Choosing the right web hosting plan is very important to the performance of your website, and indeed the success of your business. VPS servers have emerged as a popular choice among business owners, thanks to the various benefits it provides.
This guide is dedicated to the numerous advantages that come with the use of VPS servers. However, certain drawbacks will also be discussed. Keep on reading!
Pros and Cons of VPS Hosting
VPS hosting offers many benefits that are worth discussing. Yet, these hosting plans are not without their drawbacks. This section will explain this better.
Pros of VPS hosting
- Faster and reliable: Virtual Private Servers are more reliable and faster than a shared hosting server. VPS comes with improved features that can handle traffic surges better. Besides, an error in a website can have no effect on another website in a VPS hosting environment.
- Full root access: VPS offers web owners control over their hosting environment.
- VPS promotes privacy: As the name implies, a virtual private server facilitates better privacy. With VPS, users can hide files and databases from other users.
- VPS also encourages scalability: With a VPS, you can easily upgrade your server according to the growth of your website.
Cons of VPS hosting
- More expensive than shared hosting: Since VPS comes with more advanced features than shared hosting servers, they are more expensive than the latter.
- While many tutorials are available online, setting up your VPS requires more technical knowledge.
- Managing servers can be more difficult than shared hosting plans.
When You Should Switch to VPS
As a website owner, when your business grows, certain demands cannot be ignored. Your business should grow beyond the limits of shared hosting plans. Then, you need more advanced features to manage your changing demands. You need to consider switching to VPS. Many instances may demand the need for acquiring a VPS sharing plan.
1. More Security Features
Security represents one of the most important factors that determine the reliability and integrity of a website. Shared hosting plans are associated with a specific amount of security risks. These could expose your website to potential hack attacks.
It is possible for hackers to use a vulnerable website to display unsolicited content or redirect visitors to an unknown website. As your website grows and you add more content and visitors, it is important that you strengthen the security of your website by acquiring a VPS hosting solution.
Some essential security features a VPS hosting plan will offer you include:
- Backup and restore functionality
- Server and network monitoring
- DDoS protection
- Regular malware scans
- Secure datacenter
- Regular password change and two-factor authentication
- Web application firewall integration
- Manually restarting services
- Access and user permissions
These features will help improve the security of your website significantly.
2. Website Traffic is Rapidly Increasing
The growth of your business implies that your website will start getting more content and visitors. As this happens, your website may become slower when you are on a shared hosting plan. This shows that you are growing beyond the limits of a shared hosting solution. While shared hosting packages are good for beginners, their limitations make them the wrong choice for growing businesses that are looking to retain visitors to their sites.
On shared hosting, server resources are shared among website owners on the same server. If a website experiences high traffic, the functions of other websites on that server can be affected. However, with a VPS hosting plan, higher bandwidth is one of the most important resources you will enjoy. This is capable of handling traffic a growing website may receive.
You will find many VPS hosting providers that offer a good amount of bandwidth at budget-friendly costs.
3. Website is already running slow
When you have more visitors to your website on a shared hosting plan, then the website will start running slow as load time increases. Then, these are signs that you need a plan that offers you better features.
However, when you acquire a VPS hosting package, you can enjoy the use of dedicated resources, which can be scaled up depending on your specific needs. After all, you have full control over your hosting environment and you can install applications that can help you handle high traffic. This improves the performance and speed of your website.
4. Your Website has an Online Store
Those who run an e-commerce website must have experienced traffic spikes, particularly during sale period. During this period, you would have benefitted from having to scale your resources. With VPS hosting plans, you can solve this issue easily.
After all, a VPS will serve your website in a virtual environment and you have full control to improve your hosting environment, based on your growing needs. An online store can enjoy the security offered by VPS without needing to pay too much to acquire these resources.
5. You Keep Getting Server Error
When you keep getting content on your website, the limited resources a shared hosting server offers your website – which is shared by many other websites on the same server – may reduce the performance of your website.
Besides this, since resources are shared among websites, when a site has an issue, the effect of that will be felt by other websites on the same server. However, when your resources are dedicated to you – as in the case of a VPS hosting plan – you can manage your data and files better. You are less likely to get a server error.
Conclusion
Getting the best hosting plan is important to the success of your business. As you grow, you need the right resources and features to support your demands. Running your website in a shared hosting environment comes with certain limits, beyond which your website functions will be significantly affected.
Then, you need an upgrade to support the performance of your site. Do you run an online store? Are you having trouble handling high traffic? Or do you keep getting server errors? If so, then it is about time you upgraded to a virtual private server hosting plan.