Has your website grown a lot, and is your current hosting service starting to fall short of your expectations? Often the pages load slowly, or the site crashes and is no longer reachable? It means that, also for your site, the time has come to abandon shared hosting to move to something more performing and professional like a dedicated server or, more likely, a VPS or VPS Hosting.In this guide, we will try to explain, in detail, but as simple as possible, how to choose and buy the right one for your specific needs, finally listing those that, in our opinion, is the best VPS hosting on the market.
Aspects to consider when choosing a VPS Hosting
This guide aims to help the reader make amindful choiceof the right VPS service, offering a criterion as objective as possible, based on particular characteristics. Let’s see below the aspects that should be considered beforebuying your next VPS hosting.
Resources (CPU, RAM and disk space)
The first element to consider when purchasing a VPS hosting is the hardware characteristics of the virtual server. If we have decided to abandon our old hosting service, it is probably because our website has grown quite a lot, revealing the need for more resources to “run” correctly. But what and how many resources does our website need?
The hardware characteristics of a VPS hosting have measured in terms of CPU, RAM, and storage. When choosing a new VPS, you must pay attention to the number of CPUs covered by the offer. It is important to specify that usually, the CPUs indicated do not necessarily correspond to as many “physical” CPUs. In practice, the real computational capacity of the hardware of the “physical” system is divided into a certain number of virtual processors that determine the computing capacity of the individual virtual servers to which they are assigned.
Having an adequate amount of volatile memory is extremely important when you make regular use of complex applications or those subjected to heavy traffic. Suppose it is true that the CPU determines the processing speed. In that case, it is equally valid that any RAM saturation would result in a significant slowdown of your site, despite the potential offered by the processor.
The last hardware feature to consider when choosing a VPS server is the storage capacity, i.e., the storage space for our data. How many GBs our site needs is a rather easy figure to measure: in fact, it will be sufficient to “weigh” the sum of the files, folders, any databases, and mailboxes that compose it, to have a reliable unit of measurement.
Data traffic and bandwidth
An important element in evaluating the various VPS cheap offers is the bandwidth and the possible limit to data traffic. The bandwidth determines the amount of data that can pass through at the same time. It is evident that a greater width determines a better capacity for the system to support a greater number of simultaneous requests. With regard to this point, it is advisable always to check the guaranteed service levels, such as the minimum bandwidth made available to each individual account.
But how much traffic does our website need? Here’s an example, let’s suppose that our website delivers a million page views each month and that the average weight of each page (including HTML, images, and any other multimedia elements) is 300 Kb. At this point it would be enough to carry out a simple multiplication:
1,000,000 * 300 Kb = 286 GB
The data obtained, as mentioned, is purely indicative but still represents a useful reference in choosing your new free VPS.
Infrastructure
It is very important to know and correctly evaluate the provider’s infrastructure’s overall characteristics, from which we have decided to purchase your new VPS hosting. With the term “infrastructure,” we refer to a set of overall characteristics concerning the network, hardware, and some software characteristics.
Backup
When purchasing a new VPS server, it is advisable to check whether there is an automatic backup service or the possibility of performing a manual backup. In this way, we will be sure to have all the necessary tools to guarantee our valuable data.
IP geolocation
Often, this is a neglected aspect when choosing a VPS hosting, but knowing the actual geographical location (geolocation) of the servers can be quite important for a double order of aspects. First of all, the geographical proximity of the server with the target audience of your site helps to improve its performance. It is inevitable that proximity affects travel times (of data) from one node to another in the network. Correct IP geolocation will also help your site from an SEO point of view, as it increases the loading speed of web pages and will allow you to improve your position in the Google SERPs (in reference to our target market, of course).
When choosing the VPS hosting, it is good to inquire in advance about the location of the servers and/or about the possible choice (now offered by many providers) about the geographical location of the data center in which VPS is activated.
Guaranteed uptime
A golden rule in the web hosting industry is to always inquire about guaranteed service levels (SLAs) before buying. Certainly, the most important data concerns the guaranteed uptime. In these cases, the guarantee of a high continuity of the service being provided for forms of compensation if the promised level is not maintained.
Support
How can we not talk about assistance? It is a crucial element in the world of web hosting. But in the case of VPS hosting, it is important to make a distinction: when you buy a virtual server, you normally assume the responsibility of making it work properly.
However, it must be emphasized that the service provider is always and in any case required to offer technical assistance on all problems related to infrastructure and the Network. Therefore it is always good to choose a company that offers timely assistance, better if 24 hours 365 days a year.
Price
Obviously, the price cannot be ignored, but – this must never be the only criterion of choice. The economic factor must be carefully weighed within the context of our needs and expectations, remembering that too basic levels of price risk corresponding to very high levels of dissatisfaction.
