Hosting, VPS or dedicated server: how to choose

The question comes up with every new project: hosting, a VPS or a dedicated server? The answer is not about how important the site is. It is about how much you want to administer and how much guaranteed capacity you need.

Web hosting: you look after the site, we look after the server

On hosting you get a cPanel account on a server we run. The operating system, its updates, the web server and its security are our job. You install the site and look after it.

What our plans include: LiteSpeed Enterprise with LSCache enabled, CloudLinux reserving RAM and CPU for each account, Imunify360 with antivirus and daily backups. Storage is NVMe.

It is the right choice for brochure sites, small shops and WordPress. The limit shows up when you need something that does not fit in a hosting account: a bot, an application that runs permanently, a game server.

NAT VPS: root, without paying for an IPv4 address

A NAT VPS is a Linux container on Proxmox VE with full root access. It gets a public IPv6 address of its own, and for IPv4 it gets 20 ports on the node's public address, on request. That is why it costs less than a VPS with a dedicated IPv4.

From the client area you start and stop the server, open a console in the browser and reinstall the system with any of the available Linux images. Everything above the operating system stays with you.

It works well for bots, game servers, monitoring, test environments and internal applications. It does not work for a site that must answer on ports 80 and 443 for visitors who only have IPv4.

Dedicated server: the whole machine is yours

A dedicated server means physical hardware used by you alone, with its own IPv4, anti-DDoS protection included and a 1 Gbps port. You pick the processor, the memory and the disks, and on some models you can change memory and disk layout at checkout.

Delivery is not instant: we order the server once your payment is confirmed, check stock and pick the European datacenter that has it. Most are ready within a few hours, some models take up to 72 hours.

It makes sense when you need guaranteed resources, your own virtualisation, a lot of storage or an IPv4 address you control.

Choosing, in short

If you do not want to administer a server, stay on hosting. If you need root and your own services but budget matters, take a NAT VPS. If you need a whole machine and your own IPv4, take a dedicated server.

Moving between them is not free in effort: on hosting you change plan and that is it, but moving to your own server means installation and a data migration. If you are unsure, tell us what you plan to run and we will tell you where to start.