Hosting comes in sizes, a bit like office space. You can share a building with other businesses, rent a fully self-contained unit, or anything in between. Here’s how the main options compare, in plain English.
Shared hosting
Your website shares a powerful server with other customers’ websites, and everyone shares the cost. The host looks after the server, security and software; you get a control panel such as cPanel to manage your website, email and files.
- Best for: most small business websites, blogs, portfolios and brochure sites, and many small online shops.
- Pros: the lowest cost, and almost no technical work.
- Cons: less control. You can’t install server software or get root access.
The old worry with shared hosting was “noisy neighbours”: another website on the server using all the resources and slowing yours down. Good hosts now prevent this with isolation technology such as CloudLinux, which gives each account its own guaranteed share.
VPS and cloud servers
A VPS (virtual private server) or cloud server gives you your own slice of a physical server, with dedicated processor, memory and storage that nobody else uses. You get full “root” access, so you can install whatever you need.
- Best for: busy websites, web applications, developers, agencies hosting many sites, and anything that needs custom server software.
- Pros: guaranteed resources, full control, and room to scale up.
- Cons: costs more, and someone has to look after the server: updates, security and monitoring. That’s either you, or a host offering a managed service.
“Cloud server” and “VPS” are often used to mean much the same thing. Cloud servers are usually easier to resize as your needs change.
Signs you’ve outgrown shared hosting
- Your website regularly hits its resource limits, or slows down at busy times even after you’ve optimised it.
- You need software the host can’t install on a shared server.
- You need SSH or root access for development work.
- You’re hosting a large number of client websites and want them on infrastructure you control.
If none of those apply, shared hosting is almost certainly the right choice, and the most cost-effective one. Many slow websites don’t need bigger hosting at all; they need the fixes in our guide to speeding up a slow website.
When you need your own server
UK cloud servers with dedicated resources and root access, on renewable energy.
