When You Know To Upgrade?

[condairy79]

I recently have been doing a lot research on finding a new host provider for the company I work for. As you all now, this can be a daunting task, especially when you are limited on some knowledge of ecommerce.

The big questions is, when do you know its time to upgrade your hosting? Looking for the dedicated servers etc.. ?

To be quite honest, I have no idea what type of hosting our company needs at this time. I am going with what these sales reps at the hosting companies tell me. I thought I ask here and see what you guys have to say. Maybe you can provide some insight on where I am currently at and what type of hosting our company needs at this time.

Store Info:

We have 130 products at this time.

We are currently averaging 30,000 sessions per month according to Google analytics

Is that enough store info to guide me in the right direction? If you need more to better evaluate, just let me know.

Thanks in advance!

[JLHC]

You will usually know the time to upgrade if your website is starting to slow down while all software level optimizations are not helping. 

That's said, your store doesn't sound too big so a small to medium plan should suffice for now as long as there's a clear upgrade path to accomodate your future growth. 

Another point to consider is your budget. Most who don't have the budget will start with shared hosting (where some hosting providers are more secure than others so it's a hit or miss) while if you have the budget, you may want to consider starting with your own environment like a VPS, Cloud Server or Dedicated Server (depending on what the provider offers) as you will be the only one in the server so your website will not be affected by others in any way. If you do go with a VPS, Cloud Server or Dedicated Server, make sure that it's a fully managed solution so the provider will handle everything for you as managing your own unmanaged server is no fun if you are not a system administrator (biggest problem being security). 

[MagenX]

you have to use some monitoring tools where you can see if your shop hits the limit.

like timeouts, memory exhausted, etc

[condairy79]

Thanks for the input guys. We have the budget to go dedicated, thats no problem. Only thing is, I am accustomed to cPanel and not Linux. I do not want to have to pay someone to setup email account, ftp accounts, mysql DB, where I already know how to do all that if I have the interface to do it with.

That was my concern with Rackspace. I was about to pull the trigger with them guys but it appears that I will be limited to setting things up bc they do not offer cPanel with their cloud service. Instead, a program called Vesta and I really did not like the setup when watching it on Tube.

As of right now, that is my delimma going dedicated/cloud. :/

[JLHC]

Many hosting providers do provide cPanel along with a Managed Dedicated Server or Managed Cloud Server so that shouldn't be an issue.

Are you sure you can't have Rackspace install cPanel in their dedicated servers (there'll be a monthly license fee for cPanel but that shouldn't be a problem)?

[condairy79]

I was told that if it does get installed that they will not be liable for any issues. Not that was THE deal breaker but additional cost is something I am not looking forward too either. Think its like $45 a month?

I was able to see what Nexcess had to offer and I must say, they are very impressive.... so far. I just got the standard account to see the functionality last night and I must say, when they say they are dedicated to Magento, I believe it! They even offer FREE migration if you sign up with them. Plus they have it setup to where, when you grow, they are there to place you in the right hosting. Now to just see how the support is.

They have a great admin area where I can do the necessary things like email account, ftp accounts, etc. and have a great monitoring tool on the main page of the login that lets you know where you are at with traffic and db size.

Thanks for all the help guys.. If you like, I will keep you posted.

[MagenX]

if you like cPanel and dedicated, then you have to check www.ovh.com

SSD servers. it will cost you 5x less than any cloud server, and even any mid range enterprise box enough for many years.

[JLHC]

---

@MagenX wrote:

if you like cPanel and dedicated, then you have to check www.ovh.com

SSD servers. it will cost you 5x less than any cloud server, and even any mid range enterprise box enough for many years.

---

The problem with providers like OVH is they are usually Unmanaged which is a big problem for most users who don't want to worry about server management and security. 

Even if they do offer Managed services, they are not familiar with Magento so users will most likely need to hire another guy to do optimizations, etc which is unnecessary when they go with a Magento optimized provider. 

[Ann4ever]

I don't know when to upgrade. I think if there is no problem,  I don't plan to upgrade it.

[magesolutions]

You can use free service like http://www.monitor.us/ , they will show the server response time in chart. Any time you see the down time too much or the server response time too much then it 's time to upgrade your hosting.