What is VPS Web Hosting and What is the Best VPS Hosting?

What is VPS Web Hosting
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We have talked a lot about shared hosting in the past, but after your blog starts getting decent traffic, shared hosting is not ideal. You need to increase your blog’s hosting infrastructure, and the next step is to go for managed VPS web hosting.

Note: There are unmanaged VPS hosts too, which are cheaper, but if you are one of those people who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty with shell commands, managed hosting is what you want. I work on the WordPress platform, and a managed VPS is specifically geared towards WordPress blogs.

You’ve probably heard me talk a lot about HostGator and Bluehost. Though I don’t have any issue with my shared hosting accounts, if my traffic starts increasing, I’ll need to move to a dedicated server or a VPS.

For some of my smaller sites, shared hosting is ideal, but for a big site like ShoutMeLoud, shared hosting is not practical.

Dedicated web hosting is expensive, so a VPS is really the best option.

From Wikipedia:

A virtual private server (VPS, also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS) is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.

With a VPS, you will be in a shared environment but on a dedicated server. You will have full control like you would with a dedicated server, and most importantly, you’ll have all the necessary dedicated resources. This means you won’t be sharing precious resources (like RAM) with others on the same server.

Unfortunately, life is not that simple with a VPS. Most of the work is managed by Command prompts and you need to have good knowledge of Linux if you plan to run an unmanaged virtual private server.

But of course, you can always opt for a managed virtual private server. This kind of VPS is maintained and managed by the web hosting company and will be as easy to use as any shared hosting plan on Bluehost or HostGator.

You will have Fantastico, cPanel, WHM, and all of the other things that make for user-friendly hosting experiences. You don’t need to have any technical know-how to use a managed VPS.

Managed vs. Unmanaged VPS

As I mentioned above, for an unmanaged VPS account, you will need to know how to do everything with Command prompts. If you are technically good with Linux, an unmanaged VPS server will offer you more control and will be cheaper.

But if you don’t know anything about Linux, and you want everything to be the same as your shared cPanel environment, you should go for managed VPS web hosting.

Best Managed VPS Hosting

I have spent a long time finding some of the best of managed VPS hosts out there. My search is based on various reviews and forums interaction. I got lots of recommendations from some big players and some small players.

Here are the ones I can recommend:

  1. A2Hosting
  2. Cloudways
  3. Linode
  4. KnownHost

I was using KnownHost for a year and had a great experience.

After using KnownHost, I migrated to Linode. Linode is unmanaged VPS, but I had a tech guy who was maintaining my server at an annual maintenance cost, so my unmanaged hosting experience was hassle-free.

Note: ShoutMeLoud is currently hosted on Kinsta which is a managed WordPress hosting. I started hosting them in the first quarter of 2016 & never been so relaxed in terms of hosting.  You can read Kinsta review here.

Also check out:

Are you outgrowing your shared hosting plan? Let me know what you’re upgrading to in the comments below.

And don’t forget to share this post! 

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

41 thoughts on “What is VPS Web Hosting and What is the Best VPS Hosting?”

  1. John Rogers

    I am a big fan of WiredTree for managed hosting. They have great customer service and the support staff is really on top of things. Knowledgeable guys.

  2. Short Bio

    What is your thought about Digital Ocean ?? Did you tried it yet ?

  3. narin

    Hi Harsh…. currently i am with ipage shared hosting plan. It is first time i started a blog.thatwhy i went for cheapest. After only few months my site is having most of down time. Ipage operators say mysql querh limit is exceeding. For shared hosting mysql query linit is 75000 per hour and you can get 15,0000 for 20usd per month. But as i am a beginner i cant afford it. So i an already paid for 3yrs. Cannot change host to.. i am having only 5-6,000 page views per day and real time visitors dont go more than 20-25. After some time they suggested w3total cache.it helped alot. But site page load speed and time inceeased. please give your suggestions .

  4. sahil

    i have around 2lac page view a month and 60k visits in a month,
    i am currently on shared hosting of ipage
    do i need to go for VPS, which VPS to prefer
    the concern is the page renders slowly,
    suggestion would be appreciated

  5. Nilesh

    @harsh, It’s not a headache, at least with cheapvps.co.uk. As I said earlier, I’m with them since 2008. I seldom login to the server to do any modification tasks. Also, it depends on your linux skills. I’m running a Gentoo installation over there (well, KVM supports any kind of operating system).
    If you’re really interested, see this:
    s1 ~ # uname -a
    Linux s1.itech7.com 3.0.4-gentoo #2 SMP Mon Sep 19 22:57:43 IST 2011 x86_64 QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1 GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
    s1 ~ # uptime
    07:06:02 up 10 days, 8:01, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.04, 0.05

    The uptime is 10 days because I’d compiled the kernel on 19th Sep. Kernel upgrade requires a restart. After 10th I don’t recall if I logged in or not before today.

  6. Anand Kumar

    Thanks for suggestion. I would like to have some experience on unmanaged VPS and test my ability to run it smoothly + Boost the pageload time in addition..

