Shared hosting is cheap and it’s fine for getting started. You get a website and email for a few dollars a month. But as your site grows, shared hosting shows its limits: you can’t install custom software, you can’t configure the server, bandwidth is limited, and you’re sharing resources with dozens or hundreds of other sites on the same machine.
When you hit those limits, VPS hosting is the natural next step.
Signs you need to upgrade
- Your site is slow and your host says you’re hitting resource limits
- You need to install software that shared hosting doesn’t allow (Node.js, Redis, custom PHP versions)
- You need root or administrator access to configure the server
- You want to run multiple sites with proper isolation
- You need a staging or development environment alongside your production site
- Your traffic has grown beyond what shared hosting can handle
What VPS hosting gives you
A VPS is a virtual machine with its own operating system, dedicated CPU and RAM, and SSD storage. It behaves like a small dedicated server but at a fraction of the cost. You get full root access on a Linux VPS or Administrator access on a Windows VPS, which means you can install anything, configure anything, and control everything.
With VPS hosting, you can:
- Install and configure Nginx, Apache, or any web server
- Run Docker containers
- Set up caching layers (Redis, Memcached, Varnish)
- Configure your own firewall rules
- Run cron jobs and background processes
- Host multiple websites with cPanel or manually
The upgrade path
Most people go: shared hosting, then VPS hosting, then dedicated server as their needs grow. Some skip VPS and go straight to dedicated if their workload demands it, but for most sites, a VPS provides the right balance of cost, performance, and control.
Our VPS hosting plans start at a few dollars a month. Deploy at any of our six data centers. Sign up to get started or contact us if you need help migrating from shared hosting.