shared vs. vps hosting

Sup guys,

I've got a few questions i was hoping someone could help me out with. My first money site is currently using a shared hosting plan. Every month my traffic nearly doubles - at what point do I need to upgrade to a vps? If not a vps, then what should I be upgrading to? Also, is there any benefit to upgrading before it becomes necessary?

Thanks in advanced.

If it is just one site and you don't want the hassle of a vps (configuring it , backup e.t.c) you could try semi dedicated hosting (more resources) or if it is WordPress a managed wp host.
If you have time and enjoying messing with some code and ssh you could get a vps or even get a managed vps .
The point i would be preparing to move is when you experience your site to be a little slow sometimes (if your host has cloudlinux installed you could easily see the resources you are using)

At what point do I need to upgrade to a vps?

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When you experienced slowness in website loading.

If not a vps, then what should I be upgrading to?

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There's semi dedicated hosting

Also, is there any benefit to upgrading before it becomes necessary?

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Yes, you won't be exceeding your resource limit if you upgrade it earlier.

Thanks for the responses guys..

Well, currently my site is built on wordpress, so I would need to make sure to go for managed vps, or semi-dedicated hosting so I could transfer my entire site over - btw, what are the differences between managed vps and semi-dedicated?

If you thinking long term, go for vps, they are as cheap as shared hosting. And not that hard to learn, I was noob and it took me one weekend and few cases of beer to learn and switch to vps. Best decision ever! I'll never go back to shared hosting with my money site after they totally screw up my ranking due to the infamous 'this website is not available due to exceeded resource usage' error. And they won't tell when it happens, I only found out when my ranking plummeted. Digitalocean and Linode give you a credit, which works to 1 month of free service so you can take it for a test drive and learn the ins and outs.

VPS's tend to have less resources and also have many other clients on that particular server, while semi-dedicated have only a few clients on the same server which provides you with more resources.

thashytt said:

Thanks for the responses guys..

Well, currently my site is built on wordpress, so I would need to make sure to go for managed vps, or semi-dedicated hosting so I could transfer my entire site over - btw, what are the differences between managed vps and semi-dedicated?

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If your traffic is doubling every month, you might need a managed dedicated server soon. I don't know how much traffic you're currently getting, but if you're above the 25k+ a day mark, I'd go for a DS. Anything between 2k and 25k, a VPS with enough resources to sustain your website will do. You can save money on management costs if you find a hosting provider that can transfer your Wordpress site to the VPS. I don't see what other kind of management you'll need other than to track your usage.

If you running heavy traffic website than I will suggest you for VPS. VPS is the best from my opinion but its costly.

you get waaay more control with a vps - with comparatively little overhead depending on your experience

It really depends on the growth perpective on the long run and also from what it is doubling from. I mean, if you have 1 then 2 then 4 visitors at the end of the 3rd month, a shared web hosting would be perfectly fine for quite some time.
A VPS is the perfect solution when you aren't sure about the next month's traffic as it can evolve at the same time you do (upgrade / downgrade easily).

Also, the technologies used to build your website is also to take into consideration (html, php, light wordpress set up, heavy WP set up with a lot of plugins).
At this point, i would ask at your current hosting provider especially if you can trust them to advice you the right plan matching your usage and not trying to push you to upgrade.

thashytt said:

Sup guys,

I've got a few questions i was hoping someone could help me out with. My first money site is currently using a shared hosting plan. Every month my traffic nearly doubles - at what point do I need to upgrade to a vps? If not a vps, then what should I be upgrading to? Also, is there any benefit to upgrading before it becomes necessary?

Thanks in advanced.

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Just look at the performances, your skills on configuring and VPS, and choose..

If from a performance point of view your shared hosting is ok, just buy a dedicated IP. It's cheap and you can help your website gain reputation because it doesn't share IP with potentially bad "neighbours".

CarloTav said:

VPS's tend to have less resources and also have many other clients on that particular server, while semi-dedicated have only a few clients on the same server which provides you with more resources.

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NigaWAT?! Since when VPS's tend to have less resource and many other clients on particular server? Yes if you are talking about VPS for 1-10$ range ok .. providers like hostgator etc who are well known for overselling their nodes. There is providers like mine who are not overselling their nodes and so they have like ~20 VPS per server. But I'm paying 50€ for that VPS so .. You get what you pay for.
Providers like AbeloHost.com are known for not overselling their nodes.. If you are planing to move .. then they will carry you.

Again having "semi-dedicated" is nothing more than a ultra sharing hosting plan.. You don't have your OS, root access and lot more useful features like php configuration , apache nginx configuration and so on. Most of the "semi-dedi" are on low-end servers in that case VPS OpenVZ or KVM are OP. Also with semi-dedi you have the same restrictions as per shared hosting.. with VPS you are free to do everything you want with your resource.

As you mentioned there is nothing like correct time to switch to VPS. It is as simple as that if you need your site to be secure and out of spamming issues you can switch to VPS right away. And about the traffic, if you feel your site loads slow then possibly you can move to VPS or you can increase the RAM of your shared server.