Dedicated Servers vs. VPS: Advantages & Disadvantages

• August 25th, 2010
• Posted by Jason
• Web Hosting
• 2 Comments

Dedicated servers make up the top tier of web hosting because they provide complete freedom, more power, greater stability and flexibility than shared or VPS hosting. As the entire machine is allocated solely to you, your sites can use as much of the disk space, bandwidth, RAM, CPU and network access as you want without having to share any of these resources with other customers. This means a much higher level of performance compared to shared or VPS hosting. Root access gives you total control of the server and allows you to install, update and remove applications at any time and to customize it as per your requirements. You can also reboot the server at any time. Dedicated server customers also receive priority support with fully managed solutions. A dedicated solution is best for resource intensive websites with large volumes of traffic which VPS accounts cannot handle. It also ensures uninhibited growth enabling you to host a much larger number of domains without the need to expand installed resources in the long run. Server uptime and load times, both of which are of extreme importance for large websites, are far better on a dedicated machine than on a VPS. Dedicated servers also offer a higher level of security. Unlike dedicated machines, not all software and scripts run well on a VPS because it is often limited by its own virtualization. VPS users can also find themselves limited in terms of RAM and CPU usage as these resources are shared across all partitions or VPS accounts on the server, which means it would function almost similar to a shared hosting account. On the other hand, dedicated machines tend to be a lot more expensive when compared to VPS as you would have to bear the cost of the entire server. This is about the only disadvantage dedicated machines have over VPS. Higher performance and greater stability come at a price. Nevertheless, the advantages of dedicated hosting far outweigh its disadvantages. The old adage “you only get what you pay for” holds true when it comes to choosing between dedicated and VPS options.