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Shared hosting is an excellent solution if you’re just starting out. But as your business grows, you may soon realise that your website needs more resources – a clear sign that it’s time to upgrade.
A different hosting plan may offer faster loading speeds, less downtime and better security. The trick is to find the right hosting option for your website.
Both virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated hosting provide a unique, customisable server that is independent of other websites. VPS is the more affordable option, sitting between shared and dedicated servers. In contrast, dedicated hosting provides greater resources to handle high web traffic.
In this post, we’ll look at the key differences between VPS and dedicated hosting. We’ll then show you how to choose the hosting plan that best suits your needs.
VPS hosting: shared, but better
Before you start building and designing your website, it’s worth giving some thought to web hosting.
When you sign up with a web hosting provider, you are essentially buying space on a server for your website. There are countless types of hosting plans available, each offering slightly different services.
Many beginners start out with shared hosting. This means that your website is hosted on the same server as several other websites, as if you were living in a block of flats. Shared hosting allows you to share resources with other users, making it the cheapest option.
A virtual private server is one step up from shared hosting.
Just like shared hosting, VPS hosting involves sharing a physical server. However, the provider installs a virtual hosting environment on the server’s operating system (OS). With this setup, your website is allocated its own dedicated resources – much like a virtual flat.
A VPS uses a hypervisor to create virtual machines on the server for each website. Put simply: your website is hosted on shared server space, but has its own dedicated resources.
With VPS hosting, you can enjoy many of the same benefits as a dedicated server without having to pay a higher price, making it a cost-effective solution for growing websites. VPS plans may include unlimited bandwidth, dedicated disk space, a customised operating system and scalable random access memory (RAM).
Benefits:
- More cost-effective than dedicated hosting
- Better performance than basic shared hosting
- Scalable resources (e.g. RAM)
- It often includes unlimited bandwidth
- Customised operating system
- Suitable for growing websites
Disadvantages:
- It still shares the physical server with other users
- Less control over the hardware than with dedicated hosting
- Potentially lower performance than dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting: your own private space
A VPS still involves sharing a server, but a dedicated hosting account means you have control over the entire server. It’s like renting your own tropical island, complete with all sorts of resources.
Although this is a relatively expensive solution, this type of setup can significantly improve loading speeds, ensuring your customers are satisfied with your website. In fact, faster loading times can have a direct impact on your conversion rate.
You can customise both the software and the physical server hardware to suit your website’s hosting requirements.
The main disadvantage of dedicated hosting is the high cost. Purchasing a dedicated server can be expensive, particularly when compared to the affordability of shared and VPS hosting. Furthermore, you will be responsible for configuring and maintaining the server.
Benefits:
- Full control over the entire server
- Significantly improved loading speed
- Customisable software and hardware
- Ideal for high-traffic or resource-intensive websites
Disadvantages:
- A relatively expensive solution
- Greater responsibility for maintenance
- Some technical knowledge is required for configuration
- It may be excessive for smaller websites or businesses
VPS and dedicated hosting: a head-to-head comparison
So far, we’ve been getting to know VPS and dedicated hosting services. At the moment, we’re still just getting to know each other.
Before you commit to any web hosting provider, it’s worth getting to know them better. So let’s get started!
Security and performance
Both VPS and dedicated hosting plans offer a higher level of security and performance than traditional shared hosting. The difference lies in the size of the updates.
With a VPS hosting plan, you get space allocated on a server and dedicated resources. This means faster page load times and less downtime.
VPS hosting is generally secure, particularly if you opt for a managed hosting plan. However, as you share the server’s hardware with other accounts, you remain vulnerable if other websites on the same server are affected by security vulnerabilities.
In comparison, hosting your website with a dedicated package is significantly more secure. As it features dedicated server hardware and software, there is no risk of cross-contamination from other websites. In addition, you can implement your own security measures, such as firewalls, anti-malware systems and protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
This is particularly important in a business context, as cyber security incidents can be very costly – whether they involve unauthorised access to intellectual property or the theft of sensitive customer data. This alone may be reason enough to invest in an isolated hosting environment.
Dedicated hosting also offers advantages in terms of performance. A dedicated server is the best solution for handling high web traffic and customer transactions, as you have exclusive use of the CPU, RAM and bandwidth.
