Upgrade to VPS Hosting: When Should You Do?
Is it time you upgraded to a VPS hosting plan? Your website is finally gaining traction, your visitors have spiked, but your website seems unable to keep up. Can it be that your current hosting plan doesn’t have the resources it needs to run your growing website?
Shared hosting is a fantastic starting point for most small businesses and websites. But, as your website grows and requires more resources, it can disrupt the other accounts’ services and you might lack some much-needed resources. Has the time to upgrade to a VPS hosting plan arrived?
Here are some reasons why you should upgrade to a VPS hosting plan:
1. Support Simultaneous Users
When your traffic grows, shared resources can become drained. Operations such as simultaneous users accessing web pages, sending and receiving email, purchasing goods, using webchat, downloading files, forum postings, and so on can put a strain on your website.
These are called “entry points”.
Most shared hosting plans support 40 entry points or less per microsecond. If that limit is exceeded, users will begin seeing a blank page. This can be frustrating and cause users to abandon your website. Studies have shown that over 60% of visitors expect a page to load in under 5 seconds.
To help users with growing websites, some VPS plans are available without entry point limitations, removing blank screens and allowing you to serve many more users at the same time.
2. Build More Sophisticated Sites and Apps
A simple website can run smoothly on shared servers. However, server performance can be greatly reduced when handling many requests at the same time. As websites or web apps grow, they require more processing power to maintain performance.
VPS hosting packages ensure your website runs as fast as possible even when handling many requests at once. VPS plans keep their speed up by using several processing cores for their tasks. No matter how much growth you see, a VPS hosting plan will ensure that your website continues to run smoothly.
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3. Upgrade to VPS Hosting to Keep Traffic Flowing Smoothly
If the server’s CPU is the brains of the operation, think of I/O (Input/Output) as the veins and arteries which keep your data and user requests flowing smoothly. VPS environments allow system administrators to “expand” those arteries at busy times, scaling I/O resources to handle increased volumes of traffic.
Your website can get bogged and slowed down on a shared hosting plan as more and more traffic comes your way. A VPS hosting package will ensure that your traffic flows smoothly and your website runs at optimal speeds.
4. Reduce Page Load and Wait Times
On a shared hosting server, many sites are competing for a limited amount of memory. As server memory holds all of a website’s processes if your website can’t access the amount of memory it needs, page load times and other processes are sure to slow down.
Most VPS hosting packages are supported by up to 24GB of RAM, reducing wait time and ensuring your site is responsive. Users then benefit from rapid page load times, faster transaction processing, quicker downloads, uploads, and much more.
5. Upgrade to VPS Hosting to Store More Data
Many shared hosting packages offer generous amounts of disk space but beware of the underlying restrictions (number of files and folders you can store). Sharing resources with several other websites can quickly cause problems when resources become limited.
Unlike shared packages, VPS hosting plans are scalable and allow you to store a significant number of files. Whether you’re hosting galleries with thousands of images or a high-definition media library with huge video files, VPS plans have the resources to ensure you have the storage you need as your website grows.
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6. Maximise Availability as Traffic Grows
A sure sign of a site’s growing popularity is receiving notifications from your hosting provider about exceeding visitor limits. It’s a precaution that ensures server resources are available for all the sites hosted on the shared server.
Should your site exceed the limits, you may find additional charges are applied or access to your site is disabled altogether. Neither outcome is particularly desirable and can hurt your website growth.
VPS hosting allows you to transfer huge amounts of data each month, ensuring your site is always available when your users need it.
Shared hosting plans are a great place to start. You get to learn how to run a website, but as it grows you need to apply the appropriate resources your website needs. VPS hosting plans are the perfect solution for your growing website as you can scale your needs accordingly.
GreenCloud offers various VPS plans to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes. If you have any questions about VPS hosting, feel free to contact our GreenCloud team of experts. Also, be sure to check back on the GreenCloud blog for more helpful business tips!