Do I really need a VPS?

[cla313]

Hi.
One of my websites is currently hosted on a shared environment. The current hosting plan is on a Linux server and it's a basic one: disk space is 200MB, the monthly transfer allowance 10GB. Plus it includes: SSL, FrontPage Extensions, MySQL, PHP4, Perl, CGI.

The problem is that now I want to setup a password protected area for registered members only where I can provide them with collaboration tools such as calendaring, wiki, forum, polls and so on.
I am still looking for good tools to do all this and I looked for OS solutions. Talking of wikis I had two candidates: TikiWiki (suggested by host btw) or Twiki could provide many of the tools I mentioned "in one package".
First the host told me that I should forget about twiki because it uses perl and it would slow down the server. Ok , so I went on reading more about Tikiwiki. When I contacted them back about the server requirements of Tikiwiki they told me that well yes they can change the php.ini for me to meet those requirements. At the same time they are trying to push me to go to a VPS plan. And this scares me a little.
Would upgrading to a more robust Linux package in a shared environment not be good enough? Anybody can give some advice please?

Thanks in advance!
~cla313

[zulu_dude]

A VPS requires much more server knowledge than a shared hosting package. If you're comfortable running a server, then a VPS is a good idea. If not, stick with the shared hosting.

[cla313]

Well I said that migrating to VPS makes me nervous and I will not do it unless it is inevitable. But seen what I plan to add to the website is VPS really such a must? Are these applications I am interested in so much resource demanding? Is there any valid alternative that I can implement on a shared hosting plan (perhaps upgraded to a bit more capacity)?

[maccas]

You could of course install apache/mysql/perl/php etc on your home computer, have a play around with the configuration files for a few weeks, it will make upgrading to a VPS less daunting.

[cla313]

I have apache + php on my pc. Unfortunately I don't have much time left for playing around. ... oh boy. I was really hoping I can setup something on a shared environment.