Hosting 101: VPS vs Dedicated

When it comes to hosting, there are lots of acronyms and terms that get thrown around. However, when it comes to the ABC’s of web hosting, it’s important to understand the difference between VPS and dedicated hosting. In this post, we’ll break down these terms and explain how even you can become a hosting provider.

Everything on the internet exists on and amongst servers. Sometimes it’s multiple servers (cloud hosting), sometimes it’s a single machine, and sometimes, it’s a portion of a CPU. Hosting providers use these servers, and dashboards like cPanel & WHM, to provide a space for everyone on the internet to blog, game, post, create, and host all of the information that exists on the interwebs.

Dedicated

Dedicated hosting means that a hosting provider has access to a full computing machine in which they provide hosting. This is often a more secure and controlled hosting environment. However, because owning, renting, and maintaining a full machine, or several machines, can be costly and cumbersome, often times dedicated hosting is an option primarily sought out by enterprise-level hosting providers or companies managing large amounts of information.

VPS

VPS, or a virtual private server, is an allotted amount of space on a machine that a hosting provider can rent out to provide hosting to their clients. (Think of it like renting business space in a high-rise versus actually owning the building.) VPS is the most affordable of the two and is often the best start for companies, or individuals like you, to begin their web hosting business or add hosting to their current list of web offerings.