Shared Hosting is, undoubtedly, the best choice when it comes to a just-started websites or blogs, as this category of web hosting offers affordability, easy to use User Interface and reliability at once. In addition, if you have chosen one of the popular web hosts out there, you can have some advantages such as advertising credits, free site builders etc! Nevertheless, there might be situations when you should really think about upgrading to the next level — VPS, which is the popular acronym of Virtual Private Server. Obviously, there are a number of advantages you can grab from this upgrade and some of them are:
- Although virtual, purchasing a VPS and hosting your websites or blogs in it means you are hosting the sites or blogs in your OWN server.
- When compared to shared hosting, VPS provides extensive customizability and performance.
- Since you have your own server and no one else hosts his/her websites in your provision, you can have deep level of security and privacy.
- Scalability of Virtual Private Servers is a noteworthy factor; you can alter capacity of your server with respect to your requirement.
- After all, VPSs are less expensive than fully-fledged dedicated servers.
However, more often than not, newbies who are about to upgrade to Virtual Private Servers get confused between a couple of names — Managed VPS and Unmanaged VPS. It also seems that even some experienced professionals find difficulty in choosing between these variants of Virtual Private Servers. In this post, we will have an analysis of VPS in both categories so that you should know which one you should choose as to suit your requirement and convenience!
First of all, in order to clear a doubt that most of you might be having, we will have a comparison between Managed and Unmanaged Virtual Private Servers. And, I will start with an introduction to both, shall I?
Managed Virtual Private Server
Well, as you might know, managing a web server is no simple task! On the other hand, it involves a lot of subtasks as server configuration, maintenance, software updates, security patches etc. Unless you’re a technically expert user, it will be a tiresome task to take care of all these stuff along with consuming a huge amount of time. When it comes to the case of Managed VPSs, however, your web-hosting provider will take care of all these maintenance, leaving you nothing sort of ‘techy’ to be concerned about. In the practical level, you will be able to use your VPS as though it is a normal shared hosting server. Yet, it has to be noted that the label, ‘managed’ is not the same in case of every web-hosting provider. Some web hosts manage all sections of your VPS whereas some others give priority to some certain sections of the server. Thus, you should be a bit careful to notice the conditions and terms before you confirm a web host to be a provider of managed Virtual Private Server.
Unmanaged Virtual Private Server
Often referred to as self-managed VPS, Unmanaged Virtual Private Server is for those who have enough expertise in managing a virtual web server and do not require any kind of assistance from web host. So, as opposed to managed VPSs, unmanaged VPS has to be managed by the user itself and there won’t be a generous amount of support from your web host, in management of server. Thus, you will have to take care of management sectors of the server such as software updates, server configuration etc. It has to be noted however that web-hosting provider will take care of initial Operating System installation and the user has to do the rest. Simply put, purchasing an unmanaged VPS is like buying a PC with only the OS installed. In other words, you need enough expertise to manage an unmanaged VPS as though it is a physical, dedicated server.
We hope you now have an idea about both kinds of Virtual Private Servers! And, as you might have heard, both kinds of VPSs have their own advantages and disadvantages. Here, in order to understand them better, we will have a look on advantages of both managed and unmanaged Virtual Private Servers.
Advantages of Managed Virtual Private Servers
- As hardware part of your VPS is secured in hands of your web host itself, there is no need to be tensed about downtimes and technical errors. Or, at least, there is as less chance as possible.
- You rarely have to be tensed about security section of your server; management team of your web host will take care of vulnerability scans, required security patches and essential upgrades in such a way that you can secure your websites or blogs from potential attacks.
- Apart from managing your Virtual Private Server by means of the management team, your web host offers a truly impressive support team, and you can use the team to avail support and assistance at any time.
- Since you are not concerned about technical aspect of the server, you will be able to focus on your site/blog!
Advantages of Unmanaged Virtual Private Servers
- When compared to managed VPS, unmanaged VPS offers extensive level of control on various aspects of the VPS, including installation of different software, performance usage and storage space offered by host.
- Customizability is also an important factor, because changing performance and other aspects of your server is all up to your convenience.
- If you need server-level control for development and publishing of your content, let it be blogs, sites or high-resource-consuming apps, unmanaged VPS suits best.
- And, as a matter of respite, unmanaged VPSs are quite affordable than managed ones.
Well, nothing being perfect, both managed and unmanaged Virtual Private Servers have some sorts of disadvantages as well. Now, we will move on to those disadvantages.
Disadvantages of Managed Virtual Private Servers
- Comparatively, pricing plans of managed VPS hosting are quite expensive.
- Literally, you do not have control on the server you claim to own, as the whole part of controlling of server is attributed to the dedicated team from your web-hosting provider.
- If you think of changing some applications or OS in-between the process, it won’t be possible with managed VPSs.
- There MIGHT be some resource sharing or resource pooling system that is present in your server.
Disadvantages of Unmanaged Virtual Private Server
- You cannot move on with an unmanaged VPS unless you are an expert at web server management and steps do start from installing software to keeping the software up to date as to be safe from potential attacks.
- Often, if you have time insufficiency, you will have to appoint a server administrator, who definitely wants to be paid!
- There is no sort of support or assistance from web-hosting service and you will have to do everything of your own.
- Technical support of unmanaged VPS is limited to purely technical failures that occur in web host’s end, and you will have to take care of everything else that obstructs functioning of your server or website.
Managed VPS or Unmanaged VPS — Time to Decide
So, so far, we have analyzed different aspects of both managed and unmanaged Virtual Private Servers such as their advantages and disadvantages! However, we hope you might be having some doubts in choosing between both. So, we would like to put things in a simple way.
If we are to consider the case of managed VPS, it is a choice for those who do not want to spend that much time in administrator section of your server. Since it offers top-notch support from web-hosting service, you can completely forget about updates and patches. However, to get all these features, you will have to pay something more, which is quite obvious and reasonable.
On the other hand, unmanaged Virtual Private Servers are for those who seek optimum level of customizability and the ability to expand! Nevertheless, an unmanaged VPS needs to be an expert of server management, as you’ll have to take care of upgrading, security patches and all. However, when compared to managed hosting, pricing and plans for unmanaged VPS are quite low. So, if you have enough time to spend and have expertise in server management, unmanaged Virtual Private Server is a great solution to go for. So, which one do you prefer — we are eager to know.