Difference Between Hosting Accounts

This is the fifth post in our series of SEO and page speed best practices. Today’s post will educate you on the differences between hosting the types of web hosting accounts. and how they affect how quickly your website loads.

With various hosting types available, choosing the perfect fit for your website can be tough. Do you want a shared hosting, Dedicated Server, or a Virtual Private Server (VPS)? This article will tackle about the advantages and disadvantages of these hosting services so you can make an informed decision on which is best for you.

The Shared Account

Shared account is a basic web hosting account and used by millions of websites around the world. The shared account is perfect for sites with less traffic because they are inexpensive as compared to the VPS and Dedicated Server.

Here’s a scenario to enlighten you. Shared hosting account is like renting a room in a dormitory. You have your own private space; however, you share the facilities such as the bathroom, kitchen, and living room with the other tenants. With shared hosting, your private room is your home directory – nobody is allowed to invade your home directory other than you. That space is solely yours. But, you share major server resources like RAM (memory), software packages, CPU, and network connectivity with other websites.

Pros and Cons of a Shared Account

Pros

• Very cheap – fee for a basic shared account is as low as $5.97 for every month
• It is a great approach in starting an online presence
• Fully-supported by Home-Cooked Support
• Doesn’t require customer intervention when it comes to system problems
• Very easily scaled across the three shared account hosting types

Cons

• Same with renting a room in a dormitory with others, you are subject to each other’s doings in the server. Since you share the main resources, there may be times when two people will compete with the same resource all at once. Here’s another scenario – two people are using the toilet and you badly need to use it. Although there are automated scripts already in place to ensure that people are not hogging the virtual restroom, there are instances when two processes need the same resource simultaneously. From time to time, the second individual must wait for a moment – however, in computer terms, a “moment” is normally in a matter of microseconds, instead of hours.
• Less capacity to modify. The same with landlords that implement rules, shared servers also have rules on what “tenants” are permitted and not permitted to do.
• Outbound email is limited to 500 per hour
• Root access is not permitted
• Must have cPanel

Many individual starting with small online stores or blogs start with shared account.

The Virtual Private Server (VPS)

If you’re not sold out with shared hosting, then a VPS can be your next option. A VPS is somehow the same as shared account in a sense that few resources of the parent server are being shared by the child servers. However, before we delve into that. Here’s a scenario for this option: A VPS is the same as renting an apartment. Different from renting a room on a dormitory and sharing most of the facilities, renting an apartment provides an individual space with more freedom. You have your own bathroom, kitchen, and living room that are only for your usage. In a VPS setting, these are the RAM, disk space, and operating system. But, you still need to share a few resources with the rest of the building, which is the parent server, electricity and the water system, which is the network.

Pros and Cons of a VPS

Pros

• Cheaper compared to a Dedicated Server
• For sites that are becoming gradually popular, a VPS is the next step up
• Customizable – the limitations of a shared account are nearly gone
• Having a managed or core-managed VPS’s can let Home-Cooked Support take care of the management
• You will have more resources – you will have your very own operating system, RAM (memory) and in selected cases, your own CPU
• Outgoing email is not limited to 500 per hour
• cPanel optional
• Reseller-enabled
• Scalable – can easily increase or decrease system resources when required with less downtime
• Root access is permitted

Cons

• More costly compared to a shared account
• There are a few resources being shared with other customers on the server, so there are struggles with memory or server load.

The Dedicated Server

A Dedicated server is a physical server with hardware that you can use exclusively. Here’s a scenario: A Dedicated Server is similar to owning a house. From small cabins to the most elegant houses, it is really good to have something that is yours. Your hardware has no other customer, and nobody is competing for your resources too. It is exclusive to you. Your server is located in a datacenter, same as with your neighbourhood. If a fuse is blown from 3 houses away, it will not affect; but if the transformer of your neighborhood is blown then your house will be affected – if something occurs in your datacenter, which affects the network connectivity (a rare occurrence) everybody is affected. However, for problems that are specific to the server, your server is not affected by the things happening around you.

Pros and Cons of the Dedicated Server

Pros

• A Dedicated Server is a physical server that is exclusive to you
• cPanel optional
• Root access is allowed
• No outbound email limitations
• Vast resources for high-traffic sites
• Overall control over every aspect of your server
• Capacity to add more RAM, bigger disks or RAIDs
• Fully supported by Home-Cooked Support (with managed or core-managed Dedicated servers)
• Reseller-enabled

Cons

• More expensive compared to shared or VPS accounts

Server Resources

Regardless of the type of hosting service you opt for, your site will be located on a server. If visitors visit your page, the CPU and Memory of the server will work collectively to provide the visitors with the pages they want. Sometimes, there are instances that your website may utilize excessive CPU or Memory to serve a lot of pages, and that will be the perfect timing to improve and upgrade your account.

Upgrading from Shared to VPS Hosting

For many users a shared account is perfect. You have the capability to host an array of applications like Joomla or WordPress, and there are many email accounts to work with. When you compare Shared Hosting to living in an apartment, cases where an upgrade is necessary includes:

• A Growing Family: When your family is growing, and your apartment can’t handle it, then it’s a perfect time to move. For instance, you may have need of an extra bedroom or bathroom for your children. Moving into a condo can provide you with that extra space. In Shared Hosting, if your site is fast becoming popular, you may have to upgrade to VPS Hosting so your account will have more CPU and Memory. This will let you handle all of the new incoming traffic on your website.

• Customizations: If you like green and want your walls to be painted green, you may not be able to paint your walls with your favourite color if you’re in an apartment. Moving to a condo provides you with more ownership of your space, which lets you paint and decorate your space with whatever you like. If you need a software that’s not found in Shared Hosting, then upgrading to VPS hosting will have the power to install any software that you desire.

Upgrading from VPS Hosting to Dedicated Hosting

Continuing with the condo analogy, you are given a lot of control; however, you do not have total control. If you are to invite a crew to play in your home, others within the community will hear the ruckus and may complain. If your relative or friend moves with you, you may not be able to add another room to accommodate them. There are a lot of good reasons that living in a condo was great for you during a certain stage in your life; however, your family is growing. You may think of purchasing a family house where there is a lot of parking space, extra bedrooms, and a huge lawn for you to play with your pet.

For mid-sized businesses, VPS Servers are perfect. You will have a virtualized private server where you can create and tweak what you need. You may able to host a limitless number of sizes, and there are no limitations aside from the usage of the CPU and memory of your server. The server of a VPS isn’t a dedicated server, so that means that you’re still on a server with another user. Since you are sharing a server, other users can still be affected by your actions. If your website is busy, controlling most of the CPU time and memory of the server may cause performance problems for other users of the server. And if you’re using an unoptimized script and is running out of control, it will mess up your site and the whole server. This may cause downtime for other users of the same server.

Which to choose?

With the things mentioned above, you now know the various advantages and disadvantages of different type of hosting. We hope that through this article, you have grasped their distinctions. It is up to you to choose what type depending on your needs. If you intend to create a big blogging platform that lets hundreds of people visiting each month, you may have to consider dedicated hosting or cloud hosting because of the needs that you will face. These servers will be faster and help load your website as quickly as possible.

But, if you are starting with something small, why pay for a lot for what you don’t need? Go for shared hosting or VPS hosting and save a small amount of money.