Most businesses will be keen to sign up for shared hosting plans when they are starting out. Shared hosting plans are not only effective; they are also pocket-friendly. Besides, they come with user-friendly control panels like cPanel which have interfaces that make it easy for customers to work with. So, while shared servers are seen to be best suited for beginners, VPS servers are found to be better suited for sites which are expanding quickly. The need for best VPS hosting starts to surface when the demands of traffic start growing. But, when the switch finally happens from shared hosting to VPS hosting, very often businesses have no idea of what they will do. They also do not know what exactly to expect from their VPS web host.

The VPS server hosting solution is considered to be a natural step for all shared hosting users after a point of time when the shared plans can no longer meet their demands for increased resources. With the best VPS hosting you can get superior site performance as compared to the shared plans which could only offer you limited resources. But, when you are making this switch to a VPS hosting plan, there are some problems that may crop up in the course of migration. You may also be worried about difficulties that you can face in migrating the data from a shared environment to a VPS environment. This difficult level will also depend a lot on how much data is being moved and what kind of data you will migrate.

What are the indicators for moving onto the best VPS hosting plans?

• One of the surest indicators that you should upgrade to a VPS plan is when you start getting more traffic than usual. This influx of traffic is hard for the shared hosting providers to handle. You must share resources with other sites in shared hosting plans and this will automatically lessen your site speeds. For better site performance and faster speed, shifting to the best VPS hosting solutions available is necessary.
• You may also feel the need for the best VPS hosting plans when you plan on launching applications which will not be supported by shared hosting. Most of the shared accounts are limited to specific applications; you will have to adhere to the PHP version which your host chooses but on VPS you are free to install any PHP module.

What to do when you migrate from shared hosting to VPS hosting:

When you have found the best VPS hosting for your website you can migrate using a control panel. Usually the shared host will use a control panel for server management tasks. Most hosts use software like Plesk or cPanel for managing the shared servers. With control panels, there are no issues during migration. These control panels are designed to make migrations smoother since they can guarantee easier backups.

When you set up the VPS, you can install such a control panel which you have used in shared web hosting. You may simply pull backups from the shared hosting provider for using restore functionality on the virtual server in order to install and configure your site data. According to the control panel that you have used, you will need to update the site configurations. Migration is usually a hassle-free process in this case and once you have set up the server; you may update the DNS entries so as to direct them to your VPS.

In case you want to migrate from shared server to VPS server without help of control panels the scenario may be distinct. In this case the shared host may be using its control panel or none at all. The host can also use any of the above-mentioned control panels but you may not want to use this anymore for the VPS. Here, you must take backups of the site including all the databases and files. You must also recreate configuration for the site as well as databases in the new virtual server. When this is done, you may add the site files to site directory and then import database data. The way you can add the data to the new server will also depend on the nature of control panel you use. So, data transfers typically depend on whether you use a control panel or not or whether you manually configure the server. When you use site software like Joomla and WordPress you will need extra tools like PHP and Apache. Such tools are usually available by default on the shared servers, but they must be installed manually on VPS server. So, even if you have the best VPS hosting plan you need to read through the original set up guide to make sure your virtual server has all it needs before it is installed. Else, you may have to handle many errors and roadblocks during migration.