When to upgrade to a dedicated server?

Jun 14

I am sure that most of the new bloggers have a shared hosting plan, not a dedicated server and there is no problem. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated server if your blogs stays very well on a shared hosting plan. I tried to make a little research because I always argue with the guys from support on different reasons.

Today, I asked at Hostgator what happens if I get on the digg’s front page with my blog hosted at them, on a shared hosting plan. Here is the conversation ( I got the permission to post it here ):

So, as you can see, at the beginning, Jacob P – the guy from support tried to convince me that a shared hosting plan at Hostgator is very powerful and should resist at huge traffic. Then, after I said that there is a possibility to buy a dedicated server (that means giving more money to them) he changed his mind and he wasn’t so sure if a shared account will resist at a .. let’s say digg’s front page.

Right now, I am hosting about 10 websites on my shared account at Hostgator and they all have a traffic of about 15,000 visits / day and I really don’t have any problems, my account gets suspended only when I receive many visitors in a small period of time.

So, you should upgrade to a dedicated server only when yo earn more than the hosting’s price and only when your blog really needs a dedicated server, you will know that by seeing your account getting suspended very often.

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Author:
Alex Category:
Blogging 2Comments

2 Responses to “When to upgrade to a dedicated server?”

Bamboo Forest
June 20th, 2008

Heh, you put the conversation in here – creative.

Jarred
June 30th, 2008

Shared web hosting is just that shared. I have had sites taken down before because of too much traffic even thou I didn’t go beyond my transfer cap. Basically these days hosting companies have a byline stating that you can use 500 gigs per month BUT you cant use more 3%-7% of the server resources at any given time. That my fried is the rub. That is why you will want to have a vps or dedicated server for your critical sites. My host server intellect has me set up with a managed vps server for the same price as high priced full hosting package. Plus I never have to worry about that 7% resource clause I can use my whole vps if i need to!