What is VPS server hosting?

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is an internet hosting service that run on a virtual machine.

VPS server properties

For N VPS virtual machines on the physical server.

Medium cost hosting price - $20 to $300 per month.
Reduced CPU resources (1/N).
Reduced internet connection speed (1/N).
Unique IP address for each VPS.
Remote console connection.
Flexible software installation.
Better website serving vs website hosted on a shared server (response time, memory, disk, bandwidth).
Less website serving vs website hosted on a dedicated server (response time, memory, disk, bandwidth).
Easy upgrade to bigger VPS plan within the same hosting service.
Hard upgrade to dedicated server or cloud hosting.

When your website is hosted on a shared server and the traffic grows until the server response times is too long.

This happens when the website has serveral thousands of visits per day.

The solution here is to migrate from your shared hosting service to VPS hosting.

When traffic grows and the server response time is too long, the website is usually migrated to dedicated server hosting or cloud server hosting.

Cheap but more work to install and configure the server.

You will need to install:

Operating system - usually Linux distribution: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, ...
Web server application - usually Apache server.
Database server - usually MySQL, if you need it.
Server side scripting language - PHP or Python or Perl...
Email server

More expensive but less work to configure server.

There are 2 levels of server managment:

Linux distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, ...

Windows server: 2003, 2008, 2012

For Linux servers: Apache, Nginx, ...

For Windows servers: IIS, Apache

List of VPS hosting services with estimated traffic data.