What a VPS Is and How It Differs from Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is cheaper; a VPS is more flexible. The real difference isn’t the price — it’s who owns the server’s resources and who decides what runs on it.

How shared hosting works

On shared hosting, dozens — sometimes hundreds — of websites live on one physical machine. CPU, memory and disk are shared: if a neighbor on the server launches a heavy script or gets a traffic spike, your site slows down too. The environment — PHP version, modules, limits — is set by the provider, and you usually can’t change it.

How a VPS works

A VPS is a virtual machine with dedicated resources. The CPU cores, memory and disk space in your plan belong to you alone, and neighbors can’t affect them. You get root access and work with the server just like your own computer: install the operating system you need, any software, your own library versions, and open the ports you require.

When it’s time to move

• Your site gets noticeably slower at peak hours even though the code hasn’t changed.
• You need a PHP, Node.js or database version the host doesn’t offer.
• You need a static public IP address — for integrations, a payment gateway or a VPN.
• You need to run 1C, terminal access or your own service on a non-standard port.
• Your host throttles your load and sends emails about exceeded limits.

What you take on

The price of freedom is responsibility for administration. System updates, web server configuration, security and backups are now your area. The provider is responsible for the platform itself: power, network and hardware. If your team has no system administrator, decide in advance who will look after the server.

What it costs

A common misconception is that a VPS is expensive. With daily billing you pay for exactly the resources and days you use: a small server for a business-card website costs just a few thousand UZS per day, and you can scale up for a period of high load and then scale back down.

You can price a specific configuration in the calculator on the service page — it shows the cost per day, per month and per year at once.