Shared hosting, VPS, Cloud or dedicated: the full comparison

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Four ways to put a site or a system online, from the simplest to the most powerful. The choice is not about which is best: it is about how much you want to administer and how far you need to grow.

All four, side by side


Shared hosting
VPS
Cloud
Dedicated server
Resources Resources shared with other accounts, with per-account limits (CPU, memory and processes). Reserved for you alone on KVM virtualisation: from 1 vCPU and 2 GB up to 8 vCPU and 32 GB, on SSD. Reserved, with a higher ceiling: up to 16 vCPU and 60 GB of RAM. Public network plus a private network between your machines. The whole physical machine: Xeon or i7 processor, 16 to 64 GB of RAM, its own disks in RAID 1.
Administration Ours. System, security and updates are on us. Yours. We hand it over with the operating system installed and root access; from there it is on you. Yours, same as a VPS: delivered with the OS and root access. Yours. Delivered with the operating system installed.
Control panel cPanel included. Not included. Can be bought separately, at order time or later by ticket. Not included, bought separately. Not included, bought separately.
Growing Change plan in minutes, no migration. Move up a plan, with a machine restart. Scales higher, and links several machines over the private network. Changing machine means a migration and a maintenance window.
Backups Taken by us every night before dawn. Not included. Bought separately, at their own cost. Not included, bought separately. Not included, bought separately.
Built for Company websites, small and medium shops, business e-mail. Custom applications, several heavy sites, anyone who needs to install what they like. Projects that grow in layers - application on one machine, database on another. High, constant load, full isolation requirements, lots of disk.

One sentence each

1 Shared - to have a site online without minding servers. It covers the overwhelming majority of cases, for far longer than people assume.
2 VPS - when you need to install whatever you like, or consumption no longer fits inside shared limits. You gain freedom, and take on the administration with it.
3 Cloud - when the project grows separate pieces that talk to each other, or when you need to go above the largest VPS.
4 Dedicated - when the load is high all day, when you need a lot of your own disk, or when nothing may be shared.

The question that decides it

It is not "how much traffic do I get". It is this: who is going to look after the system? If the answer is "nobody in particular", stay on shared hosting - a server with no administrator ends up out of date, and an out-of-date server is a security problem, not a saving.

Order

See Shared hosting plans See VPS plans See Cloud plans See Dedicated server plans
Moving later is normal. Almost nobody starts in exactly the right place, and there is nothing wrong with that. Migration happens without the site going offline and the domain never notices. Start with the simplest thing that solves today.
From the VPS up, administration is yours. Updates, firewall and backups move to your side - see what changes between managed and unmanaged before you decide.

Tell us what you need to run and we will tell you which of these is enough.

Talk to our team

SEE ALSO

Shared hosting vs VPS: which one does your project need?

Shared hosting vs dedicated server: when the jump is worth it

Shared hosting vs Cloud: what actually changes

VPS vs Cloud: the difference is the network, not the marketing

VPS vs dedicated server: virtual resources or the whole machine

Cloud vs dedicated server: flexibility or raw hardware

And the server system: Linux or Windows hosting: which does your site need?.

VPS AND CLOUD SERVERS

For when shared hosting is no longer enough.

Dedicated resources, root access and freedom to install whatever you need. With the same support team behind it.

See servers

Linux or Windows · scale when you need to

More comparisons

This article compares the plan types. These compare the technologies and choices around them.

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VPS server with root access

Resources of your own, the OS you choose, reinstall whenever you like. from $8.40/mo (3-year plan, with coupon)

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