When to choose dedicated hosting over shared

How much traffic before we need to consider this?

[Total Paranoia]

I read Bretts post over in Forum 3 [webmasterworld.com] regarding having a unique I.P but other than the (possible, but not proved) ranking benefits, when is a good time to switch to a dedicated server?

A few of my commercial websites are seeing 40'000 - 50'000 unique hits per month with an average of 4 page views per visitor and approximatley 8gb data transfer.

I still use cheap (yet very reliable) shared hosting. Is now the time to look into a dedicated solution or would you take it further?

[SlimKim]

even if you are with a "well-thought-of-decent-host" ...

you may find as we did ... that your host ask you to go elsewhere to a dedicated, even though you are running well within there parameters.

most host cater to sites that only get a token amount of hits.

We were about where you are now, when our sites were suspended without warning.

Sometimes a semi-dedicated will work well for a time. If you forsee high growth rates ... you might won't to go ahead and go dedicated.

:)

[Total Paranoia]

Thanks slim ;). So semi dedicated might be an option for us.

Does anyone else have any views on when to go for dedicated hosting that they can share?