8 signs it’s time to switch 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 Shared hosting, overcrowded servers, outdated technology, or poor server optimization can all slow your site.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.