I rarely ever use any content management system or website builder other than WordPress these days. It may not be perfect, but its advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
Well, one of the disadvantages is that WordPress eats up a lot of server resources. This can significantly vary from one site to another depending on the theme and plugins used, but in general, the system is quite heavy on server resources.
There are a lot of things you can do with your own website setup and configurations to speed it up, but that’s not what I want to talk about in this post.
I’d like to focus on the server end of it and the web hosting specs that can have the biggest impact on your site’s speed.
The following are some of the most important considerations to keep in mind when searching for a fast WordPress hosting service:
1. NVMe Storage
Most web hosts nowadays use standard SSDs for the main storage devices in their servers, and these are pretty fast compared to slow HDD drives.
When it comes to database-driven WordPress, the faster the storage device the faster the website’s content will load.
While standard SSD devices can deliver decent performance metrics, you get much higher speeds with NVMe SSD, so look for hosting providers that utilize these in their servers.
2. Computing Resources
WordPress is written in PHP and each page request (visit) requires PHP code to be executed on the server in order to process and generate the page. This processing consumes server resources; mainly CPU and memory.
The more dynamic your website’s content is, and the higher the traffic, the more computing resources it’ll need to run without delays.
A brand new static site, such as a blog or a personal site, should do well with 1 GB of memory and 1 CPU core on a shared hosting plan.
But, for example, if you have an established WordPress site that uses the WooCommerce plugin, you’ll need a high-end WooCommerce hosting plan with at least 2 GB of memory and 1 CPU core that are dedicated to your site if you want it to run fast. The higher the traffic, the more CPU and RAM you’ll need.
3. Other Performance Limitations
In shared web hosting environments, the amount of CPU and memory available to each account may not give you an accurate idea of what level of performance to expect. That’s because there will be other less obvious resource limitations affecting the speed and performance of your site.
For example, if a plan offers a ton of NVMe SSD storage but the I/O speed is limited to 1 MB/s, it may only take a few concurrent visitors for your site to become noticeably slow.
A very limited number of PHP workers or entry processes can also have a detrimental effect on your site’s speed.
I’ve seen this issue with some managed WordPress hosting providers that limit each site by the number of PHP workers, like Kinsta for example. Their Google Cloud powered servers are pretty fast, but once a non-cached site starts experiencing traffic spikes, both the front-end and the back-end can become significantly slow unless you pay double the price or more just to get a few more PHP workers.
4. Caching and CDN
WordPress hosts usually implement different caching systems in order to speed up page loading while using as little processing power as possible.
Object caching (e.g. Redis or Memcached) is used to speed up database query processing, and OPcache is used to speed up PHP code processing.
A content delivery network (CDN) is another effective method of making your website faster by serving static files (images, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) to your site’s visitors from a cache server that is geographically close to their location.
Some CDN services also offer full-page caching, which can further accelerate the speed of your website across different geographical locations.
Pay attention to both caching and CDN (if any) features when selecting a hosting provider for your WordPress site. These don’t only make your website faster, they can also lower your web hosting bill.
Top comments (1)
I'd also add #5: Choose the LiteSpeed web server.