Results 1 to 25 of 99
Thread: Future of Shared Web Hosting?
-
03-21-2015, 01:51 PM #1Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
Future of Shared Web Hosting?
I had another post that started to drift into this topic, and it's interesting to me...so I wanted to see what shared hosting providers thought.
Here's the premise:
- Basic Shared Hosting (single IPV4, unlimited domains, Cpanel) seems to mostly sell for between $5 and $10 a month. That's ignoring any intro pricing, etc.
- There are now many reputable VPS providers in that same price range. Linode, Vultr, Digital Ocean, IwStack, Ramnode, etc. All have 512MB to 1GB memory VPS offerings in the $5-$10 month range. All are well reviewed, stable, etc.
The only thing that seems to keep the VPS providers from trouncing shared hosting is Cpanel. Do you see a point where the VPS providers add on whatever functionality is needed to attract the current customers of shared hosting?
Personally, I think a lot of what Cpanel does could be replaced, in the VPS space, with software like docker, or perhaps added functionality into tools like openvz or proxmox. The basic things that are missing seems like a relatively short list to me. Domain management, filesystem browsers, database creation/management, automated creation of wordpress sites, etc. All exist in one form or another, just not in a cohesive way like Cpanel.
And, because they would operate on a VPS, a lot of the complexity associated with Cpanel could be skipped. No need to separate different paying users, all on a single linux instance, mysql database mgmt is simplified, etc.
Anyhow, the high level question:
Is shared hosting going to be replaced by VPS services any time soon? Or I am missing some key reason they won't?
-
03-21-2015, 02:05 PM #2WHT Addict
- Join Date
- Jan 2014
- Posts
- 103
You are going to get better performance on a shared hosting account then you would on a 1GB Ram VPS unless your shared hosting provider oversells at a ridiculous amount or just plain sucks.
You also have to think about all that time you would spend setting up a VPS yourself (time is money). Sure, you could just select an already pre-configured LAMP package from Digital Ocean, Vultr or whatever but it will not be secure, optimized, and there is still quite a lot of configuration that goes on.
-
03-21-2015, 02:08 PM #3~]# Ethernet Servers Ltd - Est. 2014! - sales @ ethernetservers.com
~]# Try out our WordPress speed tests for yourself!
~]# NVMe Web Hosting | Unmanaged VPS | Fully Managed VPS | Dedicated Servers | Domain Names
~]# Don't settle for any less than the very best - come & join our family today!
-
03-21-2015, 02:09 PM #4Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
-
03-21-2015, 02:13 PM #5Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Posts
- 1,321
I do not believe vps will ever 'replace' shared hosting for the masses.
As mentioned above, a 1gb vps is not a strong machine so your essentially comparing apples to Volkswagen's.
For someone tech savvy like yourself a VPS is a great option. However the general public wants a simple control panel in a shared hosting account so they dont have to worries about anything else.█ █ RDO Servers - Shared Hosting, Resellers, VPS, Dedicated Servers, & Secure Clusters
█ █ Windows Hosting with Plesk Onyx - Linux Hosting with cPanel - LiteSpeed - CloudLinux - MariaDB
█ █ Providing Excellent Hosting since 2009!
-
03-21-2015, 02:16 PM #6Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Posts
- 956
⌈▀ Review Hell - Brutally Honest Web Hosting Reviews
█ ● ● ● Helpful Web Hosting Advice ● ● ●
⌊▄ Web Hosting Guide - Easy to Understand For Newbies
-
03-21-2015, 02:20 PM #7Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Posts
- 1,321
Valid point as well!
A quality provider will want to take good care of their customers and provide a quality service. BUT we are running a business and have to make money for us to stay in business.
If a company is offering a managed, DDoS protected VPS for $5-10 dollars, you have to ask yourself, where are they cutting corners to make money off of this! Either they are skimping on hardware, support, or somewhere else, or you will find your self in a bad situation soon when they go out of business.█ █ RDO Servers - Shared Hosting, Resellers, VPS, Dedicated Servers, & Secure Clusters
█ █ Windows Hosting with Plesk Onyx - Linux Hosting with cPanel - LiteSpeed - CloudLinux - MariaDB
█ █ Providing Excellent Hosting since 2009!
-
03-21-2015, 02:20 PM #8Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
This is somewhat hard to see from the customer perspective. I assume there are things you do on a shared host to keep one customer from monopolizing the server. I also have no idea how many people are sharing the server with me.
So, it's not entirely obvious to me what the rough VPS equivalence of a typical shared server account is.
I can say that for my former shared host, it was clearly slower. I saw that today, after having moved a few sites. Even simple things like the wordpress admin panel are snappier now.
Would be interesting to see someone do a benchmark comparison of a typical wordpress site on some popular shared hosts vs a typical VPS.
-
03-21-2015, 02:23 PM #9Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
If a company is offering a managed, DDoS protected VPS for $5-10 dollars, you have to ask yourself, where are they cutting corners to make money off of this! Either they are skimping on hardware, support, or somewhere else, or you will find your self in a bad situation soon when they go out of business.
