Q&A with ScalaHosting’s CEO discussing VPS hosting and its benefits for projects of all shapes and sizes
Historically, there have been few truly tectonic shifts in the hosting industry, but recent leaps in cloud and virtualization technology development have definitely changed the landscape.
Right now, even small companies with limited budgets prefer to ignore the temptation of getting a cheap shared plan and choose to go for something more powerful and advanced. Meanwhile, the concept of dedicated server hosting is pretty much dead, with demand dwindling and few hosting providers offering expensive physical servers.
What this means is that more and more people are turning to VPS (or Virtual Private Server) hosting. To find out why, we talked to Chris Rusev, the CEO and Co-founder of ScalaHosting – a hosting provider specializing in virtual servers. He told us why VPS hosting is such a hit with website owners and agreed to share a few tips on finding the right virtual server.
How does VPS hosting compare to other services?
In the past, the growth trajectory in terms of hosting requirements for a standard website was pretty straightforward – the project would start on a cheap shared plan and upgrade to a dedicated server when its traffic levels grew sufficiently.
Both shared hosting and dedicated servers have their pros and cons. Shared plans are cheap, but they can never give you the consistent performance users look for in a website. And while dedicated servers will provide excellent loading speeds, they’re quite pricey and are not particularly flexible.
VPS hosting is a best-of-both-worlds solution. It gives you more power and reliability than a shared package, and it’s much more flexible and usable than a dedicated server. Last but not least, all this comes at a reasonable price.
What are the benefits of VPS hosting?
VPS hosting excels in three key aspects: reliability, security, and scalability.
Your virtual server is supplied with a set of hardware resources that are available to you 24/7. You can rely on them anytime, meaning more predictable performance and consistent loading speeds.
There’s also a dedicated IP. You’re the only one using it, so you don’t need to worry about anyone else ruining its reputation or exposing you to security risks.
And while the guaranteed resources and IP address are available to dedicated server users as well, the flexibility delivered by the virtualization layer isn’t. That’s the main difference between virtual and dedicated servers – unlike physical machines, VPSs can be easily deployed, suspended, moved, and re-configured, especially when they’re hosted in the cloud. This helps in two ways.
First, in the event of a problem with the hardware powering your cloud VPS, your host can easily re-deploy it on a healthy machine and minimize what could potentially be prolonged downtime.
The other aspect virtualization technology helps with is the ability to quickly upgrade or downgrade your hosting solution. Your VPS’ hardware configuration can be updated with a few clicks, so you can add or remove resources without moving your site’s files and databases.
It’s a convenience that could also save you some money. For example, at ScalaHosting, our cloud VPS hosting plans are fully customizable. You can pick the exact amount of processing power, memory, and storage you need and upgrade individual components at will.
If you need a couple more CPU cores, for example, you can add them without upgrading the RAM or SSD storage. On the one hand, this enables us to utilize our hardware more efficiently. More importantly, it makes our solutions more cost-effective for you because you’re not paying for resources you’re not going to use.
Who is VPS hosting for?
One of the great things about VPS hosting is that it’s immensely versatile. In addition to customization and flexibility, the virtualization technology enables hosts to easily deploy virtual machines with different operating systems. As a result, at ScalaHosting, we have VPS solutions aimed at Forex traders, for example. You have full control over your server, so you can use it for anything you want.
The same adaptability is visible if we focus on website hosting alone. A virtual server is just as suitable for hosting a small personal blog as it is for running a major ecommerce business. There is a solution for virtually any project, and although VPSs are more expensive than shared plans, the benefits are often more than worth the extra outlay.
A virtual server can also be perfect for development agencies. If you build websites for multiple clients, you can host them all on a single VPS and situate them in different accounts to keep the server well organized.
With the right tools, you can even use it as a platform for a hosting reseller business.
Managed or self-managed VPS hosting?
Personally, I’d pick a managed solution any day of the week. Let me explain.
A lot goes on when configuring a virtual server to provide the best possible hosting environment for a website. Firewalls must be set up correctly, a range of software applications have to be installed and configured, and many more things need to be up and running before you can start work on your project.
