Shared, VPS, or Managed: A Plain-English Comparison

Shared, VPS, managed, the hosting categories get thrown around as if everyone knows what they mean. Here’s the plain version: they differ in how much of the machine is yours, and how much of the work is yours.

Shared hosting

Your site lives on a server with many others, sharing its resources. It’s the cheapest option and the simplest to start with. The trade-offs are the ones that come with sharing: less predictable performance, limited control, and a neighbor’s bad day occasionally becoming yours. Fine for small, low-traffic sites.

VPS

A virtual private server gives you a dedicated slice of a machine with its own resources and root access. More power and control than shared, and, if it’s unmanaged, a lot more responsibility. You run the operating system, security, backups, and updates yourself. Great if you’re comfortable operating a server; a burden if you’re not.

Managed hosting

Managed hosting aims for the middle: dedicated resources and a real environment, but the host runs the server-level work, patching, backups, SSL, monitoring. You get most of the control of a VPS without the second job of operating it. You pay more than shared, and you trade some low-level control for not having to think about it.

How to choose

Tiny site, tight budget: shared. Comfortable running servers and want maximum control: VPS. Want dedicated resources without operating the machine yourself: managed. Match the model to your time as much as your traffic.

The bottom line

There’s no best category, only the one that fits how much you want to run yourself. If “dedicated resources, none of the server admin” sounds right, that’s the managed model; see what it includes at /pricing.