Nearly all of the low cost hosting available is considered “shared” hosting. What that means is your website(s) and data are stored on the same operating system installation as other people’s [websites and data.] Your data is protected by the security features of the operating system and all the users share the same CPU, memory, hard drive.
The next step up is called VPS hosting. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. In this configuration you get your own private installation of the operating system on shared hardware. However it’s worth mentioning, that the CPU, memory, and hard drive are partitioned. So you’re not sharing “your” CPU with anyone else.
Beyond that you can have your own Dedicated Server, which means you’re renting the entire piece of hardware. Naturally this is considerably more expensive. If you’re considering a dedicated server odds are you’re not reading this post.
We are not going to get into the pros and cons of the various technologies. This is not an essay on shared versus VPS hosting. Plenty of other people have written plenty about that already.
The point here is to demonstrate that with Virtualmin you do not want shared hosting. You want VPS hosting.
The upside of VPS hosting is that your provider does not need to pay a software company for a “panel”. So, generally, you will get better performance for the same price with VPS over shared hosting. You’re also getting better security.
There are (literally) dozens of hosting companies. It’s an extremely competitive business. Any search will show you. I’ve personally used 6-7 different companies over the years. When a server had to essentially be bulletproof for business purposes I managed a dedicated server at Rack Space. Yes, it was ridiculously expensive. But that was the business need.
Now, I’m retired and only host a few WordPress sites. Nothing critical; so cost is a driving factor.
As of this writing, here’s a few options in the marketplace on the cheaper/lower end of the spectrum:
| Namecheap Pulsar | Namecheap Quasar | Go Daddy 1 vCPU | Go Daddy 2 vCPU | Digital Ocean* | Linode/ Akamai* | |
| CPU Cores | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Memory | 2 GB | 6 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Disk Space | 40 GB | 120 GB | 40 GB | 100 GB | 80 GB | 80 GB |
| Bandwidth | 1000 GB | 3000 GB | ~ | ~ | 4000 GB | 4000 GB |
| Price | $9.88/mo | $15.88/mo | $14.99/mo | $29.99/mo | $24.00/mo | $24.00/mo |
I don’t have any deal with any of these companies. Do your own research and figure out what works best for you.
My goal is not to walk you through the process of getting a domain name. It’s to help you learn a little bit about Virtualmin.
I’m just gonna assume that you already that you already own a domain name. We’ll pick this up with securing some hosting.
See you in the next post.