VPS is another form of hosting. It lies somewhere between normal cheap web hosting and a dedicated server. With cheap web hosting you share a server with 50,100,150+ people. With a dedicated server, you have the entire server to your self. With VPS, you share the server with about 10-30 other people. This makes a huge difference in load speeds, storage limit, bandwidth, etc. Unfortunately, it also makes things much more expensive.
Cheap web hosting usually goes for about $5 a month, while some of the cheapest VPS plans I’ve seen go for $30+ per month. While that’s certainly not unaffordable (just think of it as $1 a day), it’s a pretty sharp increase in price. On the other hand, dedicated servers are much more expensive, usually starting at about $150 per month.
When it comes down to it you can probably just go with cheap web hosting and be completely fine. 90% of webmasters don’t need anything but a nice cheap plan. If you are approaching the uper end of the webmaster world and are still on cheap web hosting, I recommend trying a VPS before you make the jump to a dedicated server.
I personally prefer VPS plans to anything else simply because they are very fast, but mostly because they are easy. When you get a dedicated server you have to know what you’re doing, but with a VPS you can just set it up and forget about it. Most VPS’s are fully managed, which means the hosting company does all the maintenance, surveillance, etc. for you.
As far as purchasing a VPS, you can find them at almost every web host. Most of the hosts on this site sell VPS plans, and if not, you can always check GoDaddy or some of the other large hosts.
Written by Web Hosting Expert on Jul 1, 2009.
