When to Move to VPS Hosting from Shared Hosting– Simple Points to Decide

Most of us have this doubt to decide the time when to move to VPS (Virtual Private Server)  hosting plan from Shared hosting. I had this question always in my mind and I didn’t find the suitable answer anywhere. I don’t think anyone can answer exactly, because it should come from your experience and difficulties you face with current hosting plan.

When to Move to VPS Hosting from Shared Hosting

VPS is better than Shared hosting but lower than Dedicated Server hosting plan. Three types on main hosting plans available currently according to my knowledge.

1) Shared Hosting

2) VPS – Virtual Private Server

3) Dedicates Server

No one starts their brand new blog with VPS or Dedicated Server hosting plan at initial stage of  blogging. Once your blog is becoming famous, then you can switch to VPS or Dedicated servers. The question is, when to move to VPS hosting plan?

My favorite blogger Daniel from dailyblogtips.com suggested as below,

I would say that when you reach $200 monthly or so you should consider getting a VPS (which costs around $40 monthly), and when you reach $500 monthly you should consider getting a dedicated server (which costs around $200 monthly).

in this post.

Somehow, I do not fully agree with Daniel’s statement. Yes, hosting company and plan is very important for blogging business. No matter how many promotions you are doing, producing unique contents and doing some magic SEO tricks, but if your hosting plan is not well to manage the traffic and load, then all will be wasted.

Hosting plan is very important and you must invest good money on this, but if the current shared hosting is working fine without any issues to manage the traffic, then you can stick with it for some time. Because even a single dollar is money for us, isn’t it?

Can you believe still I’m running my tech blog on Shared hosting for 5 dollars per month? which is making 10,000 PVs daily and around 700 US dollars monthly? You might be shocked to here it. I have not faced any major issues with my shared hosting and current traffic.

Several factors pushed me to decide the move to a VPS hosting plan, which I did two days ago (Its an interesting learning).  Here are the issues I faced and considering for long term plan.

Check these points and if you face the similar situation with your current shared hosting plan, then I suggest this is the time to move to VPS hosting from shared hosting.

Simple Points to Decide

1) Traffic increase rate is more than 30% and you already crossed 5000 Page Views (PVs) daily.

2) Already crossed 8000 PVs daily.

3) You started making 400$ to 500$ monthly, and monthly income rate is 30%. So, your blog is becoming very important to generate money, no matter how much is the traffic, but income is important. When a blog or website reached a state that, it can’t be down even for 10 seconds which will effect your whole business.

4) Your site is becoming slow in loading with several plugins which make multiple PHP and SQL database requests. Your shared hosting will be struggling to make these requests, so time to go to VPS.

5) Obviously, your site is down very frequently by overload.

6) Comments are loading very slowly and posting new comments not working in first time or returning 404 not found error.

7) Deleting comments, saving and publishing posts returning internal server error 500 inside wordpress dashboard.

8.) You got notification from shared hosting company that you have used the all resources for the current month.

9) You are hosting multiple heavy multimedia contents including videos and files to download.  Your blog requires more processor and bandwidth utilization for these types of hosting. Shared hosting is not good at all for this.

10) No matter how much money you make or generate traffic, but you want a private server with full root access. Yes, then you can go for VPS hosting plan.

What else do you think?

I will be sharing my experience with moving shard hosting wordpress blog to VPS managed  hosting plan in coming days.

What’s your experience with shared hosting? Why you moved to VPS plan?

Share you thoughts.

A part-time blogger who makes enough money to leave the full-time job, but still enjoying both jobs :) . Sharing the knowledge here to help everyone to build better blog and make money online.

  • I know hosting is one of the important aspects of blogging. I heard two types of hosting only and the VPS hosting not heard. So appreciate for giving VPS hosting. Few days before I read one blog that blog notify shared hosting is best. But that time I clear hosting doubts. Thanks, keep posting more.

  • Thanks for the nice post, VPS breaks server resources into virtual servers, this type of resources is based on a one server to many Virtual dedicated server relationship. Virtualization may be done by many of reason like ability to move a virtual private server contain between servers, user access to their own virtual space and sometime customer responsible for patching and maintaining the server.

  • Thanks for nice post, When you worked on the VPS hosting then you feel that you are working on your own dedicated server. It gives you dual benefits, and these benefits are dedicated hosting at the cost of shared hosting. There is a encyclopedic range of VPS hosting services available in the market including some features like cPanel and Directadmin control panels with exigent setup and configuration according to solo needs.

  • Hi Dinesh

    Finally I found a aright post at right time.. In my case the Traffic increase and revenue rate is more than 40% with daily PV more than 10,000 and expecting it to double very soon.

    I am currently using the Shared hosting server for blog- yourdigitalspace.com.Last two days it has used more that 25% CPU..

    I think it is the right times to shift to VPS. I am planning to use either Hostgator VPS, Linode or Knownhost.

    Which you thinks the best for VPS ?

    • That s the great increase rate Swamykant. Well done.

      I studied these three hosting companies while moving to VPS, then decided to go with Knownhost.
      1) Linode – is cheaper than other two with more resources. The main issue is, its an ‘unmanaged VPS’. You must start everything from scratch in your virtual server including installing OS, PHP, cPanel and other required software. If you are good in Linux and other package scripts, then its up to you.
      2) Hostgator – is provides ‘managed VPS’. But compared to Knownhost, its slightly expensive. The blogs and bloggers I follow, shifted to Knownhost from shared hosting.
      3) Knownhost – is MUCH better in support and server up time. I promise, you will be wondered to see their support. Their resource allocation is great, they sent all activities in your server to your email. So you will know whats happening in your VPS.

      If you are interested in Knownhost, try my affiliate link below (you know why I”m telling 🙂 ),
      http://www.knownhost.com/affiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=660

      Its up to which VPS you select, but I suggest you to move to VPS as soon as possible. Other good things is, you can host your other blogs also, which will help in reducing your other hosting charges.

      Good luck mate.

  • Hi Dinesh! I have just seen your tech blog already moved to a dedicated sever. Please let me know more about that case: When will we upgrade our hosting. Which service you choose, why you prefer dedicated than VPS since the later may save you some money. Also, my blog now has more than 4k pageviews and counting, I intend to choose Dreamhost VPS, any suggestion?

    Thanks in advanced!

    • Daniel,
      Sorry for late response.

      What makes you to decide that my tech blog in running in dedicated server??….. Its on Knownhost VPS.

      The switching hosts time is depends on your daily traffic growth and the money you could spend. If your blog is doing fine and not touching the limitations of current shared hosting, then still you can stay with it.
      I have no idea about dreamhost VPS, I did the complete study of most of the famous VPS providers, checked up with other bloggers and forums then decided to go with Knownhost VPS which is great all the time. I never regretted.

      • Hi dude! I check your tech domain at Whois.sc and the result is

        sysprobs.com is hosted on a dedicated server. So I think it is running by a dedicated server.

        One more question: Is Knownhost VS3 a good deal? What packages you are using with Knownhost VPS? Thanks in advanced!

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