When is it Time to Migrate to a New Hosting Company?

Packing up your stuff and moving isn’t always a great experience, but it’s a part of life. When it comes to web hosting, though, you want to believe you got things right the first time. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Businesses often find themselves in a position where they need to migrate their sites to a new host. If you’re just starting out and looking to establish a site or your site is currently in a growth period, you may be wondering when it’s time to start heading out for greener pastures.

 

A variety of factors can play into why you may want to start shopping around for a new hosting company. Here are some of the most common reasons why you might be shopping for new VPS hosting sooner rather than later.

 

Increase in Traffic

 

This is typically the biggest reason why you’d have to start seeking out new hosting options. Many people start with a shared hosting plan because it’s the most common kind of hosting and also the cheapest. It’s perfectly reasonable as to why people opt for it. However, shared hosting has its drawbacks.

 

First, a quick explainer for why shared hosting ends up not suiting people’s needs. You’re sharing server resources with everyone else on the machine. Unlike a VPS where you have a definitive allotment of resources that only you use, on a shared hosting plan all the different sites are vying for the same pieces of the pie. That ends up being the throttle point.

 

Whether it’s your traffic or your neighbor’s, a spike will cause performance issues. Site speed could diminish (which is bad for your bottom line) and, in a worst-case scenario, visitors at a point may not be able to even access your site due to a lack of bandwidth. If you are consistently getting higher traffic than your hosting plan can handle, you will see poor performance. In extreme cases, your hosting company may look to get rid of you. While you probably won’t be getting an email saying “You’re being kicked off” you can expect to receive many messages asking you to upgrade your plan because your resource use is too high. Barring that, your performance will continue to suffer until you leave your host out of frustration.

 

Resource Use

 

Traffic is usually the big culprit, but your general resource use case will dictate if you need to upgrade your hosting to a VPS plan or even a dedicated server. Something like an e-commerce site with the Magento CMS installed along with a bunch of extensions is going to be resource hungry. Right off the bat, you could be eating up most of your CPU allotment on a lower tiered plan. Throw in the huge database of products you’ll need to create and then actual user traffic and you can see how quickly you could hit your ceiling. Shared hosting is rarely suggested for e-commerce projects and it’s recommended you start with a VPS right off the bat.

 

Even a WordPress site which one might not think is terribly resource intensive could suffer from slow page loading times if too many plugins are installed and the server isn’t up to the task of processing the site fast enough. It’s true that traffic is usually the reason for high resource use, but sometimes you have to look at your own development practices.

 

 

Your Host Got Bought Out

 

Sometimes you’ll look to switch hosts for reasons that don’t have much to do with your code or traffic numbers. It’ll be for much more traditional, non-digital reasons. Just like with every other industry, buyouts occur. For the vast majority of site owners this doesn’t usually mean much of anything. Depending on the structure of the buyout, your performance levels may not change and if you never had to really use customer service before, life goes on. There’s really no difference to you.

 

But, it’s possible that the new leadership can bring changes that make you reassess your relationship with your hosting company. Maybe the customer service team you’ve developed rapport with has been replaced. Service inquiries are responded to at a slower pace. Site speed is lower because different hardware is being used. Maybe your monthly price goes up. All of these things may have you seeking out a new hosting company so you can get a better experience.

 

Conclusion

 

Migrating your website to a new hosting company can be a headache. But, if your site has been suffering due to poor performance or any other reason, it’s time to make some changes. The team at JaguarPC has been helping business owners get established with the hosting they need for years. If you’re wondering if now is the time to upgrade your hosting to better serve your customers, contact us today and we’ll help you find the solution you need.