# VPS vs shared hosting > Shared hosting runs your site alongside hundreds of others with the host doing the admin. A VPS is your own machine and your own admin. How to choose. Source: https://vpsnine.com/help/vps-vs-shared-hosting ยท Updated: 2026-10-16 Shared hosting puts your website on a server with many other customers' sites, and the host runs the server for you. A VPS gives you a virtual machine of your own, with guaranteed resources and root access, and you run it yourself. So the real question isn't which is better. It's whether you want to trade some admin work for control and room to grow. ## The differences that matter | | Shared hosting | VPS | | --- | --- | --- | | Resources | Shared with every site on the server | Your own CPU, memory and disk | | Access | A control panel and FTP or SFTP | Root over SSH | | Software | PHP and MySQL, whatever versions the host offers | Anything that runs on Linux | | Admin | The host's job | Yours | | Email | Usually included | Not included; you add a mail service | | Neighbours | One busy site can slow everyone | Isolated by the virtual machine | ## Resources On shared hosting, hundreds of sites can share one server's CPU and memory. Hosts set limits per account, often called entry processes or CPU seconds, and when you hit them your site slows down or shows errors. Those limits are rarely on the sales page. On a VPS, the memory and disk are yours. If the server is slow, it's because of what you're running on it, which means you can measure it and fix it. ## Control Shared hosting runs one stack, usually Apache or LiteSpeed with PHP and MySQL. If your app needs Node.js, Python, a background worker, Redis, a specific PHP extension or a long-running process, you're often out of luck. A VPS runs anything that runs on Linux. You choose the distribution, the web server, the language versions and what starts at boot. You can run Docker, a VPN, a game server and a website on the same machine if you like. ## Security On shared hosting, the host patches the server, but you share it with strangers. Hosts isolate accounts well these days, but one compromised site on a badly run server can still cause trouble for the others, and a neighbour sending spam can get the shared IP address blocklisted. On a VPS, you have your own IP address and your own kernel, and nobody else has a login. The flip side: patching is your job. [Install security updates automatically](https://vpsnine.com/help/automatic-security-updates) takes five minutes and covers most of it. ## The work involved This is shared hosting's real advantage. You upload your files and the host does the rest: updates, backups (sometimes), email, the control panel. On a VPS you do those things. For a first server that means an hour or so of setup, our [first hour checklist](https://vpsnine.com/help/first-hour-checklist) walks through it, and then a few minutes a month. If you've never used a terminal, expect a learning curve. It's a useful one. ## When shared hosting is the right call - A small brochure site or blog with modest traffic. - You don't want to touch a terminal, ever. - You need email mailboxes bundled with the site and don't want to set up a separate mail provider. ## When a VPS is the right call - Your site is slow and the host's resource limits are the reason. - You need software the host doesn't offer, or a newer version than they run. - You run more than websites: a VPN, a bot, Docker containers, an automation tool, a game server. - You want to learn how servers work. - You want your own IP address and your own security decisions. ## Signs you've outgrown shared hosting - Your control panel shows you hitting CPU, memory or process limits. - Pages are slow at busy times even though nothing in your site changed. - Support's answer is "upgrade to the next plan" more than once. - You keep finding workarounds for things that would be one command on your own server. ## Doing it on VPSNine A VPSNine server is KVM on NVMe storage with its own IPv4 and IPv6 address. If WordPress is what you're moving, the [WordPress one-click app](https://vpsnine.com/apps/wordpress) installs it with nginx, PHP-FPM and MariaDB on the first boot, so the server side is done a few minutes after the server is ready. [Move a site from shared hosting to a VPS](https://vpsnine.com/help/move-from-shared-hosting-to-a-vps) covers the move itself, email included. The [plans page](https://vpsnine.com/plans) has the sizes. Budget, with 2 GB of memory, is plenty for most sites coming off shared hosting.