There are several key factors that we believe may influence your decision on whether to choose shared hosting or an affordable virtual private server (VPS).
Both are hugely popular. Shared hosting accounts for around 35-38% of the global web hosting market, with over 18.5 million websites using it (SQ Magazine). VPS hosting accounts for 10.3% of the entire web hosting market, but the adoption and market are growing faster at a compound annual growth rate of 11.9%.
Both are good, but we’ll look at why one is better than the other and which one you should choose.
The More Affordable Virtual Private Server
VPS hosting splits a single server into multiple private servers. Users have more resources, an independent operating system, and complete control, similar to a dedicated server, except it’s all virtual. The far more affordable and competitive VPS is the middle ground people need between shared hosting and expensive dedicated servers.
You’re also more likely to get better performance consistency and uptime with dedicated allocations of CPU, RAM, and storage. You can customise software, configure changes, and generally have far more control over your resources.
It’s the all-rounder option for affordability and scalability.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is, as the name suggests, a single server hosting multiple websites. Those websites then get shared access to storage, bandwidth, and CPU power.
Some people can argue that shared hosting is cheaper, but there are so many downsides. One issue can be ‘noisy neighbour’ spikes, where one website on the shared hosting experiences an influx in traffic, impacting loading speeds and hosting usage for other websites on the same hosting. And with that also comes shared vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities on one site might affect others on the same server.
Shared hosting also isn’t scalable at all. Businesses will often need to switch to a pre-designed package for more bandwidth and CPU storage, for example.
Which One Should You Choose?
As you can probably tell, we would go for the more affordable VPS hosting. You can argue it’s slightly more expensive than shared hosting, but now with the benefits you get in return. Shared hosting is rigid and more prone to downtime and server issues, and you have zero control over it other than the hosting you select.
VPS is the opposite. If you expect your traffic to grow or spike, a VPS is best. If you need control over your server environment, a VPS is better. If you want more isolation and performance stability, a VPS is better.
We can almost guarantee that if you have a website that you’re expecting traffic to increase with, you’ll end up spending more on shared hosting as you need to upgrade your package for more server storage.
You need reliable and affordable hosting. And, as you can see, while both are good options and have their benefits, VPS hosting wins as the overall package. You need a hosting service that works for you now and in the future, and that’s what you’re going to get with VPS hosting.
