How difficult is it to move from shared to dedicated web hosting?
It is not hard to manage dedicated server without a lot of experience, if you purchase control panel for it. If you have experience with cPanel on the shared plan, I would recommend purchasing this control panel for your dedicated server as well. cPanel gets installed on most dedicated servers with similar setup like our shared ones have.
As for when to switch to the dedicated server, there can be two reasons. First is you need some component that can’t be installed on the shared server. Second is resource consumption by your site that overgrows the allowed limits for shared plan. The most important limits are cpu, memory and mysql connection utilization.
Unfortunately, you don’t have access to the resource stats for your site and you can ask the support to provide them from time to time to see, if you are near to or in the the red line. However, my recommendation would be upgrading to the dedicated server before when you are expecting traffic and client amounts increase to avoid possible downtime or hurry with site switch to the new server.
More Dedicated Web Hosting Help!