SD-Jack If your hosting provider forces you to change to a specific version of PHP, then you may have the wrong hosting provider. With my provider, I have a choice of PHP 5.6, 7.0 - 7.4 and 8.0 - 8.3 and I can change between versions anytime I want.
I certainly don't recommend 5.6 or anything below 8.0, but the older versions are available if needed. I had to stick with 7.4 for a while after the 8 series was released because some of my legacy applications were not compatible with the 8 series.