Although hosting providers can make their best pitch and offer you a hosting plan on the basis of your needs, it is still your responsibility as the site owner to assess when and where you need to make a change. Your website performance will indicate if your current plans are working for you or do you need to find a better and more efficient solution. Sometimes these indications can be as obvious as a speed drop or as indirect as losing out on a single customer. Here are a few scenarios that are common indicators when you should consider VPS web hosting.
VPS or Virtual Private Server Hosting is a highly secure and advanced way of hosting your site. It runs on a network of virtual servers, where each unit is kept isolated from the other. It appears similar to dedicated hosting but is only virtual and far cheaper.
So where and when does a VPS hosting option fit in?
When there is an exponential increase in site traffic.
If you have an e-commerce site, a social media platform, a news media site, or similar interactive sites, you will often encounter sudden traffic surges. For e-commerce, it will occur during festive seasons or public holidays, for news, it could be during a major political or social event. Whatever the case may be, such traffic spikes are best handled in a VPS environment, which allows you to scale your resources and upgrade your server at the very instant of a traffic surge.
When your site needs more security.
If you are hosting your site on a shared platform, and have experienced any security concerns, know that it is quite common on such hosting environments. By virtue of its hosting architecture, shared platforms are used by multiple tenants, and any threat affecting one could easily affect others. No matter what security measures you take, chances of your server’s exposure to attacks are always there. So, if security is a major concern, and which should be, you might want to consider moving to VPS. With its isolated server structure, your account remains unaffected by the others and remains secure at all times.
When you need more control over your server operations.
This particularly applies to businesses that require more discretion for data and information. As a site owner you would want more control on your server system and customize hardware configuration or add or remove software, or even increase security. You can do all this only on a VPS server where you can get root access (for Linux based) or admin access (for Windows-based) and start, stop, or override system operations.
When your site is loading slower than usual.
One-off instances of slow loading time might be a genuine technical or network glitch. But if this becomes a trend, then you should be concerned. Slow loading speed affects your site traffic, by reducing your search engine rankings, and thus reducing chances of conversions. In short, speed can directly affect your business. With VPS, the servers run on high-performing hardware which remarkably improves the site speed, thus boosting your SEO score.
Summing up…
Like most things, not all hosting platforms are made equal. Every hosting architecture is designed keeping in mind the size of the online business, the website requirements, traffic volume, tech budget, and many such finer nuances of running a site. You should read the signs and assess the scenarios and make the necessary changes at the right time.
