Shared Hosting vs VPS Dedicated | EP 615

Shared Hosting vs VPS Dedicated

1. Shared Hosting 00:49
2. VPS Hosting 06:15

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Yeah, everybody welcome to another episode of WP the podcast I’m David Blackmon

00:33 Tim Strifler: and I’m Tim Strifler

00:34 David Blackmon: today an episode 615 VPS or virtual private server and dedicated server. So we’re all the rave about hosting today and Tim Why don’t you let us know the difference between those three options?

00:49 Tim Strifler: Yeah, absolutely So shared hosting is probably the most common hosting those popular hosting and it’s it can be okay for really small Websites where you don’t need anything Specific or particular and so shared hosting is essentially a server and the hosting company will cram Typically hundreds of websites on one server and so it’s called shared because you’re sharing that server space with hundreds of other sites and you’re also sharing those resources. So the bandwidth the storage. The all the other things server resources that are a part of of hosting so it’s all shared now. VPS stands for a virtual private server and a virtual private server is it’s one server that’s partitioned and segmented into separate areas, And so even though you’re technically sharing the server with other web sites. You have a guaranteed allotment of resources that aren’t affected by other websites on the server and so it’s called a Virtual private server because of that fact. So it’s kind of like a server within a server. And then dedicated server is you have literally the entire server to yourself. There’s no one else on it You have the entire server all the storage all the bandwidth all the resources. Everything is is completely yours and so those are kind of the three main differences. There’s also cloud cloud servers cloud hosting which we’ll say for another episode but shared hosting VPS and dedicated are the three most common different hosting environments.

02:29 David Blackmon: Awesome. What are some of the cons and pros of going with each and and we’re gonna start with shared since that was the first one that Tim defined and stuff and one the cons of shared hosting is I’m gonna go with the potential to be hacked, you know, I’m gonna let you do nosey neighbor and stuff Tim because you talk about that really well. So one of the downsides of you know, you can be the best most efficient word presser in the world. You can be doing everything 100 percent correct. You can be backing up your website. You know making it secure changing your permalinks and your slugs to make sure you’re not using Admin as your username and just going on WordPress best practices. The downside is it’s in a shared environment Because you’re sharing all of those resources and you’re on one server You’re only as secure and good as your neighbor that the person that’s right next to you. So even though you’re doing everything. By the book and correct. You can still be potentially vulnerable to being hacked because let’s say Jim Bob got his first WordPress website and he set it up and he doesn’t know and he’s just fun for him you know, he’s looking for the most inexpensive hosting which is typically shared and He just throws his website on there. And then guess what? He leaves it alone and forgets about it and says, you know what? I’m not doing that anymore. I’m I’m hunting now, I’m fishing and my websites over there. Well WordPress is updating plug-ins or updating, but Jim Bob sites aren’t getting updated. You know, there’s a big security vulnerability that comes out and next thing, you know, you’re vulnerable so Shared can be kind of risky. That’s one of the biggest cons is you’re only as secure as the other websites on your server.

04:28 Tim Strifler: Yeah, absolutely, and I’ve fallen victim to that. I did everything right on shared hosting and I got hacked because as David mentioned You’re only as secure as the other sites on your on your server So if there’s a hundred websites That means only one out of those 99 need to be infected to infect You and everyone else there and I’ve fallen victim without multiple times on cheap shared hosting and I’ll never go back because of that. So yeah, David alluded to the noisy neighbor issue which is another major con of shared hosting and just like you’re only as secure as the other sites on your website, you’re only as fast as the other websites will let you be and what I mean by that You might have a server that has you know decent amount of resources and in general You know, it’s typically pretty fast and everything seems to be running pretty smooth. But if all of a sudden one of the websites on that server has the Oprah effect, right or the shark tank effect. Where you know they’re getting national or international recognition recognition. Yeah, there we go all of a sudden their website just gets blasted and is getting a ton of traffic and now all of a sudden it’s using up all the resources on that server. So now you’re not getting anything and so in the server space they refer to that as the noisy neighbor issue. Because you have a neighbor on the site that is taking up all the bandwidth and it affects you and so you you even though you only need a little small amount of resources if another side or if several other sites are using up a ton. It’s going to take it away from from you. And so it’s shared server space. It’s also shared resources. So that’s a major major con.

