Have you ever thinking to upgrade from shared hosting to VPS plan or dedicated server? In most cases, shared hosting is the best hosting choice (especially in terms of costs) to kick start. This is particularly true for startups with a budget constraint.
However, as your business and website continue to grow with more and more visitors and traffic, you start to ponder when is the best time to upgrade to a more powerful hosting solution.
In this post, we will walk you through some of the most common indicators that show it’s time your business needs a more powerful hosting.
But before we do that, let’s have a basic understanding of shared hosting. If you already have sound knowledge on this topic, skip right to the next part.
What is Shared Hosting?
In short, shared hosting meaning is basically the most basic form of hosting, and it’s serving multiple websites with a single physical server.
Thus, when you are using a shared hosting, you are actually sharing the server resources with hundreds of “neighbours”, in terms of storage space, RAM, bandwidth, etc.
The affordable pricing is one of the most remarkable advantages of using shared hosting followed by its slow learning curve.
Generally you are not required to have any specialized knowledge or skills to manage your shared hosting.
In most of the cases, the support team and the knowledge base is good enough for you to kick start a perfect website.
However, the biggest drawback of shared hosting is its perceived performance limitations. As mentioned above, your site is sharing the server resources with others, there will be a possibility that the allocated resources for you are scarce.
Also, your site’s performance also potentially be affected by other sites on the same server.
Let’s imagine that when your neighbours are organizing a house party beside you, you will hear the noise which makes you can’t sleep well, and maybe someone occupied your parking lot.
Hence, when your website grows to a certain level, you should put your customers/website visitors as the No. 1 priority — giving them the best experience should be your major concern.
In this case, you can consider switching to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or dedicated server hosting.
Here’s the article explained about the types of web hosting you can choosing from.
When Should You Consider Upgrade From Shared Hosting
Now that we have understood the limitation of shared hosting, we can now look at the signs that tell when you should upgrade from shared hosting.
- When Your Website Is Loading Slowly
As mentioned earlier, when you are getting more website visitors, a shared hosting server is not powerful enough to handle it.
The first sign of this is your website will start to crawl at a snail’s pace. It will slow down to the point that it will frustrate yourself and your visitors. Slower websites will cause a drop in revenue and conversion rates.
Slow websites also tend to rank lower in Google search results.
- When 99.99% Uptime Is Important To You
If you are running an online business, having a 99.99% uptime guarantee is something you want to prioritize. With shared hosting, your uptime does still depend on your other ‘neighbours’ residing on the same server.
We know that a website that always goes down gives a bad impression to the visitors. It will even drive your potential customers away.
Upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server hosting ensures your online business website loads faster, and most importantly, enjoys a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
- When Your Website Has Become Vulnerable
As your website grows, it becomes more prone to cyber attacks. Hackers often target bigger websites because they can extract more crucial data from it.
In such times, you will need to switch your website from shared hosting for enhanced security features.
- When You Are Running An E-Commerce Website
E-Commerce usually requires more server resources to run smoothly as it has a more complex website structure.
Also, a secure hosting environment is crucial for protecting your transaction data and customer information.
- When You Need More Control & Customisation
You can have a complete control over your hosting server when you are using a VPS or dedicated server hosting, including the flexibility to access server settings, customize it based on your preferences, configure your firewall, and run advanced scripts on it.
Unlike shared hosting, there are no limitations.
Time to Upgrade from Your Shared Hosting
If you are experiencing 2 out of 5 of the above mentioned, then it is probably time to upgrade from shared hosting.
Don’t panic, our hosting specialist team will be pleased to help you along every step to make the right choice. Talk to us now!
Related article: VPS Hosting VS Dedicated Server Hosting
