Many people wonder what VPS is and when to use it. A non-profit site with little traffic can work reasonably well on shared hosting. When your website traffic grows, shared hosting could become insufficient. Pages could load slower. Sometimes your site may even become inaccessible for several minutes. In some cases, you would even receive a notification of your hoster that your server exceeds some internal resource limits. In this case, the transition to VPS hosting will be the best option. The switch to VPS will provide you with stable performance and constant availability of your site. You should analyze your requirements before buying a VPS to make sure not overpaying. Most providers allow you to scale-up the resources of your VPS by adding memory, processor cores, or disk space. But having calculated the optimal configuration up-front, it helps you to choose a proper pricing plan. What is the best way to do that? Let's find out.

How to pick the Best VPS Service for your website Now that you know what a VPS is, it is time to find out how to choose a suitable service provider. The hosting market is packed with great offers. Deciding on the best offer might seem daunting. Picking the optimal VPS service is complicated because you have to take many factors into account.

Administration Conventional hosting is located on a shared server, which is controlled by the provider's staff. The performance of VPS will have to be monitored independently, which is not always convenient. Therefore, it is better to choose a VPS plan with included administration. Those offers are often called "Managed VPS". In this case, the server will be administered and monitored by a professional system administrator. By choosing VPS hosting with administration, you get all the advantages of a virtual server without the administrative efforts.

Operating system. Most hosters offer their customers a choice of server operating systems. Often you can choose from Windows Server and several Linux distributions. Windows doesn't have significant advantages over Linux, but if you want to run software that is only available on Windows, there is no way around it. If you do not use Windows-specific software, a VPS with Linux is the best choice for you. There are many Linux versions and distributions from which you can pick your favorite one.

Server infrastructure and hardware. It is worth getting information about the server hardware that your VPS will run on before picking an offer. It is essential to know not only the specification of RAM, CPU and hard disk space but also the class of this equipment. The servers should have the latest generation processors, fast DDR4 memory, and high-speed SSD disks installed. A provider using modern hardware like this does not hesitate to tell you about it because he has nothing to hide.

Reliability. Continuous operation and availability of your VPS directly depend on the data center in which the provider's equipment is installed. An important indicator is accessibility, which could, for instance, be at a level of 99.8% (Tier II) or 99.98% (Tier III). It seems like the difference is small, but the cost of modern infrastructure is much higher, which usually results in significantly higher prices. For the site's reliable operation, we recommend renting a VPS hosting in a data center with a class not lower than Tier III.

Reservation of equipment. Resource reservation can significantly improve the reliability and stability of VPS. The redundancy of communication channels is also essential. It should also be possible to quickly restart your VPS in case of any kind of failure.

Channel width and traffic limit. The terms of use of the Internet channel are not always transparent. Many providers limit bandwidth or charge for the traffic used by your VPS that exceeds a free limit. Such questions should be clarified to prevent unexpected costs.

Technical support. Even a well-functioning system can fail; therefore, not only reliability is essential, but also the speed of troubleshooting. Excellent technical support is another crucial factor to consider when choosing the best hosting or VPS.

Price policy. Of course, the price is always one of the main factors when choosing a hosting provider. However, it is vital to understand that VPS hosting running on a modern server in a high-level data center will cost several times more than a simple shared hosting solution. Excellent support also raises the price because qualified and well-paid administrators are involved.

Geographical location of the data center. There is no restriction in choosing a hosting or VPS service based in a different country. But it's better to always focus on your target audience. If the server is located in a different country, this will inevitably increase the load time by a few milliseconds.

Ability to rent additional IP addresses. Sometimes you need to connect an additional IP address to the server. For example, if you need to install SSL certificates for several sites on one VPS hosting. Sometimes it is necessary to place the administration panel, database, or subdomain in a different language on a separate IP address. Therefore, it is advisable to make sure that the selected service allows connecting additional IPs to VPS upon request.