Cloud Computing for Business

A VPS is a fixed slice of one physical server. Cloud hosting spreads the workload across several machines, so it can absorb spikes and survive a single server failing. A VPS is usually cheaper and entirely adequate for predictable traffic.

It is when the workload is sensitive, regulated, or noisy enough to be a bad neighbour on shared infrastructure. For an ordinary business website it is not. The test is whether you have a compliance requirement or a performance profile that shared tenancy cannot satisfy.

Shared hosting is a few dollars a month, a VPS tens, and private or dedicated infrastructure hundreds. The costs that surprise people are the metered ones — bandwidth, egress, snapshots, support tiers — so ask what is metered before comparing headline prices.

That depends entirely on the provider, and it is a fair question to ask directly. It matters for latency, for regulatory requirements, and for which government can compel access. A provider that cannot name the country is a provider to avoid.

When the site is slow at busy times rather than all the time, when the host starts mentioning resource limits, or when you need software the shared environment does not allow. Consistent slowness is usually the site, not the plan.