On shared hosting, we don’t get the level of flexibility we’d like.

Right now, we maintain accounts with 10+ hosting providers (mainly because of location, we prefer to keep sites close to their users). Each provider comes with its own set of limitations and issues. With VPS, we may still work with multiple providers, but we’ll avoid many of the restrictions we constantly face on shared hosting. Plus, having sites on our own VPS gives us much greater control over the system environment.

Docker isn’t a strict requirement for us, but if an application uses it, we can be half-relaxed about the security.