There are number of website server options, each with a different price point and different advantages and drawbacks. Across the spectrum, with shared website servers being on the low end and co-location (i.e. owning your own website server) on the high end, virtual private servers (VPS) fall in the middle. Virtual private servers are designed to give you some of the flexibility and control of a dedicated or co-located website server with the cost benefits of a shared hosting plan.

How Do Virtual Private Servers Work?

In essence, a virtual private server is a virtualized machine that runs alongside other virtualized machines on the same website server. What this is means is that each virtual machine acts like a distinct website server—replete with its own IP address, operating system, etc.—but it uses the same hardware—RAM, hard disks and CPU—as the other machines on the website server.

Typically, each virtual machine will have a claim to a certain amount of the physical resources. For example, let’s say a website server is a 2 GHZ dual core processor with 8 gigabytes of RAM. If there are four virtual private servers running on that website server, each one can get 2 gigabytes of RAM to itself and 512 MHZ of processing power. This example is a rough estimation, of course—things likely won’t get divided that neatly, but the goal is an equitable share of the processing power.

Why Would I Want a Virtual Private Server?

The advantages of a virtual private server are that you get root access to your VPS as if it were its own dedicated website server. This means you can install and configure any programs that you want. If you’d rather opt for PHP and PostgreSQL over MySQL or some other alternative server side software, you can do so without affecting the other “tenants” on your website server. You can also host an unlimited number of websites on your virtual private server using virtual hosts. Plus, you can set up FTP servers, mail servers and other services other than websites. Lastly, you also get a dedicated IP address, which has certain security advantages over a shared IP address.

Why Wouldn’t I Want a Virtual Private Server?

The drawbacks of a virtual private server are added responsibilities. With superuser and root access, you’ll have to be somewhat adept with Linux, Windows Server or whichever server software your website server host is running. You’ll also need to know how to securely install and configure software. While many hosts will help you along in this area by providing pre-configured disk images, in general, VPS is more suitable for advanced users. This is the main disadvantage when comparing VPS to shared hosting. When comparing VPS to collocation or dedicated website servers, the primary drawback is that you won’t get as much performance as you would from a standalone website server. Although you have disparate software and operating environments than other accounts, you are still sharing hardware performance and processing speed. If bandwidth and speed is a paramount concern, you may want to opt for a more expensive website hosting solution.

In summary, a virtual private server is a middle-of-the-road solution for those who want more freedom than a shared hosting plan but aren’t ready to invest in co-location or a dedicated website server. You get almost all the perks, but you are still limited by having to share your processing power and storage with other accounts.