In a shared hosting environment, hundreds of accounts are on the same server and share the operating system & server resources (such as database server, mail server, and web server). While reliable and secure if properly setup, shared hosting systems are still vulnerable to uneven resource distribution and are at risk of having a service (such as web or mail service) become unstable due to another client "abusing" or "over-using" the shared hosting system's resources.

VPS accounts operate independently from each other, each having its own operating system and application set. VPS also give customers a minimum guarantee of server resources; such as bandwidth, memory, processor units and disk usage; so no other account cannot monopolize an entire server's reliability. VPS are more secure because each server operates independently and is completed isolated from other virtual private servers on the same physical machine.