Sometime ago I was introduced to the world of hosting. My friend told me about vps and stuff and we went along to buy the vps and started setting up stuff there. Now I am back on cpanel. The other day I was enquiring on managed hosting. So what are the differences between shared hosting, vps and managed hosting and the pros and cons of using each of them, when will you be probably using them.

Shared hosting

-Using comes with cpanel and abundant of scripts that help you to install softwares on it. Useful for running websites like wordpress, drupal, zoomla, vtiger crms among the others. You can even develop some custom web application on it. If you need to install something special or some special functions you probably need to use unmanaged/managed servers. It usually comes with support so if somethings are not working you can email/call/live support on their website.

Unmanaged vps/Servers

-Vps, it’s like they partition part of their server’s resources to you. It’s like your server hosted else where. You upload your OS install your own software. You also get some support in terms of asking what is happening. Again they might have some ports blocked or they limit the rate of smtp out or some functions disabled. Contact them to know and if there is a work around. Useful for developing custom software perhaps. It’s better to move to managed servers once you start hosting for your customers.

Managed Servers

-Managed Servers are useful when you are hosting for customers. You have some help with your software then on unmanaged servers. They will help you with patches and they probably have more experience with the file logs and experience with general software like commonly used linux behaviour, Mysql, Apache, among the others. They should help you find out what is going out pretty quickly or even help you solve some of the problems going on with the some of the software your software is dependent on to run.