When deciding between shared hosting and a VPS most developers make this decision similar to how they would decide between mobile phone plans, on a GB per dollar basis. There are a number of shortfalls with this approach as a VPS is much more than an increase in resources, it’s a completely different service. Mistakenly these two hosting options continue to be weighed against each other based on the cost of the plan, disk space offered and anticipated traffic to your website. As far as VPS plans go, there are plenty of plans out there that offer generous amounts of bandwidth and storage that is redundant, as most websites wouldn’t reach a half of this quota, so why spend the money?
Price is a main factor a lot of people use to compare hosting plans, although it’s important how much the plan will cost you it shouldn’t be the determining factor in your decision. The critical factor in deciding to go forward with a VPS is the ability to customize, which converts to customer experience. Customer service is more than phone calls and emails, your customers also experience your level of service through the tools and resources you provide them with.
The three vital reasons to use a VPS over shared hosting is customization and control, scalability and ease of management. Firstly let’s focus of customization, of the three points listed above this is the most important when it comes to deciding on a VPS over other hosting plans. From the customer’s perspective, customization is the critical factor in evaluating their experience of your level of service. It is simple to customize your Plesk dashboard with access to 200+ preinstalled applications and CMS’s, and you and can brand the VPS with your company’s logo. But it goes beyond simple aesthetic changes with things like:
- Allowing SSH/root access so you can run custom scripts and install custom packages.
- Enable mail relaying services and the size of emails.
- Allocation of resources for a hosting subscription based on your customers' needs, from things like the number and size of mailboxes, the number of aliases and subdomains, and the number of database(s).
- You have administrative control of the hosting, and you can choose to provide your customers with a login so they can manage their hosting, or you can administer it on their behalf.
- It gives you a greater degree of isolation to insulate your customers from the issues that can arise from other people's issues that plague shared hosting environments in some cheaper hosting providers.
Secondly, VPS’s are inherently scalable. It allows you to grow your resources as your customers grow and support them every step of the way. Access to extra bandwidth and storage is normally just a click away. The last point is ease of management, through the Plesk dashboard it’s simple to stay in control and access resources and reports, as you need them. Plesk has been designed to make managing any number of websites easy – all from the one control panel.
It’s hard to compare a VPS plan with that of Shared Hosting. It is so much more than an upgrade. VPS’s allow for customization, scalability and ease of management resulting in a customizable user experience.
