Sharing might be caring, but businesses are moving towards private servers

Liquid Web survey polls 951 decision-makers and technical users on their habits
Nearly half of VPS users have left a provider due to poor support
Uptime guarantees and full admin control are key features

A new study from Liquid Web, one of our picks for the best web hosting providers around, has uncovered a growing trend for businesses to favour Virtual Private Servers (VPS).

The study found 27% of non-VPS users are planning to migrate to a virtual private server within the next 12 months, with those using shared hosting most likely to migrate.

Of those that already use private servers 90% say they would recommend this type of hosting mainly due to root-access. Cloud platform users seem to be mostly motivated by costs to make the switch, those using dedicated hosting are unhappy with the performance of their server, and shared hosting users are frustrated with restrictions on configuration options.

Virtual Private Servers are now more accessible than ever

The study also revealed what businesses are using private servers for. Nearly half are using VPS servers for hosting websites and apps, while 15% are using the servers to deploy or fine-tune AI models.

Other uses include game hosting (such as Minecraft hosting), automation scripts, client projects, and running ecommerce stores.

VPS servers have traditionally been the go-to server choice for the most technical users but results show that they’re being used more and more by hobbyists.

IT pros and developers are still more likely to be using a VPS (50% of respondents) with 58% hosting sites or apps, 45% using servers for DevOps testing, and 31% reporting to use VPS for automation scripts.

A growing percentage are hobbyists (19% of respondents) with 58% using servers for gaming, 42% for hosting sites and apps, and 18% hosting discord bots.

The growing trend for VPS use could be down to the large amount of tutorials on the web. 65% of respondents said that they learnt using online tutorials and trial and error. Only 31% had any formal training. That doesn’t mean that help is not appreciated as almost half of VPS users have left a provider because they’re not received the support needed.

Windows was the most preferred operating system for 36% of users, with Ubuntu picking up 28% of users, and CentOS for 9% of respondents.

The growth of VPS is not too surprising considering the servers offer better reliability and configurability than shared hosting and not having the same cost overheads of dedicated and cloud hosting while keeping the same performance and scalability.

“The future of hosting is about delivering the affordability of shared, the control of dedicated, and the scalability of cloud. VPS is the bridge, and leaders who invest now will be best positioned for growth,” noted Ryan MacDonald, Chief Technology Officer at Liquid Web.