06:15 David Blackmon: Yeah, and I know that it looks really appealing the price points, you know because as you go up You know virtual private servers typically a little bit more expensive than shared and even as you scale up to the dedicated side, obviously You think about it a hosting company has a hundred clients on one server versus only one person on that server they have to be able to Justify the cost of the server and stuff. So obviously it’s going to be much more expensive now I’m of the adage of you get what you pay for and I like Tim started out and shared hosting I had a blue celery a Bluehost reseller account as a matter of fact, I still have it. I’m grandfathered in Bluehost discontinued reseller accounts in I want to say it was 2014 so like six years ago, they quit it. However, they allowed you to keep your reseller account because they had unlimited sites unlimited whatever for $30 a month, I Mean, come on Unlimited is a misnomer. It’s nice. It’s not a truth. You know, there are no such thing There is no such thing as true unlimited, you know that there’s resources are limited and stuff. So They did away with it. But I kept it and I started on shared and then I moved to VPS with a to hosting several years ago And it worked really well for us. But as our company and business and traffic continued to grow We ultimately ended up, you know with dedicated servers and I know Tim has a similar story and You know, I’ll never go back. You know, I mean the the cost, you know justifies, you know what we’re getting and stuff. It is more expensive but you know It’s quite a bit more expensive. You know dedicated is a lot more expensive and in order to justify a dedicated server You really need to have like a high traffic D commerce website or making enough money to justify. That so I think we have currently between five and seven dedicated servers now. Which is kind of crazy But you know, it’s it’s just where our business has scaled and stuff so..

08:37 Tim Strifler: Yeah, definitely Yeah. And I would say cuz you know we talked about the pros and cons of each most of the cons are related to shared hosting I would say that the con for dedicated is is the cost as you alluded to David. However, if you can justify it is more than worth it. So like David said if it’s a High traffic e-commerce site when you’re making money with your website, you know you better believe that it’s gonna be worth it and same thing if you have a ton of clients and you want to put your Clients on your dedicated server and your clients are paying you maintenance and hosting fees, okay. Well again, it’s gonna more than pay for it. But if you just, you know have a personal blog or something like that and you don’t get a ton of traffic It’s more of a hobby. Well, don’t buy a dedicated server just because it’s about that’s just a waste of money.

09:19 David Blackmon: All right, Tim I think or have we covered shared VPS and dedicated sufficiently enough?

09:25 Tim Strifler: I think so. One thing I will add is we’re going to talk about in the next episode managed wordpress hosting and so stay tuned for that. And we’ll definitely compare kind of what we’re talking about today traditional hosting versu s managed. But I would say kind of the winner of shared hosting versus VPS versus dedicated kind of you know, the all-around winner. I would say is VPS because you get guaranteed resources. It’s a server within a server you don’t have the noisy neighbor the sideway you hacks and all of those types of things that you do with shared hosting but it’s Also a lot more affordable to dedicate them. So if you want a winner, that’s what I would say.

10:07 David Blackmon: Yeah, unless you have a high traffic D commerce website. Correct. Go dedicated exactly bite the bullet.  Don’t cheap out, you know, Tim and I talk about this all the time, you know If you’re serious about your business, you really need to be serious about your hosting. Hosting is the foundation. It’s the most important thing in your business. So, you know, yeah You’re smiling Tim. You’re laughing..

10:32 Tim Strifler: I’m laughing because I don’t know if I should say this publicly on the episode David, but David’s company is coming out with hosting. They’re they’re building their own hosting company. Hope that’s okay to say publicly David. Yeah

10:46 David Blackmon: Yeah, absolutely. We we’ve we’ve technically launched it it’s in beta so It’s specifically geared towards the Divi theme obviously, you know, Tim and I are big WordPress guys but were we’re heavily entrenched in the Divi community and that’s kind of where we we started and we create products for it.  So it just kind of made logical sense for us to You know go ahead and start a Divi hosting company, but it’s WordPress as a whole. So if you have a WordPress website and you want a great host come check us out Divispace.com.

11:22 Tim Strifler: So yeah and the reason why I was smiling David is is I think that what you just said Which is one of your catchphrases? We both have our certain catchphrases of things we a lot whether it’s on here or Divi chat or in our course One of the things that David says it’s one of his catchphrases is if you’re serious about your business You need to be serious about your hosting which I think you need to put on a shirt with your new Divi a Hosting logo by Debbie’s face or you know, whatever the name.

11:46 David Blackmon: That’s a great idea man. That’s it. That’s a great idea. Yeah. Yeah, well, thanks. All right. Well tomorrow like Tim said we’ve got another great episode 616 managed WordPress hosting versus traditional Hosting we’re gonna give you the pros and cons and hopefully help you figure out which one might be best for you So be sure to join us tomorrow. We’ll see you tomorrow

12:11 Tim Strifler: Take care. Bye bye