Shared Hosting vs Dedicated hosting

[sudhirmangla]

I am having a site with 4000-5000 unique users per day. Site is currently hosted on shared hosting. Site has become very slow and sometime down due to excessive traffic. Should I look for other shared hosting or look for dedicated hosting plans.

Most of my pages are static HTML.

[Jack_Hughes]

If the site is worth anything to you then a dedicated server may well be the way to go. They are not that expensive and you can always host more of your sites on it.

[sudhirmangla]

I have read other topics on this form Does VPS would be good or dedicated servers are the only option for that much traffic.

I future I want to switch to word press

[limoshawn]

we switched to a dedicated server late last year and have been very happy!

It's costing about $400 a month for full support and maintenance (and the server of course). We were previously paying about $220 for shared hosting of all our sites. Now everything is in one place, much easier.

[sudhirmangla]

But as I am having only one site. Dedicated hosting would be too costly for me. With that much fees I hardly get any profit from the site. I heard that VPS would be available for around 35$

[rocknbil]

There are less expensive dedicate hosting plans out there, we cannot mention names but I pay about $1100 USD per year.

You only have one site now - but if you had a dedicated server, you could add as many sites to it as it can handle at zero extra hosting fees. That's a Big Deal in the long run. :-)

Additionally the idea is to monetize your site so that it pays for the hosting. A VPS is a good plan though, it will be 100x better than shared. The only problem with VPS is you don't get direct command line access to the box itself. If you don't need that for anything, it will work for you.

[particleman]

Basically repeating what others have said, but dedicated hosting is all around better. You can get into a dedicated package for around $100 or less a month ok support usually. For the business I work for we use one of the high end hosting companies and we pay $400/m for that, but I can literally pick up the phone and talk to a qualified tech 365/24/7 with no wait. Worth it? Yes, we run a few ecommerce sites on it. Even 20 minutes of down time during the day once a month makes up the $300 a month.

Whatever dedicated package you decide on you end up with a more robust solution in the long run.

[vincevincevince]

A good recommendation for today's market is most certainly to rent a dedicated server at the lower end of the market (but not scratch bottom) and then pay a system administrator a small fee to regularly work on your site and be available in case of emergency.

[bmcgee]

No offense, but using the justification of "avoiding 20 minutes of downtime each month" is a lousy reasoning to pay $400 / mo for a dedicated server.

Even if you are paying $100, you shouldn't be tolerating downtimes like that. Accepting it means someone isn't doing their job or you have a poor setup and/or data center.

[aspdaddy]

Look for a host that has much busier sites than yours, and try their shared hosting first. Get stats on your weekly data transfer and peak concurrent usage so you know what to ask for.

Ultimately your budget dictates whether you use shared, VPS, or dedicated. If you can afford it and need it, go dedicated.

[limoshawn]

bmcgee,
I can't speak for particleman but I pay that much a month for the service. I can't count the times that the techs at my host have fixed something I broke in a matter of minutes, stuff that would have taking me hours to fix (but only seconds to brake ;) ). I’ve never not been able to get a hold of my host, they even answer the phone at 2 in the morning. That kind of service is priceless and hard to find.
That price also includes server and software updates as they come available. I’ve never had to ask for new software to be installed, they usually tell me what’s coming out before I know about it.

[particleman]

ditto Limoshawn..

bmcgee, unfortunately I have learned the hard way in the way of hosting. I disagree with what you are saying, that downtime directly cost us money. I'm saying 20 minutes cost OUR business the difference in hosting price in lost sales. Run the numbers that is enough to make the switch. When our site goes down for whatever reason I pick up the phone and it will be fixed or addressed immediatly regardless.

[bmcgee]

My point is that you have other issues besides the hosting if you have downtime like that. Don't blame it on the hosting and pay extra.

Resolve the root of the issue instead.

[limoshawn]

root of the issue: I brake stuff... a lot.

resolution: pay for good service that can fix stuff quickly.. so I can get back to braking it.

[bmcgee]

heh good one. If you have a data center that will provide "you break it, we'll fix it" service, then that deal works well for you.