I have been with a web hosting provider for many years and have a shared hosting plan and know I need to upgrade that service, they have a web hosting plan with unlimited domains and a bunch of other unlimited parameters like disk space and bandwidth and a VPS plan with 20 GB disk and 500GB bandwidth for about the same price.
What is typically the difference between these 2 types of service?
Hey @MacksM3,
The difference between a shared hosting provider and a VPS is that - on the latter - you can do and install anything, not just a website. Also, on a VPS you control the system down to the Operating System, which means you can login and control it via terminal just as you do a local system. In short, you have full control.
Per the bandwidth, you’ll need to keep an eye on it to see how much you’re using on a monthly basis.
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Think of a VPS like this: Your friend has a huge amount of bandwidth. He can also provide you with public facing IP addresses (required to reach your website). You purchase a small machine and rent rack space from your friend to install your machine at his house. That is sort of like having a VPS (even though in this example it’s really bare metal server).
Now you find clients who want to have their own web sites. You create 10 - 20 websites on your server (located at your friend’s house) and you rent each website to a client. That is shared website hosting.
Hope the above analogy provides some clarity. Vasileios, please correct me if I misspoke. 
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You spoke correctly, @Midline!
It is true. If you have a big enough VPS, you can host a great number of sites as well - each in its own folder with its own assigned domain too. That’s something that can’t be done on a single hosting package. To be more precise, that’s what hosting providers do on their shared servers. Only the dedicated ones are actual machines (which is why they go in the hundreds of USD per month).