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Before = shared hosting, now VPS, but is dedicated the new VPS?
I have used hosting since 1995. First it was shared hosting, free hosting like GeoCities, then paid hosting, still shared hosting. Then I started to use VPS hosting, but it was really expensive. $30-50/mo for under 1 GB RAM, maybe 20-40 GB HDD, 500 GB BW etc. Then shared hosting almost disappeared, or it exist, but who want shared hosting when VPS is so cheap? Now I have upgraded (or?) from VPS servers to dedicated servers. Hetzner, OVH and Kimsufi.
Do anybody here on LET sell shared hosting anymore?
Do you think people will expect dedicated servers to be cheap as or cheaper then VPS servers in the future?
Why do you use a VPS instead of a dedicated server?
Comments
It is the logical next step. In 2017 LET will start coloing their own servers. In 2020 we'll start buying our own data centers.
Yea they still do? https://www.lowendtalk.com/categories/shared-hosting-offers
I think shared hosting is for people with absolute no knowledge how to run their own website. With little knowledge, VPS is the better option. Or dedicated servers...
i would use shared hosting when there is a need to install something from cpanel or interworx to test out or even use for personal tasks e.g: rss. if the provider is good and reliable than more uses.
one way of install and forget thingy, so they will stay around until all users are vps ninjas.
Some advanced people also use shared hosting to avoid the hassle of managing a server, especially when something goes wrong and you're enjoying time offline.
Ehh. I still have a fair amount of shared hosting, the only difference is that it went from $10/mo to like $5-10/year with dedicated IPv4 and other fun stuff. Some of the LowEnd Shared is really good.
Any decent size site I'll be hosting on a VPS or most likely one of my dedis, but I still host friends/family on cheap cPanel shared (/reseller) hosting, along with projects where I don't want to setup a whole web stack to play with some scripts or throw up a static site.
But you have both VPS and dedicated, so you have the knowledge
No, cloud (which is the old time-sharing) is the new VM (which is the old VPS).
Dedicated resource VM is the new dedicated.
Kimsufi is the new everything else, unless you're @jarland, in which case you're required to say that Droplet is the new everything.
@nekki is the new Elagabalus.
Solus v2 is the new Duke Nukem Forever.
LET is the new Mos Eisley.
Dedicated is the new VPS for hobbyists and people with needs that are not dynamic (constantly going up and down to large degrees, think someone who can save a million dollars by spinning down hourly servers for a 6 hour window). Each product has it's own set of use cases though. There are use cases where dedicated is a terrible idea, and use cases where a VPS is a terrible idea. Hobbyists tend to flock wherever, and I think that's the shift we generally see here. Not a whole lot of people here running high volume, powerful infrastructures. Well, with exception to the providers
As for shared, plenty of hosts here offering it, and plenty of people buying it up. Heck, I use dreamhost religiously.
meh! dedicated server is so old school .. dedicated DC is where the action is now at ;P
I think vps will be around for quite a while. the plans will continue to get bigger, but dedicated comes with some issues that vps does not have. Most companies like the idea of provisioning VPS as needed as opposed to a single (or few) dedicated.
I disagree. SH, then DS, then VPS, then Cloud (what ever it means)....
No.
The reason shared hosting has always been (relatively) cheap, is that it's a shared environment that can be oversold, and where the high upfront infrastructure costs (hardware, facility, network, ...) are covered by somebody else and spread across many customers.
VPS hosting gradually became cheaper as virtualization support and tooling became more widespread, since it has the same economic advantages as shared hosting does.
Even though it's now often considered the step inbetween shared hosting and a dedicated server, that's not true chronologically; virtualization in the hosting industry is a relatively recent development, compared to shared and bare-metal hosting.
The problem is that the same can't really happen for bare-metal servers, unless a provider already has considerable capital to invest in upfront costs, specifically hardware. This is why you see very cheap servers from very large hosting providers, while smaller providers charge a lot more. This is not likely to change (beyond the occasional loss leader), simply because it's not really a shared environment.
Will dedicated servers become cheaper? Yes, because the network/facility infrastructure is still shared. Will they become as cheap as VPSes? No, because they're not a shared environment hardware-wise.
I know its cheaper but I still use reseller because its more secure and there is someone to do the job for you for free
This. Even my dedi's are sometimes just there to run KVM or LXD. Managing a dedi is fine for small or predictable. The swingy stuff needs a cloud. I don't really have any shared, but that's because I got tired of fighting for PCI compliance stuff. It's nice to just pass on the first scan.
InB4 "Get a Slice"TM
... what? Shared hosting environments are probably the single most insecure environment you could possibly be hosting in.
Shared hosting from a good, responsible company is actually pretty useful for hosting websites that you want to stay up, but don't want to worry about checking the server, doing security, updates, etc.
If you have a low or even medium traffic website that earns you some revenue, you'd actually make more money with shared hosting since you would be more focused on the content that gets you traffic instead of running a server. This is like time management 101.
I have a $5/year Buyvm (buyshared.net) shared hosting plan and it's a great way to put up a few low traffic pages without needing to fuss over a self-hosted server (monitoring, restarts, security patches, yada yada). They even automate the installation and renewal of LetsEncrypt certificates. Yes I have plenty of vps that I can and have run web servers on, but most of the time I don't need the hassle.
I also have a 3 euro/month Scaleway dedicated server (2GB ram, 4 ARM cores, 50gb NAS storage) and I could see that as a future direction for VPS, though I don't use it much.
