Difference Between Shared Hosting and VPS

Shared Web Hosting vs VPS

Shared Hosting (common) and VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting are services and concept offered by web hosting providers. The major difference between shared hosting and VPS is, in shared hosting multiple websites and users will be sharing the same server and related resources whereas in VPS server, it is virtually partitioned into multiple private servers (logical servers) and user can manage it better than shared hosting. But resources are limited in VPS hosting as well comparing to dedicated server hosting.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared Hosting is configured in a physical hardware box running with either windows or Linux based operating system. Multiple websites and users will be assigned to this server. Server resources will be shared by users without any restriction or priority to individual users. These days many hosting providers allow unlimited server spaces, that is you can host as much as you want except media files. In shared hosting scenario resources like main memory, backbone bandwidth, processor utilization, storage space and application will be shared.

For example Apache web server, IIS web server, MS SQL Server, My SQL Server, Cpanel application and some other applications will be shared among users assigned to the particular web server where you are hosted. But shared web hosting is the cheapest hosting option compared to other hosting options like VPS and dedicated.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting

In VPS, physical server box, installed with a base operating system will be partitioned and configured as separate server by a concept called Virtualization. On each virtual servers created on this box could be installed with different operating systems as per user requirements and applications. Users will have admin rights to the virtual servers and virtually treats this as individual server or dedicated server assigned to them.

In VPS, resources can be shared or dedicated to users as required except processor utilization. When you order for VPS hosting you can request or select the memory size or hard disk space as per your needs. Here these resources will be dedicated to specific VPS server.

VPS concept eliminates the limitations associated with shared hosting and provides us flexibility and the power of dedicated servers by allocating dedicated resources. Since users get administrative rights in VPS hosting, software configuration and customization is possible.