To be? Or not to be? That is the question. Such is also the dilemma that one can face to decide whether it is time to migrate to VPS Hosting from your Shared Hosting environment. But as Shakespeare would say “Be just, and Fear not“, for in this post, we will discuss 5 important tell-tale signs that suggest you should move from Shared Hosting to VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting.

1. Audience Base is on the Rise: Your hosting Control Panel Analytics is your best friend when it comes to understanding server performance. Sure, you can use tools like Google Analytics to understand traffic growth numbers, but that won’t help you understand how your server is performing to serve that traffic. Which is why, you need to correlate Google Analytics data to the data from your Hosting Control Panel. Keep a watch on 2 important metrics: Requests per Second (RPS) and Peak Response Time (PRT). A proper understanding of these metrics will help you understand if the current Shared Hosting setup is adequate of if you need something more resourceful.
2. Security: Since in a Shared Hosting environment resources are shared, the chances of security threats are higher. Although the security of your website is the responsibility of the hosting provider, you need to keep yourself informed on what is happening. This can be done using the Security Logs. Keep a close watch on your security monitoring logs, if you see that there is an increase in security breach attempts or other security issues, then you should take action. Another thing you can do is keep a watch on Error Rate of your website from the hosting Control Panel. If you see that the rate of non-200OK pages being rendered is rising, then your server is not cut out to serve your site in the best way possible.
3.  You Need to Install Custom Software Regularly: If your website requires custom software and plugins to be installed regularly, or you are building complex functionality that utilized 3^rd party integration, then moving to VPS hosting will be more viable as it will give you more control over programming actions with features like full root access and support teams.
4.  Your Website is not Passing PCI Compliance Test: If you are planning to start eCommerce on your website or your existing eCommerce business is expanding, then Shared Hosting many not prove to be sufficient, moving forward. With VPS Hosting, not only will you get enhanced security and performance, but you will also be able to customize it to meet the rigorous standards that PCI compliance requires in terms of security and data protection under the PCI DSS Compliance test. Being PCI compliant gives you added security, and also boosts customer confidence.
5.  Your Need for Hosting Support is Increasing: As your website and business grows, you need to add that much more resources to your website and hosting. And as the overall complexity and resources increases, your reliance on the hosting provider increases. In VPS Hosting, you will have better support and some good VPS Hosting Providers like ResellerClub provide Managed VPS hosting that gives you a dedicated support team, around the clock.

These are just a few signs that you can look out for, if you want to decide on moving to VPS hosting. But as a thumb rule, as your website gains popularity and traffic and if you are taking up online transactions and complex functionality, VPS Hosting might be a better option for you. Hope this helps and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!