I just got done helping a client migrate what was left of her sites off a shared host.  I won’t get into a bashing game with the host  - but they screwed up and she lost quite a bit of data.

Shared hosts are great for spreading out the ip’s – but mission critical (ie your money sites) stuff should not be there.

If you lost it would it hurt?  If so it’s time to:

1.) Make sure you have a great host.  I love liquid web‘s VPS’s.  I also like Wiredtree.  Both have great support.

2.) Make sure you have a back up system in place that is redundant.  In other words actually download your back ups and put em on a disk every now and a then.

Look,  you can fit a whole mess of blogs for example on a 60 dollar VPS from wiredtree.  Buy a couple IP blocks and that turns into a 75 dollar a month server with 14 or so IP addresses.

Worried about being able to manage it?  They do it.  You get a Web Hosting Manager login where you can create sites, then you just do the same thing you’ve always done.

Step it up.  If you ask they will even help you migrate your stuff over to your new server.