VPS Vs. Dedicated Servers

Before I start showing dedicated servers and VPS on the market, I think it's interesting to clarify the differences between these two modalities, to have more tools before making our decision.


When thinking on our own server to our pages or web applications, an important factor we consider is the price difference between dedicated servers and hosting services. Against that monetary increase, the VPS appear as a cheaper alternative that can help us in the transition.

So VPS are a cheap alternative. But I still don't know what a VPS is!

A VPS is a "virtual private server" (hence the acronym). It's basically a virtual dedicated server but, in reality, the same hardware can have multiple VPS. So we're talking about a PC that will have multiple virtual servers running at once.


Each VPS appears to us isolated, as if it were a dedicated server. But when we go to the server room, we see that several VPS are on the same CPU. Virtualization allows us to create separate servers with the same hardware. For this reason, it's a cheaper alternative compared to a dedicated server, and can help us at first.

What is the difference between a VPS and a dedicated server?

The major disadvantage of a VPS is the performance. A VPS is more limited in capacity, since, as mentioned, several VPS run on a single server, sharing its resources. Therefore we have a certain percentage of CPU, RAM and disk space assigned. In the case of a dedicated server, that percentage is 100%.


But, on the other hand, there is a big advantage: price. A VPS costs on average between 2 and 4 times less than a dedicated server. That's a big thing to consider! On the other hand, being a virtual PC, you can easily fix the various errors that can be generated by our changes in the configuration.

Ok. So I need a VPS? Or a dedicated server is better for me?

Suppose we want to do a testing, or we're starting a web development and we need an external server. We'll need to experiment, test, debug, and analize possible errors. In this case, a VPS can do the trick.


Now suppose that our testing or development are completed. We must deploy it to a company with several branches in the world and we need the system to remain active, stable and to have good performance. So we now require a dedicated server.

I'm lazy. Just tell me what I need!

Ok. Let's say, in summary, that a VPS are enough for small applications, or enable us to publish a number of websites without much CPU usage. And a dedicated server is necessary for high performance web applications.