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Shared Hosting

Whether you have subscribed to the free web hosting or the Unlimited Hosting plan, the type of web hosting service you have is called Shared Hosting. With a Shared Hosting plan, you share storage on a web server with other users. Since the costs of the web hosting servers are shared by all users, web hosting providers can offer more affordable prices for such services. However, all the files are exposed to the users that are on the same shared server. If any one of the users makes an error in scripting, all users on the shared server are affected. Therefore to lower the chance of this happening, users that are subscribed to Shared Hosting services are not authorized to run their own programs.

Quite often, businesses and experienced programmers need to run their own programs. In such cases, they have the option of renting a server for Dedicated Server for themselves. However, this type of service generally costs over US$100 per month.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are for those who are in need of running customized programs on a low budget. Basically, VPS users still share the server with other users, but they are given separated computer functions. In other words, your files and hosted websites are not affected by other users on the server, and each VPS user would be guaranteed resources on the server (e.g. Guaranteed 256MB ECC RAM of the web server). This service can provide more security and performance. The average cost for VPS is approximately at US$20 per month.

Which should you choose, Shared Hosting or VPS Hosting?

VPS hosting is strongly recommended for experienced programmers and/or businesses that have a webmaster. VPS users can have complete control of the assigned servers. Shared hosting is ideal for users that are on a limited budget.