Security issues and malware attacks keep haunting the web hosts and webmasters alike – over the last few years security breaches and attacks on WordPress-based websites/blogs have become quite common.
We’ve seen numerous intrusions on blogs and websites hosted with GoDaddy, Network Solutions, HostGator and most of the renowned web hosts, but the notable point is that all those attacks were mainly on the shared servers.
Virtual Private Servers come with their own share of security benefits, although they cost a whole lot more than shared hosting services at the same time. So, it’s quite natural that the novice webmasters don’t really prefer the VPS and dedicated servers, until they outgrow the shared hosting limits, and are forced to look at a VPS due to greater bandwidth and storage space requirements.
But, it’s not right to consider VPS only at that point. In fact, one must choose VPS right from day 1 for hosting e-commerce sites, and running web apps that require high security levels. Running such apps on shared hosting can be suicidal!
Now, VPS serves as a middle ground between a dedicated server, and shared hosting environment. As a result, some of the security tasks will still be in server administrator’s hand, and hence the security won’t be as good as that of a dedicated server. On the positive side, the cost of a VPS is also much lower than that of a dedicated hosting.
Moving on with our discussion of security benefits of VPS, a virtual private server runs as its own instance, and hence doesn’t affect the other VPSs in the system in case of any problems. This is where it offers amazing security improvement over the shared environment wherein an attack on any website potentially puts all the sites hosted on that shared server at risk of being compromised indirectly.
Furthermore, a lot of technical benefits of VPS, but they vary with the way in which, VPS systems are managed; otherwise the benefits are mostly monetary. Managed VPS solutions can reduce the technical complexities of managing things, though unmanaged VPS hosting are relatively cheaper too.
However, it’s important to understand that those who need highest levels of security must consider a dedicated server rather than a virtual private server. And, the money paid on a dedicated server will certainly worth the security improvements that you’d get in lieu of the difference in pricing.
The same analogy pretty much applies to the difference between level of security of a shared server and a virtual private server.
As a web host, you might enjoy a greater profit margin selling shared hosting packages, and find it relatively tougher to find customers who are ready to shell out money on VPS. Moreover, it may also be tedious to manage a VPS, but that’s a totally different thing altogether. And, it’s mainly due to lack of awareness of the security benefits that a VPS offers over the shared servers.