Getting your business online, and managing it is a very important task. More than selling the product, what’s important is rendering customer service and retaining them. When your business is online, it means you own a website and your users can connect with you through an internet connection.

Your website is thus, the most important asset, as its quality will speak of your product’s quality. The hosting service is the link between your website and the internet. For your website to work properly, you need to host it on the right hosting platform.

For that, you need to properly evaluate your website’s requirements. The major hosting services are:

• Virtual private server hosting
• Dedicated server hosting
• Cloud server hosting

What makes them different from each other are the features they offer, like:

• Speed
• Performance
• Technology
• Consistency
• File Storage

This write up will take you for a quick comparison between them, which will help you in selecting the ideal hosting service for your website.

VPS hosting

The VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting works on the principle of virtualization. A physical server is split into multiple isolated instances. An individual user gets complete control on his resources like bandwidth, RAM, storage and processor. A VPS thus, gives you a dedicated environment supported by virtualization technique.

Advantages of VPS hosting:

• Individual server space.
• Supports applications installation.
• Cost effective.
• File systems are separated and as such it prevents unauthorized access.

Disadvantages of VPS hosting:

• Less scalability.
• Single point of failure.
• Technical expertise is required.
• Not good for managing high traffic.

Dedicated server

The dedicated server hosting gives you complete access to your server as it is there solely for your business. The resources are thus reserved only to meet your business needs. With such dedication, your applications’ performance is top-notch. You also get your own IP address which helps your website to rank higher in search results.

Advantages of dedicated server:

• Delivers great performance.
• Resources are reserved.
• Full control over physical as well as software components.
• Good for those who seek security for their website data.

Disadvantages of dedicated server:

• Very expensive.
• Requires technical know-how.
• Single point of failure.
• Inflexible in terms of scaling up and down.

Cloud server hosting

Cloud server is the latest trend in the computing industry. In this, virtual servers run in a cloud computing environment. The virtualization makes it similar to VPS, but cloud delivers much more because of its features like instant scalability, flexibility and on-demand resource utilization. With cloud hosting, you get multiple deployment options like SaaS, IaaS or PaaS. You can customize your business needs with it as you get complete flexibility through it.
Advantages of cloud server hosting:

• Get high scalability.
• Deploy and remove servers instantly.
• Be cost efficient with pay-per-use.
• Manage data backup and restore regularly.

Disadvantages of cloud server hosting:

• Lacks security.
• Internet connectivity is a must.
• In public cloud, you get limited control over resources.
• Web latency issues can be found if not hosted through the right providers.

Comparison – VPS vs Dedicated vs Cloud hosting:

Selecting the right hosting service that meets your entire business needs, is a difficult task. Hence, we are going to make a comparison between the servers to make this decision easier for you. Let’s start with the key points of comparison:

1. Cost comparison
   • VPS gives better cost efficiency. Although in VPS, you get a private server, but it is a part of the entire physical server. Hence, the cost of a single VPS is reduced.
   • By working on a “demand basis” and “pay-as-you-go” model, cloud computing gives maximum cost efficiency. You pay for what you use.
2. Best performance
   • Dedicated server gives better performance when compared to the VPS. It gives complete control over the server and undivided server resources.
   • Cloud server gives maximum performance due to its services like instant scalability and anywhere accessibility.
3. Security
   • Dedicated servers are ahead in terms of giving security. They are demanded due to this very reason. Data security and privacy, may be lesser in VPS in comparison.
   • Though many assume that cloud servers risk security, but it is not completely true. With cloud’s private deployment model, you get the high level security.
4. Data recovery
   • As both dedicated and VPS servers work as standalone entities, chances of system crashes are high. Data recovery and backup are the issues in traditional hosting services in comparison to cloud.
   • In cloud, you can create multiple backups for your file, and thus work securely.
5. Scalability
   • High traffic demands more space, bandwidth and other resources. As dedicated servers come with limited resources, scaling up is a time consuming task.
   • In cloud, resources are obtainable on demand. Thus, you can scale up and down based on your website’s demands.
6. Suitability
   • Cost effectiveness and pre-configuration of servers make VPS well-suited for websites with a predictable traffic.
   • By offering security and physical isolation, dedicated servers are best for high performance applications and websites.
   • Cloud computing with its exceptional features has the capability to absorb every requirement and thus is fit for “Nearly every business requirement”.

Our quick comparison list below will help you understand the difference in a better way:

 

Features	VPS	Dedicated	Cloud Hosting
Remote access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Root access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Resource allocation flexibility	No	No	Yes
Global CDN	No	No	Yes
Hardware control	No	Yes	No
Software control	Yes	Yes	Yes

Conclusions

The ideal web hosting is one that’s able to match your business needs, and helps it in achieving new heights. Again, which way to go is your own choice? But, you need to select a hosting that delivers beyond your expectations and helps your business flourish.