Shared hosting starts at $4.99/mo and suits most websites. A dedicated server starts around $119/mo and suits some. Here is where the line actually falls.
Most sites belong on shared hosting and stay there happily for years.
These are the signals that you have outgrown a shared machine.
For a small site, usually not in any way a visitor would notice — the bottleneck is your code and your database, not the neighbours. A dedicated server wins decisively once you need sustained CPU or memory that a shared machine will not guarantee.
When you are hitting resource limits regularly rather than occasionally, when you need root for something specific, or when an audit requires isolation. Traffic alone is rarely the trigger; sustained resource use is.
Yes, and we migrate the site for you. Starting on shared hosting costs you nothing in the long run.
A VPS sits between the two on both price and isolation. We concentrate on shared hosting and bare metal because those are the two we can run genuinely well — talk to support about what fits and we will tell you honestly if we are not it.
They can. Shared hosting includes DirectAdmin as standard; on a dedicated server the machine is yours and a panel is an option rather than an assumption.
The rest of the hosting section, each page answering one question.