This post might look a little bit of order, but as I was performing my morning routine of checking the various forums and web sites I am a member of or I follow to find what’s new I came to this interesting question. It might be a question of every [or at least a lot of] newbie to web hosting. You simply want to start online, but there are so many options out there. Different companies offer you options like free shared web hosting, paid shared web hosting, VPS hosting or dedicated servers and you jut do not know what way to go. There are just too many information thrown at you at one time. I know it is hard to decide when you are a newbie. I was a newbie too.
The next step such a person does is to make a simple forum or Google search [for e.g. "VPS"] to find more about the different options. But Google tends to throw lot of “hosting links” to your first page of results and so the only way you can possibly go is to visit “Hostgator”, “1and1″ or some other company and take a look at what they offer. They will describe all the features you might get if you sign up for a package with them and somewhere along the way they might give you some basic info about VPS. But do you really need it? What is it either way?
Well, as a newbie you most probably will not know what to think about the whole thing. There are some opinions on Web hosting talk, that it is better to go straight to a semi-dedicated or dedicated server instead of moving to VPS, but then there are the ones who will tell you to go to VPS and not dedicated….
My piece o advice would be to start at shared hosting and do not change until you really start hitting the limits of shared hosting environment. You might be surprised how long it might take ’till you hit those boundaries. With a small start up page you might never really need to move up the ladder. But this changes from project to project. For instance a forum with lots of daily visitors might feel not too good on a shared hosting as it generates a lot of traffic and thus will hit the “Bandwidth” limit fairly quickly. Although some hosts will tell you there are no Bandwidth limits set you will soon realize, that there are some called Fair Use Policy [FUP].
Small family web sites, small blogs or small business web sites will never really need to move to something bigger. There are shared hosts able to accommodate needs of these small web sites with bandwidth limits around 30-50GB, but as soon as you hit 30GB/month [50] you should start to look for an alternative. At this stage your site should be able to generate a revenue and thus you should be able to use it for something more reliable, with more space and bandwidth plus you will want to start manage the web site on a more serious level. And this could be the point to move to VPS. If your site does not generate 30-50GB/month you should be fine on shared package and our host should not make you any problems.
The problem with shared hosting relates to the term “shared”. You share resources with the other web sites hosted on the same server as your web site. You share CPU, server space, bandwidth, RAM and more and thus you can never exceed certain limits set by your host company. VPS on the other hand means Virtual and you become an owner of a Virtual Server in a data center [emulated on a real server]. You are still limited in how much CPU, RAM etc you can use, but you can clearly see the limits. You are able to manage the virtual server in a way you would manage a real server although some limitations apply. A VPS is a good alternative if you do not have the resources or knowledge to manage or buy your own dedicated server plan, but you would like to have all the benefits of a server and not to count on shared hosting limits. You should be aware that not only you will use the resources of a server, but there will be more VPS accounts on one server, but with VPS there will be not as many as there would be in a shared environment and you are always guaranteed you will be able to use all the resources you pay for. It’s because every account has the limits set and can’t go beyond them [it can on special occasions...] – you can say it’s the same by shared hosting, but remember there can be 100′s of web sites on a shared hosting, but only a limited number of accounts on a VPS server and thus you can be sure there will be far less sites! I have forgotten to mention the higher level of security.
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But you will not be able to utilize all the pros of a VPS if your site does not even hit 10GB/month and does not really needs that much f management. Until your site really rises to a high level you will be fine with a shared hosting environment. It gives you the best options – you can move freely, you can use the resources available to you, it is cheaper and you are not required to have any special technical knowledge.
OMG, it looks like I would telling you to move to VPS 
after I read this article, but the opposite is true. I want you to make think about it and do not go for VPS unless you have a high traffic web site and you want to have a higher level of security and want to manage the whole thing. Do not forget to leave any comments related to this topic at the end of this article. Tell us about your opinion on this subject and maybe you can add your experience. Have a nice day!
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