What is a VPS and when do you need one?
The short answer
A VPS is your own virtual server with guaranteed capacity and full control, from a few dollars a month. You need one when custom software, serious traffic or several sites outgrow shared hosting. A self-managed VPS asks for some technical skill.
In detail
On a VPS you get a walled-off share of a physical server. It has its own operating system, memory and CPU. Nobody can eat your capacity. You can install whatever you want, from a specific database version to custom software or several sites side by side. DigitalOcean and Hetzner sell such servers from a few dollars a month. Hetzner delivers remarkable power for the money.
The real price is responsibility. Updates and security are your job, and so are the firewall and backups. Want VPS power without the system administration? Cloudways offers that middle path. It puts a management layer on top of cloud servers. You get the muscle without being a sysadmin.
So when is it time? When your site keeps hitting the limits of shared hosting. Or when you want to run something beyond a standard site. Developers who simply want the freedom also fit here. Until then, good shared or managed hosting is the wiser choice.