# What is a VPS?

A virtual private server (VPS) is a slice of a physical server that behaves like its own machine. It runs its own operating system, holds its own files and restarts on its own. The hardware underneath is shared. Everything above it is yours.

## Virtualization in one paragraph

A program called a hypervisor splits one physical computer into isolated compartments. Each compartment gets a guaranteed share of CPU, memory and disk. Guests cannot see each other. To software inside, the slice looks like a whole computer, which is why a game server or database installs on a VPS exactly as it would on dedicated hardware.

## The four common options

| Option | Hardware | Control | Price shape |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Shared hosting | One program serves many sites | Lowest, control panel only | Cheapest monthly |
| VPS | A slice with its own OS | Root on your slice | Fixed per size |
| Dedicated machine | The whole computer | Full, down to the kernel | Highest fixed |
| Cloud servers | Slices rented by API | Full, plus API scaling | Metered, varies |

Price tracks isolation. Sharing is cheap because idle capacity is reused. A VPS guarantees your share, so a busy neighbor cannot take it. Dedicated removes the neighbor entirely. Cloud rents the slice by the minute and adds an API, which suits spiky workloads and punishes always on ones that never scale down.

## When a VPS fits

- A game server with mods, where shared hosting cannot run your build.
- A small app with steady traffic, where cloud metering would cost more than a fixed slice.
- A database for one app, where the working set fits in the slice memory.
- Anything you want to snapshot and move, since a slice is a file the host can copy.

## Limits worth knowing

A VPS is still one computer. It fails as a unit, it has a ceiling on CPU and disk speed, and oversold hosts can stretch shares thinner than advertised. Backups stay the operator's job unless the host takes them. For Kraftify targets the same logic applies at one remove: a target is sized like a slice, and its files are what [Backups](/docs/backups) protects.

Kraftify sizes read like VPS sizes on purpose: small, medium and large, each with compute and disk. See [Deploy a target](/docs/deploy) and [Billing](/docs/billing).

> No region is funded yet, so nothing can be provisioned. Sizes and rates are published so scripts written today keep working. See Region status.

## Sources

Vendor neutral definitions plus the pages behind the comparison.

- [What is a virtual private server](https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/vps). IBM. The standard definition used on this page.
- [What is a virtual server](https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/virtual-server). IBM. How slices relate to bare metal and to virtual machines.
- [How servers work](/docs/how-servers-work). Kraftify docs. Requests, ports and uptime underneath.