Hosting and cloud · Comparison
Serverless vs VPS vs shared hosting
Three very different ways to run the server side of a site. They trade off how much you manage, how costs behave as traffic grows, and what kinds of software you can run.
3 options · 8 questions side by side · updated
The options
- ServerlessA way to run server code without renting or managing a server: you upload functions, the provider runs them only when requests arrive, and you pay for what is used.
- VPSA virtual private server: your own slice of a physical machine, with its own operating system and full control, rented for a flat monthly price.
- Shared hostingThe cheapest kind of hosting, where many websites share one server that the host manages, typically used for WordPress and small PHP sites.
More comparisons
- Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare PagesAll three build your site from Git, serve it from a global CDN and give every branch a preview link. They differ in which frameworks they favour, how they bill, and what sits around the hosting.
- AWS vs Google Cloud vs AzureThe three big clouds offer similar building blocks under different names. The choice usually comes down to your team's experience, the ecosystem you already use and a few standout services.
- Fly.io vs Render vs Railway vs HerokuFour platforms that run your backend from Git or a container without you managing servers. They differ in free options, how they bill and how much control they give you.
- Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2Both store files in buckets and speak the same API, so code can often switch with a few settings. The big difference is what you pay when people download your files.
- Git vs GitHubThe two names are often used as if they meant the same thing. Git is the program that records a project's history on your machine; GitHub is a website that hosts Git repositories and adds collaboration on top.
- npm vs pnpm vs Yarn vs BunAll four install packages from the same npm registry and read the same package.json. They differ in speed, disk use, strictness and what else comes bundled with them.
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