Hmmmm…..first off, 100 visits a day is great, but it’s a very low number that is VERY managable on shared hosting – your hosting should be able to handle 100 times that number before you need to consider VPS, *unless* those 100 visitors are also downloading huge files or streaming long videos.
And yes, php.ini does get loaded if it’s in the /wp-admin directory. When you do an auto-upgrade, it shouldn’t get overwritten, but if you manually update WP by uploading (via FTP) the new version, then you may overwrite that file and need to re-upload it to the (new) /wp-admin folder. It’s always a good idea to double-check that it’s there after any update to WP.
SO if you have your wp-config.sys set to increase the wp memory limit to 512M and your PHP says it’s already set to 512MB…which is really unusual for shared web hosting – it’s generally a much smaller number as their default – any settings in php.ini will override the default settings that the hosting company uses…anyway 512 should be more than enough to resolve any 500 errors.
Hopefully someone with more knowledge of servers will chime in to help, they will likely need to know more about your hosting environment (e.g. windows vs. linux, apache I assume? and maybe what hosting company).
You could try calling your hosting company for more assistance, but if they try to steer you into the more costly VPS, you might want to shop around. I use 1&1 and have been happy with them for many years – primarily because I *don’t* need a lot of support from them, just reliable service, but their support has improved a bit over the years.
Lastly, a quick Google search on fixing 500 internal server errors turns up a number of pages with different solutions offered, most having to do with memory but some imply that a corrupt .htaccess file could be to blame…have a read through these to see if they help:
https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/how-to-fix-the-500-internal-server-error-on-your-wordpress-website
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-internal-server-error-in-wordpress/