“Shared,” “cloud” and “VPS” sound like three price tiers, but the real difference lies elsewhere: how much of the server is yours and who takes care of it. The wrong choice costs you either way — you either pay for a server you don't know how to manage, or you keep a large website on a plan that holds it back.
In short
- Shared (web) hosting: your website sits on a server managed by the hosting company, alongside other accounts. You only work in the control panel. It suits most business websites and small to medium online stores.
- Cloud hosting: still managed hosting, with the same panel, but with more resources and more websites per account.
- VPS: a virtual server of your own, with root access. You get complete freedom, but also complete responsibility: updates, security, backups.
Shared hosting, explained
A shared hosting server holds several accounts. Each account has its own limits for memory, processor and PHP processes, so one website can't take resources away from the others. The hosting company manages the server, the operating system, the web server, PHP, email and backups.
You get a control panel (Enhance, in our case) where you do everything your website needs: email addresses, databases, the PHP version, files, the SSL certificate. You don't have SSH access and you don't install software on the server — and a typical website doesn't need to.
At NBT Host, these are the web hosting and WordPress hosting plans: Starter, Store and Multi-site, with 5 concurrent PHP processes per website.
Cloud hosting: the same convenience, more room
Cloud hosting is still managed: the same panel, the same daily backup, the same email. The difference is in the numbers: more websites per account and more resources. At NBT Host, the cloud plans hold 30, 60 or 100 websites and give each website 10, 15 or 20 concurrent PHP processes.
Move to cloud when:
- you have more websites than fit in a web hosting plan;
- a website has traffic spikes or lots of dynamic requests (a store, searches, customer accounts);
- you want more disk space without moving your websites to a server you'd have to manage yourself.
VPS: your server, your rules
A VPS (virtual private server) is a virtual machine with its own operating system, which you access as root over SSH. You can install whatever you want on it: Node.js or Python apps, Docker, n8n, a VPN, your own database.
The price of that freedom: the management is up to you. Security updates, the firewall, application backups and what happens when a program stops. NBT Host VPS servers don't include management; you can add automatic daily backups or a control panel (cPanel, Plesk or Enhance) as paid options.
A VPS is not automatically faster for a typical WordPress website. A poorly configured server, with no cache and no updates, performs worse than a well-managed hosting plan.
The comparison, in a table
| Web hosting | Cloud hosting | VPS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who manages the server | The hosting company | The hosting company | You |
| Access | Enhance panel, FTPS | Enhance panel, FTPS | Root, SSH |
| Backup | Daily, included | Daily, included | Separate option |
| Used for | Business websites, small and medium stores | Many websites, high-demand websites | Your own apps, technical teams |
| PHP processes per website | 5 | 10, 15 or 20 | As many as you configure |
How to tell you need more
Signs that your plan has become too small: the website slows down exactly when it has the most visitors, pages load slowly or return errors at busy times, or the disk space is always close to full. Before you change plans, it's worth checking whether the problem is the website itself — a heavy plugin or unoptimized images. We've gathered the usual causes in the article on slow WordPress.
You can move to a larger plan at any time, without rebuilding your website; beforehand, we tell you in writing how much you'll pay and from when. If you're not sure what to choose, write to us with what runs on your website and how many visits it gets; we'll tell you honestly whether you need a VPS or whether managed hosting is enough.