Does Your VPS Location Matter?

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If you’re trying to decide between several VPS server locations, you’re faced with a series of considerations. You want the best services and customer support, but be sure to factor in the physical location of the VPS server when you make your decision. You may not think the VPS location matters, but it can matter in a few ways.

First of all, a good rule of thumb is to find the best provider possible. Make sure they offer technical support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If your website is geared toward selling products to customers in the United States and you live in the United States, then it’s probably a good idea to have the VPS hosting in the United States or North America. That’s because you’ll be able to contact the customer support team whenever you have a problem.

If your VPS location is in a country that’s in a time zone far away from yours, you may have trouble reaching customer support. For example, if you’re in the United States and your server is in Australia, it could take you an entire day to contact customer support. Of course this may not apply if your hosting provider offers 24 hour customer support, as most reputable providers do.

The VPS location can matter when it comes to your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well, for a couple different reasons. For example, Google now factors page speed into its search engine ranking factors. If your site is geared toward visitors from the US but is hosted in a remote location with a poor internet connection, it could impact your ranking. On the other hand, simply hosting in the same country as your visitors doesn’t guarantee that your server performance is will be better. You have to take into account the reliability of the server itself and the speed of your VPS Hosts internet connection. Also, your results could be affected by search engines geo-locating your site in the wrong country, however you can usually bypass this by indicating your primary target country within your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Another way VPS hosting is affected by geographic location is based on climate. Recently, Facebook, Google and Microsoft set up server farms in Sweden and Siberia. The rationale behind the remote location is based on the cost of maintaining the servers. In colder climates, it doesn’t cost as much to keep the servers cool and comfortable as it does in temperate or hot climates. The lower temperatures keep the electric bills lower, and those savings can be passed on to you in the form of lower fees for your VPS. Similarly, the cost of electricity may vary from country to country, often depending upon abundance of natural resources. So it may make economic sense for you to host your VPS in a country with cheaper electrical rates, as the cost savings may be passed on to you in some form.

If server speed, internet connection and customer support are equal, then the choice is yours as to where your server is hosted. It may come down to your comfort level in working with any given hosting provider, depending on business hours, supported currencies and the language they speak when they pick up the phone.