version of VPS costs double and triple the price of a unmanaged version but it saves your time and allows you to devote it on your website.
To sum up, when you choose between Shared Hosting and VPS you have to evaluate several factors:
1. Whether you are experienced enough in the field of hosting.
2. What kind of resources you need.
3. What budget you have.
4. Whether you are willing to invest your time in managing your own VPS.