The three tiers
- Shared hosting. Many sites on one server, each in its own account. It suits brochure sites, small WordPress sites and landing pages.
- VPS. A virtual machine with its own operating system and root access, on shared hardware. It suits stores, web applications, CRMs and groups of sites.
- Dedicated server. A whole physical machine. It suits sustained high traffic, large databases and isolation requirements.
When to move up
- You hit resource limits during normal traffic, not only during spikes.
- The application needs software the plan cannot run: Redis, queue workers, Node.js.
- On a VPS, steal time or I/O wait stays high: a sign to consider dedicated hardware.
Managed or unmanaged
“Managed” is not a standard term. Get the list in writing: who applies security updates, where backups are stored, when a restore was last tested, and who receives alerts outside business hours.