Many webmasters turn to VPS hosting when their websites are experiencing growth in traffic. Shared hosting offers an unstable environment for websites that are rapidly growing. There are many things to consider in order to find a hosting that works for you.
Price is one of the factors you should consider when choosing a VPS hosting company. The price vary across different types of VPS hosting. Unmanaged hosting is the cheapest because you won’t get any help from the provider to maintain the server. Managed hosting has an expensive price tag because of the 24 hour monitoring from the provider’s IT team.
Managed hosting offers convenience for webmasters who do not have the expertise to carry out the maintenance tasks on the server. The type of services included in the managed hosting packages vary across different providers. Some of the services included in managed VPS hosting are automated backups, performance monitoring, software updates, malware scanning, installation of control panel, SSH access and 24/7 customer support services.
If you are choosing a managed VPS server, make sure the provide offer 24/7 monitoring service to avoid possible attacks. For example, DDOS attack on the VPS server can cause the entire server to slow down. Proper monitoring will prevent such attacks from taking place.
Unmanaged VPS hosting gives you free access to the entire server. Unmanaged VPS hosting is the best solution for webmasters who are equipped with an IT team. Some providers will provide a little bit of help for webmasters who choose unmanaged hosting. If your IT team face problem in maintaining the server, you will have to pay additional fee to have the provider’s IT team resolve it.
It is important that the VPS web hosting companies offer 24/7 customer support. You should avoid provider that do not offer telephone number to contact their customer support. You should find out how you can contact their customer support. Many providers offer toll free telephone so that you won’t get charged with a phone bill when you call their customer support team.
The VPS provider should be equipped with backup hardware so that the server will continue to load properly even after power outages. You should take into account factors such as RAM, bandwidth, CPU power and operating system when choosing a VPS hosting plan. You should avoid VPS hosting packages that offer less than 512 MB RAM. With more RAM, your computer will be able to load at a faster speed. If you plan to host more than one website, you must find a plan that offers unlimited add on. Besides, you should consider the features It include in the VPS hosting plan such as PHP, MySQL database and e-commerce.
When choosing a VPS hosting, make sure you check for the money back guarantee. You should read the refund policy to find out how you can get a refund in case you are not satisfied with the services of the VPS hosting provider.
Lastly, you must not forget to perform a search on Google for customers’ reviews. You should reference a number of sources for the VPS hosting company reviews. You can do research on customer reviews for 2 – 4 VPS hosting companies. If the provider has a lot of complaints, you should avoid signing up with him and find another provider.