Currently I am in a big dilemma whether to go VPS or just stick to a Shared Reseller account.

I like the freedom in VPS but I am worrying about the speed

So let’s say I go for a VPS with 1 G of guaranteed RAM ( with DirectAdmin) ,how many dynamic ( PHP-MySQL) websites I can host with no significant decline in performance.

appreciate your contribution

TheJoker replied: Many have asked this question, including me, and sadly the response is there are too many variables to say.

Quel replied: With a VPS you do control how many sites are in the box. In a shared hosting you do not. Today the server may hold just 5 sites on the server and see an impressive speed, and after 6 month the same server may have 600 and be slow as hell. In the same line of thought, a dedicated is better than VPS since you only share the network uplink and control HD space, cpu, etc…

Said this, everything is arguable and depends a lot on your personal situation. You can find a good provider that really keeps the server at a reasonable level. Then shared may be better because the network link is faster and cpu bigger than what you can get with a VPS that fits your budget.

Q

Scientist replied: On one DA server that I worked on had over 200 domains and it ran quite comfortably with 2GB of RAM. If I recall correctly, this was the setup I used:-

Apache = maxclients 60
PHP = suPHP (for DA its referred to as CGI)
Exim = spamassassin and spamhaus enabled
MySQL = using around 600MB for most of the day. Tweak your my.cnf accordingly

Granted that server had mostly "regular" accounts with only 3-5 busy sites and pushed only 150-200GB traffic per month. If you scale down accordingly you should be able to host a decent number of sites.

fshagan replied: A VPS can be overcrowded too. It all depends on how many virtual servers the host puts on the physical server. So you can end up with the same kind of overcrowding that you would get at an "unlimited" shared host. That’s why I think your question is an important one that shouldn’t be addressed with the usual "VPS is better!" sentiment we find here.

I have just over 30 websites on my 1 GB VPS, and it runs fine. But I am with a dynamite host, who doesn’t drastically oversell the nodes on the machine (MDDHosting.com). With a good host, I think you will find better performance than on a shared or reseller hosting account. But if you choose a host that overcrowds his servers with VPS nodes, you will have a problem.

So its a question of quality over cost, for me. VPS will cost you more, if you choose the right provider.

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