Signs it’s time to upgrade your web host in 2025

Your website is often at the heart of your business, whether you’re driving sales, sharing content, or building an online community. So, you can’t afford to settle for bad web hosting.

Choosing a hosting provider for your website is like selecting a home — it needs to be secure, reliable, and able to grow with you.

This blog post outlines the key signs that indicate it’s time to upgrade your WordPress hosting provider and how to prepare for a smooth transition.

8 signs it’s time to upgrade your web hosting provider

Even with the best intentions, not all hosting providers can keep up with the growing demands of modern websites.

To help you decide if it’s time for a change, here are eight clear signs that upgrading your web hosting provider might be the right move.

1. You’re losing visitors because of slow load times

In today’s competitive market, every detail matters — including your website’s performance. After putting in the effort to provide an excellent service, you don’t want your website to turn potential customers away because of slow load times.

Consider this: A one-second delay in page load time leads to an 11% drop in page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions. For an e-commerce site making $100,000 a day, that’s a potential $2.5 million in lost sales annually.

Slow load times frustrate visitors, causing them to leave before engaging with your content or products. And when users bounce, you lose not only traffic but also sales and leads.

In a Kinsta case study, Trango Tech shared how slow load times and downtime hurt its business, prompting a switch to Kinsta: “Our website was painfully slow at times, and the frequent downtime was costing us business. It was hurting our clients and our business as a whole. Clearly, a change was needed when we started losing customers.”

This experience highlights how slow website performance can lead to a loss of visitors and, ultimately, revenue.

Google also emphasizes page speed, making it a key ranking factor. If your site is slow, you risk falling behind in search rankings and giving your competitors an edge.

So, what causes slow load times? Often, it’s your hosting provider. Shared hosting, overcrowded servers, outdated technology, or poor server optimization can all slow your site.

Switching to a provider that prioritizes speed, such as one using isolated container technology and performance optimizations, can make all the difference in improving load times and boosting user engagement.

2. You’re dealing with frequent downtime

Website downtime means lost opportunities!

Every time your site goes offline, you’re losing visitors, sales, and in some cases, your reputation. For any business — whether it’s an online store, a blog, or a service like an online driving school — constant downtime is more than just a minor inconvenience. It’s a direct hit to your bottom line.

Take Permis Online, an online driving school in Belgium, for example. It offers interactive courses for users preparing for their B driving test. As its user base grew, Permis Online needed fast, secure, and reliable hosting. Downtime or slow load times simply weren’t an option. However, after experiencing multiple outages, including one lasting over 24 hours, the company realized its hosting provider couldn’t meet its needs.

As Permis Online put it: “The decision to change host had become inevitable after a series of challenges with our previous provider, culminating in an outage lasting over 24 hours with no intervention or possibility of resolution on our part. This inadequate level of service was jeopardizing our reputation and the quality of user experience we strive to deliver (not to mention the loss of money!).”

Frequent downtime causes stress — not only because you’re losing sales and traffic but also because you’re constantly worrying about your site’s reliability. Every time you find your site down, you wonder what opportunities you’re missing.

Research shows that downtime costs businesses anywhere from $137 to $427 per minute, depending on the size of your business. So if your site is going down often, you’re losing a significant amount of money.

So, what causes downtime? There are many reasons, like traffic overload and malware attacks, but at the core of these issues is often one thing: low-quality hosting.

When evaluating hosting providers, it’s important to understand the average expected uptime. The industry gold standard is 99.9%. This means your site should only be down for about 43 minutes per month — or less. Any more, and you’re likely to lose sales and trust.

If your host isn’t meeting these standards, it’s time to consider a change. You need a provider that guarantees uptime and offers proactive monitoring, so you’re not left scrambling every time something goes wrong.

3. Support takes forever (or never helps)

Hosting-related issues like site crashes, security breaches, or slow performance don’t stick to a 9-to-5 schedule. When problems arise, you need real, expert support immediately, no matter the time of day.

Take a recent case from 5Tales, a digital marketing agency that moved to Kinsta. The company shared: “In the past, we had a lot of problems with our websites. They were slow, the hosting support team wasn’t very helpful, and our websites were infected with malware all the time.”

Every hosting provider claims to offer the best support, but not all support is created equal. One core aspect we often overlook when choosing a host is the quality and type of support they actually provide.

You need to dig deeper and understand the kind of support your provider offers. Is it human support that can resolve complex issues, or is it a chatbot that can’t solve anything beyond simple questions?

If you’re noticing any of the following issues, they’re clear signs it’s time to upgrade to a better provider:

• You’re stuck waiting for hours, even for minor issues.
• Support agents give you incorrect or irrelevant advice, leaving you with unresolved issues.
• The same technical issues keep cropping up, with no real solutions in sight.
• You’re met with rude or dismissive agents who don’t value your business.

These are not normal experiences, and you shouldn’t just get used to them. Your website is too important to leave in the hands of a support team that cannot meet your needs.

When evaluating your hosting provider, look beyond their marketing promises. Check if they offer 24/7 human support, especially support staff who are knowledgeable about WordPress. Reading customer reviews on G2, Trustpilot, or similar sites can also give you a clearer picture of the support experience.

