VPS Hosting: What Is It and What Does It Mean for Your Company?

If you’ve ever shared a bedroom with someone, you know that it can quickly become frustrating. You don’t always feel that you have access to your own space, and often, your roommate might infringe on your peace and quiet. Eventually, you really start to want your own room.

Incidentally, web hosting is much the same way. Usually, websites use shared hosting, meaning they’re sharing server space with multiple other websites. Those other sites take up bandwidth and RAM, often leading to issues for your own site.

So, what can you do? The answer is, you can acquire VPS hosting for your website. VPS hosting is like having your own bedroom, but for your website. So, what exactly is VPS hosting, and how can it benefit you? Keep reading to find out.

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What is VPS hosting?

VPS hosting is a type of web hosting that provides you with your own private piece of a server. Technically, you’re still using the same server as other websites. However, unlike with shared hosting, those other sites can’t infringe on your piece.

VPS hosting is something of a middle ground for hosting. On one end, you have shared hosting, where you’re completely sharing the space with other sites. On the other end, you have private servers, where you pay to have an entire server to yourself.

Shared hosting is inconvenient, but private servers are expensive. So, VPS hosting is the ideal middle ground.

How can a VPS hosting plan benefit your business?

VPS hosting has the potential to work wonders for your website. Here are some of the main ways it can benefit you!

1. Enhanced power and performance

The most obvious advantage of using VPS hosting is that it can significantly increase the performance of your website. Since you won’t have to worry about sharing your server space anymore, you have access to much more bandwidth and memory.

As a result, your site will be able to run much faster and more efficiently. This can help you retain more web traffic since it’s less likely that you’ll have to worry about slow page speeds pushing people away. You can also include more memory-intensive elements like videos on your site. 

2. Greater reliability

In addition to performing more efficiently, your website will behave far more reliably when you use a VPS hosting plan. With shared hosting, it’s always a bit of a gamble — one day, things might run smoothly, but the next day, the other sites on your server could be taking up more bandwidth and hurting your page speeds.

With VPS hosting, that inconsistency will be gone. You’ll be the only one occupying your personal slice of the server, meaning any fluctuations will come from your website and your website alone. That saves you the stress of worrying about what each new day could bring for your site.

3. Increased uptime

The third major benefit of using VPS services is that they can significantly increase your site’s uptime — that is, the amount of time your site is up and running. Every website has outages occasionally, but the less time your site is down, the better you’ll fare in search results and the more traffic you’ll retain.

Not every VPS host offers the exact same uptime guarantee, so keep an eye out for those with the highest uptimes — ideally, 99.9%. The difference between 99.0 and 99.9 might not seem like much, but it can mean several hours of downtime over the course of a year.

Factors to consider when choosing a VPS host

When you look for a VPS host for your website, there are a few things you’ll want to keep an eye out for. Here are some things to think about when selecting VPS services!

1. Managed or unmanaged

The first thing to consider is whether you want your VPS services to be managed or unmanaged. Managed hosting refers to a type of hosting where the host handles all the server maintenance, updates, and other behind-the-scenes elements on your server.

If you’re not particularly familiar with back-end server work, you’ll probably want to opt for managed hosting. However, if you’d rather take things into your own hands — especially if you don’t trust your web host to do things the way you want — you can go for unmanaged VPS hosting.

2. Specific site or app requirements

Another thing to think about when looking for a VPS hosting plan is what you plan to use it for. If your website or apps have any particular requirements, you’ll want to make sure your choice of VPS host can fulfill those needs.

For example, you might need your host to have compatibility with a particular operating system (OS) — Windows. Many web hosts only work with Linux, so if you need one that works with Windows, you’ll want to keep an eye out for that.

3. Quantity of resources

Not all VPS hosting plans are made equal. Some offer more resources than others, so you’ll want to consider how many of those resources you need. By “resources,” we’re referring to:

• Memory
• RAM
• Bandwidth
• CPU
• Storage

Depending on the website(s) or app(s) you intend to run, you might need different quantities of each of those resources. When you choose a VPS hosting plan, ensure that it has as much of those things you need. Otherwise, you’ll have some difficulty running your site and/or apps.

4. Customer support

Finally, you’ll want to consider whether you want a VPS host with constant and reliable customer support.

Particularly if you want an unmanaged plan, you may not care that much about customer support — but it doesn’t hurt to have it. And if you have a managed plan, you’ll definitely want some reliable customer support so you can get help when you need it.

Website development from WebFX

Want some help putting together your website? WebFX can do it for you! We’ve been building websites since 1996, giving us over 28 years of experience with web design and development.

With our web development services, you’ll get help building your website from the ground up. We’ll ensure that your website is secure, mobile-friendly, and more. We’ll also keep you regularly updated on our progress.

To get started with us, just call 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!