Shared or Managed VPS Hosting? Which is better?

In the past, VPS hosting has been chosen only by people with the ability to manage a server themselves. Today it is much easier for everyone to have their own VPS hosting, especially with 34SP.com. We have numerous managed VPS hosting plans, making superior hosting more accessible alongside the same great support you are used to.

What is VPS Hosting?

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. A VPS is a container on a physical server that you can use for many types of custom website and email configurations, with a set amount of resources set aside for your use. VPSs are generally used by clients who need an increased level of flexibility for their hosting. Most budget plans you can find on the market are shared hosting, meaning your site is sharing a pool of resources with other sites, allowing providers to keep costs low at the expense of reduced performance and resources for each site.

At 34SP.com we would recommend you choose VPS or containerised hosting wherever possible. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of both VPS hosting and shared hosting:

Shared Hosting

Advantages

• Cheaper prices
• An option for clients needing online presence only
• Server maintenance knowledge not required

At 34SP.com we like to cater for everyone. If you feel you fit into this category we will happily provide a hosting platform to suit you. We call it Professional Hosting. You can host your website and emails at a lower cost while benefiting from our UK based support and server management.

Disadvantages

• Website performance. Your website performance will be affected by other sites sharing the same server. This can cause you to experience slowness or even downtime as other websites become busy.
• Shared resources eg. server memory. Sharing resources means they are available to all sites on a server and are not reserved for your use.
• Flexibility issues. Shared hosting comes with software and setup limitations. Using WordPress as an example, some plugins may be banned on shared hosting setups if they use a significant amount of resources.
• Growth opportunities. Shared hosting is built mainly for small websites and for people who need an online presence only. This does pose scalability problems; should your site grow significantly in the future, you may need to move to a more powerful hosting solution.
• Security threats are more of a risk on a shared hosting platform.
• SEO. Although SEO is a grey area we know from experience that the better the performance of your website, the better it will rank with search engines. There are many factors to SEO and website performance is an important one.

Managed VPS Hosting

Advantages

• Security. Having an isolated container on a server to host your website is much more secure. On shared hosting a security threat on another website could easily affect yours, with a VPS there are many more options to lock your data down. At 34SP.com security is important to us, please ask us for more information about the security levels of your particular hosting plan in.
• Performance. The resources are dedicated to you at all times allowing your website to perform at its best around the clock. Containers can also be optimised to increase speed for your site.
• Uptime. The uptime on a VPS is only affected by the server as a whole or your own website configuration. On shared hosting, hundreds or thousands of other websites have the opportunity to cause downtime for your website. This is why we are happy to offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) on our managed VPS hosting plans and guarantee the availability of your site.
• Flexibility. Using a container means you have more flexibility to adjust the setup of your website. You or your developer have more freedom to add plugins and software, enhancing your website and creating a better experience for you and your site visitors.

At 34SP.com we recommend managed VPS hosting wholeheartedly. We have a dedicated WordPress hosting platform for WordPress websites, we have a business hosting package, perfect for e-commerce websites. We also have our containerised reseller hosting, for better performance if you have multiple websites. Enquire today!

Disadvantages

• Access. Having a managed VPS is not the same as having a VPS alone. With our non-managed VPS you have a complete access to the server to be able to log in and do installations yourself at the root level. With a managed VPS we look after this for you.
• Resources. With a container the full advertised resources are included in your package. There will be factors that use up some of this space, such as the OS or the control panel. This is the same with many products such as your mobile phone; some of the storage listed by manufacturers is used by the system, leaving you with less for your data. If you buy a container with 25GB of disk space and your website is also 25GB in size, you may need to purchase an upgrade. At 34SP.com all our our containers are easily scalable, allowing for the growth of your website.

If you need a VPS hosting plan with no management we offer those too!

Like any hosting plan, there are pros and cons to VPS hosting and it’s important that you understand cheaper is not always better. At 34SP.com we offer value for money hosting platforms as we believe the quality of the hosting itself along with great support are the two most important qualities you should look for in a hosting provider. We recommend VPS style hosting as the right path for most of our clients.

Please do call and speak to us today for advice on the best hosting plan for you.

-Siobhan @34SPSiobhan @34SP