What is VPS Hosting?

VPS hosting bridges the gap between shared web hosting services and dedicated server hosting services. VPS Hosting is a type of web hosting that allows multiple customers to have access to their own virtual machine.

What is a VPS?

VPS, which stands for Virtual Private Server, is another term for a virtual server. The word "private" emphasizes the fact that your virtual server is "private", meaning no other customers have access to your server.

So what is a virtual server?

Also known as a "virtual machine", a virtual server is a software implementation of a machine (i.e. a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. Each virtual machine can run its own full-fledged operating system and can be independently rebooted. A single computer can run many virtual machines side by side. Multiple operating systems can co-exist on the same computer, in strong isolation from each other. Users share a server, but because each VPS is effectively isolated from other accounts, the user has full control over the server space. Each VPS operates almost entirely independently of the other accounts that share the server space. This is particularly beneficial to hosting providers, who can offer customers their own virtual machine - or in other words, VPS hosting.

Benefits of VPS Hosting

As mentioned, VPS hosting bridges the gap between shared web hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.

VPS Hosting vs Shared Hosting

VPS hosting offers a lot more than a shared hosting plan. With a shared hosting plan, customers have very limited access to the server. With shared hosting, the closest you'd come to the server would probably be via your FTP client when you upload new files to the server.

With VPS hosting on the other hand, you can logon to your server with superuser-level access. You can install virtually any software you want. You can choose your own operating system, perform your own system administration tasks, and more. With VPS hosting, you "virtually" have your own machine.

While it is more expensive than shared hosting, VPS hosting is usually much cheaper than dedicated server hosting.

VPS Hosting vs Dedicated Server Hosting

VPS hosting is much cheaper than using dedicated hosting, but provides a similar amount of functionality (at least in comparison to shared hosting). A VPS offers many of the capabilities and features of a dedicated server, including administrator (root) access and dedicated IP addresses, but at a much lower price.

Despite these benefits, a VPS can be less efficient than a real machine when it accesses the hardware indirectly. Plus, due to the number of virtualization clients typically running on a single machine, a VPS could become less stable, and exhibit lower performance, than a dedicated machine. However, many hosting providers implement techniques for overcoming these issues.

So, dedicated server hosting is definitely your best option. But if your budget doesn't allow for this, then VPS hosting is the next best thing - and at a fraction of the price.

Who Should Get VPS Hosting?

Virtual dedicated servers are particularly suited towards budget-conscious companies and individuals that run higher-traffic websites or complex applications and therefore need the bandwidth, consistent performance, and flexibility that VPS hosting is known for.

Example of VPS Hosting

To get a better idea of what's included with VPS hosting, check out the VPS Hosting at our partner site, ZappyHost.