If your website or company mail has outgrown shared hosting, the next step is usually a VPS. Here is what actually changes — and what it costs in practice.
What shared hosting really is
On shared hosting your website lives on one machine together with hundreds of others. It is cheap because the cost of that machine is split between everyone on it. The trade-off is that you share processor time, memory and reputation: a busy neighbour slows your site down, and limits are fixed by the provider — you cannot install what you like.
For a brochure website with a few hundred visitors a month, that is perfectly fine. Problems start when the site grows, when you add a shop, or when you need something the hoster does not offer.
What a VPS gives you
A VPS is a slice of a server reserved for you alone: your own processor cores, your own memory, your own operating system. Nobody else can slow you down, and you decide what runs on it — a website, a mail server, Nextcloud, a database, an internal application.
The catch is that a bare VPS arrives empty. Someone has to install and configure it, keep the system patched, watch that it is up, and make backups. That someone is either you or your provider — which brings us to the word managed.
Managed versus unmanaged
An unmanaged VPS costs a few pounds a month and comes with nothing but the machine. If it stops responding at midnight, that is your evening. A managed VPS costs more because the provider does the housekeeping: updates, monitoring, backups, restore tests, basic security.
For a small company without an in-house IT person, unmanaged usually turns out more expensive — not in fees, but in the hours you spend and the risk you carry.
Five signs it is time to move
- The site is slow at busy times and the hoster suggests a bigger plan every few months.
- Your mail is tied to the hosting account. If the hosting goes, the mail goes with it — and moving mail later is far harder than moving a website.
- You need software the hoster does not allow — a specific PHP version, a database, Nextcloud, an internal tool.
- You have no idea when the last backup was taken, or whether it restores.
- You are told the problem is "the shared environment" whenever something breaks.
What it costs
Our managed plans start at £25 a month for a mail server and £30 for website hosting, with everything included: updates, round-the-clock monitoring, daily backups with restore tests and UK data centre. A standard migration — one website or one mail domain — is £75 one-off, and free if you pay for a year up front. Complex moves are quoted before any work starts.
Compared with £5 shared hosting that sounds like a lot. Compared with one afternoon of lost email, it usually does not.
How a migration actually goes
We copy the site or mailboxes to the new server first and test them there. Only when everything works do we switch the domain over, so downtime is measured in minutes. Your old hosting stays untouched until you decide to cancel it — there is always a way back.
Not sure which you need?
Tell us what you run today and we will say honestly whether a VPS is worth it for you. Sometimes the answer is no, and better shared hosting is enough.