What type host do I need?

VPS, dedicated, managed?

[Wlauzon]

In the process of getting all things in place for some site/domain moves to combine several sites into one. All will then have a single domain. One is an ecommerce site.

We do not expect heavy traffic - perhaps 500 to 1500 uniques a day. The number of pages will not be huge, perhaps 5000 at max. But the site will be info-heavy, with a lot of things like pdf manuals, spec sheets, and associated images, some of which might be pretty large.

One of things important to us are load and download speed, so customers don't have to wait for pages to load. The ecommerce package, forum, and blog will be php/MySQL based.

So question is, will a VPS server work for us, or should we go with something like a managed dedicated server? Is a dedicated worth the approximate 3-5x extra cost?

[tedster]

I've got clients in a similar situation who do OK with a VPS server.