Nowadays, most website owners start the internet presence of their business or non-profit initiatives with a shared hosting plan. Cheaper, time-tested, and based on physical servers that are split between other website owners, shared servers are quite a decent option for the majority of new online pages. As they are shared between several server tenants, their maintenance costs are relatively low.
Once a website initiative grows and its traffic starts to increase progressively, people usually think about moving their webpage to a dedicated server. But as individual dedicated servers are much more expensive to maintain, as well as a single user is responsible alone for the enhanced development of their server, many website owners take the decision to switch to unmanaged or managed VPS hosting plans.
VPS Hosting: What it is?
Imagine a tall 30-story building in the heart of New York, Frankfurt, or London. By itself, this construction is a very large home. But this large residence contains 150 smaller homes, each of which is a separate and independent dwelling. Depending on its area, such a separate apartment in the larger shared home can possibly provide a comfortable life for even a big family of at least 4-5 members. That’s what actually we are talking about in the next paragraph.
VPS is the abbreviation for a “Virtual private server”. Explained in more “technical” language, there’s a type of physical server that provides shelter to a large number of websites, just like shared servers also do. But there is one significant difference: in this case, the single physical server is much bigger, and it contains many smaller virtual servers in it. When talking about VPS hosting, your site is based on any of these virtual servers. I.e., your website is living in a virtual server, just like people who live in cozy flats in huge city apartment buildings do.
So, a VPS server is separated from the rest. Though each VPS server is a consistent part of a bigger server body, they work independently from each other. For letting people have their website hosted on a single VPS server and enjoying all the advantages and comfort of a dedicated server, the VPS technology is unique and without a precedent. And, most importantly, it provides a cozy place for your website at a significantly lower cost than if you use the traditional dedicated server.
Types of VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is recommended for sites that attract medium to high traffic. Usually, people switch to it after previously having a cheaper shared plan at the beginning of their website initiative. Before upgrading their beginner plan, they have to choose between two main types of VPS hosting:
- Unmanaged VPS hosting: The hosting provider takes care of the physical server and its technical performance. Its responsibilities are limited to the server’s existence and keeping it running only. But this is quite enough for the site to work normally and without any problems. Backing up, improved security that some websites need, and core updates are up to the website’s owner.
- Managed VPS hosting: The hosting service provider takes care of all the server-related responsibilities like core updates, better security maintenance for some websites that need it, backups, software installations, etc. With managed VPS hosting plan, the owner of the website doesn’t have to care about anything else besides the website’s visual creativity and, for business sites, the marketing efficiency.
For Whom is an Unmanaged Hosting Plan Appropriate?
If your business or non-profit is growing, you can get very good progress if you increase your traffic by simply upgrading your plan. This way, your site won’t be unavailable if many people visit it at the same time.
Usually, unmanaged VPS is suitable for website owners whose activity, no matter if a business or another one, is bigger. Sometimes, smaller website owners might be quite into website server maintenance and security, and they might also prefer to take care of this part on their own.
Larger businesses and other types of online initiatives usually possess greater resources. Their owners more frequently have special requirements. That’s why many of them prefer to personally take care of backing up and improving the security of their websites more often than owners of smaller websites do.
If your business has recently been established, then we would recommend you choose a managed hosting package. Thus, you will have more time to concentrate on developing marketing strategies and the website’s content and visual appearance. If you have already finished this very enjoyable creative activity, your business is yet unhesitatingly growing, and you just need more traffic, then we would recommend you choose unmanaged hosting by Hostens.
Not an Option of Compromise
At first glance, the term “unmanaged” in “unmanaged VPS hosting” may be associated with any kind of lack or disadvantage, since the word itself is lexically negative. But you shouldn’t be worried about it at all as “unmanaged” is not related in any way to the performance and efficiency of the VPS hosting service.
An unmanaged VPS hosting plan by Hostens, for instance, could let you get quite a decent 24/7 customer support line, a proactive server maintenance attitude, and just everything your already well-developed business or cause needs for the server core of its web page.
Top 6 Pros of Unmanaged VPS Hosting
Unmanaged hosting plans have many pros that you can take advantage of without having to pay for stuff that you will never really use in a managed package. Here we have gathered the 6 main pros for which unmanaged VPS hosting is a great solution for every business, non-profit, or other kind of initiative that is already well-established in the online environment.
1. Saves money
With an unmanaged VPS plan, you could save money on some managed hosting features that you won’t use, but they’re still present in the managed plans of most providers. And, of course, you usually must pay for them, no matter if you will use them for real.
Unlike most hosting packages, you can activate some individual features of managed hosting, such as regular backups, with the unmanaged VPS plan by Hostens. With Hostens, you can choose only those that you need indeed. So, you can only pay for the managed plan features that you will really use.
