When running a website or web application, the first decision is usually whether to choose shared hosting or a VPS (Virtual Private Server). The two differ not only in terms of performance, but also in who operates the server and what can be installed on it.

Shared hosting

With shared hosting, multiple customers’ websites run on a single server, sharing a common operating system and resources (CPU, memory, disk space). Each account is allocated resource limits (for example, the CloudLinux LVE limits on cPanel hosting) to ensure that one website cannot slow down the others. The server, web server, PHP, database and email are installed, updated and monitored by the provider; you manage your websites, databases and email accounts via a control panel (cPanel, KeyHelp).

VPS

A VPS is a virtual machine running on a physical server, isolated through virtualisation (such as KVM), with its own kernel, its own operating system and guaranteed resources. Although several VPS instances run on the same machine, another customer’s workload will not take up your CPU and memory allocation. You are granted full root access, so you can install anything that runs on Linux, and you decide on the server’s configuration.

Comparison

	Shared hosting	VPS
Resources	shared, per-account limit	dedicated vCPU, RAM and storage
Access	control panel, FTP/SFTP, or possibly SSH	full root access
Software environment	offered by the provider (PHP versions, MySQL/MariaDB)	freely selectable (Node.js, Python, Docker, Redis, your own web server)
Operations	carried out by the service provider	Do you manage this yourself, or is it provided as a managed service by the provider?
Prerequisites	basic	Linux system administration
Cost	lower	higher, increases with size

When is shared hosting enough?

For personal websites, blogs, small to medium-sized WordPress sites and online shops, shared hosting is generally sufficient and involves much less work. If your main priority is not having to deal with the server, this is the right choice: with our web hosting plans, we take care of server maintenance.

Signs that it’s time to switch to a VPS

• The website regularly reaches its resource limits, and caching and optimisation no longer help;
• you need software that cannot be run on shared hosting: a background service running continuously, your own database server, Docker, or a custom PHP extension;
• runs multiple projects and would like a separate, dedicated environment for each one;
• You would like to fine-tune the server settings (web server, cache, firewall) yourself.

Our blog post explains in detail when it is worth switching to a VPS.

Interim solutions

If you need VPS resources but do not wish to manage a server yourself, there are two options. The dedicated cPanel server comes with a KVM VPS cPanel licence and is managed by us, allowing you to manage your websites via the interface you are used to. For a customised environment, our system administrators manage the server as part of our managed VPS service.

If you opt for self-management, our KVM VPS plans are available with between 1 and 16 vCPUs, 1 and 32 GB of RAM, and 10 and 320 GB of NVMe storage, with root access, daily backups and DDoS protection.