5 Great Reasons To Choose VPS Hosting

Anyone who runs a website has to make a crucial decision, namely, what kind of web hosting is right for me and my site? Unfortunately, that answer isn't always as straightforward as we'd like. Some sites can exist very well on a shared hosting plan, while others will outgrow it pretty quickly and need to move out of a shared environment. There's an option between shared and dedicated hosting, though – it's called VPS web hosting (which stands for Virtual Private Server), and for some sites, it's the perfect fit.

Here are five reasons you might want to check out VPS Hosting:

1. Need SSH/Root Access – This is one of the more common reasons to move out of a shared environment, and could fall under the umbrella term “server-level customization.” No hosting company is going to let you tinker with the server – there are too many sites that could be affected by that. On a VPS, however, you're separated from other sites, and therefore free to customize your server with any software that you want and need.
2. Scalability – When you started off online, a shared hosting plan was probably perfect for you – the right amount of resources and the managed support you needed. But if your site is growing, or if you want to add more domains, that shared environment won't be able to hold you. Growth, whether it's an e-commerce site or a blog, is a major reason to look into a VPS.
3. High traffic/Traffic Spikes (the Digg Effect) – It's funny how the dream of most bloggers can turn into a nightmare without the right hosting plan. Getting popular on Digg can take down a shared server in short order, but a VPS stands a better chance because many have “burstable memory,” which is essentially a pool of memory to call on during a traffic spike.
4. E-Commerce Site – If your website is your livelihood, then the last thing you want is your site's performance being affected by another site. That can happen in a shared environment, but is much less likely on a VPS, since your site is separated from others on the same machine.
5. Cost – Lastly, a major reason to look into a VPS is that it costs much less than the other robust hosting option; that is, a dedicated server. Before virtualization software made a VPS possible, shared and dedicated were the only options; now that VPS is out there, you can get many of the best features of dedicated hosting at a fraction of the cost with a VPS.

This was a guest post by my friend Blue.