When you get shared hosting, you usually get the regular cPanel,  LxAdmin, or whatever control panel the host is using. When you order a VPS account, you get two different control panels. Now you’re probably thinking two panels, that means twice the amount of headache. You’re wrong! When you get a VPS you get a control panel for the VPS itself, which controls the virtual server. This isn’t what controls your domains. This control panel controls the state of  the VPS – on, off, or restart. This also shows the current RAM usage, the CPU usage, and how much each is limited to. You can also change the root password, and the timezone settings.

If you want to use it for hosting, which most people would, you need to install an addition control panel on your VPS. Depending on which VPS control panel your host uses, you can install a free version of LxAdmin on your VPS. This is very easy, you just click install, restart the VPS, and you can login with the default login.

You can monitor how much you’re using when you have a VPS, and this is useful for power users and people who want more control over their hosting. Some people really need SSH access to their server for various reasons and this allows those users to use it easily. You can even use SSH over the browser with built in java applets.

Need a cheap VPS? Just go look on web hosting forums for a deal. There are tons of VPS hosting companies that have offers and sales all the time. Just look for coupons that are recurring. Sure it sounds nice if you get 80% off.. but that will be for the first month, then you have to pay a huge amount the rest of the time you’re with that company. Recurring coupons mean the new price you get with the coupon is the price you pay for the rest of the time you are with that hosting company.

Hosting companies will usually split their VPS customers up on different servers. Most of the time hosting companies will put all of their smaller VPSs on one server, and keep their larger VPSs on a different server. They do this because the bigger ones usually take up more resources like RAM and bandwidth. The smaller ones typically don’t use that much RAM or bandwidth, so they can keep those all on one server.

VPS accounts allow users to have more flexibility over their hosting. Not only does it allow them to have more control over their hosting, but it allows them to have “root” on their server. This lets them make scripts, programs, and have SSH acces to the root of their “virtual” server.

Generally people who need VPS accounts are people who have resource hungry websites. These websites are usually proxies, and online videos websites. Or, people who have high traffic websites.