Most Web Hosting companies offer "VIRTUAL" or "SHARED" hosting. This means you literally share your resources, applications and environment with potentially hundreds of other users in the same directory. This configuration can allow any compromises to a single site to affect the performance and security of everyone else on the same server.

With Virtual Private Server (VPS), also known as Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) technology, a web server is divided into multiple isolated environments. Each environment has its own server software providing independence for that website. Any compromise to a site would only affect that VPS and could not affect any other site on the same server. As with a dedicated server, each VPS has its own independent operating system with its own web server, mail server, and independent software instances. A crashed application (Apache, Sendmail, MySQL etc.) in another client's VPS has no effect on your VPS.

Virtual Hosting     VPS Hosting   Server Server Resources Hosting Account - Shared Applications - Limited Control - Shared Environment - Shared Web Server - Shared Mail Server - Shared Database Server - Shared FTP Server     - Install your own applications - Administrative Control   (Root Equivalent) - Independent Secure   Environment - Dedicated Web Server - Dedicated Mail Server - Dedicated Database Server - Dedicated FTP Server