Hosting Recommendations

I know there are several topics covering available hosts, but I'm wondering if anyone can help me with specifics.

I have been looking at switching over to hostgator's vps from my current godaddy shared, as my website performance is suffering greatly and I am starting to lose members over it.

Can anyone tell me what plan they would recommend for an active dolphin site @ 650 users? We anticipate 5000 members by the end of the year, so I am thinking about biting the bullet and going with their level 3 plan (1.13ghz, 768mb, 30g disk, 500gb bandwidth) @ $40 a month as it is fully managed and includes cpanel. Will this support 1,000-3,000 active members? When I hit 5,000 members, is it a simple upgrade to the next service tier or should I expect down time for them to upgrade me?

These are all probably great questions for the Hostgator support team, but I see more value in hearing opinions from paying customers first.

Have a chat with DosDawg at Terabyte, he will give you the best advise regarding hosting, even if you choose not to host with him he will point you in the right direction.

The thing that I would say about his hosting however is that he fully supports dolphin, you stated in your post ($40 a month as it is fully managed) the hosting company may manage the server but I doubt it very much that they will help you with management or support of your dolphin site.  This is where Terabyte excels above all others.

Also, just remember like everything else in this world you get what you pay for.

Good luck with choosing what will fit you best.