4. Your host can’t keep up with your growth

As your business grows, so do your website’s needs. When you first started, your website might have been simple, with just a few pages and moderate traffic. But as your business expands, you need a host that can handle the increasing volume of visitors, transactions, and content without faltering.

Take the case of Blak Brews, an Australian tea company. When founder Troy Benjamin was chosen to compete on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars, he knew that the company’s hosting solution wouldn’t be enough to handle the expected spike in traffic. Blak Brews was already forecasting thousands of visitors at once, and its old platform just wasn’t designed to handle that.

“We were already envisioning what the potential estimate of visitors could be on the site at the same time. One thousand. Two thousand – easily. We needed to make sure that Shopify could do this.” – Troy Benjamin, Founder of Blak Brews

Their solution? Switching to a hosting provider that could keep up with the company’s growing needs — one that could scale seamlessly and ensure its site performed smoothly, even during peak traffic. This move ultimately helped Blak Brews handle high-volume traffic without any hiccups, keeping its customers happy and its business growing.

If your current host can’t keep up with your growth, it’s time to move on to one that can. A host that can scale with you will help you grow your business without running into performance bottlenecks.

5. Your site’s security is at risk

You should never have to gamble with your site’s security. If your site has been hacked or compromised in the past, or if you’re constantly dealing with security scares, it’s time to ask whether your hosting provider is truly keeping you protected.

Weak security measures from your host can lead to several risks. For starters, your site could be compromised by malware. This doesn’t affect just you; it can put your visitors at risk. Imagine your site infecting a customer’s device — that’s the kind of event that can destroy your credibility in an instant.

Then, there’s the risk of being targeted by hackers. Cyberattacks are increasingly sophisticated, and bad actors exploit every opportunity to access sensitive data, disrupt your operations, or hold your site hostage with ransomware.

What should you expect from a secure hosting provider? They should:

• Offer basics like SSL certificates, DDoS protection, and firewalls as standard, not optional add-ons.
• Proactively monitor your site 24/7, looking for vulnerabilities and addressing issues before they escalate.
• Provide you with robust backup and recovery tools to help you restore your site quickly with minimal damage.

If your host isn’t proactively monitoring for these threats or offering robust security tools, you’re more vulnerable than you should be.

6. You can’t get the tools you need to manage your site

Managing a website shouldn’t feel like a chore. The right tools can make your day-to-day tasks like backups, updates, and monitoring easier and faster.

But if your hosting provider doesn’t offer the tools you need, you’re likely wasting time wrestling with clunky interfaces or looking for third-party solutions and plugins to fill the gaps.

Imagine trying to troubleshoot a site issue using a hosting dashboard that is unintuitive, outdated, or missing the features you need to make changes quickly. This lack of functionality can slow you down and lead to unnecessary frustration.

For example:

• If your host doesn’t provide automatic backups, you might have to rely on plugins, adding extra steps, security risks, and costs.
• Without tools like staging environments, you’re forced to test changes directly on your live site, risking errors that could disrupt your users.
• If your control panel is difficult to navigate, even simple tasks like creating subdomains or handling multisite installations become unnecessarily complicated.

SIX15 Solutions faced these challenges with its previous hosting provider, Media Temple. As SIX15’s business grew, the lack of advanced management tools like easy staging environments, detailed performance analytics, and flexible backups became a major hurdle. Managing multiple client sites was inefficient, with routine tasks like optimizing databases and switching PHP versions requiring manual effort.

Ultimately, this led the company to switch to Kinsta, where it found a user-friendly dashboard and the right tools to scale efficiently and offer better service to its clients.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, constantly trying to manipulate third-party tools or paying extra for features that should be standard, it’s a clear sign your hosting provider isn’t meeting your needs.

7. Your hosting fees keep going up with no extra value

If your hosting fees keep climbing without any noticeable improvements in features, performance, or support, it’s frustrating and a clear sign that it might be time to upgrade.

Hosting costs can increase for valid reasons, like infrastructure upgrades or added services, but when those price hikes come with no additional value, it starts to feel like you’re paying more for the same (or even less).

Hidden costs can also creep up unexpectedly. Atomic Smash, a web development agency, experienced this firsthand when it managed its own servers. While self-hosting seemed like a cost-saving approach at first, the reality was far from it. The team found itself spending significant time and money on maintenance, updates, and scalability challenges, all of which detracted from its ability to focus on client work.

As Atomic Smash explains: “Maintenance isn’t just a once-in-a-while task — it’s recurring and can eat up valuable time. Hidden costs like emergency repairs, security breaches, and hardware upgrades can add up quickly.”

If your hosting provider is adding costs without delivering real value — whether it’s charging extra for basic backups, SSL certificates, or scaling resources — it’s time to reconsider.

A reliable host should offer transparent pricing and ensure that every dollar you spend improves your website’s performance, security, or user experience.

8. You want a more sustainable hosting option

Sustainability has become a major priority for businesses, and your choice of hosting provider is no exception.

