Managed Or Unmanaged VPS?

An article by ewoodesign    Comments Off

If you’re website is growing you may soon realize that shared hosting just doesn’t cut it anymore. You’ll also find that it can be very pricey to have your own server. Which will lead you to looking for a cheap virtual dedicated server. You should know however that cheaper packages are that way for a reason! The number one thing you’ll want to look at is managed and un-managed packages.

A managed server is one that is well, managed! This will be most like a shared hosting package. The difference being that you have much more control over the server. There are a lot of server management tasks going on behind the scenes that your hosting provider takes care of for you that you don’t see. You will be responsible for all of these tasks! This could equate to many hours of work and that’s if you already know what you’re doing.

An un-managed server leaves you with a bare bones set up that you have to do all the work for. The good thing is that you have total control. This means you can install any software, scripts, ect. that you like. Anything you want enabled or set up for yourself you can just do it. The bad is that you have to actually know how to do this. Some VPS providers will offer assistance or mild “training” but many leave you on your own. This is why they can afford to offer their VPS packages so cheap.

While the managed servers spend money on man power for customer service and tech support the discount packages normally don’t. If you really need the resources and have free time this could help you get more hardware for less cash. Since you are essentially just renting the computer hardware and storage space.

While it may seem like you aren’t getting much space on your VPS you may use much less than you think you do. Pretty much all shared hosting packages offer “unlimited” but unless your site is very traffic heavy you probably aren’t using much space. I host many domains for under 300MB of disk and a traffic rating of 30GB. You can get quotes from a site like vps2fast.com to see what kind of package you can afford.