Based on the hosting plans available and the research I’ve done talking to various representatives, my short answer is: probably not. To really arrive at the right answer however, you need to ask two questions:
Does my site regularly experience traffic well in excess of 500,000 page views a month?
Do I need highly specialized hardware and/or software, and do I have the expertise to set this up at my disposal?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, you should seriously consider researching a dedicated hosting solution. If the answer to both is “no” you should be fine with a VPS.
There is a final consideration: prestige. If you have a Gucci store, you probably won’t have IKEA chairs — even if they’re extremely comfortable and do their job perfectly well. If you’re creating an online banking app, from a marketing perspective you’ll likely want to tout that you use the most secure, most high-end server — even if such a setup isn’t technically required to run the app. In such cases, getting a dedicated server may also be worthwhile.
Choosing The Right Host
In many cases, choosing the right host is more important than choosing the right hosting plan. There are three things I recommend that you do to figure out which host is right for you:
Read a number of “top hosts” articles online and/or, better yet, talk to a few non-biased developers
Browse hostingreview.io for general hosting company ratings
Talk to any potential hosting company’s customer support before deciding
Reading articles about top hosts will give you a shortlist of hosts to take a look at. Take these articles with a grain of salt, however, because most of them contain affiliate links that can, unfortunately, make a fewer of the less-scrupulous publishers rather biased. Either way, I think it’s safe to say that you’ll learn more about the good side of hosts mentioned in these types of article articles than the bad. On the upside, you’ll at least be able to familiarize yourself with a bunch of potential candidates.
Browsing hostingreview.io is also a great thing to do because this website doesn’t work with affiliate links at all; it gathers opinions via social media and rates the hosts accordingly. In my opinion, this is a much better system, although it too isn’t without its faults.
As far as I know, the data is aggregated. For example, a host with top-notch dedicated plans may have sub-par VPS plans. Negative reviews for VPS plans will affect the overall score of the company. Whether this is good or bad is debatable. Personally, I think a company should strive for excellence in all areas. If the same company operates one of the best VPS solutions but one of the worst dedicated solutions, that isn’t too reassuring — even if I’m actually only looking for a VPS.
Take care to also actually read some of the tweets about the site to get a sense of why people like or dislike the host you’ve chosen to look at.
Talking to customer support is an important way of gauging the level of attention a company pays to their customers. This isn’t foolproof either however, since sales reps are probably way more motivated than support technicians, whom you will be talking with after you actually purchase a plan. That said, a bad experience with a sales rep may be a good indication of the company’s general level of quality.
Leading VPS and Dedicated Hosts
Need some specific examples of where to start? No worries. Below are some of the hosts we know a bit about. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a perfect host; bad hosts have their good days and good hosts have their bad days.
While reading reviews you should know that downtimes of 1-2 days are rare, but do occasionally happen. A large host may have tens of thousands of accounts. The chances of a few suffering from hard-to-resolve problems each year are actually pretty high. Unfortunately, all hosts are liable to experience such problems and none are foolproof. It’s really how often they have such issues and how they go about handling them that really set the best apart from the rest!
SITEGROUND
I have two reasons for featuring SiteGround first. They tend to receive superb social media reviews and the time I spent with their sales rep was nothing short of awesome.
I tried getting a straight answer out of three hosting companies regarding the “superiority” of their high-end VPS services over their low-end dedicated services and SiteGround was the only one who gave me useful information and straight answers.
Their VPS service (which they, like many other hosts, label ‘cloud hosting’) may be a little on the expensive side compared to some other companies, but it’s extremely customizable. You can choose how many cores you need and how much memory and storage you have access to. A good VPS with SiteGround will cost you about $70/month, but you’ll be getting both great tech and an extremely good level of service. Their dedicated servers start at $200/month, which isn’t bad.
LIQUID WEB
Liquid Web is another company that’s well-reviewed on social media. I worked with a friend on a website we put together a while back, which we decided to host with Liquid Web primarily due to cost concerns and it’s been there every since.
Their VPS plans come in at around $50 for the low-end with a la carte add-ons you can mix and match to your own needs. Dedicated plans start at $150/month — which seems like a pretty good deal at first glance!
MEDIA TEMPLE
Media Temple is a more than capable high-end hosting company that I’ve personally had a lot of experience with. They’re also, incidentally, the folks who host this very website you’re currently reading. Support-wise they have always been excellent; from sales reps to tech support, they almost always go above and beyond what’s expected of them. Although I’ve had a few previous hiccups with their shared services over the years, their VPS hosting plans are top-notch! Perhaps best of all, I’ve yet to bump into any kind of issue at all when it comes to installing things on them!
About the only downside of Media Temple is they are pretty expensive, especially when it comes to dedicated hosting. You get what you pay for, though. I haven’t tried their high-end services yet (partly because the lowest configuration costs a whopping $2,000/month), but a huge number of top-end big business/tech companies choose to use them!
LINODE
Linode is a company I don’t have any personal experience with, but I often hear good things about them — especially regarding uptime and support. Mark Jaquith (a WordPress lead developer) for example, seems to hold them in high regard, which is definitely a good starting point.
Mark Jaquith
@markjaquith
The Linode RAM and SSD storage updates are fantastic. I downgraded and cut my Linode bill in half and it’s still faster.
11:38 PM - Apr 19, 2014
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Linode is a VPS-only service — which is a good thing in my opinion because it allows it to focus all of its energy into doing one thing. Interestingly, the prices are given per hour rather than per month (although monthly costs are still visible if you need them). Another thing I like about Linode is that they have a “tiny” package for just $10 a month! This isn’t a powerful solution, of course (the price kind of says it all), but if you don’t have many visitors but still need a reliable VPS solution, it’s certainly a great alternative to shared hosting!
Their high-end $80/month VPS is extremely powerful for the price. With six cores, 8 GB RAM, 192 GB SSD storage and 8TB of bandwidth, it’s one of the most versatile packages I’ve seen to date.
Conclusion
You should now have a good understanding of the various differences between dedicated and VPS hosting. All else being equal, a VPS solution is likely the best bet for all but the largest online endeavors. If money really is no object, however, then there’s nothing wrong with grabbing a dedicated package. In some cases, it may actually be the only sensible option!
Don’t forget, though, that the various management services you receive with your hosting plan are just as important as the specs and the customer service — so be sure to check these out thoroughly with a few different hosts before making that all-important final decision!
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