Reseller Web Hosting Vs. VPS Hosting: Understanding the difference

Article Posted by Expert Author: Jesse Schwarz  on 10/02/2013

Understanding each product, understanding the features as well as knowing what the best fit is for you can be daunting as the catalog of offerings can be rather large. So let’s take a look at the differences.

Shared Website hosting

Shared web hosting optionIn a nutshell, shared hosting describes an environment where websites are installed on a partition of a main server. This partition is not exclusive to one client and can be shared among a large number of clients and sites. So how are resources allocated? This is all done by the hosting provider at the administrator level and varies from company to company. There can be restrictions in place that help counter abuse, but for the most part, the amount of resources are enough for the average size website. The other benefit is that you don’t need to understand the programming language of the server operating system. Most of the time you will have some type of control panel that will allow you to control your partition, install applications and manage users among other things.

 

  • Scalability: The very nature of shared hosting is to provide a user friendly environment for simple hosting needs. However, if you are planning on scaling your website and acquire a large amount of visitors, this environment is very limited in terms of configuring the server for optimum performance. Page speed as an example is a big ranking factor and if the server is not optimally configured, this can hurt your rankings in the search engines. We definitely recommend moving to a VPS if you are considering you website as a long term investment.
  • Billing: For the most part, shared hosting is billed on a monthly basis and varies based on the amount of resources you want on your partition. These resources include memory, bandwidth, disk space, emails, databases and others to choose from. If you have a question regarding the resources you may need please contact us and we will be more than happy to help.
  • Windows Vs. Linux: Simply put, most experts recommend Linux by far for its stable environment when it comes to server operating systems.

Shared Hosting Is A Good Fit For:

  • Small and medium sized businesses that are in need of a brochure type website.
  • For SMB’s and individuals who want a simple blog or forum.
  • CMS type or template based websites
  • And if cost is an issue, this is usually a great place to start.

 

VPS Hosting or Virtual Private Web Hosting

A VPS hosting setup is still considered a shared environment, but comes with the advantages of a dedicated server without the high price tag. Basically instead of individual accounts, a virtual private server will act as a full server installation. Since most websites do not need the resources that come with an entire dedicated server, this has become a very popular and good alternative. Another differentiation is that in a shared hosting environment, there is not guarantee on how much CPU power or memory will be available at any given time. If a website on a shared hosting plan receives a large amount of visitors, this can cause pages on someone else’s site not to load or to load so slowly causing visitor dissatisfaction. In a VPS environment, you are basically guaranteed a certain amount of performance and this will not be affected by any bad neighbors on the server. In a VPS setup you also have more control over configuration and administration at the server level vs. account level.

  • Scalability: This is a much better solution for long term planning since the memory thresholds accommodate large websites. Many times hosting companies can seamlessly increase your resources to a more comprehensive plan.
  • Billing: If you can afford it, we highly recommend paying for a full year ahead of time when dealing with reputable companies. It is not uncommon to receive 30%+ discounts when choosing the yearly billing option. Another tip is to not set a hosting plan for auto renew if you are considering the yearly plan. Auto-renews are usually charged full price while some hosting companies will apply discounts with manual renewals.
  • Admin Access: VPS hosting allows for a greater control of the root access to the server. This allows for the installation and configuration of your own applications among other server level configurations. You can even setup a reseller hosting account and host other sites.

 

VPS Web Hosting Is A Good Fit For

  • Reseller Hosting – Setting up your own hosting business
  • Marketing firms that may host client sites
  • Large websites that may potentially have heavy use of databases and a large visitor base
  • Companies that may launch multiple sites over time
  • Sites that cannot be down from time to time because of server overload.

 

While virtually all web hosts have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, this is a bit misleading. Uptime as they define it is if your site will load, regardless of how fast it will load. Our advice and we have sites on dedicated, VPS and shared hosting is that if your site is important to your clients or makes money online, you should consider VPS at minimum. Shared hosting is hit or miss. HostingAndBackup.com has had shared hosting plans that performed magnificently for years and when we setup additional shared hosting plans from the same company, these took forever to load so were forced to switch over to VPS and host multiple sites from there.


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