Outgrown Shared but Can't Afford Dedicated. VPS?

[etali]

I've outgrown my shared hosting, and I can't afford the amount that my host would charge for me to make the leap to dedicated hosting.

Does that mean that a VPS would be a more viable option? What is the usual cost for a VPS? I would need something that could handle moderately large amounts of traffic at peak times. I don't need a lot of space (just a few gig) but lots of bandwidth, and also a good uptime policy.

I'm concerned with a VPS that when the server and database was getting hammered it would just fall over like my shared hosting?

Any advice much appreciated.

[TWD_Tony]

In my opinion there are only 2 kinds of hosting - shared hosting and dedicated hosting... Anything else (VPS / VDS) is just a half arsed attempt at making shared hosting look like dedicated hosting - which of course it isn't.
A good VPS has it's place - but if you are looking for the power and the resources that a dedi box provide's then you will only find these in a dedi box and not on a VPS.

As you can tell - I'm not a fan of VPS's at all

[monaghan]

If you are breaking a shared host with 1 site, then either you have a huge site which has no business being on a shared host anyway or the hosting provider has oversold the box beyond it's capacity.

If you go with VPS, then you'll need to manage the VPS just as you would with a dedicated box and you'll need to ensure that the share of the box you get is sufficient. Some VPS control systems allow overselling of VPS resources, so you could have just as many problems.

Often (in my opinion) to get a decent VPS would cost nearly as much as a small dedicated box.

Working with databases is often sub-optimal due to design issues. If you are hammering the database, then what are you actually doing? Most (if not all) database queries should be optimised to use indexes. Don't do a select * if you don't need all the fields. Has the schema been normalised? Do you make good use of where clauses to reduce the data returned. Don't return more data than you actually need to generate your web page.

Try tuning your code and indexes as this may generate vast improvement with no need to move hosts.

[paperclip]

THe advise above is great. Either optimize what you have, or if that's not possible, then you really need a dedicated server.

[brian]

I have a number of sites that are too big for shared accounts - but have no problems having their own reseller accounts, which is slightly more expensive than shared, but usually far cheaper than VPS and dedicated.

[monaghan]

Good call Brian, however you need to ensure that your reseller host is not overselling resellers as you'll be in the same boat

I'd optimise the site first, then look at either a non-oversold reseller and run the single site within it or look for a shared host who will not overload the server.

Whichever way you go, if you're using a lot of resource, then expect to pay a fair price for the hosting.

[MasterMind]

At some point of my hosting experience what i did was getting two shared reseller hosting in different services/datacenters, and at very a low price after exhaustive research.

Therefor I created accounts for my domains adding 4 DNS records to each one, 2 for each reseller, then if one were down, domains switched automatically to the other and so on.

Maybe a crazy experiment but it worked for me

[monaghan]

Not a complete failover, but good idea for static sites though