A VPS can perform some of the functions of a dedicated server at just a fraction of the price, but there are limitations. As the name suggests, a VPS is one of many virtual machines running on a powerful server at the end of the day. On the other hand, a dedicated server is a full server (computer) rented out to one person.

Therefore, it’s clear that dedicated servers are the superior ones compared to VPSs (when it comes to resource allocation). To make the difference clearer, visualize yourself living in an apartment in an apartment building and living in a house. According to this example, Living in an apartment is like having a VPS. You get your dedicated resources, but in the building, there are multiple apartments. 

Having a dedicated server, on the other hand, is like living in a house. You have full control over the whole building (house). VPS hosting undoubtedly has its benefits, but dedicated servers are a clear winner in resource management and overall performance.

VPS hosting is also very secure. Still, dedicated servers are again yet, on the whole, another level due to complete isolation. The best way to describe this situation is about having an apartment in an apartment building as owning a VPS while having a dedicated server is like owning a standalone house with very high walls (if you have proper security measures on your dedicated server).

Now apartments in a building have walls between them, thus providing decent privacy and security. However, it still cannot compare to the amount of privacy and security a standalone house would provide.

The amount of bandwidth in and out of your server is one consideration. Inbound bandwidth is usually less important than outbound bandwidth because unless your visitors upload a lot of data, inbound HTTP requests will be small compared to the documents and images that your site will return for each page request.

Shared hosting platforms are usually not set up for high volumes of traffic and processing since the server’s power must be distributed between dozens, or sometimes hundreds or thousands of other users and websites. But, for average-sized and trafficked sites, such as hobby sites or “pamphlet” information-only domains, or even small blogs, shared hosting is perfectly acceptable.

Sites that require more intense server-side functions, like online stores or sites which generate documents such as invoices or quotes, or sites that convert audio or video on the fly, may need more resources allocated than would come with your average Shared hosting account.

Additionally, sites that have higher outbound bandwidth, like those that serve up audio or documents to users, will need additional bandwidth (and disk space) that Shared hosting may not provide, and a VPS would be better in those cases.

The plain number of visitors or page loads on your site may not completely describe your site’s processing and bandwidth needs. If the site is not properly optimized for processing, the server will have to work harder for each page load. And, if you utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN), your outbound bandwidth usage will be considerably lower since images and other static files will be served from other locations.

A shared hosting package is, of course, shared amongst multiple occupants. Therefore, if you have a “noisy neighbor” who is overusing CPU time or eating up memory, then there will be less available for the remaining websites, including yours, causing them to suffer in performance.

Modern Shared hosting providers will combat this by introducing resource limitations, such as maximum RAM usage, the maximum number of processes, and maximum CPU percentage.

These work to combat the “noisy neighbor” problem but could limit you from temporarily overusing resources to run, say, statistics, or compile your nightly order list. Temporarily breaking these shared resource limits is called “bursting”, which is an option for some hosts.

To a much lesser extent, the noisy neighbor issue is also present on Virtual Private Servers that have multiple tenants per server node. Multiple virtual servers can be run on one physical server. Still, modern hypervisors (the software that runs the parent machine) are intelligent enough to silo VPSs very well. 

Even if one VPS is going hard and running out of memory, even to the point of having a kernel panic or halt state, the other VPSs on the parent machine will generally take no notice at all. But, several hosts also offer bursting of CPU and RAM for VPSs, which can still affect your private server.

There are “Virtual Dedicated” packages available at some hosts that provide all of the resources on one parent (dedicating it to your VPS) to avoid noisy neighbors and retain the hypervisor’s scalability and management.

One of the major differences between VPS hosting and Shared hosting is the average price of each platform. Shared hosting could be had for anywhere between $2 and $30 a month from various vendors, while VPSs start somewhere around $30, with nearly no upper price boundary. These various price points come with varying resources, including support, Memory/CPU resources, disk space, and bandwidth.

Different hosting providers may provide different price points for seemingly identical resource availability, but make sure you discern these differences carefully. Find out what kind of scalability is available, any baked-in backup solutions for the platform, support response times, and what portions of the hosting platform are managed.

You should also ask to see what self-service documentation is present and whether you can preview the control panel and management interface for your hosting. Finally, see if extra costs are necessary for any of these add-ons that could affect your final monthly or yearly hosting costs.