Nobody likes a slow website. In fact, a study by Kissmetrics shows that nearly 47% of internet users want a website to load in less than two seconds. Further, 40% of users will leave the website and never return if it does not load in three seconds. Additionally, Google has started including page load speeds as a parameter in determining page rank for the website in the search engine results. Hence, in simple words, if you want your website to attract people, then a fast loading website is a must.
The choice of the web host plays an important role in determining the speed of the site. After all, the site resides on the web server, hence the performance of the server impacts that of the website. Today, we will look at two hosting types – VPS Hosting and Shared Hosting and look at the aspects that make VPS Hosting services faster than Shared Hosting services.
VPS Hosting and Shared Hosting
In order to understand the similarities and differences between VPS Hosting and Shared Hosting services, let’s look at a simple example:
When you buy or rent an apartment in an apartment building, you have the privacy of living the way you want and also customizing your living environment to a certain extent. This is VPS Hosting. On the other hand, when you live in shared accommodation (i.e. one apartment shared by many residents) or as a paying guest (i.e. you live with the landlord cohabiting the apartment), then you need to share the resources (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) with the others. This is Shared Hosting.
In VPS Hosting or Virtual Server Hosting or Virtual Private Server Hosting, you are allotted a virtual private server where your website resides. You can customize the hosting environment as per your needs. In Shared Hosting, you share the resources like bandwidth, storage, etc. with other users who share the same server.
What Makes VPS Hosting Services Faster Than Shared Hosting Services
In VPS Hosting, you have dedicated resources for your website. Therefore, you don’t share them with the other users. This means that the performance of other websites on your server does not impact the performance of your website (which is the case in Shared Hosting services).
Shared Hosting plans are usually designed for websites with lesser traffic and resource requirements. On the other hand, VPS Hosting services are made for sites which need an isolated environment and more processors as well as computing resources (websites like news platforms, e-commerce sites, etc.). This ensures that the websites load faster than those hosted on Shared Hosting plans.
Easy and instant scalability of resources also impacts the speed of the website. When the site experiences a sudden spike in traffic (i.e. an unexpectedly high number of users try to access your website), you need more resources to manage the traffic. In Shared Hosting, adding more resources is a time and cost-consuming process. However, in VPS Hosting, you can add resources to your plan in no time. This means that even when your site is experiencing a traffic overload, users will not experience a slow website. This creates a good brand image and also improves your SEO ranking.
Conclusion
Creating a good website which engages the users is only half the battle won. It also needs to be fast and provide a great site experience to users and the right choice of a hosting plan can create a huge difference in the speed of the site. If you are currently using Shared Hosting services and are not satisfied with the loading speed of your site, then you should probably start considering VPS Hosting plans.
About Nick
Nick is a Software Engineer. He has interest in gadgets and technical stuffs. If you are facing any problem with your Windows, feel free to ask him.