Shared and VPS hosting in Kenya

Comparison between shared and VPS hosting in Kenya

It is essential to know the difference between shared and VPS hosting in Kenya when choosing a host for your website. The purpose of your site will determine which of the two hosting plans you take. The need for security, high performance, reliability, and control are some of the factors that you should look for in a hosting package. With Shared hosting, you share the same server resources with hundreds of websites hosted by a single company.  VPS hosting is where the hosting company subdivide a single server to make virtual individual and independent servers that host ones’ site. There are few differences between shared and VPS hosting in Kenya which make these plans suitable for different websites. Shared hosting is a standard service with basic functionality while VPS is more profound in service delivery.

Factors to consider when choosing between shared and VPS hosting in Kenya

When selecting the package to take between shared and VPS hosting, the following features are of importance to note.

Server Resources

With the shared hosting plan, your site will share all web resources of the same server with other websites that the host company has allocated. With VPS hosting package, one gets a virtual dedicated server which will provide all the resources that you need independently. When a shared server is working with many websites, their traffic is high hence shared hosting is slow. The virtual server has partitions of a hard disk, bandwidth and CPU thus VPS is faster than shared hosting.

Reliability

Since shared hosting plans have shared resources, the performance of your website might be affected by the traffic from other sites on the same server. If the traffic from all the sites overwhelms the server resources, there is a possibility of downtime in shared hosting. VPS hosting is reliable since each virtual server has special allocation hence the performance is considerably high.

Cost

Shared hosting is cheaper compared to VPS hosting plan since all websites hosted by the server make the contributions. The initial cost of purchasing a shared hosting plan is low. The host company takes care of the maintenance cost of the server and its resources. VPS hosting is a premium service due to the particular allocation of resources; hence it is more costly than shared hosting.

Security

Since many sites share environment host, there is no 100% guarantee of data security. Malware from other websites can find a way into your site if the security framework is not good enough. With VPS hosting, one can implement robust security features through customization. Since VPS hosting is on a private server, there is a minimal threat of malware infection on ones’ website.

Administration and control

On a shared hosting platform, the user has no responsibility to control the server hardware since Host Company maintains the server. You have limited authority over the server resources when operating on shared web hosting. In VPS hosting, the user is responsible for taking care of the virtual server resources. You will need an administrator to maintain the server for you since it is a bit technical to run the server. The tradeoff for this technicality is the ability to customize the virtual server to meet your desires.

Scalability

During the initial stage shared web hosting is appropriate since the traffic and applications might not require large space or bandwidth. With growing spikes per given time, shared hosting may fail to meet this requirement due to limited resources. VPS is more responsive to increasing traffic and data as the server can be scaled to accommodate demand.

Therefore, it is wise to look keenly on the needs that your website might require before choosing the hosting plans. As a user, you should be able to distinguish between shared and VPS hosting in Kenya, look at particular features of each package and make an informed decision.