VPS explained is repurposed from Ryan Huang’s video, What Is A VPS? using Content Gorilla, Grammarly and adding my own expertise with VPS.

I’ve migrated this blog from a shared web host to a VPS one. So, what is a VPS? A VPS stands for a virtual private server, also known as a virtual dedicated or dedicated virtual. Although there are different names for it, the most common one is VPS or virtual private server. Whereas many people choose to host their site using shared hosting, because of the low cost, in time, some of those decide to, as I did, to move to a VPS host.

VPS Explained Simply

VPS hosting is between shared Web hosting and dedicated Web hosting or dedicated server. With shared Web hosting, you’re pretty much in a pool with tons of other people, and typically, if you’re with providers like the HostGator, Bluehost, and GoDaddy, many consider them to be slow. Then you have the dedicated servers, where you get the full machine. But what about in between? That’s where the VPS servers come in. In my opinion, it’s probably one of the best solutions, especially if you’re running, for example, e-commerce software, like Magento or osCommerce, even WordPress. If you have anything more than just a brochure website, the speed of the load time affects SEO — and of course, affects your user experience as well.

VPS Compared To Shared Hosting

With the VPS, you get to have a full server. They call this the VPS node. A VPS server part of a VPS node. One way to describe what a VPS is, you take a server, slice up into a few big chunks, and each of those chunks becomes its a microenvironment with its operating system. So from the software’s perspective, it has a full server, just without the total resources. The cool thing with that is, unlike the shared hosting, where if one customer on that Web host is using up tons of resources, everyone’s sites are going to run slow.

With the VPS, because it’s similar to the dedicated server, everything is partitioned. So if the next guy that has a VPS is destroying their resources because they’re running a cumbersome video website, where it requires tons of software to compress a video, stuff like that, it won’t affect your server—which is a cool thing about the VPS’s.

Another cool thing about the VPS compared to shared hosting, is if you need to upgrade space, you can. Even though these days, everyone’s offering this bogus unlimited, or close to unlimited, where you have just tons of resources. My thing with that is if every hosting company’s clients used even half of that, they’d all go out of business. Those are just fast numbers that they throw out.

But if you start using the resources, then shared hosting wouldn’t work. With the dedicated servers, if you need to upgrade, you would have to have your datacenter or hosting provider add memory, or add another hard drive or move you to a more powerful server. With the VPS’s, if you need to scale up, it’s relatively easy. All VPS-hosting companies can raise the space, increase the memory, add on another virtual CPU, if you need it—which is great for scalability because when you don’t need it, you don’t have to pay for it, and when you need it, it’s simple. The other cool thing is with the shared hosting, if your website’s running slow, you need to contact the Web host. They either restart the server for everybody, or they tell you, sorry, but this is how it is. With the dedicated servers, if something’s running slowly, you would have to call into your Web host or datacenter, and they would have to restart the machine physically.

Although some can restart the machine remotely, you usually have to contact your Web host, for them to do that. With VPS, most VPS providers, including my Web hosting company—we have a full team—you have a login. You can log in, and you can restart your virtual private server, you can shut it down and then start it back up, which is a compelling ability to have full control over your VPS. The other cool thing is, just like the dedicated server, you can decide to have Linux, Windows, or any flavour of Linux, depending on what you or your development team prefers.

So that’s another of the very cool things about VPS, that you have your own environment. Hopefully, that gives a pretty good understanding of what the VPS is. Like I said, for most e-commerce websites, I recommend the VPS. If you’re doing much more, then you can upgrade to a dedicated server. But for most e-commerce websites or most websites that are little more than a brochure website, I recommend the VPS options.

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