When Should You Upgrade to VPS Hosting?
The Key Signs That You Need to Switch to VPS Hosting
There are plenty of reasons you might be considering switching from one hosting solution to another, but one of the most common upgrades that smaller businesses make is moving from shared hosting to VPS hosting as their business expands.
Here are some signs that you are ready to move on to VPS hosting:
1. Your Website Page Loading Has Slowed Down
If you started your website with either a free hosting solution or a shared hosting option, there is nothing wrong with that for small businesses with a limited budget. However, as you attract more traffic or add more content to your website, it becomes slower and slower.
You can use a website performance tool for free to see how fast your website is. There may be some small changes you can introduce to speed up your website. If that does not help, it is probably time to upgrade to VPS hosting.
Free hosting gives you limited storage, and the performance is generally poor because you are using the same server as many other websites. The same goes for shared hosting; your website will share a server with other websites, so what happens with their sites will inevitably slow your website down. Nothing irritates website users quite as much as a slow-loading page!
2. You Want to Add New Features to Your Website
If you want your website to impress visitors, you will need features that help boost your sales. If you use WordPress, you might want to install plugins that add functionality like a rotating photo gallery or another stunning add-on to make your website stand out from your competitors.
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) offers almost the same service as a dedicated server, enabling you to do a lot more with your website.
With VPS hosting, you get more RAM, disk space, and CPU than with shared hosting, so your website can handle more resource-hungry features and more traffic. The more features you add to your website, the more demand you place on your hosting service, making it inevitable that a growing website will need an upgrade if it started with a basic hosting package.
Popular website design trends include particle backgrounds and custom illustrations to bring your website to life and attract potential customers. Design elements that include images, videos, Flash files, databases, etc., will require more storage space from your hosted server.
3. You Need to Enhance Your Security
The need for better online security has become more prevalent than ever before. With various scams and new types of complex cybercrime emerging regularly, as a website owner, you have a responsibility to protect your website users.
If you are collecting data using online forms, you want to ensure that the data you collect is as safe as possible. If you are taking card payments through your website, you must comply with the minimum requirements of the PCI and maintain a secure environment for website users.
Shared hosting solutions are less secure than VPS, partly because the VPS hosting company will acquire better security solutions and because sharing a server can cause security problems. For example, your website could pick up a virus from one of the other websites hosted on the server you are sharing.
4. Increased Traffic to Your Website
It only takes one excellent marketing campaign or a series of positive online customer ratings to cause an unprecedented surge in traffic to your website. If you started with the basic features offered from a UK VPS, your website might not handle the increased traffic. It can cause your website to crash if your hosting solution is inadequate for the new demand from eager visitors interested in your products or services.
If your website doesn’t crash, it may slow down because your hosting solution isn’t geared up to handle the volumes of traffic you have attracted. So, if your business awareness is growing and you’re finding increasing numbers of visitors heading to your website, it is probably a good time to upgrade to VPS.
If you can time it before performance issues emerge, that is much better than waiting until the problems start. If people visit your website looking for solutions and the website isn’t available or loads slowly, they will move to a competitor’s website. Most online consumers want a website to load within seconds, or they will leave. It really is as simple as that, and it can drastically impact your ability to generate online business.
Research shows that 40% of website users will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.
5. If You Want an E-commerce Website
If you previously set up a simple website just to get your business online but now want to sell your products from your website, your old hosting solution may not do the job. Look at the VPS hosting UK options better equipped to support e-commerce websites and the higher demands that come with that.
Your e-commerce website will require more sophisticated security features as you will be taking online payments, and your product pages will take up significant amounts of space that a shared hosting solution probably won’t handle.
6. Your Website Keeps Going Offline
One thing that can really harm your business reputation is when you have problems with your website going offline. Numerous reasons cause this, such as running out of space or reaching visitor limits, but hosts often take their servers down for maintenance.
If this is happening frequently, you are potentially losing customers each time. Not only will you lose that initial interaction with the visitors, but there is also a large chance they will not return because they have a bad impression of your website when presented with an error message. So when looking at UK VPS hosting solutions, see if there is a guaranteed amount of Uptime. The better the amount of Uptime, the more your website will be available to your visitors.
7. Approaching the End of Your Contract
If you signed up with a contract that is ending, it is always worth looking at other hosting options available. Technology can move a long way in just a year, and what might have been the best deal 12 months ago is no longer what you need. People are often put off changing web hosts because they think it will take up time and will be complicated, but it really isn’t difficult. In the same way that you might change your mobile phone network or your Sky/cable TV provider, your web hosting can quickly be moved from one provider to another. If your new VPS hosting provider has a good support team, they will ensure the transition goes smoothly.
If you have been experiencing performance issues or your host raises their prices, you should see what else is available to meet your hosting requirements. If you have future plans to make changes to your website, it is the ideal time to start planning your website developments and select a VPS host that will deliver everything you want.
Having a well-planned digital marketing strategy will help you choose the most appropriate web hosting solution, so it is always a good idea to do this before the end of your contract. Develop your plans for one year’s time or even further ahead if you can, so that you can get started with the best UK VPS hosting solution that suits your needs.
8. You Need Administrative Access to the Server
With shared hosting packages, you do not have full administrative access to the server, which you might need if you want to install software that needs access to the program files. You will only really need this level of access if you plan to manage the server yourself.
Summary
The best time to look at switching your hosting provider is before performance or any other issues begin to impact your business. A broken website or a slow-running website can do severe damage to the reputation of your business, so as soon as you are seeing any signs of performance problems, you should act quickly.
When visitors get frustrated with your website, they will not do business with you, and they will not come back to your website a second time if they could not get what they wanted the first time. You really cannot afford to let those opportunities slip through your fingers. If you have the budget to move from shared hosting to VPS, it is the best solution for an expanding business that cannot afford the expense of a dedicated server.
Like all the different types of hosting packages, there are various UK VPS hosting providers available that you can choose from. The important thing is to avoid rushing into a selection without understanding your own business’s requirements for now and in the future. Understanding what you will want from your hosting package in a year or even a few years’ time will be very useful in choosing the most relevant host for your business’s needs.
Feel that it’s time to make the move to VPS hosting? You’ve come to the right place.
Check out our VPS packages for the fastest, most secure VPS hosting around! Click here to get started.
Need more information or assistance? Our support team is here to help. Contact us via our support page, or reach out to us directly. We are dedicated to providing the best support for all your hosting needs.
