The Beginners Guide to VPS Hosting

Posted on Apr 21 2014 - 6:11pm by Editor

Deciding on how to best play web hosting that will benefit you and/or your business is a tricky business with so many options out there to choose from. If you are considering shared hosting, then you will be pleased to know that it is cheap and easy to acquire, however resources are very limited.

If you are considering a dedicated server solution, you will be pleased to know that these are powerful and can be customised, however you may need a good level of technical knowledge to run them, and they are far more expensive than shared hosting solutions.

VPS Hosting

So, what is the middle ground here? If you have a website that holds more information, and is acquiring more and more traffic, and you do not want to have the dedicated resource to deal with technical knowledge, then a Windows or Linux VPS hosting solution could be for you.

A VPS, or Virtual Private Network is a hosting solution that provides your site with the stability, quality and security that your business needs. It provides businesses and individuals with a solution that is right for them.

What happens, then, when your site is too big and gets too much traffic for a shared hosting plan, but doesn’t require the resources (or expenditure) of a dedicated server?

Like all server solutions, the features and benefits can vary from supplier to supplier. So it is important that you can familiarise yourself with what is on offer in the market at the moment. This means understanding the specs, and knowing what you get for your money.

It is not just the VPS architecture that you need to consider, you should also think about the support that you will receive. Again, this hugely differs from supplier to supplier.

Some VPS suppliers like to take the completely hands off approach, meaning that you may need a certain level of technical knowledge should something go wrong, even though a VPS is very stabile and rarely goes wrong. Other suppliers are very hands on, they want you to have the best VPS experience possible, and they also want to up-sell and cross-sell their other products and services in to your business too.

Here are the levels of support that are usually outlined by any VPS supplier:

  • Un-managed

  • Semi-Managed

  • Fully Managed

The support can come in a number of different ways, from hardware and network support to software issues. So, it is important that you can check out what level of service VPS suppliers offer when you are doing your research.

So, do you need VPS? Only you can decide that. A VPS is certainly the best solution for you if you have outgrown your shared hosting service, and are growing as a business. The more acquired traffic you have going to your site the bigger the demand you on your hosting. So it makes perfect sense switching to a VPS. However, if you already have a dedicated server solution you may not feel the need to switch to a VPS. The question that you must ask yourself here is, how much cost and resource does using a dedicated server impact on my business? If you want to reduce your costs, and free up resource then switching to a VPS could be the ideal solution for you.