Ongoing maintenance shouldn’t be underestimated, either. If you don’t install software updates and patches regularly, you seriously threaten your site’s security and performance. And someone needs to monitor the server’s health to ensure everything is running smoothly.
If you can do all this on your own (or if you have a team of experts ready to take care of it), a self-managed server could be a suitable solution. One of its advantages is that you get full access to the machine and can do pretty much anything you want.
However, a self-managed VPS is not for everyone. Maintaining an entire server requires a certain degree of technical expertise and is best handled by people with more experience. Even if you have all the necessary skills, you don’t necessarily have the time to work your way through all the maintenance tasks. This is especially true if you have deadlines to keep.
That’s why, at ScalaHosting, we put more emphasis on managed VPS services. With a managed server, the initial deployment and ongoing maintenance are left to our technical experts. They take care of stuff like firewall configuration, software installation, patch management, etc. It’s a more convenient solution for those with advanced technical skills and a more usable one for newbies. Whatever their expertise, website owners get to focus 100% of their attention on their projects.
In light of this, it’s no wonder managed VPS is our most sought-after service.
How important is the control panel?
Well, it depends on who you ask. There are geeks, for example, who will tell you that you don’t need a control panel to build a website.
They’ll say you can install a CMS, set up a database, create email accounts, etc., all through the command-line interface. And they’d be right. At least in theory.
In the real world, controlling an entire server via the console isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. And even those who know how to do it rarely have the time.
That’s why novices and experienced users alike prefer the graphical user interface of a control panel. It’s a more efficient way of managing a project, and it’s infinitely more user-friendly for those making their first steps into the world of website building.
Having been in the industry for well over a decade, we’ve seen this first-hand. We’ve also seen the myriad of management platforms available on the market and the problems users encounter with them. We decided to use that experience to build SPanel – a web hosting control panel that has all the tools and utilities you need to develop a website on your VPS.
We’re not doing it on our own, though. We believe that the people who are best equipped to tell us what SPanel’s development trajectory should be are the users themselves. They interact with it daily and can, therefore, see clearly where SPanel lags behind and where it excels.
Every user can request a feature through a platform designed specifically for the purpose. They can also vote for tools already suggested by others, and the entries with the highest demand are put in SPanel’s development pipeline.
I believe you can’t go wrong when you use people’s real-life experience to determine how a product should be developed. Therefore, I think the best is yet to come for SPanel.
How to find the right VPS hosting service?
People focus on the hardware configuration when they’re on the market for a virtual server. They try to guess how much memory, processing power, and storage they’ll use, and their entire choice is based on these assumptions. It may sound a bit crazy, but in this case, this is not that important.
The great thing about a VPS is that it’s infinitely scalable. If you don’t get the hardware configuration right from the outset, you can always change it. It’ll take no more than a couple of minutes.
What you should focus on is finding a host with enough customization options to facilitate your site’s growth. Check to see whether your server can be upgraded to meet the demand once the traffic picks up and don’t forget to compare some prices to ensure you’re getting a fair deal.
It’s not just about the hardware resources, either. You have to make sure the virtual server supports the solutions and technologies required by your site, and if anything is missing, you need to check with the host’s support team to see if they can install it for you. While you’re at it, you can assess the customer service agents’ responsiveness.
All in all, at all times, you shouldn’t forget that you’re looking for a comprehensive solution that not only gives you the power you want but is also flexible and has the tools and features to build and run your project as efficiently as possible.
Final words?
VPS hosting has a rare treat – it manages to be both powerful and usable, especially in the case of managed plans. It’s difficult to ignore its merits, and the only thing that may put you off is the fact that finding the right virtual server isn’t always the easiest thing in the world.
However, if you take the time to learn more about how a VPS works, you should have no problems picking the best possible solution and enjoying its benefits.
About ScalaHosting
Founded in 2007, ScalaHosting, LLC is one of the managed VPS hosting market leaders. Using a blend of innovation and proven technology, the company has created solutions that are reliable, scalable, and easily adaptable to an incredibly broad range of projects.
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