Dedicated Servers vs. VPS for Small Businesses
If your business is looking for a new hosting solution, you may want to review the pros and cons of purchasing either a VPS or a dedicated hosting server. A dedicated server offers considerable customization options and more computing resources but tends to come in at a higher cost than a VPS. A VPS, or virtual private server, is a containerized hosting solution that offers many of the same features and hosting options but at a lower cost.
Choosing between a VPS and a dedicated server can be tricky if you’re not familiar with how these products work. This article will define each choice and discuss how they might meet your business’s hosting needs. Your operational scale, budget, and customization requirements may determine which one is the right fit for your company. What works well for one small business might not be the right solution for another. Let’s review each product's pros and cons to determine which suits your business's needs best.
What is a Dedicated Server?
A dedicated server is a computer belonging to a cloud services provider that’s rented out to another business or consumer for hosting, high-performance computing, and cloud storage purposes. The hardware is maintained and stored in a data center belonging to the provider company, but the end user controls and modifies the machine. Dedicated servers are a fantastic hosting solution for businesses that want a full server but don’t have the financial resources or time to maintain a server in-house. Dedicated servers often use top-of-the-line hardware with substantially more RAM and CPU than your average PC. Most dedicated server users host using Linux rather than Windows.
What is a VPS?
A VPS hosting plan, or virtual private server, is a significantly more cost-friendly hosting solution that offers many of the same features as a dedicated server but with less computing power and customization options. A VPS is essentially an isolated partition of server hardware, running as a fully virtualized machine. A cloud services provider will usually offer a range of VPS, scaling from as little as five or six dollars a month to upwards of a hundred. While the hardware and computing resources of a VPS are technically shared with other VPS on the same machine, there’s no security risk associated with overlap between the virtualized instances.
Key Benefits of a Dedicated Server
Dedicated servers are a great solution for many small businesses, offering a range of hosting, video sharing, and cloud computing options without the hassle that comes with maintaining the actual hardware. If you’re thinking about getting a dedicated server for your business, there are a few key pros and cons you might want to consider first.
Customization
Dedicated servers are without question the best hosting solution in terms of customization, short of purchasing and maintaining a server yourself. Choose from a variety of operating systems and security features and set up your server with CPU, bandwidth, and computing options that best fit your budget and operational scale. While dedicated servers can quickly get expensive depending on what customization options you select, you’ll only have to pay for what you need.
Performance
Dedicated servers offer incredible performance options with commercial-grade hardware that’s both expensive and impressive. Intel Xeon Gold and AMD Ryzen processors ensure the computer has significant power and performance potential, while nVME SSDs and RAM options ensure that the server is ready to handle a significant workload. Most dedicated servers start with approximately 32 GB of RAM as well as a minimum of 500 Mbps bandwidth.
Key Benefits of a VPS
While dedicated servers are usually the more powerful hosting solution for your business, there are a number of reasons why you might want to consider getting a VPS instead. Choosing between the two products for website hosting requires you to know how much traffic your site currently receives and how much it’s projected to grow.
Cost
The primary benefit to a VPS, without a doubt, is the product’s cost. Hosting solutions start as low as six dollars a month, which is significantly lower than the minimum price for a dedicated server. However, the computing power of a low-cost VPS can be fairly limited. If you’re expecting significant customer traffic, you may want to consider more powerful options.
Luckily, VPS products come in at a range of price points, so you can pick and choose based on your estimated requirements. As a small business owner, you’ll likely need to maintain a higher level of page speed for customers so that they’re not clicking away (and so that Google continues to rank up your page within its search results).
Scalability
VPS products are much easier to scale upwards or downwards as your business’s hosting and storage requirements change. While these products don’t have quite the same customization options as a dedicated server, your cloud hosting services provider should still be able to help you find a hosting solution that matches your computing needs, as well as your operational scale.
Security Options for VPS and Dedicated Servers
Both dedicated servers and VPS are highly secure hosting solutions that can provide you and your business executives with significant peace of mind. By purchasing either product, you’re reducing the likelihood of downtimes to practically zero and bolstering the safety of your critical data. In terms of security, there’s minimal difference between the two products. While your VPS might technically share a machine with other VPS users, the virtualized operating system setup works in complete isolation, so you won’t have to worry about viruses.
Conclusion- Dedicated Servers vs. VPS for Small Businesses
Both VPS and dedicated servers are solid choices for covering the hosting requirements of your small business. To choose between the two products, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with how much computing power your website requires. You’ll also need to consider the importance of scalability and customization when it comes to selecting a server.
