vps vs shared hostin

A question that always come up... what are your thoughts? Any downsides to getting a vps? Last time I got one it was unmanaged so I couldnt figure it out..now I am hearing about "managed" vps for an extra 30 a month...any thoughts?

In my opinion, having a VPS is much better than shared hosting because you have a lot more control over the configuration, and you are sharing hardware with a lot fewer people. Having said that, there is a BIG learning curve, and I have found that there isn't much in the way of step-by-step guidance out there. Unless your chosen host provides such tutorials (after you become a customer, of course), you can expect to be spending long hours hunting down the answers to the many questions you will have.

Even with a managed VPS, where the host sets it up for you and installs cPanel/WHM, PHP, MySQL, etc., you still need to do a lot on your own, such as:

- creating/managing nameservers
- adding DNS zones
- creating hosting packages for your sites (like how much storage, bandwidth, email accounts, etc. will be allowed for each of your sites)
- securing the VPS
- learning how to use SSH, SFTP, etc.
- editing your main php.ini (assuming you've got a Linux server) file, if necessary, using PuTTY

If you are willing to put forth the time and effort required to get your sites fully operational on a VPS, then I highly recommend that you go this route. I used both shared and reseller hosting for years before I made the switch to VPS, and even though the VPS was challenging at first, there's no way I'd ever go back to shared hosting.

The typical shared hosting can't host anything else than static sites reliably. Anything consuming resources is usually prevented with restrictions at script level, and in any case you will have the site shut down fast once you consume even just 5% or 10% of system resources.

VPS done well is the best alternative.... done well means Linux as OS, Xen virtualization, either Apache or Nginx as server, full understanding of how things work, contract that permits you to do anything is legal, etc. And if you don't now how to manage it first learn... don't try to win car races without even knowing how to drive...

well I am def not trying to spend any time messing around configuring hosting.

So basically what your saying is unless you know what your doing your stuck with shared hosting? Or you could hire someone to run it I guess...

no way to get ahold of a server setup like shared hosting is?

appleman said:

no way to get ahold of a server setup like shared hosting is?

Click to expand...

To my knowledge, there isn't. You'd probably have to find someone to do the configuration for you and set up the individual websites that you want to host. So yeah, if you don't know what you're doing and you don't want to learn the skills or pay for someone else's skills, then I'm afraid you're stuck with shared hosting.