Shared hosting or cheap VPS?

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

What's your preference for hosting?  Note cheap VPSes refer to those that cost about the same as shared hosting (you can find decent VPSes with 512MB RAM for around $5-$10/mo if you look around the place, or 128-256MB RAM ones for $2-4/mo).

Personally, after knowing how to set up and use a VPS, I wouldn't go back to shared hosting.  The flexibility of the former outweighs the difficulty of learning how to use the Linux command line and the additional time required to set up and tweak a server IMO.

[Firefox Wins]

Personally, after knowing how to set up and use a VPS, I wouldn't go back to shared hosting.
^^^
This. shared hosting cannot compare once you know better.

You probably already know:
Low-end VPS requires some luck, since OpenVZ does not guarantee other uses can be stopped from abusing the server. In other words, you might not get a responsive (blazing fast) share of the CPU all the time.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

Similarly, someone can abuse I/O performance unless the virtualising platform somehow allocates a guaranteed amount of disk time to you.  I haven't heard of any which does this, though since I don't run Xen, KVM or similar, I wouldn't know.
Or they could just abuse the network too.
Or the host could be crap, be down all the time, and the physical server be totally unsuitable.

Same thing with shared hosting, except there's even more scope for users to abuse the server.

[Shukaku]

I go for shared hosting, as all the communities I start, end up going nowhere.

[RocketFoot]

I use shared mainly because I can't afford VPS!  The only problem I have with shared is open connection limits.

[mrgtb]

I use shared hosting with the MyBB forum I'm running. I always have done first anyway, thinking that if things pick-up I'll move to better hosting like VPS later on, no point throwing money down the drain at the very start when having no members and a new board on your hands. But the problem now is that forums are dead with nobody wanting to join posting on them because of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites these days. You just cannot justify paying more money for VPS to run a forum board anymore.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

But how much are you paying for shared hosting anyway?  I see some hosts charge up to $10/mo, though most probably around the $3-5/mo mark.  You can get a decent VPS for that amount.

For start up forums, personally, if I didn't have existing servers, I'd go with free hosting and "free domain name".  Don't believe the bullshit that idiots on the MyBB community (most of whom can't run a decent forum themselves) spread about avoiding anything free; unless you're targeting webmasters, or you're trying to sell stuff, your visitors really won't give a damn about the hosting.  Though do take some time to ensure that the free host is reasonably reliable (it doesn't have to be exceptionally great, just reasonable most of the time).
I started out on free hosting using the free subdomain provided by the host.  Only moved to paid hosting after the board accumulated 10k posts, and only because I was exceeding the limits of free hosting.  If the forum had failed, I would've lost nothing but the time I invested.

[RateU]

(10-18-2011 03:30 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  For start up forums, personally, if I didn't have existing servers, I'd go with free hosting and "free domain name".  Don't believe the bullshit that idiots on the MyBB community (most of whom can't run a decent forum themselves) spread about avoiding anything free; unless you're targeting webmasters, or you're trying to sell stuff, your visitors really won't give a damn about the hosting.  Though do take some time to ensure that the free host is reasonably reliable (it doesn't have to be exceptionally great, just reasonable most of the time).
I started out on free hosting using the free subdomain provided by the host.  Only moved to paid hosting after the board accumulated 10k posts, and only because I was exceeding the limits of free hosting.  If the forum had failed, I would've lost nothing but the time I invested.

Finally....
At least I know now that there are people (MyBB users (at least you)) who do not mock those who use a free host and/or a free domain as a start/hobby/getting experience/small forum, like me.

Thank you very very much for your opinion and experience sharing, Yumi
It's really really helpful for me

[Vapor]

Who was your vps provider again zinga ?

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

This forum is hosted on a 1GB ChicagoVPS Xen.