I was trying to compare something in the middle...something that doesn't exist now. A VPS provider that has something sort of like Cpanel, that attempts to provide self-service, basic optimization for websites, etc.
-
03-21-2015, 02:28 PM #10Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Posts
- 1,321
I can understand your point, and this varies with each provider.
Some companies pack as many accounts on a server as they can (overselling). This makes them more money, but can cause performance issues with the sites on the server.
Quality providers do not over sell their machines and ensure that they have the processor/ram/HDD to handle the sites on it.
On a lower quality host, you may not have 1GB of ram available to a shared site. A quality host would upgrade their hardware or move some account if the resource usage was getting too high.█ █ RDO Servers - Shared Hosting, Resellers, VPS, Dedicated Servers, & Secure Clusters
█ █ Windows Hosting with Plesk Onyx - Linux Hosting with cPanel - LiteSpeed - CloudLinux - MariaDB
█ █ Providing Excellent Hosting since 2009!
-
03-21-2015, 02:28 PM #11Disabled
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- 127.0.0.1
- Posts
- 5,732
Hosts who offer low prices or part of EIG oversell which causes the slowdown, which is why no-one on this forum would recommend them.
It's also down to the Virtualization cheap servers are mainly OpenVZ. OpenVZ is awful compared to Xen (Which is like a small dedicated server) but costs more, and then there's KVM now getting it's part of the market and it's full virtualization like Xen but it's not the same.
But everything adds up and shared hosting or reseller hosting works out cheaper unless you can manage a VPS yourself.
-
03-21-2015, 02:38 PM #12Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
-
03-21-2015, 03:09 PM #13Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jul 2010
- Location
- Online
- Posts
- 4,881
I don't think VPS will become a substitute for shared, because the majority of clients signing up for hosting doesn't need it; their sites don't need it. And a large number of those clients doesn't have the skills - or more prosaically the money - to use VPS even if it's Managed.
A $ 5-10/mo VPS cannot be reliable; the provider has to cut corners somewhere else to make a profit out of those prices, and cutting corners always tends to lead to a bad end.My "ranking" is kidding.
I'm just a humble client, here to seek help and guidance from the true experts.
-
03-21-2015, 03:14 PM #14WHT Addict
- Join Date
- Jan 2014
- Posts
- 103
Let's say you get an un-managed VPS with 1GB of Ram and 1 vCPU Core, can be found easily for $5-10 depending on the provider.
With cPanel/WHM installed your looking at anywhere from 750mb-850mb ram usage just from everything running in the background.
Without a control panel, just a LAMP stack that has been properly optimized and secured your still looking at 200-300mb of ram usage in the background. That's leaving you with 700mb free.
Most reputable hosting companies on here usually allow you to use 1 vCPU Core and 1024MB (1GB) of ram on their shared hosting accounts. You'll still have access to more available resources on that shared hosting account since your ram is not being eaten up by background stuff. Many hosts also run cloudlinux, which contains resources per client and so you don't have issues of one client taking everyone elses resources.
Now, the only thing that may be a bottle neck on the shared hosting account is the I/O limit. Most hosts do 1mb/s although I have seen some that allow up to 10mb/s. Honestly though, if your going to push 10mb/s your going to need a lot more then 1 vCPU Core anyway.
This isn't even accounting all the other extra software and what not that comes bundled with a shared hosting account, and the time you save not having to set it up. I am just talking from a pure resource/performance stand point.Last edited by profall; 03-21-2015 at 03:18 PM.
-
03-21-2015, 05:20 PM #15Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Posts
- 86
A $ 5-10/mo VPS cannot be reliable; the provider has to cut corners somewhere else to make a profit.
With cPanel/WHM installed your looking at anywhere from 750mb-850mb ram usage just from everything running in the background.
And, because a VPS inherently has user separation, they don't need to build everything Cpanel does to get there.
The idea is this...
- VPS providers have evolved to the point where there are now several that offer a decent sized VPS in the $5 to $10 range, deliver good uptime, and have satisfied customers. That's a pretty new thing.
- These same providers have an incentive to get new customers. One potential source is current customers of shared hosting.
- They don't get those customers today, mostly (in my view) because Cpanel is a deal breaker for them. It's expensive, and much of what it does isn't needed on a VPS.
My suspicion is that once their current market is saturated, they will come after shared hosting. Can they do that right now? No, I agree...they can't.
Where I seem to clash with most of you is the level of effort that would be required for them to build something that could compete with shared hosting.
I think it's relatively low. There are many things that Cpanel does that is already available to them. Just not in a cohesive way, and not with a interface that works for that sort of customer.
