This one particular question always plagues users and businesses across the globe. Usually small business units find shared hosting a very economical and a viable option. However, in due course of time, businesses expand and usually outgrow the shared web hosting plans that they once started with. That’s where Virtual Private Server (VPS) comes into play. VPS, as per a business point of view, serves both, small time business houses, as well as, mid-sized units; both of which have a bulk of data to handle on a daily basis, via their site or by e-mail. In the technical language VPS basically bridges the gap between Shared Web Hosting Services and Dedicated Hosting Services, providing every user an equal amount of freedom from the rest, while maintaining economy in operation.
Though both VPS and Shared hosting have several similarities such as, usage of a single server to provide services, similar level of compartmentalization to separate multiple users’ files from each other; they still have a clear distinction. This distinction will be outlined in the rest of this article on very specific grounds.
Private Email Server & IP Address
While shared web hosting solutions share both the web server and e-mail server, with a VPS Hosting Solution an organization, will have the privilege of having its own e-mail server, exclusive to handle all its mails. Since in a VPS, the email would be generated from a unique IP address, it will ensure quick and accurate delivery, ensuring privacy at all times. Moreover it prevents Spammers from infesting your mailbox.
An Exclusive Operating System
With VPS servers, one enjoys the exclusiveness of having, full autonomy in terms of operating systems that would be designed and would cater exclusively to the needs of the VPS to use. While such a system seems identical to having a dedicated server, one still enjoys the benefits of a shared hosting account.
Performance
A very advantageous feature of VPS, that makes it a more viable option over Shared hosting is, that no one customer, is in a position to have access to a larger share of resources. Hence uniformity and reliability always prevails.
Security
As far as security is concerned VPS accounts are insulated from each other, this minimizes the threat that unauthorized access can bring along with, ensuring safety against hackers or other customers. Further since the account is in isolation, any kind of DoS attack, intended for someone else, would not affect the user.
Firewall Customization
With a Shared web hosting, necessary access must be provided to users, to be able to access web-mail, POP, FTP etc. With a VPS system in place, the firewall is capable of being locked down, in order to provide access from specific nodes, to a certain set of services. This is possible as a VPS is a standalone environment.
If it were to be concluded in a nut shell, Shared hosting is like living in an apartment but still not is able to enjoy the privacy, which a VPS service promises. However the ease of operation and low costs still works as a driving factor, for some to choose Shared over VPS.
