Becoming a successful blogger or internet entrepreneur depends on a lot of factors. However, one of the most important but often underestimated by the majority of bloggers is a website’s loading speed.
Creating quality SEO content, outstanding web designs, and clear branding is critical for the success of the online business; but, poor website loading speeds can significantly compromise all this great work.
Sounds crazy?
Read this; research by BrandPerfect discovered that two-thirds of all online shoppers abandon a purchase because of poor loading speed of a website. And by slow, I mean failure to load within 5 seconds.
Well, the question is, would you really want to lose two-thirds of your hard-searched customers just because of your website loading slowly?
If your answer is no, let’s dive deeper into how you can gain that extra loading speed at the lowest price. The speed depends on various factors, such as hosting, image optimisation, scripts, the total number of requests and more. However, one of the primary things to check is the hosting server.
Once you pick the right hosting provider, the first part is done. Hence in this article, we are looking at the top 4 VPS hosting companies you should consider.
DigitalOcean.Com
DigitalOcean is an American cloud hosting company that was started in 2011. Initially, it was launched as a platform for allowing developers to transfer projects to and from the cloud, but has grown ever since to reach more than half a million customers.
Pros
It boasts of 99.99% up-time which is higher than the industry average up-time of 99.94%. Imagine it had only eight outages from January 2018 to July which totaled just 27 minutes!
Regarding loading speed, the average industry loading speed is 890 milliseconds (MS); however, DigitalOcean does it at 322 MS at its fastest and 456 MS at its lowest moments. That is half the time other hosting providers make!
It also offers an array of user-friendly tools and apps, and its very easy to use for developers. However, you need to have advanced computer skills to get the most out of it. If you are not a developer, you might be needed to hire one to do the work for you.
Their pricing is also a little bit high but definitely worth depending on the services you get in return. Their packages start at $5 a month all the way to $960.
Linode.com
Linode is also another fantastic VPS hosting alternative that was started in 2003. It prides itself in offering niche-targeted services and packages, which is what has made it one of the highest-rated in the industry.
Pros
It offers an array of packages suiting different needs and tech skills. The packages start at $5 a month all the way to $960 for the tech gurus. They offer incredible features such as Intel E5 processors, solid-state drives, and 40 GBPS network among other features. All these features can also be upgraded at no extra cost.
Their hosting services guarantee a 99.9% up-time, and incredibly fast loading speeds. Additionally, in case of any difficulties, their customer support is always available with a response time of even 5 minutes.
Cons
Well, the pricing is almost similar to that of DigitalOcean. Not that cheap but definitely worth it. Also, they only offer VPS and cloud hosting services meaning you cannot access shared hosting or dedicated servers.
The biggest issue is it has had issues with safety after having experienced two hacking incidences in 2013 and 2012, and more recent DDOS attacks that have been experienced by users.
Upcloud.Com
UPCloud is one of the simplest and easiest to set up cloud hosting providers. Some of its unique features are; extremely high and consistent performance, thanks to the use of MaxIOPS. Be assured to get your cloud servers set up within 45 seconds.
Secondly, it offers flexible and easy scaling. You always have the authority to configure and switch between different plans, or scale using pre-configured plans. And finally, it gives you a chance to create a private network interconnected across all UpCloud’s data centres.
Pros
Some of its pros include; ease of use, server cloning, floating IPs, Snapshots and scheduled backups, in-house developed control panel, and it’s considerably cheap with packages starting at $5.
Cons
You also need advanced tech knowledge, and the control panel takes time to understand.
Vultr.Com
Vultr is also another company that offers high-performance SSD cloud servers, and 100% solid-state drives that use the latest Intel CPUs. They have 15 locations to choose from, all with cloud servers spun up of utmost 60 seconds.
Some of its features include; Snapshots and backups, Control panel, 15 data centres, mobile support, unrestricted access for shared hosting, and numerous operating systems.
Pros
They are quite cheap with their cheapest package starting at $2.50 a month, extremely high uptime, and guaranteed increased loading speed for your website.
Cons
You need some advanced tech knowledge to get set up.
Final Words
If you have still not made up your mind to shift from shared hosting to VPS, I would suggest you do. Shared hosting is best suited for websites that receive low traffic. However, if you want to scale your website, you need to upgrade to VPS.
VPS provides extremely high loading speed due to the availability of vast resources which are limited on shared hosting.
To set up a VPS you need some tech skills. It’s not as hard as it sounds though. It is just like windows VirtualBox but for the servers. We will get a tutorial ready soon.
The easiest way to begin is to try a VPS server using a free control panel such as Plesk (free on DigitalOcean), Vesta, or by using scripts such as Webinoly. You can easily get set up with just some online tutorials; but if you don’t want to go through the stress, just hire a developer to get the work done for you.