When you have a website, it’s important that people can access your website at all times. It may not always be possible to do with certain types of web hosting programs.

A virtual private server may be the type of web host you’re looking for. You need stability, reliability, and room to grow in a web host. A virtual private server offers all three things along with incredible security.

Want to know what is a virtual private server and how it can help you grow your business online?

Read on to find out what a virtual private server is and the benefits of having your site on one.

What Is a Virtual Private Server?

You’re likely familiar with some types of web servers for a website. There are shared servers and dedicated servers.

Shared servers tend to be less expensive because you’re sharing resources with a lot of other websites. Dedicated servers are exclusively for your website. You have the server all to yourself. Because you’re the only one on a server, it’s going to be very expensive to have your website there.

What is a virtual private server? Think of a virtual private server (VPS) as having the best of both worlds. You have the affordability similar to shared hosting (though a little more money) while maintaining the exclusivity of a dedicated server.

Here’s how a virtual private server works. Your website is likely to be residing on a shared server. You’re sharing that server’s resources with a lot of websites and accounts. That’s not bad unless one of those accounts sees a sudden spike in traffic or is hit with a hacking attack.

When there’s a sudden spike in traffic on another account, that account is sucking up all of the resources of the server, leaving you with very little.

It’s kind of like having all of the water faucets in your home hooked up to one hot water heater. You’re in the middle of taking a hot shower and someone turns on the kitchen sink. All of a sudden, you’re trying to wash your hair in freezing cold water with soap irritating your eyes.

With a virtual private server, there are virtual partitions on a server. You’re basically using one very powerful server and creating multiple servers on there. Since it’s a private server, you’re not splitting resources.

Why Is a Virtual Private Server Important?

Why is your business website important to you? It’s where your customers find your services. It’s where your

A website that’s down will cost a lot more than lost sales. You may lose the trust in people who are visiting your site for the first time. You can also lose credibility in the marketplace and that can hurt a lot more than a short period of no revenue.

According to some estimates, downtime can cost on average $5,600 per minute. Can you afford to lose that? Not at all.

VPS Is More Secure

Another important factor with a virtual private server is security. You may have incredibly secure systems and a foolproof backend.

However, on a shared account, you could be on a server who hasn’t updated their website in two years. That leaves them (and you) incredibly vulnerable to hacking. Once hackers are in the server, there’s a big chance that your site will be affected.

More hosts are aware of the type of sites that are on their accounts, but there are some spammy sites that can slip through the cracks. If you share a server with an account that spams or offers illegal content, your site is at risk.

These sites can be blacklisted from search engines and marked as insecure sites. That’s good to protect other users on the internet, but it’s not good for you.

Not only are you sharing a server’s resources with that account, but you’re sharing an IP address. That could mean that your website could go down with that spammy ship, too.

With a virtual private server, it’s just you and you alone. That means that you are in full control and not at the mercy of another account.

Migrating to a Virtual Private Server

There are so many reasons why a virtual private server can be a good thing for websites. How do you migrate your website to a VPS hosting account from shared hosting?

You have to start by finding the right VPS host. You should start with your shared host as they may have a VPS account available. If you’re ready to cut ties with your host, you’ll want to look for a VPS that is affordable, reliable, and has a great reputation.

Once you find your hosting company, it’s time to get to work.

Before you close your hosting account, make a full backup of your site in CPanel. Your new hosting company is likely to have set up CPanel on your VPS account.

You’ll go into your new CPanel account and restore the account with the backup files from your shared server.

Finally, you’ll have to go into your domain name’s DNS and point your domain name to your new host’s DNS.

A Virtual Private Server Can Work Wonders for Websites

What is a virtual private server? It’s a very affordable solution to help you scale websites with very little headaches.

From a business owner’s perspective, they’re more reliable than shared hosting. From a developer’s perspective, they’re much more reliable and secure. Developers can also add customizations to improve performance that they can’t do on a shared server.

When you add the affordability and upgraded security to the equation, VPS hosting becomes a no-brainer.

Do you want more tech tips? Check the blog regularly for the latest tech news and updates.

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