To put the differences into perspective, here are a few typical packages:
| Features | VPS | Dedicated server |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Usually 2–8 vCPUs | 4+ physical CPU cores |
| RAM | From 1 GB to 64 GB | From 32GB |
| Hosting | From 20GB to 1TB | From 400 GB to several terabytes |
| Traffic | From 100 Mbps to 4 Gbps | At least 1 Gbit/s |
| Security | Virtualised environment, general DDoS protection | Physical isolation, unique security features, customisable DDoS protection |
Customisability
Customising your web hosting account is essential if you have big plans or if your website is growing rapidly.
Websites hosted on a VPS offer greater flexibility than shared hosting. Once your virtual private server has been set up, you can access the files and install the software required to run your website.
That’s a good start. However, larger, more complex web projects may require much more customisation.
With dedicated hosting, you can tailor the server to your specific needs. For example, you can replace the server’s software and modify the hardware configuration. You can even install a completely different operating system.
In other words, running a dedicated server is essential if you have large-scale or highly specialised requirements.
Let’s look at a few specific examples. This is what customising a VPS looks like:
- E-commerce: As your small online shop grows into a popular brand, it may be worth installing specialised e-commerce software and optimising your hosting account for product catalogues.
- Custom web applications: With a VPS, you can install and configure various programming languages, frameworks and databases, such as Python, Django and MySQL.
- CMS optimisation: Whilst the most popular content management systems (CMS) run smoothly on shared hosting, VPS hosting allows you to optimise your plan for your chosen system.
Meanwhile, dedicated hosting would be a good choice in the following scenarios:
- High-traffic websites: News portals, online gaming platforms or large e-commerce sites that need to handle traffic spikes. With a dedicated server, you can customise hardware configurations and install specialised software for load balancing, caching and content delivery networks (CDNs).
- Complex web applications: Enterprise-level applications with complex requirements (such as real-time data processing) often require the kind of flexibility that dedicated hosting provides.
- Special requirements: Some businesses require specific hardware or software configurations for their day-to-day operations. For example, a scientific research institute may need a server equipped with specialised graphics processing units (GPUs) for data analysis.
Scalability
If you want to expand your website, you’ll need a hosting plan that can keep pace with demand.
On a virtual private server, you can increase the CPU, hosting and memory as required. This can be an excellent solution for medium-sized websites that wish to expand over time. By using VPS hosting, you can scale the server’s resources without having to upgrade your subscription.
If you can no longer scale up your VPS, it’s time to consider a dedicated server. Dedicated hosting comes with a significant allocation of resources, so you’ll probably not need to upgrade your plan. With a dedicated server, rather than having to increase server capacity, you can focus on reliably maintaining your web traffic.
However, should the need arise, you can still upgrade to a larger server or expand the resources of your dedicated server. When configuring your server, you can select the amount of RAM required to handle your web traffic. You can also choose a RAM size one size larger than your current requirements, thereby making the system scalable.
Costs
In many cases, the most significant difference between a VPS and a dedicated server is the price. The cost of web hosting can vary greatly depending on which plan you choose.
VPS plans are generally quite affordable. As several websites are hosted on the same server, hosting providers are able to offer server space at a discounted price.
However, VPS plans are more expensive than shared hosting plans. You can see this for yourself by comparing the prices of shared web hosting and VPS hosting on our website.
Dedicated hosting involves a whole server for your exclusive use, so the costs are correspondingly higher. Our DreamHost dedicated servers can provide an effective solution for larger websites that require greater performance, better control and greater versatility.
Even our most basic dedicated hosting plan comes with 16 GB of RAM, DDoS protection and a 100 per cent uptime guarantee. With full root and shell access, you can easily start customising the server to suit your needs.
As you can see, there is little difference in price between VPS hosting and dedicated hosting. That is why some small and medium-sized enterprises opt for cloud-based hosting as a middle ground.
This type of web hosting solution provides access to a network of virtual servers, the resources of which are scalable, and you only pay for the services you actually use. It’s a great way to gain access to more resources without having to bear the ongoing maintenance costs of a full physical server. But that’s a topic for another time.