Should you switch to VPS hosting from shared?
It is the most commonly asked question by businesses that reach the threshold of their shared hosting platform. With time, even business sites need more resources as they grow. Shared hosting is insufficient in sustaining these sites.
However, the businesses don’t have enough capital to invest in dedicated hosting. It is where VPS hosting comes in. VPS hosting grants hosting synonymous to a dedicated server. Unlike dedicated server hosting, VPS is very affordable and proves to be a cost-efficient option for growing businesses.
A glance at VPS hosting
Virtual Private Server or VPS hosting is a premium hosting that utilizes virtualization technology to convert a section of a server into an independent server. Since one server machine hosts many sites on its partitions, it is affordable for the service provider to charge low. The VPS has all attributes of a dedicated server while keeping moderate management costs.
MilesWeb’s VPS hosting services
MilesWeb is one of India’s leading hosting service providers. It provides various web hosting solutions and internet services for business and private use. MilesWeb offers managed and self-managed VPS hosting for Linux as well as Windows. Their VPS hosting has a state-of-art cloud infrastructure with advanced features like SSD servers, high-performance Intel processors and so on. They have even managed to cut costs to make their services available at pretty economical prices.
Some of the salient features of their VPS services are:
- You get a dedicated IP address for your hosting. It is a feature that is unique to sites that don’t share their server with other websites.
- Cloud-based VPS infrastructure offers incredible scalability for websites and helps keep their performance at an optimum level.
- You have full root access to your server that gives you the freedom to make any system configurations. You can install any software applications, access and monitor storage, bandwidth and server usage. It gives you total control of your server.
- You get high-speed data transfers with SSD integrated servers. MilesWeb’s VPS hosting service boasts of 100Mb/second network that assures fast loading speeds for websites.
- MilesWeb provides many plans that can accommodate businesses with all types of budgets and requirements. They offer services for Linux-based VPS hosting as well as cheap windows VPS server hosting. A further option is their managed and self-managed VPS hosting for both Windows and Linux users.
What is a managed VPS hosting?
VPS hosting provides a dynamic hosting platform for websites. However, the maintenance and technical help you need to manage the hosting is also potent.
Managed VPS hosting services offer dedicated technical support that takes care of all the technical aspects like upgrading, server maintenance, etc. It is a privilege that is exclusive to the managed VPS hosting clients only.
MilesWeb is one of the few companies that offer cheap managed VPS hosting. The technical specifications for their managed and self-managed VPS hosting services are the same. The only difference between the two is the work and performance efficiency.
What are the pros and cons of managed VPS hosting?
Here are some features of the managed VPS hosting that sets it apart from the self-managed counterparts:
Full server maintenance
Regular server maintenance is necessary, peculiarly if the server hosts high traffic website. However, it requires considerable technical knowledge and intuition.
With managed VPS hosting, a dedicated technical team oversees the maintenance duties of the server. This team consists of experts with a vast knowledge of server hosting and its technical aspects.
Server maintenance requires considerable efforts:
- Page caching.
- Regularly check log files of the server.
- Appraising folder permissions.
- Maintain redundancies of the system.
Sense of reliability
The technical team does all the maintenance and more to ensure that your VPS hosting is secured and optimized. You are free to focus on the business activities and not worry about any hosting issues like downtimes or slow loading speeds.
Assured optimized performance
The regular maintenance and scaling of resources give the site aesthetic performance potential. The technical team integrates software applications and mechanisms like CDN that guarantee optimum performance for site operations.
Improved security
The VPS support reassesses security features like firewalls, permissions, etc. They even audit the server logs for security alerts or evidence of hacking attempts. It gives better protection and security to your hosting and clients as they show active vigilance.
Memory Backups
Every system, no matter how foolproof, is prone to threats that may result in data loss. For example, a client may accidentally upload malware or cause a breach in the system. As a system administrator, you must safeguard the precious data to restore it on a clean website.
Taking regular backups of all the clients by yourself can get tedious. However, in managed VPS, the tech team performs regular system backups to ensure you have a source for retrieving the system data in case of system failure.
Updates
Regular updates for your system are necessary to ensure smooth working of the site. The idea of managed services is that you don’t have to keep updating the system. The technical team will always keep your system up-to-date without you even knowing. They install critical updates for service packs and applications. They also keep updating the operating system whenever needed.
Consultation
You get complete guidance like in concierge service for any configurations you wish to make to your hosting. The technical support even gives you personalized recommendations for software applications, security patches and much more to enhance your hosting performance.
Dedicated support
The technical support you get in a managed VPS hosting is very different than the self-managed. You would have a team standing by to address all your queries and provide step-by-step instructions for troubleshooting problems. What’s more, they are available 24/7 for their clients.
Even though managed services are better than self-managed, they have very few cons too.
Expensive
Given the extra features and exclusive management you get, managed VPS hosting is costlier than self-managed hosting. The additional charges of the service pay for the technical staff and their efforts. It is still cost-efficient than keeping an in-house team for hosting management.
Difficulty in transition
There are times when you need to switch from managed to unmanaged service. The provider handles maintenance and configurations in the managed hosting. It becomes hard to understand and make modifications to the server files. It makes the transition from managed hosting to self-managed hosting difficult.
Why should you opt for managed VPS hosting?
The self-managed VPS hosting gives you a perfect hosting platform to host your business site. However, managing the hosting by yourself can get too hectic for your schedule. It is a different story if you are a developer and have hands-on experience which makes things easier.
If you have enough finances to spend on your hosting and websites as a whole, you should go with managed hosting. It is recommended for newbies or businesses that have no prior hosting experience to get managed VPS hosting.