Who uses a VPS?

[Jason]

A VPS is stronger than shared hosting. It can handle more. It can handle more because there are fewer other users sharing resources. Now, with a dedicated server, you don't share any resources. Anyway, though, the cost of a VPS and especially a dedicated server are much more than you'd pay for shared hosting? Do you feel it's worth the sacrifice?

 

[Arantor]

Unmanaged (no control panel) VPSes exist for like $5 a month...

But it honestly depends what I'm doing - most of the stuff I run doesn't play nicely on shared hosting for various reasons and it's honestly not worth my time fighting that and 'fixing it' to work just to save maybe a buck a month (often not even that) in practice.

 

[Tracy]

Actually... with some VPS's, you can have "dedicated" resources for it... you end up paying quite a bit more for them though.

Dedicated vCPU

Shared vCPU

My site (based upon simple visitor loads) would be well served by shared hosting... this has 5 sites running on it.

But then you count in the fact that I'm using ElasticSearch for my XF site (ran on the VPS) along with Redis cache and Memcached (for different sites)... I couldn't do that on shared hosting. I would have to pay for outside vendors to connect to... and if I'm going to do that, then why not simply host it myself.
I started out (for about 2 months over a decade ago) on shared... and, as I've commented before, I quickly kicked it to the curb as I was competent to administer my own servers and I didn't like the restrictions.... so I chose to do go to a VPS, then to dedicated servers with my own VPS instances, then back to VPS's as I could not realistically justify the cost of dedicated hardware when my other hobbies could use that money.

You still can have incidents of "slowdown" on a VPS, especially if it's a cheap hosting provider that oversells - which many of those "low dollar" ones tend to do.

This is a 12 year old CPU, but honestly, it will run most everything a base site would need.... and you get the "dedicated hardware" for about twice what my VPS runs.

The thing that keeps me from it, it's based in the EU... I prefer my server to be US based. This is an offer of an "old" server that was taken out of service by Hetzner and offered at a "special" price. OVH has recently got "stoopid high" on their server prices, or I would look at them.

 

[Jason]

Unmanaged (no control panel) VPSes exist for like $5 a month...

But it honestly depends what I'm doing - most of the stuff I run doesn't play nicely on shared hosting for various reasons and it's honestly not worth my time fighting that and 'fixing it' to work just to save maybe a buck a month (often not even that) in practice.

I don't know how to use stuff without a control panel. I don't know if it's really worth it to learn how.

 

[Arantor]

Therein does lie the question: is it worth it? If you have the time and inclination, yes, because more options are open to you for hosting etc. than 'must have cPanel' but honestly if not... it's not like there aren't other options available to you.

For example at work we've standardised on Cloudways for VPS stuff - it's not as cheap as some shared providers but you get an actual resourced VPS with a limited control panel (more than enough for most applications, really). Better deals may be out there but you get a lot of the headaches managed for you.

 

[kensonplays]

OVH has recently got "stoopid high" on their server prices, or I would look at them.

Well, that may be true, but thankfully, a friend and I's company is likely getting enough credit from OVH to last us a couple years or so, with enough resources for the company *AND* our personal sites, so we will have our own "Public Cloud" which is better than shared hosting. We'll be getting: 120gb ram, 64 core, 400gb ssd, and either 1 or 10gbps bandwidth.

Will be very nice for the services our company plans to release, along with our more hobby sites ran on the side at no extra cost.

 

[Tracy]

Well, that may be true, but thankfully, a friend and I's company is likely getting enough credit from OVH to last us a couple years or so, with enough resources for the company *AND* our personal sites, so we will have our own "Public Cloud" which is better than shared hosting. We'll be getting: 120gb ram, 64 core, 400gb ssd, and either 1 or 10gbps bandwidth.

The one I scoped out (and was similar to what I used to have on their service) was going to be $602 a month. As I said, similar specs to what I used to have, and paid $179 a month for back when I had dedicated equipment.... rather a noticeable "increase" for similar specs.

 

[kensonplays]

The one I scoped out (and was similar to what I used to have on their service) was going to be $602 a month. As I said, similar specs to what I used to have, and paid $179 a month for back when I had dedicated equipment.... rather a noticeable "increase" for similar specs.

At least it won't cost us anything for about a couple years while we look into other options.