Shared Hosting, VPS or Dedicated Server:
how to choose for a business website
Three levels of website infrastructure explained simply: how shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers differ, and what a business site actually needs — not what a hosting provider's marketing wants you to buy.
Once your site's built, the next question is where to put it. Shared hosting, VPS, or a dedicated server? People usually decide by price, which is a mistake — the real difference isn't the money, it's how much your site actually needs and who's on the hook when the server goes down. From here on, forget words like 'cloud', 'premium' and 'unlimited' — every provider means something different by them.
Shared hosting: space on a server you share
Shared hosting means renting space on a server that's also running dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other people's sites. Everyone splits the same CPU and memory, so if a neighbor's traffic spikes, your site can slow down too. In return you get a low price and almost nothing to configure: a control panel, a ready-made database, and the provider's support team owns the whole server. For a business card site, a landing page, or anything without serious traffic, that's usually more than enough. Complex backend logic or strict response-time requirements — that's a different tier.
We actually have a client on this tier — happyrecept.ru runs on regular hosting with a provider called ihc.
VPS: your own isolated server inside a physical one
A VPS isn't a shared table anymore — it's your own room in the same building. There's still one physical machine, but you get a guaranteed slice of CPU and RAM, your own OS, and root access. Other tenants exist on the same hardware, you just barely notice them — resources are isolated. This is where most mid-sized business sites and apps end up: online stores, sites with a user dashboard and forms, Telegram bots with a backend — basically anything that isn't pure static content. We run our own stuff this way too: the novixsun site itself sits on a VPS, in Docker, behind nginx and Cloudflare. You can run any backend — Go, Node.js, PHP, doesn't matter — and get predictable performance without paying for a dedicated machine.
Dedicated server: the entire physical machine for one project
A dedicated server is the whole physical machine, entirely yours. No virtualization, no neighbors. Maximum resources, full control down to the hardware itself. But maintenance is now entirely on you too — setup, security, replacing a drive if it dies at 3am. It makes sense with consistently heavy load — thousands of visitors a day, heavy computation, video — or when you have strict hardware requirements or rules about where data physically lives. For a typical business site, a dedicated server usually just means paying for resources nobody will use.
Comparison by criteria
If you don't have time to read all of the above — here's the short version.
| Comparison by criteria | Shared hosting: space on a server you share | VPS: your own isolated server inside a physical one | Dedicated server: the entire physical machine for one project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Low | Medium | High |
| Resources | Shared with other sites | Guaranteed CPU/RAM share | The entire machine |
| Server control | Minimal — control panel only | Full — root access, any stack | Full, including hardware choice |
| Who's responsible for the server | The provider | You (or your dev team) | Entirely you |
| Best fit | Business card site, landing page, low traffic | Business website, online store, bot with a backend | Consistently high load, specific requirements |
How we choose infrastructure when we build a site
We don't sell hosting and we're not a reseller — picking and setting up infrastructure is part of development for us, not a line item. For most projects we build, a VPS is the right call, and that's usually what we recommend. But if a project genuinely needs a dedicated server, or plain hosting is actually enough, we'll say so — instead of pushing the pricier option because it's pricier.
Questions about hosting, VPS and dedicated servers
Is shared hosting enough for an online store?
Depends on the store. For a handful of products with no user accounts, maybe. But most online stores need consistent speed under load, database work, and their own backend — that's VPS territory. And even if hosting is fine on a normal day, it can just fold during a big sale with a traffic spike.
What's the difference between VPS and 'cloud hosting'?
It's mostly a marketing problem: 'cloud hosting' from one provider is just hosting on a server cluster, from another it's basically a VPS with a nicer name. Ignore the word 'cloud' and look at what you actually get — guaranteed resources and root access. If you have that, it's a VPS, whatever it's called on the pricing page.
Can we start on shared hosting and move to a VPS later?
Yes, and it's pretty common. Launch on something simple, move to a VPS once traffic grows or the logic gets more complex. We try to design the architecture from day one so that move doesn't turn into rebuilding the project.
How much more expensive is a dedicated server than a VPS?
Depends on the provider and configuration, but usually several times more — you're paying for the whole physical machine, not a slice of it. For exact numbers, check with hosting providers directly; we don't sell servers or track current pricing.
Can you set up and host our project's server for us?
Yes. Infrastructure setup — Docker, nginx, deployment — is part of the build, not a paid add-on. Describe the project and we'll suggest a hosting setup that fits it.
Not sure which of these actually fits your site?
Describe your project — on a call we'll work through it together and figure out a setup that fits the task, not the one that costs more.