When to Upgrade Your Hosting Plan

Signs You Should Upgrade Your Hosting Plan

The most common reason people upgrade their hosting plan is to improve their website’s performance.

Often, lower tier hosting plans include everything for a website’s basic needs, but if your site grows and begins to generate more traffic, your hosting plan may not be able to keep up.

So, when should you upgrade your hosting plan? If your website is struggling with performance issues, encountering resource limits, or needs improved security, it’s probably a good idea to upgrade to a more inclusive plan.

Learn more about web hosting with our Complete Guide to Web Hosting.

Website Performance

A website that performs poorly can result in the loss of user engagement and potential revenue. While there are a lot of different factors that affect website performance, but you might consider upgrading your web hosting plan if your website is experiencing any of the following:

Slow Speed. First, make sure you’ve optimized your website by caching and compressing website media. Large files, especially video files or high resolution images, can slow down your site. Once optimized, check your website’s loading times. If it is still taking more than 3 second to load a page, it probably means your server is overloaded and it’s time to upgrade.

Frequent Downtime. You may consider upgrading your web hosting plan if your website is experiencing consistent crashes or other server errors, like 503 errors. If you’re still getting “This website is temporary unavailable” messages after optimizing your site, this may mean that your current web hosting plan is unable to handle the amount of traffic your website is bringing in.

Customization Limitations. As you’re developing your website, you may find you want to customize it with different functions and plugins. If you’re using email with your website or want to increase its database size, it’s a good idea to upgrade to web hosting package that will give you more dedicated server space.

If you’re interested in optimizing your website to improve performance, check out our guide on Hosting and Website Performance for a more detailed explanation and useful tips.

Resource Limits

Another reason you may want to upgrade hosting plans is to give your website more “room” on the server. If your site is consistently hitting limitations with CPU usage, memory, or bandwidth, it may be time to upgrade to a web hosting plan that offers more capacity.

CPU and RAM Capacity. Having the right amount of CPU and RAM for your website is essential for good performance. Think of it this way: the CPU is your website’s brain. It’s responsible for processing the data quickly and responding to user commands. RAM is your website’s short-term memory. It temporarily holds data from programs that are currently active, but will lose that data if those programs are terminated.

If your current CPU or RAM capacity is unable to keep up with your website’s current needs, users will experience slower load times, glitchy image rendering, or lag. If your website is optimized (as discussed above) and you are still experiencing these issues, an upgrade may be the way to go.

Website Storage. Your web hosting plan essentially gives your website a “spot” on a host’s server. Depending on your current service, you may be sharing this space with other websites, which may cause poor performance, especially if your site is getting an influx of traffic.

For more information on CPUs, RAM, and Bandwidth, visit our page on What Server Resources Mean. We break it down into much greater detail in this guide.

Steps Before You Upgrade

Unfortunately, upgrading your hosting plan isn’t as easy as clicking a button. You are going to want to prepare your website before you upgrade so that it continues to run smoothly during and after the upgrade process.

Preparing your website for a web hosting upgrade is very similar to preparing a website for migration. Basically, you want to make sure everything is optimized and cleaned up before you upgrade so that you’re not bringing any non-web hosting issues with you.

1. Backup your website. Hopefully, you are consistently backing up your website’s database, whether manually or by using a WordPress plugin. Before you upgrade, make sure you have access to the most recent backup. It’s always a good idea to save your backups off-server (either on a hard drive on in the cloud), just in case something goes wrong during the upgrading process.
2. Optimize your website. Make sure you’ve optimized your website by actively caching data and compressing any large pieces of media. For example, if you have a video embedded in your website, it may be more optimal to upload it to a third party, like Youtube or Vimeo, to host the video, rather than using your web hosting plan’s limited disc space.
3. Identify and fix bottlenecks. While your website might be generating the traffic you want it to, you may find that users are meeting a bottleneck when trying to interact with your website. Before upgrading, try using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to cache your website’s content. If you’re still encountering traffic bottlenecks after this, it may indicate a larger problem with your site’s RAM. Insufficient RAM can cause the system to use the hard drive as memory, resulting in slower load times.

Web Hosting with Northwest Registered Agent

Curious about our hosting plans here at Northwest?  We offer open-source web hosting with flexible plans, privacy protection, and human help.

Plus, we make it easy to upgrade your hosting plan if needed.

Take advantage of our super-fast load times, reliable hosting, and access to up-to-date WordPress features. And best part? You can bring your own site or build it here, with us.

All of our plans include 1 free domain, SSL certificate, and Domain Privacy.