Differences Between Dedicated, Shared, and VPS Hosting

BlueServers presents an ultimate guide on what are the differences between Dedicated Server, Shared Server, and Virtual Private Server. Grab some coffee and prepare for a 5-10 minute read. Some of the positions might seem similar but this is a deceiving feeling. Anyway, let’s get started.

Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

Shared Hosting is the most popular option on the market, used by most end-users who need to put online only a website with few resources. Being the cheapest option and the simplest to work with, it is the best option for most people who have little knowledge or do not need much attention from the hosting companies.

In this case, your server is shared by other end customers and you get only a small share. The server's memory, operating system, traffic, disk space, and all the server's characteristics are shared with other customers who have purchased the same package of services.

This is the best option for those who have little knowledge of computers or web servers, as the maintenance and management of the hosting are extremely simple.

The dedicated Server option consists in renting a physical machine totally dedicated to a client, hence the name dedicated, so that all the resources of that machine are entirely and exclusively at the client's disposal. These options are fantastic for clients that have more than one website online and want to guarantee its constant evolution, with thousands of visits per day and lots of daily resources.

In practical terms, it is the same as imagining a dedicated server as a building, which can later be divided into as many floors as the customer needs, thus making each floor work as a shared server, dividing the resources siblingly (or not) among the various websites he needs.

As you might expect, a dedicated server has a very steep price, it can reach hundreds of dollars per month. However, for those who have large websites and want to ensure their security, it is one of the best options on the market today. There is also the extreme need for administration of the server itself since in these cases the hosting company is free to manage the server, thus requiring advanced knowledge to ensure its proper functioning.

Server Performance

Hands down dedicated server beats down shared hosting without any problem. It is simply as comparing a small town car to a hypercar. In shared hosting, even after upgrading for the next plan you are receiving a very small increase in performance, while in a dedicated server case the sky is the limit.

Server Security

It’s difficult to say which one is more secure in terms of the breach. If your website is built on top of WordPress website with admin admin login and password you can be hacked regardless of the infrastructure is hosted on. 

Hosting providers tend to care about their security very much, and stories of hosting providers being hacked and passwords being stolen is an extremely rare occasion. Of course, if your team is a specialists in cyber security dedicated server offers more security at least on the hardware level as you are not being dependent on anyone. So we can state a point to the dedicated server.

Customization

Shard hosting cannot be customized anyhow. It’s just a set of hardware parameters that are being allocated to you. You cannot change the storage type or expand a RAM, you need to advance to the next plan regardless of whether you want additional storage to your RAM or not. 

Dedicated server on the hand offer full customizability including on the network level. RAM, Storage, CPU everything can be changed, except probably the platform, because it means basically a new server. Plus you can create VPS on your dedicated server by running virtualization software.

VPS Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

While we have talked about dedicated servers in the article above, it’s worth telling what is VPS itself. 

This is a slightly more advanced option than the shared hosting option and is ideal for those who have a resource-intensive website or for those who want to put more than one website online. Renting a virtual server, or also called VPS, becomes much cheaper than several shared servers, thus leading to users being able to have several websites online in the same hosting package.

This is an intermediate option between shared and dedicated, where the virtual server is simulated inside a real computer, producing independent environments despite sharing the same physical space. In this option, the virtual server has its own operating system, private access, disk space, and traffic, thus allowing much more security and personal management of these resources. The virtual server also allows the user to install his own programs, scripts, or special security systems.

Speed

Coming up with the comparison of those two, we can state that if your requirement is to send 10Gb using the 1Gbit network the result will be practically the same. For example, if VPS is built on top of NVMe drives the speed of read/write will be the same in both cases. Dedicated server shine when you require to transfer and process a lot of data in a short period of time. So if your website is relatively big for shared hosting but too big for a dedicated server it’s wise to stay on VPS for a while. So here is a point for a dedicated server but only in certain case scenarios. 

Scalability

VPS is limited by the node he stays in. So if the node is 32Gb of RAM, VPS can only extend to this number. Dedicated server is practically not limited in terms of scalability, you can install even 2TB of RAM so it is highly scalable. On the other hand, VPS scalability is very fast, because everything is done via the software part of the virtualization. Dedicated server requires the server to be shut down for the upgrade to take place, which definitely consumes time. It can take 4 hours to do if the spare parts are in stock but if they are not, you need to wait until those parts come to the data center. Point to VPS here.

Price

If we could say it short, then it would be. Dedicated Server => VPS => Shared hosting. The pricing is relatively easy to be calculated. For Shared Hosting you can host hundreds of people on one server, which eventually lowers the price of renting the space on it for the customers. They basically share all the costs of electricity, internet, and all that jazz. On a dedicated server all those costs lie on the shoulders of one customer. 

That concludes our article about the difference between different variations of the server. Thanks for reading!