Melissa, I have given you live example of someone (on this forum - i actually forgot the link to that discussion), they were on shared host, and happy with it, went up to get VPS with 768MB RAM, and all went down, eventually putting them back to shared host.
usually hosting companies run two types of shared hosing accounts, personal ones are for like $4-$6 and Business ones are like $14-$25, obviously giving advantage of lesser accounts per server.
Do have a look at http://www.stablehost.com/enterprise-hosting.php
its enterprise plan on shared host, so hosting lesser accounts, and plus side, they are on litespeed webserver, which is claimed to be 7 times faster than Apache that is currently used by almost every host, litespeed being PAID software as compared to Apache, so you can expect bang for your buck.
and I am fairly sure, their cheapest enterprise plan for $19 will be twice as strong as your VPS-1
Melissa, Unfortunately VPS-1 would NOT be sufficient, I will tell you reasons for that.
your current shared hosting, may be sufficient for your current needs and could as well be for your oncoming needs for the reason, that on shared hosting, the hardware is typically very powerful because they host some 500+ accounts on each server and each account hosting 3+ domains , so you are expecting some 1500 sites running on a shared hosting server. because shared hosting is the basic level of most hosting types, so people tend to get shared hosting for testing purposes only, some for keeping domains only etc. A typical shared host server is made up of Multiple Core CPU (8+) and some 24GB of RAM with RAID discs, and not every customer actually USES their shared hosting accounts other than testing, or may be few light websites running, so eventually those who are actually using it gets a good share of that strong hardware deployed for shared server.
Now, coming to your VPS, comparing to a powerplan (which I am sure must be hosting way less than 500 accounts per server), the RAM of 512 is very very low, you should be looking at 3+ GB of RAM on a private server, as I have seen someone on shared hosting before, thought of getting a VPS with 768MB of RAM (which is 256 MB more than your desired one), and there moodle site fell apart after 30 concurrent users, and you are talking about 100.
how much is your Budget to go?
Alex, for 10-20 users (unless they are using the LIVE CHAT sessions, or all taking quizzes at the same time), a shared host costing around $4 a month will be suffiient for your needs.
I have used Bluehost/Hostmonster for moodle before, and they worked perfect, you only go for dedicated hardware if you are expecting some 20,000 users registered and 100+ using at the same time.
Tim, there are two versions of Essential 2013112100, One available in Plug-in database, other was updated on github, having same version but modified.
I was having some trouble with Gareth's Grid plug-in until I downloaded that modified version from Github, so unless you already have downloaded from github, why not give it a try.
https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/ESSENTIAL_261