The environmental impact of running servers — in energy-intensive facilities that power websites worldwide — can be significant. If your current host isn’t taking steps to minimize its carbon footprint, it might be time to find one that aligns better with your values.

Green hosting isn’t just about feeling good; it’s about choosing a provider that actively invests in renewable energy, efficient data centers, and carbon offset programs.

By switching to a more sustainable option, you are helping the planet and showing your customers that your business is committed to ethical practices.

If sustainability is a priority for you, look for hosting providers that:

• Use renewable energy or offset their carbon emissions.
• Operate energy-efficient data centers.
• Actively invest in eco-friendly initiatives.

A sustainable hosting provider isn’t just better for the environment; it’s better for your business. It shows that you’re forward-thinking and willing to invest in a future where tech and sustainability go hand in hand.

Why Kinsta could be the best option for you

If you’ve noticed any of the signs mentioned above indicating it’s time to upgrade your web host, Kinsta offers solutions specifically designed to address those challenges.

Kinsta is a Managed WordPress Hosting provider that provides many built-in features aimed at helping your site perform optimally. It is built to meet the needs of growing businesses, universities, educators, agencies, and developers.

Here’s why Kinsta stands out:

• Blazing-fast performance: Kinsta is powered by Google Cloud Platform’s Premium Tier network and advanced caching with Cloudflare’s global CDN to ensure your site delivers lightning-fast load times, even during traffic surges.
• A 99.9% uptime guarantee: Kinsta’s container-based infrastructure ensures reliable performance with an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee, giving you peace of mind that your site will stay online when it matters most.
• 24/7 expert support: Kinsta’s support team consists of WordPress experts who are available 24/7 in multiple languages, ensuring quick and effective resolutions for any issues, no matter where you’re located.
• User-friendly tools: The MyKinsta dashboard provides an intuitive interface with advanced features such as staging environments, automatic backups, detailed analytics, Git, WP-CLI, SSH access, easy plugin and theme management, an ionCube loader, and one-click cloning, making site management easy.
• Scalability: Whether your business is growing or experiencing seasonal traffic spikes, Kinsta’s scalable infrastructure ensures you always have the resources you need. You can easily switch between plans with zero downtime and stay informed with proactive overage alerts.
• Built-in security: Kinsta secures your site with a free Cloudflare integration, including an enterprise firewall, DDoS protection, and SSL certificates. Real-time monitoring, isolated containers, and automatic plugin checks ensure robust protection, backed by our Malware Security Pledge for hands-on recovery if needed.
• Transparent pricing: Kinsta offers straightforward, transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Our plans include essential features like backups, SSL certificates, and advanced caching at no extra cost, ensuring you get clear value for every dollar spent.
• Commitment to sustainability: Kinsta is a green hosting provider running entirely on Google Cloud’s renewable energy-powered infrastructure and integrating Cloudflare’s carbon-neutral services. By optimizing data transfer and leveraging efficient CDN technology, we reduce your site’s environmental impact while maintaining top-tier performance.

With Kinsta, you’re not just getting a hosting provider — you’re gaining a partner that’s committed to helping your site succeed.

If you’re ready to switch to a host that ticks all the boxes, Kinsta could be the perfect fit!

How to prepare for switching hosts

Switching hosting providers might seem daunting, but with the right preparation, it can be a smooth and stress-free process. Follow these steps to ensure your migration goes seamlessly:

1. Talk to your existing hosting provider: Before making the switch, it’s worth discussing your concerns with your current host. They may offer to resolve the issues or even match a competitor’s offer, potentially saving you the hassle of migrating.
2. Check compatibility: Verify that your new hosting provider supports the technologies and software your site relies on, such as specific PHP versions or plugins.
3. Evaluate your current hosting setup: Take note of your site’s configurations, including DNS settings, databases, and email accounts. This ensures you have all the necessary information when migrating.
4. Back up your website: Always create a full backup of your site before switching. This provides a safety net if anything unexpected happens during the migration.
5. Plan for downtime (if necessary): If your new host doesn’t guarantee zero downtime, let your audience know about the potential temporary disruption. Post updates on your site or social media channels to keep your visitors informed and reassure them the situation is temporary.
6. Choose the right time: Schedule your migration during low-traffic periods to minimize any potential impact on your visitors. If your site is updated frequently or has specific requirements, plan accordingly.
7. Review your DNS settings: Update your DNS records to point to the new host. Be aware of propagation times, which can take up to 48 hours.
8. Test your site post-migration: Once the migration is complete, thoroughly test your site on the new host. Check for broken links, missing files, and performance issues to ensure everything is functioning as expected.

At Kinsta, we can handle migrations for you — for free, with no downtime. Whether you want to migrate your site immediately, schedule it for a specific time, or require expedited migration, we’ve got you covered. Our migration experts ensure a seamless transition without disrupting your operations.

Summary

In this blog post, we highlighted the key signs that it’s time to upgrade your web host, such as downtime, slow performance, rising costs, and inadequate security or tools. Recognizing these signs is crucial for maintaining your site’s reliability, performance, and growth.

We also outlined practical steps to prepare for a smooth transition. If you want to learn more about Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting, talk to our sales team.

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