Hosting a website is an essential part of the website building process. Think of this hosting process like a piece of land. You cannot build the house of your dreams without having the piece of land first. Every single website, in one way, shape or form, is hosted on a certain server. Unlike land, certain websites require a lot more power behind their hosting, while others only need a little bit.
The Three Ways of Hosting
There are three ways to currently host a company’s website and data, but the differences can sometimes be hard to describe. The three types are Dedicated hosting, Shared hosting and Virtual Private Hosting. Let’s use analogies to clear up the terms a bit. Let’s say your family is going on a trip just outside the city. Dedicated Hosting is like renting an entire party bus. It makes sense if you need the entire 32 seats, but for a family of five? It is absurd to rent an entire party bus. The gas, the empty space, the driver giving his time; it adds up to so much money and resources that aren’t required. Shared hosting is like renting a car at a car rental dealership. You get something that fits your family, but it is rented for an allocated amount of time. It is great, but what if you meet with some friends and want to go with them? You’d have to go all the way back to the rental car dealership and rent another car. Not too lucrative for things out of the norm. Cloud hosting is the Uber app. You use your app to call upon the cars. The app is specifically yours, and nobody else can use it. You have the ability to “rent a car” at your leisure in any city with very little restrictions.
In computer terms, a dedicated server is one that is only for your company’s sites. Of course, being able to have something to yourself comes with a price. You are renting a very powerful computer to host and maintain your information. A shared host is more affordable because you are sharing one of those computers with others, but when your site begins to get serious traffic, issues can occur, and your website can end up being slow. A VPS is like a combination of both, but on the cloud. Some companies, like Memset, give you the opportunity to choose one based on your needs.
Why You May Need a VPS
A small to medium-sized business is the perfect use for a VPS. You should upgrade from a shared to VPS if you care about better speed, performance, and security. Shared hosting almost always has many users on one server, which can slow down the process for your site. Add heavy traffic, and your site speed can repel customers. Performance is also not up to par on a sharing server. Resources are always being used on a shared server. Finally, the improvement in security is incredible. You have full control of the server and can make changes as needed. With VPS hosting, the entire cloud server is dedicated to your website, and there is no need for compromise, be it scalability or security breach.
