When you browse through some of the hosting types that your Web host offers you might stumble upon a listing for VPS hosting.

What is it?

Well, I am sure I will not cover every inch of what a VPS hosting account is, but let me go through the basics so we don’t need a degree to understand what it will and will not give you.
VPS stands for virtual private server. It is sometimes also referred to as a virtual server or a virtual dedicated server. It takes one big server and partitions it off into several smaller servers. Each VPS hosting account can have its own operating system and can be rebooted without effecting the other accounts on the machine.

Now that you know what it is, what is it good for?

These types of hosting accounts are usually used as a stepping stone between your basic shared hosting accounts and dedicated hosting accounts. You get all of the benefits of having your own dedicated machine, but you still have some limitation as to what you can do with it. If shared hosting is a light snack, and dedicated hosting is a three course meal, you can consider VPS hosting a regular sized dinner.

Now where with a dedicated machine, your RAM and CPU usage would be a little less limited, with VPS hosting you are more in the boat with shared hosting. You will be limited by your Web host in disk space, bandwidth, CPU and RAM usage. Now where a VPS is helpful is when you need the benefits of dedicated hosting such as certain types of script setups and account access.

So as I said before, this is a much needed plan in between your shared and dedicated hosting. It allows you a little more flexibility than a shared hosting account, but limits you more than a dedicated account would.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 102!

To read user reviews and find a linux or Windows VPS host we highly recommend the VPS Hosting section at Web Hosting Unleashed!