You can safely assume that any commercial shared hosting server has been compromised to the point that your site is as well. This is a terrible, terrible argument for shared hosting.
People who have a 2Gb-8Gb idle kvm/dedi lying around from the Thanksgiving weekend sales:
Definitely take Sandstorm for a spin https://sandstorm.io/
lead Creator is Kenton Varda, brains behind capn-proto and before that ProtocolBuffers at Google . (no amateur to systems software)
I like the peace of mind of throwing all my random php self-hosted apps onto a Sandstorm installation on my dedibox c2750 avoton + 160gb intel ssd. (all apps/grains are isolated with a capability-based security model)
I'm currently running piwik, wordpress, docuwiki, rocketchat, kanban, notes, mediawiki, and idling at 1.3GB ram. (edit: oh and etherpad for silly fanfic with buddy)
Beautiful engineering. Tons more ported apps in their marketplace
Citation? I'm gonna call that unfounded speculation. I can see how you might make a seemingly logical leap to the theory, but I don't think you have any supporting data. Without data it's kind of an unfair suggestion. You don't really know what goes on behind closed doors at godaddy, dreamhost, or hell even bluehost for that matter. That's not really a basis for a default assumption that everything is compromised.
Unless, of course, you do have some data that you're holding close to your chest.
Low end datacenter. $7 I'm in.
Unless you are putting the money out for a system like CloudLinux for your shared server, a lot of them being insecure isn't far from the truth. Shared hosting customers are AWFUL about keeping their sites upgraded and current and it is not uncommon to start out a Monday having to review some hacked site for sending out spam (even with CloudLinux). However, if you choose not to use CloudLinux, this means if one site is compromised and the person gets a php shell uploaded to the account they can basically access any world readable / writable directories on the server and this is one of the main ways used to infect and hack other sites. The lack of a jailed environment (which CloudLinux provides) leaves you in a position where one hacked site can end with many many hacked sites and some random person with a breadth of access to that server. And up until recently when they patched Dirty Cow, I can only imagine how many of these servers were rooted... Even worse, I have seen some hosts that provide shell access on their shared platform without using CloudLinux which makes this even more insecure.
I am not saying there are not good, safe hosts out there that employ tools like CloudLinux, CXS (cxswatch), KernelCare and other tools to help detect and prevent the abuses mentioned, but your run of the mill, oversold shared host likely isn't affording these things as they have an effect on their bottom line. In some cases depending on how crazy their cost for services are, could actually negate any profits to be made once your fork over for the licenses needed for these extra security products.
This in particular is another reason you can't prove things are secure either, because most hosts don't disclose specifically what tools they do use and when issues do occur are not always forthcoming when a site has been hacked providing elevated access to an attacker on the system (rightly so or people would likely start screaming fire and running from the hosts...).
Again, I am not saying this applies to 'all hosts' and also not saying a VPS running cPanel doesn't suffer from the same issues, but with the way a lot of people I have seen run their shared servers, they are generally one of the more insecure services you could purchase.
Bottom line is a lot of people picture shared hosting as some type of safe utopia, but sadly it is not always quite as safe as they imagine. Some hosts do take great constant care of their services, but as many of those hosts that do exists there are also an equal number who don't do anything and just pray they aren't hacked.
On Topic:
It has always been:
Shell Account -> Dedicated Server -> Shared Hosting -> OpenVZ VPS -> XEN VPS -> KVM VPS -> 'Cloud Server'
I feel like most of the people here don't realize that before VPS was a thing, shell accounts were all the rage (somehow I feel like I am dating my self by admitting this, lol).
Back in the days of dial-up, if you had a good ISP or provider, they used to provide shell accounts either for free or for a small additional cost. Makes me pine for the days of my old Netcom shells...
It is just now with older dedicated servers and those with low power cpu cores (Atom, Avaton, Celeron, etc) becoming cheaper that it seems that dedicated has jumped back at the end of the list. The natural progression that has been seen though, is much closer to what I mentioned above.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
@jarland did you work for one of the listed hosting providers? The reason I'm asking because from your comment looks like you've some inside information.
As long as idiots still exists, thousands of providers who sell shared hosting packages more than cost of dedicated server.
Not sure what to make of that... it's something like scaleway instantapps? They want to put server applications into an "app store" so they can be as shitty as mobile apps? Is something wrong with apt-get install or a docker container? It looks too slick for my tastes but I can't tell quite what it's up to. I do notice there are some smart people involved.
It's like Cloudron, YunoHost, etc. They're trying to make simple but secure one-click installers for self-hosted apps, to help more people control their own data. That's pretty much all they're up to.
I don't know what those two are, but if they already exist, do we need another one? My main reaction to sandstorm was from the words "app store", which made me cringe.
Not to mention that first/second gen E3's are now like 5 years old but still kickass CPUs, same with older i7's - so you've got a ton of dirt cheap yet powerful gear on the market after 2-3 year lease cycles are up.
$40 gets you a 4GB "cloud" instance, or it can get you an E3-1270v2/3 with 32GB Ram and 2x240GB SSDs (we have a few of these with Hetzner). So you've got a lot of folks spending money on one or multiple big boxes vs a handful of VPS's, at least in the 'low end' hobbyist space.
Same money, wayyy more power & resources. Just makes sense.
'App store' is something most people can easily grok. It's an automated installer/ecosystem for FLOSS web stuff, usually integrates SSLs and handles firewall configuration.
Why do we need RHEL when Debian already exists?