As a business owner, you are responsible for many of the operational decisions daily. Some of these decisions are less obvious than others, such as which type of hosting plan your website will have. This seemingly insignificant decision has the power to determine the success or failure of your business. We will be looking at VPS as a hosting option and explaining its various benefits and uses.
Hosting Types Broken Down
When first starting a business, many people opt for shared hosting. This is usually the cheapest type, and it is a good way for the company to get started without breaking the bank. With shared hosting, there are hundreds of other websites sharing the same server space as your website. This means that the websites all share the server’s resources, including the CPU, RAM, and storage space. This is not an equal distribution, as one website may use up more, causing the other sites on the server to falter.
As your business grows, you will have the option of upgrading to a VPS or virtual private server. With this type of hosting, multiple sites will still share the same server space, but the resources will be evenly distributed. Each website will have its separate portion of the server, which will improve the performance of all of them.
Benefits of VPS Hosting
Enhanced Security
People often switch to VPS when they want to have stronger security for their websites. A VPS has stronger security because there are fewer opportunities for hackers as compared to shared hosting. If even one website neglects to implement proper security measures with shared hosting, someone can hack their website. Since all the websites are on the same server, the hacker could easily conduct a virtual attack on the others. The hacker would then be able to send spam emails to clients, store malicious files on the site, and launch DDoS attacks.
With a good VPS hosting provider, business owners will have a reduced chance of falling victim to a hacker. Your website will be better protected due to improved firewalls, more frequent data backups, and additional monitoring and scans.
If you, or someone you work with, know about regular website maintenance, virtual security, and system management, you will have better luck with VPS in terms of security.
Faster Speeds
Since your website is no longer competing for resources on the server, the performance will improve. This includes increasing the loading speed of web pages for visitors. A reduction in loading speeds is important when it comes to customer satisfaction. If a customer must wait for more than a few seconds, they are likely to navigate away before the page loads. This is the bounce rate of a website.
Websites with higher bounce rates will rate poorly on a Google search result. Google’s algorithm considers page speed to be a direct factor when it comes to a website’s search engine optimization.
Increase in Bandwidth
With a new website, there is not likely to be a high amount of daily traffic because not many people know about you yet. This is partially why shared hosting works so well for young websites, as the amount of bandwidth can remain low with few repercussions.
Once you start noticing an increase in virtual traffic, VPS is useful due to an expanded amount of bandwidth. With this upgrade, your website can handle more visitors without crashing or taking a long time to buffer. Having enough bandwidth is important. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing new potential clients and the corresponding profit.
Who Should Use a VPS?
Any growing company should consider upgrading to VPS if they find that shared hosting is not meeting their needs any longer. eCommerce websites should use VPS hosting because they will be collecting the confidential information of their customers. They will need enhanced security to keep the information safe and retain their customer loyalty, which is essential for emerging businesses.
An eCommerce website also requires more backend control and system management than a basic blog or portfolio. With a VPS hosting plan, you can customize features and access certain controls.
