Decisions
Straight comparisons
24 side-by-side comparisons of the decisions people actually agonise over, with a table rather than a paragraph.
This index holds 24 head-to-head comparisons of the decisions that actually change an outcome when you buy hosting: virtualisation type, core allocation, storage medium, jurisdiction, payment method and protocol choice. Every one ships a comparison table and a plain verdict on which to choose and when.
VPS vs Dedicated server
VPS vs dedicated server: which do you actually need?
A VPS is a slice of a physical machine with guaranteed CPU, RAM and disk; a dedicated server is the whole machine. A VPS wins on p…
VPS vs Shared hosting
VPS vs shared hosting: the real differences
Shared hosting gives you a directory on a machine that hundreds of other sites also use, with no root access and hard limits on pr…
VPS vs Hyperscaler cloud
VPS vs cloud hosting: cost, control and lock-in
A VPS is a fixed machine at a fixed monthly price. Hyperscaler cloud is a catalogue of managed services billed per unit of consump…
KVM vs OpenVZ / LXC
KVM vs OpenVZ: why the virtualisation type matters
KVM is full hardware virtualisation: your instance runs its own kernel and cannot see the host. OpenVZ and LXC are container techn…
KVM vs LXC containers
KVM vs LXC: isolation versus density
LXC containers share the host kernel and start in milliseconds with almost no overhead; KVM virtual machines boot their own kernel…
Offshore hosting vs Onshore hosting
Offshore vs onshore hosting: what actually changes
Offshore hosting means placing a server in a jurisdiction other than your own, usually one outside the Fourteen Eyes alliances and…
No-KYC hosting vs KYC hosting
No-KYC vs KYC hosting: what the provider knows about you
KYC hosting requires government identification, a billing address and usually a payment card before provisioning. No-KYC hosting r…
Shared vCPU vs Dedicated vCPU
Shared vs dedicated vCPU: what steal time costs you
A shared vCPU is scheduled against other tenants, so under contention your process waits — visible as steal time in top. A dedicat…
NVMe vs SATA SSD / HDD
NVMe vs SSD vs HDD for a VPS
NVMe reaches roughly 500,000 random IOPS with sub-100-microsecond latency; a SATA SSD manages around 90,000 IOPS; a 7,200 RPM HDD …
Monero (XMR) vs Bitcoin (BTC)
Monero vs Bitcoin for paying for hosting
Bitcoin's ledger is public: anyone can see that an address paid a hosting invoice, and chain analysis can often connect that addre…
Crypto payment vs Card payment
Paying for hosting with crypto vs a credit card
A card payment creates a permanent, identity-linked record at your bank, the card network and the merchant, and can be reversed fo…
WireGuard vs OpenVPN
WireGuard vs OpenVPN on a VPS
WireGuard is about 4,000 lines of kernel code with modern fixed cryptography; OpenVPN is roughly 100,000 lines in userspace with c…
Self-hosted VPN vs Commercial VPN
Self-hosted VPN vs a commercial VPN service
A self-hosted VPN removes the provider from your trust equation but also removes the crowd: the exit IP is yours alone, so every r…
Tor vs VPN
Tor vs VPN: different tools, different threat models
Tor routes through three volunteer relays chosen so that no single one knows both who you are and where you are going. A VPN route…
Ubuntu vs Debian
Ubuntu vs Debian for a VPS
Both use the same package format and most of the same software. Ubuntu ships newer packages, five-year LTS support and vastly more…
AlmaLinux vs Rocky Linux
AlmaLinux vs Rocky Linux: does the choice matter?
Both are free rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, both offer roughly ten years of support per major release, and both are binary…
Unmanaged VPS vs Managed VPS
Managed vs unmanaged VPS: who patches the server?
On an unmanaged VPS the provider guarantees the hardware, the network and the hypervisor; everything above the kernel is yours, in…
Anonymous hosting vs "Bulletproof" hosting
Anonymous hosting vs bulletproof hosting: an important distinction
Anonymous hosting means the provider does not collect your identity — a privacy property. "Bulletproof" hosting means the provider…
Panama vs Switzerland
Panama vs Switzerland for offshore hosting
Both sit outside every intelligence-sharing alliance and outside the EU. Switzerland offers the stronger statutory framework — hos…
Iceland vs Netherlands
Iceland vs Netherlands for privacy-oriented hosting
The Netherlands has the best connectivity in Europe through AMS-IX and the lowest latency to most European users — but it is a Nin…
Seychelles vs Belize
Seychelles vs Belize for offshore infrastructure
Both are classic international business company jurisdictions with strong corporate confidentiality, no data-retention mandate and…
Hourly billing vs Monthly billing
Hourly vs monthly VPS billing
Hourly billing suits infrastructure that exists for hours — a build farm, a load test, a temporary migration target. Monthly billi…
Network DDoS scrubbing vs CDN / reverse proxy
Network DDoS protection vs a CDN proxy
Network-level scrubbing filters attack traffic upstream of your server at layers 3 and 4, and it works for any protocol — game ser…
VPS vs Serverless functions
VPS vs serverless: cost, cold starts and control
Serverless bills per invocation and scales to zero, which is unbeatable for genuinely intermittent workloads. Past roughly a milli…