When to upgrade your web-hosting? Advantages of VPS?

Question

Right now I'm using shared hosting from ixwebhosting. As I've developed more websites for clients and continue to receive more visitors each month I have experienced a lot of "lag" and slow load times from the server.

Most of the time I'm using wordpress and jquery so basically I'm running linux, php, mysql and all the basics. I know wordpress can be resource intensive so i'm looking to upgrade.

How do I know what specs I'll need? Are there any good benchmarking tools?

Basically I just need some suggestions on how to move forward with upgrading my host to something that is able to handle 5-10 website with 5k-10k visitors a month.

Answer 1

I've been there...

The first place to start is http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ where you can lurk in the VPS section to read current reviews of who's doing well. There's a good section on VPS offers to that makes the switch a little less costly.

I've used a few over the years and settled on WiredTree based on their service (which you cannot overlook). Managed hosting is always the best way to go unless you are server-savvy.

Additionaly, and as a side topic, you can reduce the server load of resource intensive WordPress sites through good caching (W3TC etc).

Good luck...

Answer 2

You are looking for a VPS in the range of 1GB+ RAM and a decent CPU. I would recommend a MANAGED solution if it's the first time you will be using a VPS.

I had a positive experience with Site5, they also have many co-locations (a term which you will be familiar very soon :)).

I, however, moved to Rapidswitch server (dedicated server) which is in entry level and works very well for me.

For the benchmarks i cannot really tell you something serious but, i'm pretty sure someone else will do.

Hope it helps :)