I host a handful of my own sites and a few small business sites, and my reseller account has been solid — reliable, with good speed.

Soon, though, I'm going to host a half-dozen Wordpress sites for a national company. Each site will offer the company a marketing presence in a specific state where the company will have between 50 and 100 customers.

So, the traffic will still be relatively low, but I will need rock solid hosting. My client will be updating content on the sites themselves, so the WP backend must be responsive. (My current host will occasionally have some slow moments.)

Also, I want the confidence that these sites will always be up, or as close to 100 percent as is reasonable. (I realize, outages do happen.)

I'm leaning toward a managed VPS such as Knownhost or Servint, which will double my hosting cost. About $50 monthly, or so.

I would appreciate any advice, particularly whether or not the added customer service and security of a higher-end managed VPS would justify the price for this scenario.

The use of wordpress tends to require a higher amount of cpu resources. A VPS may be an option of your current reseller account is maxed out. A VPS may not guarantee better responsiveness as somtimes, a good reseller account with its servers being managed well could be better.

Uptime wise, I would say, it tends to be better at Servint or Knownhost. They respond quickly, when compared to some shared hosting plans.

It may give you better security and support of tech guys, but it does not guarantee you better uptime and reliability.

I think that a reliable reseller from a reputable provider can suit your needs fine

Yeah, I think you just need a reliable reseller account from the well-known hosting providers out there.
But, sure it would be better than a reseller account if you go with the managed VPS.

There's a general bias I feel towards VPS. The hype makes customers want them, the hosts want customers to buy VPS as there's more money in it for them.

I wouldn't give a good $25 reseller account for a $50 entry level VPS (at this price point it is entry level if it's managed), if performance is a main issue. In any case, I'd make sure that the customers use supercache or some other Wordpress cache plugin. It will improve performance and minimize server resources usage as well.

Surely a good Reseller can hold up and do good but what about CPU usage ? Will the server be alright if it is being beaten? And then you can run a risk of being suspended. It all depends a good reseller can work and a VPS can work as well. It's your call.

It is up to you, anyway as long as your sites doesn't eat more then 10% of CPU you should not have problems with a reseller account. But again, is up to you. Also the budget looks fine for both of the choices.

I think it depends on what host you go with, some hosts overload their resellers onto the servers, some hosts do the same with VPS, you'll just have to TIAS

I have a current site on Medialayer shared hosting and it's been nothing but topnotch, but the price to host the half-dozen to a dozen domains I'm hoping to land would push it into the range of managed VPS.

I've recently opened a second account with a reseller host (too early for a review, so I won't mention the name) and it's been very good so far, with the exception of two instances of pages becoming very slow to load and slow access on the Wordpress backends. Possibly just a quirk, but enough to push me to consider options.

With that as additional background, would anyone mind helping me understand the limitations of the "entry level" managed VPS? Obviously, I'm struggling the cost/benefits analysis and any additional thought is greatly appreciated.

Hello,

I have a current site on Medialayer shared hosting and it's been nothing but topnotch, but the price to host the half-dozen to a dozen domains I'm hoping to land would push it into the range of managed VPS.

I'm glad to hear you are happy with our service. Have you contacted our sales department regarding your needs? We are able to provide a custom plan for your exact requirements - you aren't limited to just the plans on our site.

Thanks,

I will contact your sales department. The service has been solid, but I wasn't sure it was a good fit for this particular project. I will followup.