First of all, Hostgator is great: it's fast, cheap, and works. So why am I switching? One word: flexibility.
For the past few years, VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting has steadily grown. This page describes the fundamentals:
What is VPS Hosting?
VPS is an arrangement where you host on a virtual private server. A VPS is created by “virtualization” software which simulates multiple servers within a single machine. Each partitioned server runs efficiently in a private environment isolated from its neighbors. With VPS hosting, you essentially have your own server at a fraction of the cost. This provides you with much more to work with in terms of flexibility and control.
Basically, I've outgrown shared hosting, but need something cheaper than a dedicated or a colo. With CPUs and memory quickly not becoming the bottlenecks, virtualization plays an increasingly important role. That's where VPS comes in.
In a nutshell, I need more flexibility - subversion repositories, remoting, various computational projects, etc that hostgator can't offer without a 100$ dedicated server. A VPS? $10-15. That's the cost advantage.
So basically, this site may be up only sporadically for the next few days. Hopefully the DNS propagation gets done this week.
