Pros and Cons of using a Virtual vs Shared Servers

[DXL]

I have a site that has been on an iPower shared server for a few years, it went from 90,000 visits, 6 million hits and 40 gigs of bandwidth a month exactly one year ago, to about 300,000 visits, 16 million hits, and 100 gigs of bandwidth a month today. Most of this traffic is from search engines, although I have about 7,000 backlinks (subsequently I use this site to link to other sites of mine for PR/link value reasons). Right now I'm allowed 250 gigs of monthly bandwidth usage, my host provider is encouraging me to move to a virtual server and kick that up to 1000 gigs.

I have several features that rely on MySQL databases (message board, galleries), they have been running slower lately and the host says that its because I'm on a shared server, and should move to a faster virtual server. I'm concerned that moving to a different server could somehow effect or corrupt my databases. I'm also worried about losing the numerous webmail accounts with years worth of emails saved to them, and all of my statistics data collected through AWstats.

So what would be the pros and cons of me moving this site to a virtual server?

[axgrindr]

I had a similar situation as you and my shared host provider asked me to move. Same situation with lots of MySQL databases to move and all kinds of data to save.

I ended up moving it twice. Once to a virtual server the ultimately went for the fully dedicated server. The dedicated server ended up being cheaper than all of my shared accounts combined.
The move was fine and everything arrived intact.
You can always keep them both running during the switch so if something is missing you can get it quickly from your shared server.

If I were you I would bypass virtual and go straight to dedicated because you'll probably end up there sooner or later anyway.

If you are a ww supporter you should check out the 'Webhosting Issues and Options' forum.