VPS is widely considered the natural progression for companies upgrading from shared hosting. Affordable, high-performance and inherently more secure, it provides exceptionally more resources for just a small increase in price. While VPS might be the right decision, finding the best hosting provider and package needs some consideration. Here are some important tips to help you make the right choice.
What are you going to use VPS for?
VPS hosting comes in a range of packages, each offering differing amounts of resources, such as storage, CPU and RAM. The needs of your business should dictate what resources you’ll need now and in the foreseeable future and this should be a key consideration when looking for a VPS package, otherwise, you might restrict your company’s development further down the line. Here are some of the main things VPS is used for.
Large and busy websites
The extra storage and processing power offered by VPS makes it ideal for companies with large or multiple websites with heavy traffic. The additional resources enable your website to handle large numbers of simultaneous requests without affecting the speed and performance of your site, ensuring fast loading times, continuity and availability.
Deploy other applications
As businesses grow, they tend to deploy more applications for business use. Aside from a website, you may want to utilise applications for remote working, employee tracking, access control or some of the many others which businesses now make use of. Not only does VPS give you the storage and resources to run these workloads; it also gives you the freedom to manage and configure your server in a way that best suits your needs.
Remember, the more apps you use and the more data you store, the bigger the package you’ll require.
Other common uses of VPS
A VPS can be utilised for a wide range of purposes. It can be used for developing apps and testing new environments, private backup solutions, hosting servers for streaming and advertising platforms, indeed, even some individuals use them to host gaming servers so they can play their favourite games with their friends online.
Whichever purposes you have in mind for your VPS, make sure you look carefully at the resources you need now and for growing space in the future.
Latency and location
One issue that many businesses don’t fully consider is the location of their VPS server. This, however, can have an impact in a number of ways. As data has to travel from a server to a user’s machine, the further the two devices are apart, the longer communication takes. This latency can have big implications. Firstly, it can make your website load slowly on more distant browsers. This has been proven to increase the numbers of users who will abandon your website and, consequently, lower conversion rates. Secondly, it slows response times on your site, so when someone carries out an action, there is an unnecessary delay before the expected result occurs (a major issue for gaming servers) and, thirdly, when search engines measure latency times, they may downrank your website because it isn’t fast enough. As a result, your organic traffic can diminish.
Another vital consideration is compliance. To comply with regulations like GDPR, you have to guarantee that the personal data you collect about UK and EU citizens is kept secure. While you can ensure this in countries which are signed up to GDPR, like the UK, the bulk of the world’s servers are hosted in the US where the data on them can be accessed by US law enforcement for national security purposes. In such instances, companies cannot guarantee data privacy and, should the data be accessed, your business could be in breach of regulations.
The tip here is a simple one: for speed, responsiveness, SEO and compliance, ensure your VPS is physically hosted in the country where the vast majority of your users are located. Be careful though: just because your web host operates in your country doesn’t necessarily mean their servers are based there. This is why, at Anteelo, all our datacentres are based in the UK.
Expertise
As your business develops its use of IT, you will start to need more in-house expertise to manage your system and make use of the applications at your disposal. Upgrading to VPS is a critical time for having IT skills in place, as you may need to learn how to use the new platform, migrate your website and other apps to it and deploy any new apps that you want to take advantage of.
IT expertise, however, is in short supply and training can be expensive. Even with it in place, there may be issues that you need help with. This makes it crucial that when choosing a VPS solution, you opt for a vendor that provides 24/7 expert technical support. A good host will not only set up the VPS for you and migrate your website; they will also manage your server so you can focus on your business and be there to deliver professional support whenever it is needed.
Security
The proliferation of sophisticated cybercrime together with increased compliance regulations means every business needs to put security high on their priorities. While moving from a shared server to a VPS with its own operating system makes your system inherently safer, you should not overlook the security provided by your hosting provider.
Look for a host that provides robust firewalls with rules customised for VPS, intrusion and anti-DDoS protection, VPNs, anti-malware and application security, SSL certificates, remote backup solutions, email filters and email signing certificates.
Conclusion
VPS hosting offers growing business the ideal opportunity to grow its website, handle more traffic and deploy a wider range of business applications – and all at an affordable price. However, its important to choose a VPS package that offers enough resources, is located close to your customers, is managed on your behalf, comes with 24/7 expert technical support and provides the security your company needs.
