In this article, we'll cover the basics of the differences between Shared, VPS, and Dedicated Hosting.

Hosting Platform Analogies

Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting includes our Personal / Cheap Hosting Plans and our Business Class Hosting Plans. Shared Hosting is very similar to living in an Apartment Complex. All residents are in the same location and must share the available resources with everyone - such as the pool, parking lot, and play ground. In shared hosting, all accounts (sites) must share the available resources with all the other accounts on the server - such as CPU time, memory, and disk space.

VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting includes our 256M, 512M, and 1024M VPS Hosting Plans. VPS Hosting is similar to owning a Condo. While you still share things on the property, you are ultimately responsible for maintaining your own property and repairs inside the condo. There is also significantly less residents per building and assigned parking. On a Virtual Private Server, you are allotted resources that are not shared by everyone. The over all CPU time and memory are shared across all accounts on the machine, but at the same time portions of those resources are always dedicated to each account. This allows for more power and flexibility than being on a shared account. 

Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated Hosting includes our Essential, Advanced, and Elite Dedicated Server Hosting Plans. Dedicated Hosting can be compared to owning a house. You are allowed and have access to all resources available on the machine. No one else's account resides on the machine (your house) and would not be capable of tapping into your resources.

Server Resources 

Apartment living to Condo living

Condo Living to Single Family Home Living

Keeping with the Condo analogy, you have a lot of control, but you don't have complete control. If you invite a band to play in your living room, others in the Community are going to hear the noise and may complain. If a friend / relative needs to move in with you, you're not going to be able to build an addition to help accommodate them. There are many reasons that a Condo was great for you at one point in your life, but you're at the point where you have a big family and there's a lot going on every day. You may decide to buy a single family home, where you'll have plenty of parking, extra bathrooms, and a big back yard to play with the dogs.

VPS Servers are great for mid sized businesses. You have a virtualized private server in which you can setup and tweak exactly the way you need to. You can host an unlimited number of websites, and there are really no restrictions, other than your usage of your server's CPU time and memory. A VPS Server is not a Dedicated Server, so you are still on a server with other users. As you're sharing a server, your actions can still affect other users. If you have a very busy website, dominating the server's CPU time and memory could cause performance issues with other users on the same server. If you are running a script that is not optimized and runs out of control, it can disrupt not only your site, but could affect the server as a whole and possibly cause downtime for others users on the same server.

Server Administration: What's the landlord up to?