    I am a curious person about technology. So I felt VPS will be best place to test things and knowledge.

    Baby Plan on Shared hosting for CallingAllGeeks?
    How much traffic can be maintained by Linode 512. Since An OS will also consume RAM.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      In that case you can grab 512MB plan which will be good enough to handle your traffic.. I’m on 1024 MB plan..And traffic is around 3 Lack that includes 2 blog.. Another one is very small one….!!!
      Yah baby plan on shared hosting for CallingAllGeeks..
      I’m also considering moving ShoutMeLoud to Hostgator Baby plan or VPS….
      Unmanaged VPS is headache at times, especially when you don’t have much time..

  7. Anand Kumar

    How much now you pay for VPS at Linode?

    Is Linode 512 plan will be enough for me?

    Planned to install Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid +Apache+MySQL+PHP5+WordPress.
    Currently have 5000hits/month But expecting 20,000-25,000 hits/m in next few month.

    Thanks for your last DH coupon!

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Anand with that traffic why you need a VPS hosting? VPS hosting will cost a lot compare to shared hosting and until unless you touch 300000Pv/month, most of shared hosting can handle the load. I have been using Hostgator for CallingAllGeeks.org and I’m on baby plan which is taking care of all the need. You can read Hostgator review here:
      http://wphostingdiscount.com/hostgator-webhosting-review/
      Anyways, do let me know if you have any questions.

  8. snehidan

    I have been using VPS from knownhost for hosting my drupal sites more than a year. Very happy with them. They are very prompt and efficient in troubleshooting. Great host for people like me with very little experience.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thanks for comment and feedback about Knownhost. Even I’m using the Knownhost and must say their customer support are amazing…

  9. Ashwin

    Harsh,

    A Nice post… Even I am looking at migrating to a VPS, with the number of my blogs increasing. I found Knownhost appealing, but I have a question…

    They seem to charge an extra $5 for the cPanel. Since I have so far worked only with Shared hosting, I don’t really know how can the server, domains and the database be managed without cPanel. Can you give me more details and what are the advantages of going for a cPanel?

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Ashwin cPanel doesn;t help much but I like having cPanel as it I’m use to it and I can quickly make changes like adding domain and removing domain .
      You will enjoy your experience with Knownhost.

      1. Ashwin

        Awesome! Thanks for the info. I liked Knownhost and planning to go for it 🙂

        1. Harsh Agrawal

          Great..!! Best of luck with your VPS experience and do come back and let us know your experience with Knownhost. 🙂

  10. Gourav Jain

    Hello Harsh,
    You should try Linode.com

    Even many VPS sites have resources from Linode and this company also helped Google in its China case

    1. Ashfame

      Yeah! Linode is the best in my opinion but how can you say that other sites just rent their servers from Linode?

  11. Anish K.S

    harsh me to in VPS, Whats your Monthly rent for the same.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      I pay around 45$/month.

  12. khalid

    Hi
    I came here from facebook and thanks for sharing such a great nowledge.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      I’m glad Khalid. you find it useful enough to drop a thanks here. Welcome to Shoutmeloud. 🙂

  13. Ashfame

    @Harsh
    Instead go for a unmanaged service like Linode, get the VPS installed by someone (costs 50USD) and then continue. Will save you 20USD each month.

  14. Mohit

    Basically VPS hosting is used for heavy scripts like some Social Neworking scripts coz these scripts demands more CPU. But an average website like a blog doesn’t need much powerful server. Your info is valuable to me.

    -Mohit

  15. Gaurav

    You should have a powerful node support, these are the basis over which i uses to judge an VPS service. You take 1gb of ram but the nodes are unable to support the traffic, that does not make sense.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Mandar
      Thanks a lot for the links but I spend almost hours in the web hosting forum and other forum and no one suggested any one of them apart from slicehost. Another one which I was recommended by many is liquidweb.

      1. Mandar Salvi

        Hello,

        Technospot.net is using ASmallOrange! And I was using LunarPages few years back. 🙂

  16. Osama

    I can’t say nothing ….. great post helped me alot – another great managed VPS hosting company http://mediatemple.net/ .
    You say that you have another 5 websites could you mention their addresses, i want visit them

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Osama
      I heard of MT but got same bad review by one of my blogger frd who used it. So MT is not even an option here..

  17. John Samuel

    I still have a lot of time to ponder about this topic, since my traffic is not as high as compared to others. But thanks for introducing this topic

  18. Rahul

    Yes, Dedicated hosting will be costly as compared to the VPS. I think dedicated hosting will cost you min. $200 with decent features.

  19. izzat aziz

    your post plus post from problogdesign, i think i know good deal of information already.. i still new in blogging, but I looking to create five project for my portfolio so maybe i should look into vps too..

    good tips and post.. 😀

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Izzat if your projects are not very resource hungry and traffic going to be decent, a good shared hosting will be good for you. But if you feel it will be the other way out, you should go for one of the VPS hosting or dedicated hosting.

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