Also, with an unmanaged VPS hosting plan you have the opportunity to practically pay several times cheaper for the service if you prepay for a longer period of time. The longer period you prepay, the more money you’ll save!
2. Ensures the comfort of a dedicated server
With unmanaged VPS hosting, you get absolutely all the conveniences you would get with any dedicated hosting plan. But at a lower price, which is always an advantage. Although VPS servers share a physical server machine with other site owners, each VPS server has enough space to provide unlimited traffic comfort to each user.
Just like a dedicated server, a VPS server completely lacks the inconvenience of your site not being reachable if too many people want to access it simultaneously. The only disadvantage of a VPS server is actually a drawback of dedicated servers either: the maintenance costs are not shared with other users, and the individual backing-up price is included in the cost of the plans. But, still, services by VPS servers are cheaper than those by dedicated ones.
3. Powerful stability and excellent site performance
In the same way as a dedicated server does, VPS servers also offer stability and superb website performance. Since each webpage owner has their own virtual space within the big physical server, space is not spread between all other users as it is with shared servers.
With unmanaged VPS hosting, the website speed and overall vitality can never be breached by increased traffic toward other “neighbors”. It’s a completely win-win-win pattern. You gain excellent stability, excellent performance, and an excellent own virtual environment.
4. Unmanaged VPS hosting has good enough security
Among the main traits of each VPS hosting plan is that it has much better precautionary measures than shared servers do, and they are quite similar to the security practices of a dedicated server.
No matter what the server type is, server security has always been among the top responsibilities of each provider. But website owners could add supplementary protection extras to meet particular sensitive data demands of business fields such as banking, healthcare, and insurance, which are fussy about security.
Although other sites are sheltered under the single roof of a large physical server, the virtual partition significantly reduces or completely prevents the risks of malicious activities within the large physical server where VPS servers are hosted.
5. Many upgrade opportunities
The ability to upgrade your plan or its features is a relatively common practice among hosting companies that offer unmanaged VPS hosting services. The unmanaged VPS hosting plan by Hostens, for example, offers some optional additions to the main plan with which you don’t have to pay for a fully managed VPS hosting package, such as the following:
- Daily/Weekly backups: Backups could potentially save your website’s data in case of malware or potential attack by hackers.
- Access to cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin: These are popular hosting control panels making the process of hosting a website easy and simple.
Unmanaged VPS hosting plans and packages can be quite a decent solution in all laps of a website enlargement because they can easily be upgraded anytime a necessity occurs. Website traffic and additional features could be supplemented anytime within the same hosting provider.
6. Root Access
Root Access is a function that provides you with unconstrained around-the-clock access to your server. It is a tool available on dedicated and VPS hosting plans only.
Shared hosting plans and packages are not able to provide you with it because that would mean giving you access to all the information of all other sites hosted on the same shared server. In case you would like to have Root Access provided, you should move to either a VPS or a dedicated plan.
With unmanaged VPS hosting you will get full Root Access, so you could operate, navigate, and customize the server, including its resources, trouble-free, whenever and wherever you want to.
Conclusion
Unlike managed VPS hosting (which is more expensive but the best option for beginners in their business who want to focus on marketing strategies and their website’s appearance), unmanaged VPS hosting is a cheaper choice for users that already have decent proficiency in website maintenance.
Hostens offers an exclusive unmanaged VPS service that is ahead of many other hosting companies for allowing website owners to add some additional managed VPS hosting options for a small fee. For example, regular backups and a web hosting control panel.
Anytime your hosting plan-related needs multiply, you could contact the 24/7 customer support of Hostens for possible improvements and upgrades. We have nice opportunities for everyone, even for your hamster, as we like to say.
FAQs about Hostens
What is Hostens?
Hostens is a Lithuanian hosting provider that has proved its advancement and professionalism. It offers its customers high-rank hosting services at top prices, a friendly attitude, proactive maintenance, and 24/7 customer support.
How can I contact Hostens’ 24/7 customer support?
Our team of polite and always ready-to-help experts can be contacted by live chat, email, and ticketing. We always say that these young people are the heart of Hostens! We owe our customers’ satisfaction to them. They’re really well aware of potential hosting-related issues, and they could resolve any issue promptly and precisely.
What are the payment methods at Hostens?
Hostens has a really huge variety of payment methods. You can choose between widely spread debit and credit cards, e-wallets, and cryptocurrencies. Here they are:
- Visa
- Mastercard
- Maestro
- PayPal
- Paysera
- Bitcoins/Bitcoin Cash
- Alipay
- Tenpay
- UnionPay
- Doku
- OneCard
- Boleto
- International payments
Does Hostens charge additional fees for payments?
Hostens has never charged any additional taxes for any payments by card, e-wallet, international payment, or crypto. As any method may require a small fee from their side, you better cautiously check the conditions of your payment method.