Both a VPS and a dedicated server give you your own operating system with full root or administrator access. The difference is what sits underneath.
A VPS (virtual private server) is a slice of a large physical server. A hypervisor splits that machine into several virtual servers, and each one gets a fixed share of CPU cores, RAM and disk. A dedicated server is the whole physical machine, with nobody else on it.
What actually changes
| VPS | Dedicated server | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Shared physical host, fixed share for you | The whole machine is yours |
| Starting price | From $8.00 a month | Quoted per configuration |
| Delivery | 1 to 6 hours | 1 to 3 business days |
| Upgrades | Add RAM, cores, disk or IPs in place | Change or add hardware parts |
| Best for | Sites, apps, VPNs, dev and test servers | Heavy databases, large storage, constant high load |
When a VPS is enough
Most projects start, and stay, on a VPS. A VPS fits when:
- your site or application runs comfortably on a few cores and a few gigabytes of RAM,
- you want the server today rather than in a few days,
- you expect to grow step by step and would rather add resources than migrate.
Our VPS plans come with a dedicated IPv4 address, Windows Server or Linux, and unlimited traffic on a shared 1 Gbit/s port in Germany, France, the UK and the USA. You can compare every location and type on one page in the VPS comparison.
When you need a dedicated server
Move to a dedicated server when the limits of a shared host start to matter:
- Sustained CPU load. Encoding, game servers, analytics and busy databases that keep every core busy all day run better on cores nobody else uses.
- Large storage. Our dedicated servers in France can be configured with hard drives up to 72 TB, and in Germany with up to 768 GB of RAM.
- Your own virtualisation. If you want to run your own virtual machines, you need the bare hardware.
- Predictable performance. With no neighbours on the machine, your benchmarks today are your benchmarks next month.
Cost: compare like with like
A dedicated server costs more per month than a single VPS, but the comparison that matters is cost per unit of work. If you are already running three or four large VPS plans side by side, one dedicated server with virtual machines of your own may cost less and be easier to look after.
A practical path
- Start on a VPS sized for today, in the location closest to your users.
- Watch CPU, RAM and disk use for a few weeks.
- Upgrade the VPS in place while that is enough.
- When you keep hitting the ceiling, or you need hardware a VPS cannot give, ask us for a dedicated server quote.
Not sure where you are on that path? Open a presales ticket and tell us what you run: we will suggest a configuration before you pay anything.