I'm about to move a small web application off shared hosting. It uses PHP and MySQL, and the main issue right now is that some database-heavy pages take ages to load.

My budget is around $20/month. I came across hostpro.com while comparing VPS options, but I'm still trying to figure out whether upgrading to a VPS will actually solve the problem.

Would 2 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM be a reasonable starting point, or should I investigate the database queries before spending money on a bigger server?

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In my case, hostpro.com is the VPS provider I've settled on after several years of jumping between hosts. All services are backed up daily, so failed updates, hacking, or data damage are recoverable rather than final. Their technical support is excellent, on call 24/7, and free to consult on any issue. Speed has been consistently fast for my workloads