Can a Shared hosting compare with a VPS 512 MB of RAM?

I wanted to buy a shared hosting but with the budget to buy a share I could try a small VPS with 512 of RAM. I know its hard to compare in this case but if I buy a VPS THEN it is still better than a shared hosting in same price? any advice?

Hi wpspeedster,

I think you're much better off with the unmanaged VPS (I'm assuming at that price, it's unmanaged) but do you know how to set it up, secure it and maintain it?

VPS's are better for some users, worse for others. Just because it's a VPS, doesn't make it better.

Typically, for the same amount of money, you will get better resources, and better performance from shared hosting.

Keep in mind, a VPS is still shared resources unless it is XEN or KVM with dedicated resources. There is not much you can do with 512mb ram, especially if it's shared ram on a oversold server.

wpspeedster said:

I wanted to buy a shared hosting but with the budget to buy a share I could try a small VPS with 512 of RAM. I know its hard to compare in this case but if I buy a VPS THEN it is still better than a shared hosting in same price? any advice?

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You will have better performance with a VPS but you have to know how to manage it and i will not recommand you a VPS with less than 2GB RAM.
With more than 2GB, you can easily install a control panel and host many website on your VPS.

wpspeedster said:

I wanted to buy a shared hosting but with the budget to buy a share I could try a small VPS with 512 of RAM. I know its hard to compare in this case but if I buy a VPS THEN it is still better than a shared hosting in same price? any advice?

Click to expand...

Considering the fact that you do not question the cpanel, because if you have a VPS will have to compare a cPanel license and have sufficient knowledge to manage it, since cheap VPS are unmanaged. You can try a free control panel as VestaCP that is lightweight and can be installed on a VPS with 512MB RAM, I recommend choosing a VPS with KVM or Xen virtualization that has dedicated resources.

For a free control panel, CentOS web panel is a good choice.

It looks like you don't have experience with managing VPS so you may go for VPS only if you are interested in actually learning Server Management, but because no matter which control panel you use, you will still need some server management skills

Just make sure to always keep backups of your data

wpspeedster said:

I wanted to buy a shared hosting but with the budget to buy a share I could try a small VPS with 512 of RAM. I know its hard to compare in this case but if I buy a VPS THEN it is still better than a shared hosting in same price? any advice?

Click to expand...

Interesting question,

Though I suppose that a shared hosting is not compared with a VPS 512 MB of RAM if they are not use a hosting panel. Because if you use LAMP or LEMP on your VPS with optimizations, a VPS with 512 of RAM is pretty strong to handle processes from your websites while the resource of a shared hosting can be limited by your hosting provider and it can be lesser than 512 MB RAM very much.

Hi wpspeedster,

There are two key points when you are compare VPS to share hosting.

First of all a share hosting platform can have up to 150+ accounts per server. If they offer unlimited plan this can translate to couple thousand of websites. Most sites are just a couple of static pages that will not consume a vast amount of resources. However if you have a couple of resource hoggers on the server, you can experience a tremendous slow down in speed on your own site. Secondly if you paying for that unlimited space but you only use 1gb of it than you have to understand that someone else is probably using 20+ gb from what suppose to be your resource pool. However share solution usually provide you with easy builder system for your website. A ton of script library you can one click install to your website. Some provider also offer free advertising network coupon like Google or Bing coupon. Search engine submission is usually provide for share hosting account.

Second key point is for VPS platform. If you use a VPS platform that is un-managed you do need some technical skill to set it up. It is simple if you know the procedure but can be challenging if you have never done it before. You have to calculate the resource the server control panel is going to use, beside that you have to leave enough resource for your HTTP server, MySQL and other server that necessary to run. With 512mb of space you will probably not able to setup an e-mail server or a DNS server in combine with hosting server. Not all panel is going to use 1GB of memory but they are tough nut and do require resource to run. For paying panel you can go with Plesk or Cpanel. For opensource solution the basic version is free or the complete thing is free would be CentOS Web Panel, Virtualmin combo with Webmin, ISPConfig.

In the end though. it can be conclude that one will provide you with a lot of useful tool but can be none flexible in term and can be slow sometimes. The other option will give you very flexibility in term of what you want to use or how you want to use it, it also offer you the most bang for your buck. However can be very costly to setup either in hour value or financial value. In the end the choice is base on what you think fit best for your circumstance.

Test yourself with the VPS and then decide to shift. VPS is for sure powerful and has more capacities but also, just because its a VPS, it doesnt makes it better for everyone. it will take some time to understand its management and functions