My blog has been growing quickly! While the shared hosting plan I had on BlueHost served me very well for the past year and three months, it became really apparent in recent months that it was time to upgrade. Why? I’m enjoying 10,000+ visitors per month (thanks everyone!), I have advertisers on my blog, I aspire to start (slowly) making money from my blog, and my personal reputation is on the line with PPC Ian. As such, I decided to upgrade to HostGator VPS Level 3 Hosting. I couldn’t be more excited! My blog now loads faster and it will be far more consistent and stable. The end result: A better user experience for you!
What Is HostGator VPS Hosting?
So what the heck is this VPS stuff? There are three basic types of hosting: shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting means your site(s) are hosted on a server with many other sites. Shared hosting is a great solution and you can get so much value for cheap. I actually have shared hosting accounts with BlueHost, HostGator (in addition to my VPS account for PPC Ian), GoDaddy, and iPower. I have over 80 active web businesses so shared hosting across multiple hosts (with add-on domains) is the ideal way for me to diversify and stretch my hosting dollars.
What’s the downside of shared hosting? Most of the time it works really well, but from time to time your sites can slow down when other sites on the server get a surge in traffic. I noticed this happening with PPC Ian every few weeks. How do you solve this dilemma? Easy: Get a dedicated server for your site (which can be expensive) or VPS (virtual private server) hosting like myself. VPS basically means PPC Ian is one of several sites on the server, but the server is partitioned and my site has guaranteed dedicated resources just as if it were on its own server. Sweet stuff!
Why I Went With HostGator VPS Hosting
So, why did I go with HostGator VPS hosting? First and foremost, I have personal experience with their shared hosting plan and couldn’t be more happy. Second, HostGator has been getting a lot of great press in the Internet marketing community. John Chow has been blogging about HostGator quite a bit and if HostGator VPS hosting is good enough for John Chow, then it’s definitely good enough for PPC Ian!
Third, HostGator is the host that can grow as you do. When it comes to VPS hosting, HostGator offers 9 different plans. I started out with plan 3 (with the cPanel option). For $49.95 per month, I’m guaranteed 1.13 GHZ CPU, 768 MB RAM, 30GB disk space, and 500 GB bandwidth. This plan starts at $39.95 but you have to pay $10 extra if you want cPanel. As PPC Ian grows, it’s easy to upgrade to higher level VPS plans.
Another reason I went with HostGator: They transitioned my site from BlueHost free of charge. I filed a ticket on Friday and within 48 hours my site was transitioned over with great attention to detail. The technical support team at HostGator is top notch and I couldn’t be more happy with the free transfer process.
I Hope You Enjoy My Faster Blog
To close out, I want to sincerely thank you for your support. It’s because of my readers (like you) that PPC Ian has been such a success. I’m really pleased to offer faster load times and more consistency. I’m also going to be experimenting with some other technologies to keep my blog as fast as possible, such as the W3 Total Cache plugin. Thinking of signing up for HostGator? Fan of PPC Ian? I’d truly appreciate it if you signed up through my affiliate link!
