About two months ago, I moved this site, along with a bunch of other sites I run over to a self-run VPS hosted by ChicagoVPS.net. For the past 4 years or so I had been with Dreamhost, after a very nice 2-year deal for $10.74. In the past couple of years I have had to renew for about $219/2yr to keep a couple of client’s sites running. Back in September, I found lowendbox.com, a site that aggregates “Low End Box” VPS deals. I was able to snag one for about $60/year, with way more resources and flexibility than Dreamhost. The downside was that I bear the brunt of all server management. I need to worry about backups, DDoS, hacks, etc now. Luckily there is a very strong community of people doing just this.
Dreamhost as of late had gotten really slow. I primarily host WordPress sites, which are not very memory-friendly. They require a decent amount of CPU time as well. I started to notice that it would take around 15-20 seconds to load one of my sites, whereas other sites would load WAY faster (or even simple static pages). I decided to make the switch and try running WordPress on this VPS. WAY faster. I can also do SSL now and manage configurations for every piece of software.
Although the VPS’s are still shared, it is a way better amount of resources than sharing web space only. I would HIGHLY suggest checking out LEB, LET (LowEndTalk) and the wealth of knowledge there for hosting your own sites.