Difference between shared and dedicated plans

This article will describe the difference between a shared and a dedicated plan in ElephantSQL. Hopefully you will also get an idea of what plan will work the best for you.

Shared servers

Shared servers like Tiny Turtle and Pretty Panda are single databases located on a shared PostgreSQL database server. This means that a single instance of ElephantSQL runs on the database server and it serves multiple tenants.

Features on shared plans

• Support: We provide 24/7 support to thousands of customers. We've been providing the service for over four years and have operation experience from a huge range of customers.
• Backups (pg_dump, WAL, base backups): Automated backups (pg_dump) are performed every day. Full server backups (base backup) are perfomed once a week, rolling WAL backups are performed every second minute.
• Database statistics
• ElephantSQL SQL Browser: A web browser tool for SQL queries
• Slow queries: Identify which queries that are running slowly in your system

One thing to note when subscribing to a shared plan is that other users' actions might affect the performance of the whole server. If someone manages to use a lot of CPU, everyone will be affected. We are continuously working on improvements for the shared instances and we always strive towards offering better quality and service. This has required us to add some limitations to the servers as described below:

• Data limit: The data limit will stop users from inserting more data when the limit is reached.
• Limit on number of concurrent connections: Where a connection is a TCP connection between your application and the PostgreSQL database

Dedicated servers

We provide 24/7 support to thousands of customers. We've been providing the service for over four years and have operation experience from a huge range of customers.

SLA and support on dedicated plans: We guarantee at least 99.95% availability on dedicated plans. ElephantSQL will refund 50% of the cost for outage larger than that. Request of refund must be submitted in writing, within 30 days from the outage to which they refer, via email to contact@elephantsql.com

Features on dedicated plans

• Support: We provide 24/7 support to thousands of customers. We've been providing the service for over four years and have operation experience from a huge range of customers.
• Critical support: We provide 24/7 critical support with a 30-minutes maximum initial response time. For the plans Power Panda and larger we can provide direct phone numbers, if requested.
• Backups (pg_dump, WAL, base backups): Automated backups (pg_dump) are performed every day. Full server backups (base backup) are perfomed once a week, rolling WAL backups are performed every second minute.
• Point-in-time-recovery: Restore you database to any point in time
• Database statistics
• ElephantSQL SQL Browser: A web browser tool for SQL queries
• Followers (HA plans): Option to create a follower plan, where your follower can be located in a different region or in a different cloud provider
• Fork: Option to create a standalone copy of your database
• Log integrations: Ship your PostgreSQL logs to Papertrail, Splunk, Loggly and Logentries
• Server metrics: Server metrics that helps you to measure performance metrics from your server

Comparison table - Shared vs Dedicated plans