A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is multifaceted. From hosting a website or an online game server to creating an external backup server; you can do anything with a VPS, so long as it’s neither illegal nor violating your VPS hosting provider’s terms of service. So, whether you’re a VPS newbie or a VPS veteran looking for unseen VPS benefits, here are a few things you may or may not have known you could do with VPS.
VPS benefits include
1. Self-hosting to save money
On a VPS, you have full autonomy. Numerous software options such as Dropbox, PayPal and Slack exist for your business but are all sold as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), for a monthly fee. However, there are a number of self-hosted equivalent or surpassing alternatives to these that drastically help you cut costs. Become less dependent on SaaS platforms by following tutorials or step-by-step guides online to install their alternatives.
2. Running a game server
Hosting an online gaming server is also one of the many possibilities with a VPS. With the popularity of online multiplayer games increasing, as a market, it’s profits are attractive to many. Even though these games are usually hosted on dedicated servers, a dedicated hosting solution tends to cost much more than a VPS option. VPS offers users the best balance of price and performance when it comes to hosting a game server. Resources can be easily optimized to meet requirements, resulting in longer term viability.
3. Setting up a mail server
You can host your company’s mail server on your VPS to avoid extra costs. For example, a SaaS service typically charges you by number of mailboxes / accounts. Contrarily, self-hosted email servers are easily handled by even the most basic VPS plans. You can also host all your employees’ addresses and store all their emails.
4. Stay in touch with VoIP
You can host your own VoIP server using a VPS. It helps you make calls over the internet to effectively communicate with colleagues, or friends while gaming, regardless of location.
5. Setting up a VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) could help conceal your online payment details, as well as secure company and client data from potential hackers. Contrarily, you’ll find many free and paid VPN providers that might be selling your data. Thus, installing a VPN on your VPS can be crucial for your business. Using unsecured public WiFi might compromise your personal data. However, if you have a VPS, you can always use it as a VPN to secure your browsing session.
6. Running a Development Server
VPS serves as an ideal platform for a development server. Normally, when you’re developing an application, software, or website a separate platform is needed to test them away from your live environment. It's best to avoid making changes to a live website, before ensuring everything is fully functional, as this could expose patrons to potential mistakes.
7. Creating a Backup Server
You could set up a VPS to use as a convenient online backup; which is a critical precaution nowadays, especially in a business context. Your VPS can even be your file server where you can remotely access all your necessary files, so long as you are online. Finally, you can configure your VPS for website backup. If your website malfunctions, you can just re-upload a backup and restore the website to a previous working version.
8. Experimenting and improving your development and programming skills
A VPS can also be used to improve your programming skills as you have full sovereignty over it and can always set it as a testing environment if you are planning to try out new applications. This evades any conflicts or unexpected results if things fail because you can always reinstall the OS and start over again. As long as you’re connected online, your VPS can be used to create a personal GIT server to privately share code with co-workers.
9. VPS hosting
A. Web Hosting Primarily used for hosting, when it comes to performance, VPS with dedicated RAM, powerful SSD storage, and a server CPU is indomitable. Therefore, when choosing VPS hosting over basic shared hosting, your website’s user experience improves drastically.B. Host a Web Server With VPS it’s possible to host an entire server as it does all the things a regular server would. If running a static site is possible with your VPS, then it suffices to run web server software, like Apache, Nginx, or OpenLiteSpeed, where you can upload your files. Also, when running a web server, you can automate its installation with help from the meta-package lamp-server for Ubuntu, and the Centmin Mod script on CentOS for a web server based on Nginx. You can also easily install WordPress, or a flat-file alternative to it, on your LAMP stack. Using your VPS for server hosting is definitely one of the best ways to make the most of it.
10. Helping others
It’s easy to share some hard drive space on your VPS and offer some hosting space to the less fortunate. They may not need much space and if they already pay for shared hosting, you’d be helpful by relieving this financial burden. This is just one of the many ways you can help others with VPS. You can read more about VPS hosting and how it compares to other hosting methods, such as shared hosting, here.
In Conclusion
The possibilities with VPS aren’t limited to the aforementioned. We only compiled some of the most interesting options. You can use a virtual server for a plethora of tasks, including email hosting, web applications testing, backing up files, setting up VoIP servers, hosting gaming servers and much more for example an extra layer of security through creating your own VPN. You can use it to access a GUI remotely. Even if you only want to experiment and refine your skills, a VPS would be the right choice for you. Here at Luxhosting, we offer affordable and powerful VPS cloud hosting for everyone.
