Shared/VPS/Server

[Spaceman3750]

The decision on whether to use a shared, VPS, or dedicated server is one that will forever plague webmasters. While the decision often comes down to bandwidth, disk space, or CPU usage, some other factors may come into play.

Shared - Shared hosting plans are best for people starting out in web design, or who have simple, low-medium traffic sites that are stable. This is also the cheapest of the three options, with plans available from only a few bucks a month.

Virtual Private Server - A VPS is usually best for sites with higher amounts of traffic, CPU usage, disk space, or are a testing grounds. For example, if you are testing a major script and it crashes Apache or the operating system, that crash is isolated to only your partition, and will not affect others on the server. You can even get these fairly inexpensively, with the cheapest plan I have seen running $10 per month.

Dedicated Server - The big kahuna of website costs, and decisions... If your site is high traffic or has very specific system or software needs, dedicated servers are the way to go. These often run between $100-$150 per month for an average system, and the prices only go up from there.

So, which do you use? Right now, I am on shared, and plan to be on a shared plan until I own a network of websites with enough traffic to necessitate a VPS or dedicated server.

[Envy]

I mix and match. I use shared for development websites that are not yet public and I have a VPS for live websites that receive traffic.

Another reason I use VPS is because I do a great deal of server optimizing and a shared hosting account simply will not allow me to do the optimizing needed for a live environment.

For instance, the shared hosting account I use runs apache 1.x.x, PHP 4.x.x and MySQL 4.x.x. The VPS is running apache 2.x.x, PHP 5.x.x and MySQL 5.x.x and I wouldn't have it any other way.