When we first come to start a new website, shared hosting plans seem to provide the perfect solution.
They’re cheap, they’re fairly reliable, and with all manner of tools and products at our disposal -often for free- they make it a breeze to launch our site and keep it running on a long term basis.
Yet as our business grows, what started as a match made in heaven between you and your provider may start to disintegrate. It may be that you’ve evolved to the point that you’re now attracting far more visitors than you really planned for when you took out that basic plan, or that you need to implement new features to serve the needs of your customers that your shared hosting just isn’t capable of supporting.
When that happens, it may be time to think about an upgrade.
For some, this might be as simple as going up to the next tier of shared hosting, though for many, the best website hosting solution may well be to move to an entirely new way of working, such as with VPS or, at the far end of the scale, your own dedicated server.
Thinking of making the jump?
Here’s our top four reasons to upgrade from your shared web hosting plan.
1) You’re attracting visitors by the hundreds
Even if your shared plan boasts of unlimited bandwidth, you’ll soon find that even that has its limits when you’re pulling in a thousand or more visitors each week.
With hundreds of visitors pouring into your site each day, things naturally start to slow down, especially when other sites on the same physical server are drawing the same kind of numbers.
By upgrading to say a VPS plan, you can not only serve those visitors better, but make sure you’re well prepared to receive even more.
2) Your website is becoming slow to load, or even crashing
As a result of all those new visitors you’re getting, the performance of your website really begins to suffer.
Pages will take longer to load, and in the case of a certain spike in traffic, you may even find it crashes altogether.
Unless you’re able to get it back online in an instant, then for all intents and purposes, your website ceases to exist during that down time.
When you upgrade, you have greater resources at your dispoal, and fewer websites on the same server that could cause your site issues. The upshot, greater performance, more reliability, and faster page load times.
3) You’re running a business with eCommerce features
For many businesses, their online store is their main method of generating income. If that sounds like you, then investing in a VPS or dedicated server may well prove to be the best insurance policy you could take out for your business.
As we’ve already mentioned, there’s a greater risk of slower loading websites and downtime with a shared plan.
This is bad enough for any website, but if you’re relying on yours to make money, it could prove disastrous.
If customers experience issues using your site, they’re likely not to come back, meaning you don’t just miss out on one sale, but on that all-important repeat custom.
4) You require greater security
Though this is particularly important for eCommerce users, any website where you’re taking personal information, payments or anything else that requires solid security will benefit from upgrading from a shared plan.
Though most website providers take security seriously even with shared plans, problems have been known to arise, often as a result of another website on your server being compromised.
A VPS or dedicated platform greatly reduces this risk and comes with tighter security controls.
