What is the difference between shared hosting and dedicated servers?

1. 88

   WryLiltposted 10 years ago

   What is the difference between shared hosting and dedicated servers?
   
   What is the difference between shared, VPS, reseller hosting and dedicate servers?
   
   At which stage would it be best to upgrade?

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2. 48

   Luke Zellekeposted 10 years ago

   1 - Shared Server: you share the server space with other clients. Good to start with, but as your traffic grows you will need to move out to your own dedicated server.
   
   2 - VPS (Virtual Private Server): is a server running a virtual operating system (OS) thus creating an environment that can accommodate your demands. E.g. A Windows Server can have a virtual server server running Linux and you could host your domain/site on the Linux server.
   
   3 - Reseller Hosting: If I were to buy some disk space (with a few domains and subdomains thrown in) from a hosting company and I were then to sell a portion of that to you and other users (thus making a profit) I would be a reseller and you would be hosting your site on a reseller hosting server.
   
   4 - Dedicated Server: the opposite of a shared server, you get your own box with all the bells and whistles (and of course better courtesy - j/k). This usually ideal when you have a medium to large traffic website or an online business.
   
   I hope that helped.

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   1. 61

      Oneitposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Just wanted to add that a VPS isn't always the same as a full Virtual Server. A VPS is only a abstraction layer over the OS that essentially fences the users apart. A true Virtual Server is your own dedicated resources and generally much faster.

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   2. 88

      WryLiltposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks! At what point would traffic/number of websites be a reason to upgrade, do you think?

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   3. 61

      Oneitposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Good question, unfortunately there is no perfect formula to work that out. Your best bet would be to use some of these sites to test the performance of your server. http://loadimpact.com/  http://www.webpagetest.org/  http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

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3. 61

   Oneitposted 10 years ago

   We get asked a lot what the difference is between a VPS and Cloud Server or Cloud Computing. There is often quite a price difference so we wanted to explain why. read more

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