Your small businesses survived its first year, beating the 40% failure rate in Ireland. Congratulations!
Now, you only need to get through what they say is an 80% risk of small business failure within the first five years.
Honing your entrepreneurial and management skills is key to achieving that goal. But today, that also means meeting your customers’ digital needs and preferences.
Having no online presence, like 22% of Irish businesses, is one of the quickest ways to lose customers. The same is true if your website is always down and inaccessible (hello 404 error page).
This is where VPS uses for your business come into play.
But what does VPS even mean? What can your business do with it to survive — and then thrive — in the Irish economy?
This list of VPS benefits will get to the bottom of all these questions, so keep reading!
First, a quick background. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, and is one of the most scalable hosting services. In a single, physical server, there can be several of these virtual servers.
Confused? Let’s define each of the words in VPS, starting from “server.”
In web hosting, the physical “server” refers to a super computer with loads of storage space. Large companies can rent that “server” in the form of a dedicated hosting plan.
The “private” in VPS means that only one hosting client uses that server. Unlike shared hosting, wherein many clients have to share a single virtual server. With a VPS, you’re the only one who can use and access that virtual server.
Imagine the physical or dedicated server as an entire house. If a single party were to rent the entire house, it would be pretty expensive, right? But, it provides the greatest level of privacy and convenience, since there’s no one to share the house with.
It has several rooms, which when you rent them out, can be private rooms. Those private rooms are much like VPS, wherein only one person has access to one room.
Those rooms become like “shared hosting” if you put, say, five beds in each and rent them out to many people. Again, shared hosting is when many clients use a single virtual server in a physical server.
That said, VPS offers more flexibility, privacy, security, and resources than shared hosting. But it’s way more affordable than an entire, dedicated server.
Site speed has always been a major Google ranking factor. And for good reason: Slow web pages lead to unhappy customers.
Then in July 2018, Google added mobile site speed to its ranking considerations. It noted that 53% of mobile users leave a website after three seconds of non-loading pages.
Unfortunately, Irish mobile e-commerce sites aren’t up to speed. Their mobile pages take more than 10 seconds to load. That’s over three times more than what customers want!
Often, this results from the use of shared hosting. With several other sites on that same server, slow site performance is bound to happen.
If your web and mobile sites are on shared hosting, it’s time to go VPS. Especially if you’ve got high resolution images and videos there. No matter how interesting they are, you can’t show off your products and services if your pages don’t load.
Businesses that need a dedicated server are those receiving a lot of traffic every day. They’re best for companies running intensive computer applications or host corporate CMS sites. A good example is Google, as it processes over 40,000 requests per second.
At the same time, you don’t want strict host limitations, which happens with shared hosting. That’ll only result to poor and slow site performance. Also, too many clients in one host increases the risks of site downtime and security issues.
VPS falls between these two, making it the better choice for growing businesses. One of the biggest VPS benefits is that it’s like a dedicated server without the same costs.
Since you “rent” or “lease” that one part of the physical server, that virtual server is yours to use. It’s in that way it serves you like a dedicated server.
At the same time, you’re only using part of an entire server, which is why it’s more affordable. You only pay for the space and resources you need now, with the option to upgrade later. It’s easy to upgrade your webhost VPS plan as your business grows.
Remember: You’re renting a “virtual” server, so you don’t have actual access to a physical device. That’s less maintenance responsibilities (and costs) for you to worry about. Your VPS hosting provider takes care of the hardware maintenance.
As a client though, you still have a part in maintaining your VPS, and we’ve listed all in this complete checklist.
While shared hosting is cheaper, a rogue program from one of the clients can shut down all other sites in that host. An infected client can spread viruses and malware, compromising your site.
Whereas with VPS, you own and have full control of the server’s environment. You can use it for sync services that let your clients and employees upload and download data. You can install more security programs to keep your digital date safe from breaches.
Since you control the computing environment, you decide which programs to use. It’s independent from the operating systems of the other VPS in that server, so you can choose what OS to use. So long as the apps are compatible with your OS, you get to decide what to download and run.
Your web host should meet your business growth as you get more traffic to your site. In time, you’d also need to install and run more programs to keep your site fully-functional.
The scalability of VPS is what makes it a great option, even for small start-ups. You can choose as small a hosting plan you need now, and then upgrade it with your expanding business.
Ensuring your business is always accessible and available online, check. Preventing slow-loading pages, website downtime, and unavailability, check. Keeping your digital data safe from potential errors of “hosting neighbours”, check.
As you can see, the list of VPS uses is quite the long and extensive one, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t use it. Plus, its benefits outweigh its price, which is only a bit higher than riskier shared hosting.
Still gearing towards shared hosting? Then be sure to read this guide on shared hosting dangers before you make up your mind!
