Web hosting, VPS or a dedicated server?

Web hosting

The simplest option for the general public is web hosting. Here the customer doesn’t have to worry about many things – they just upload the content of their website via FTP, populate the database, create email mailboxes for their domain through the administration, and that’s it.

The servers on which the web, email, database and other related services run are fully managed by us. We perform maintenance, security configuration and updates, monitor their functionality and load, and handle all related issues (with the exception of errors directly in the customer’s PHP application).

The capabilities of web hosting are, however, fixed. It can only run PHP applications using a MySQL/MariaDB database. For PHP, the modules available for use are precisely defined, and various limits apply – the maximum script run time, the maximum memory for running a single script, and so on. These limits cannot be adjusted or changed individually in any way.

If you are looking for web hosting for a more demanding website, choose the premium Extra service – it offers more performance, has better parameters and daily backups.

Web hosting is a shared service. This means that several hundred customers reside on a single web hosting server, together sharing the performance of the entire server.

Despite some limitations, web hosting is the most widespread service and fully satisfies the vast majority of customers. The limiting parameters are set relatively high and a wide range of PHP modules is available. The customer doesn’t have to worry about anything and doesn’t need any deep computer knowledge. Most open source applications run on our web hosting – content management systems, e-shops, discussion forums, and so on.

Virtual server (VPS)

The second tier is the virtual server (VPS). Here the customer gets their own “empty” server, running in a virtualized environment, on which they can run absolutely any operating system with any software, and therefore any application. They have full access to the server (as Administrator on a Windows server or as root on Linux). If they install PHP on the server, they can add any modules to it and use any configuration.

A VPS is therefore all about freedom of choice – the customer can do anything on it in any way, because the server is theirs alone and in these matters does not affect other customers in any way.

Here, however, the customer must have a relatively good understanding of the things involved in running their own server – installing and configuring the operating system, securing the server, installing and configuring applications on the server, and so on. From us they receive a bare server with a basic installation of some operating system, or optionally a Debian ISP package (which additionally comes with Apache, PHP, MySQL, a mail server, a DNS server and the ISPConfig control panel ready to go). The rest is up to the customer. We only take care of keeping the virtualization environment running. Whatever runs on the VPS is then fully managed by the customer alone.

A VPS does, however, still share some resources with other customers. We can run several dozen virtual servers on a single physical server. A VPS therefore shares processor performance and I/O performance with the others on the same server. A VPS is thus still not suitable for extremely demanding applications that need many processors, more than 4 GB of RAM, and so on.

Dedicated servers

For the most demanding customers there are dedicated servers. In this case we lease a physical server that is fully available to the customer. As with a VPS, the customer can run anything on such a server, but in addition they have the server’s entire performance truly and exclusively to themselves.

With dedicated servers it is also possible to devise your own individual configuration – the type and number of processors, memory, and the type and number of disks. We have some in stock, some are made to order.

We lease the hardware to the customer; it cannot be purchased. On the other hand, we guarantee the hardware: we repair its faults at our own expense and replace faulty components with our own money.

But again, as with a VPS – we do not take care of what runs on this hardware. That is once again fully up to the customer – either they understand it themselves or they find someone who will take care of it for them.