For small to medium size businesses, rising popularity bloggers, or any other website owners with large, dynamic content or high traffic on their website(s), it’s crucial know the importance of being hosted on a stable platform. Shared hosting, by its very nature, would not be a good idea to depend on with its limited resources and lack of control.

On the other hand, a dedicated server would be a great plan to have, but unless you have the hundreds of dollars a month to invest on it, its more of a dream than a reality. But with the advancement of virtualization technology, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) were made possible, bridging the gap between dedicated and shared hosting.

Virtual private servers are exactly that, a server in a “virtually” private environment. Virtualization technology creates a separation between “shared” servers, enabling them to function independently while still technically being in the same physical unit as others. Therefore, a VPS is able to have many similar features of a dedicated server, but at a much lower cost. These features include your own operating system, IP address and resources like RAM and disk space, with CPU being just one of the few shared aspects. You can even have control over the firewall and customize it to fit your needs.

Even more benefits of VPS web hosting include:

1. SSH/Root Access – You’re able to get “server-level customization,” which was previously only available with dedicated hosting due to security concerns with the nature of a shared hosting environment.

2. Scalability – For most sites, the fundamental goal is continued growth, whether by adding additional sites, increasing traffic and so on. Shared hosting does not have the capacity to support very much expansion, whereas VPS hosting allows you to start off small and continue to grow without having to upgrade machines.

3. Accommodate Usage Spikes – Let’s say the popularity of your blog is on the rise and you get a link to your site from a much larger site like Digg or Slashdot. This can become a disaster that can instantly cripple your site on a shared server. But on a VPS, this wouldn’t be much of a problem with the availability of “burstable memory,” which is a pool of reserved memory that can be utilized when needed, such as in times of unexpected high traffic.

4. E-commerce Stability – If you have a business site with e-commerce, you don’t want to risk it not functioning due to someone else using up the resources, which is possible in shared hosting environment. With a VPS, you can rest assure of encountering this problem since your site doesn’t rely on the same resources as others on the same machine.

5. Cost – At a fraction of the cost of a dedicated server, VPS hosting has many advantages, such as greater control, a higher level of security and superior performance for resource-intensive websites. It’s a great step up from shared hosting when in need of a platform that can handle a site(s) growth while staying on a budget.

What are you using for your Pligg install? And, are you happy with it?

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