-
03-21-2015, 05:39 PM #16Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Nov 2012
- Location
- WWW
- Posts
- 751
Sometimes shared hosting is better than cheap vps for 5$
ADELINAhost (Established 2012)
Shared Hosting - VPS - Dedicated Servers in more than 10 locations
https://www.adelinahost.com
-
03-22-2015, 03:03 AM #17Newbie
- Join Date
- Mar 2015
- Posts
- 25
Coming from the experience I have in the hosting industry over the last few years along with building client websites, no. I don't see VPS's overtaking shared for one simple reason. Have you ever tried to explain to a 48 year old woman with no computer skills how to run a website? I have. We had to set up almost everything for her. She's not an uncommon customer either. There is a budding industry of people who need and or want websites who are either older, or not tech savvy. I'm about to be in my early thirties and I know many people my age that don't even know what it is that I do. Not a single one of them would understand how to use a VPS even with those tools you talk about implemented. The simplicity of shared hosting is simply needed for those who cannot do it on their own. Like some mentioned things like softalicious are life savers for those people. There are a number of reasons why but I think this is the big one in my experience so far.
█ HostLlama - Home Of The No Drama Llama - No hassle web hosting
█ Web Hosting - Domain Registration - Specialized Services - Personal Customer Support
█ http://www.hostllama.com
-
03-22-2015, 03:11 AM #18Hello World
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- /etc/my.cnf
- Posts
- 10,657
-
03-22-2015, 03:19 AM #19~~~~
- Join Date
- May 2008
- Posts
- 3,424
Some people seem to forget that the shared packages come with way more tools/features than if you'd get a $5 or $10 VPS. cPanel being one of those tools, a very important one if I might add, which if you want to have on your VPS it'd cost you at least an extra $10-$12. The managed support would be yet another addition that a shared hosting package has compared to a $5 VPS.
Perhaps some people don't really need these tools/features that you'd typically find on a shared hosting plan, if they can manage and sustain their own VPS... but for the majority of people these are essential things they'd need to have... this is why I believe that comparing a $5 shared plan to a $5 VPS cannot be done, and this is why I think shared hosting will always be a big part of this industry.Last edited by Andei; 03-22-2015 at 03:25 AM.
Uptime Monitor - Minimize your downtime by being the first to know about it!
Blacklist Monitor - Are any of your IPs or Domains blacklisted? Find out before it gets to affect you or your clients.
-
03-22-2015, 03:41 AM #20Hello World
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- /etc/my.cnf
- Posts
- 10,657
The likes of RVSitebuilder are absolutely useless, Softaculous is another one if you just using Wordpress or another script, CloudLinux wouldn't be needed. Infact most of the softwares seen in the typical shared environment wouldn't be needed and control wise for handful of sites you could use Virtualmin or another quality free solution the only reason cPanel gets thrown around is because it's popular with shared hosting which is simply becoming a high dive to the bottom offering everything but the kitchen sink for peanuts.
-
03-22-2015, 03:58 AM #21~~~~
- Join Date
- May 2008
- Posts
- 3,424
Well, you're not wrong, and I fully agree that all the software and tools (including the managed support) can be replaced or done by the clients themselves.
All I'm saying is that most people are not that tech-savvy nor do they want to be or have the time to read through countless guides/customizations/optimizations in order to get to the point where they can manage/secure their own VPS.Uptime Monitor - Minimize your downtime by being the first to know about it!
Blacklist Monitor - Are any of your IPs or Domains blacklisted? Find out before it gets to affect you or your clients.
-
03-22-2015, 04:05 AM #22Hello World
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- /etc/my.cnf
- Posts
- 10,657
They'll always be a demand for the low tech able people just where that demand go's once more platforms shift over to SaaS models and the shared hosting market becomes more painful with everything competing over price is anyones guess really. However I don't think in the future low tech shared market will be big enough to support a full business based on the number of existing providers.
-
03-22-2015, 04:36 AM #23Web Hosting Evangelist
- Join Date
- Mar 2003
- Posts
- 470
This kind of exist already, for app hosting like PagodaBox, AppFog, Heroku, except it's still a bit complex for non-tech. So I guess it is only a matter of time until someone makes this easier. What's only needed is to have the same Cpanel experience on a VPS backend without the customer having to deal with server management. Who knows, Cpanel could be the one to make it.
-
03-22-2015, 04:48 AM #24Web Hosting Evangelist
- Join Date
- Jul 2012
- Posts
- 450
-
03-22-2015, 05:24 AM #25Web Hosting Evangelist
- Join Date
- Mar 2003
- Posts
- 470
@Jonchun That's different than what I'm trying to say since you deal with each and every account's different VPS config. What I mean is something like those app hosting companies I mentioned, they only manage the backend as a whole not per account. There's no such thing AFAIK for Cpanel.
Similar Threads
-
Future of shared web hosting and Reseller webhosting
By vortexa in forum Web HostingReplies: 27Last Post: 01-24-2015, 06:17 PM -
Is unlimited space and bandwidth the future for shared hosting?
By GazCBG in forum Running a Web Hosting BusinessReplies: 31Last Post: 07-16-2013, 12:33 AM -
Shared Hosting -- Is the future in the Cloud?
By e-Sensibility in forum Web HostingReplies: 37Last Post: 11-18-2009, 10:15 AM -
The future of shared hosting, one million kernels running in VM
By programguy in forum Web HostingReplies: 6Last Post: 08-06-2009, 03:42 PM -
Shared + Reseller Hosting by Host of the Future.com
By Nygaff in forum Shared Hosting OffersReplies: 0Last Post: 07-26-2004, 03:40 PM