VPS Hosting is one of the many kinds of hosting that you can select to host your website on the World Wide Web.Buying a web hosting plan means buying space on the web server and uploading the website files on the server. It is not as easy as it sounds as you need the best plan without blowing off your budget.
In case of VPS hosting, all the websites are hosted on a virtual server are basically on a single powerful server that is divided into further compartments.
A server software is individually installed on these virtual compartments thus, all of them work independently of each other.
Many companies offer the VPS Hosting Plans. Thus you need to select the best out of them depending on your budget and requirements. Here, in this article, I shall be discussing certain pointers that shall help you in the selection of a cheap VPS Hosting Plan.
How To Choose The Right VPS Hosting?
There are certain crucial factors that you need to look into before making a final choice: –
#1: Windows vs Linux
To begin with, you must know what kind of hosting environment you need: Windows or Linux. Linux is completely different from Windows with its share of peaks. Irrespective of what suits you the most, if your website is developed on ASP or ASP.net, then you surely would need Windows environment.
Thus, you need to select those VPS providers who offer windows based hosting.
#2: Managed vs Unmanaged
You don’t have the root access to your server in shared hosting, thus, managing your server is out of bounce. But, when you select VPS hosting, the entire server is yours. So, require somebody to keep an eye on the performance of the server.
If the hosting provider itself takes this task, then it is the managed VPS else unmanaged VPS where you are solely responsible for the server.
Thus, if you are a technically sound person knowing the server inside out and you are familiar with its repairing, rebooting, restarting, shutting down; then you must go for the unmanaged hosting. Else, always pay a bit more and get relieved in managed VPS hosting.
While selecting the hosting services, you need to keep in mind the extent to which the service provider is offering you managed VPS services. Do compare the various plans before finalizing one.
#3: Redundancy and Scalability
Redundancy means here to have a backup at the data center specifically. For instance, if the power supply fails, you need UPS and generators in place. But what if the ISP services get interrupted at some point of time, you need some backup arrangement for that too.
So, while selecting the provider, you must check these features as well.
Scalability refers to the ability to handle the occasional or sudden increase in the load on your server. This is usually done by using the redundant resources of the system. When both of these features are combined, they result in consistent performance and higher uptime.
#4: Price
For VPS hosting, the price varies considerably due to the nature of the hosting environment. The cost varies on many factors like service levels, hardware specs, and many others.
For a basic VPS hosting package, on an average, you would pay somewhere between $8-$15 which include basic utilities of 1GB RAM and 20 GB disk space.
#5: Cloud-based vs Conventional VPS Hosting
Very often you must be coming across the term cloud-based VPS hosting. But what is it exactly and how does it benefit you?
Conventional VPS
A conventional VPS is something like a small server inside a bigger server. We can even call this bigger server as the “mother server.” This server is a physical server, something like what you see in a server room or inside a data center.
To help you understand this kind of hosting, take the mother server has a big house, which is divided into many rooms and rented out as many VPS hosting accounts.
Cloud-based VPS
Whereas on the other hand, a Cloud-based VPS means a cluster of servers. Similar to the conventional VPS, this also draws resources from one server only, but then this one server is made up by the combination of many servers. Thus, in this many mother servers combine to make even a bigger parent server.
Thus which option is better?
With Cloud based VPS, virtually there is no limit as you can anytime add a server to the cluster, thus the resources can be upgraded without any downtime. Also, storage can be added in the SAN( centralized storage system ) as per the increased usage.
Thus, as cloud based VPS offers you greater flexibility, thus it is better than the conventional type. But, you must weigh your requirements first before selecting the hosting type.
#6: Server Specifications & Configurations
You must consider the server specifications and configurations offered before finalizing the plan. In my opinion minimum of 1 GB RAM and 20 GB, hard disk space is required. Of course, it surely depends on the traffic of your website, space requirements, and many other factors.
There are many limitations on the data transfer. Once you exceed the permissible limit, most of the VPS hosting providers impose some restrictions. Thus, before choosing the plan, you must go through limitations as well.
It is imperative that the VPS provider, you select offers you the latest version of operating system and the updates also. This also depends on your website largely.
Do consider the type of backup protocols offered in the plan. Is your site architecture and data safe?
You must consider the number of IP addresses included in the service. If the service provider imposes a limit, you must know the cost of the additional IP addresses.
#7: Customer Support
Irrespective of the promises made by your VPS hosting provider, you might face issues every now and then. Thus, in tough times, you need a handy and efficient support team to help you get back on track. Even if your hosting provider doesn’t offer you round the clock customer support, still you must check the response time taken by the customer care for your queries.
This is a very crucial point before you select the hosting provider.
#8: Trial Period
Some of the hosting providers offer a free trial period, thus if you are not satisfied with the services, there is nothing to loose.
Thus, before finalizing the cheap VPS plan, do check out the trial period and make use of WHSR or Pingdom Uptime Monitor to know about the server uptime and other responses.
Hope, these pointers shall help you in selecting the most appropriate and cheap VPS Hosting Plan.
Great article. Managed VPS hosting is a great solution for small to medium businesses as it really give you the opportunity to cut costs on IT infrastructure. My company owns a managed VPS at RoseHosting. The best part is they do almost all of the server administration for us and we can focus on our work.