A plan can be changed at any time, in either direction, from the client area. Moving up is immediate; moving down requires preparation, and this guide explains which.
When to change
| Sign | What it indicates |
|---|---|
| Disk space is nearing its limit | Move up, or tidy up |
| You have more sites than the plan allows | Move up |
| You are short of email accounts | Check first whether aliases suffice |
| A site slows down at peak hours | Tune the site first; the plan afterwards |
| You have closed sites | Moving down is possible |
Moving to a higher plan
It is the simplest case. Disk space and the other limits are raised, and the difference in rate applies to the following period.
The change touches neither your domain name, nor your email addresses, nor your files, nor your databases: the frame widens, the content does not move house.
And the new plan's price obeys the same rule as the old one: the one displayed at the time of the change is the one at the next renewal.
Moving down
It is possible too, on one condition: your actual usage must fit within the limits of the target plan. An account occupying twenty gigabytes cannot switch to a plan offering ten.
Tidy up before, not after:
- old backups left on the hosting — they have no business there;
- logs and temporary files left by applications;
- test files, working copies, previous versions of the site;
- abandoned mailboxes, often the bulkiest;
- databases of old projects.
Also check that the number of sites and the number of databases fit into the new plan: those are counting limits, not volume limits, and they do not forgive.
How to proceed
The change is requested from the client area, on the page of the service concerned. If you cannot find the way, a ticket does just as well.
When in doubt
Open a ticket stating the domain and the target plan. We look at the actual occupancy and tell you whether the change fits — it is more reliable than an estimate, and it avoids a change refused at the last moment.
If your project outgrows what shared hosting can do, we will tell you so rather than sell you the plan above. See The limits of shared hosting.