How Website Hosting Affects Your Website’s Speed

Website hosting

TechsPlace | Website hosting is one of the first things you’ll need to sort out in order to get your website out there online. But it’s also something that many people rush through for the sake of launching their site as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, making the wrong web hosting choice can haunt you in the future. So it’s worthwhile putting some thought and research into it upfront to make sure you’re getting a host that has your best interests at heart.

If you’re wondering what the big deal is, here’s some information on how website hosting affects your website speed. Considering more than half of visitors expect a site to load fully in 3 seconds or less… Your web host could actually be costing you traffic.

Let’s dive into it so you can understand the effect a good or bad web host truly has on your business… And what you can do about it.

 

How Website Hosting Affects Your Website’s Speed

Your web host can make or break your website in many ways, including how fast it loads when someone lands on it. Here are the factors that contribute to your website speed… And the things you should double-check on your own web host if you already have one.

 

1. Shared vs Dedicated Hosting

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make when investing in web hosting for the first time. For websites that don’t have a lot of pages or get a lot of traffic, sharing resources might not seem like a problem at the time.

If your site has grown since you signed up with your web host, has multiple pages within different menus, or gets a decent amount of traffic, sharing resources can slow your site down quite a bit.

But it’s not just your own website’s resource use that could affect your speed, so don’t get complacent if you have a very light website. If you’re sharing a server with other sites that are resource-heavy, your own might suffer as they steal even the most basic of resources away from it.

For this reason, we always recommend choosing dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, or cloud hosting over shared hosting.

 

2. The Host’s RAM

RAM stands for random access memory, and the amount of RAM your host provides to store your information can have an effect on your website’s loading time.

The more RAM, the faster data can be processed and loaded. On the flip side, the less RAM, the slower your site will be… And for no apparent reason.

If you haven’t yet decided on a web host, it’s worth comparing a few to see how much RAM they offer. If you already have a web host, it’s still worth checking.

2GB should be the minimum you consider, but it’s always a better idea to size up to a host that offers 4GB so you have room to grow later on.

 

3. Bandwidth

Bandwidth is also known as the data transfer rate. It refers to how much data can be transferred at one time. If the bandwidth is low, your pages will load slowly because they can’t load all the elements fast enough.

For websites that don’t have a lot of data or have very simply designed pages, a lower bandwidth might not be an issue. But if you’ve got a fair bit of data on each page, this could be a speed killer.

 

4. Your Traffic

Technically, the amount of traffic that comes into your website is out of your web host’s control. But when you have a whole lot of visitors on your site at one time, your host may not be able to split resources between all of them… Leading to slow loading times, or it may not open at all for some unlucky people.

Make sure your chosen web host can keep up with your estimated amount of traffic. If you’re planning or even hoping to grow your traffic exponentially, it’s best to choose a host that can keep up with your traffic wishes rather than your current traffic numbers.

 

How to Fix the Issue

So what if your website is slow and you’re losing traffic, missing out on sales, and inadvertently chasing people away? There are two ways you can speed up your own website and prevent lost chances.

 

1. Get a New Website Host

If you’ve never considered things like shared resources, RAM, and bandwidth before, now might be the time to compare a few new web hosts and see if you can find a better deal than what you’re currently getting.

We highly recommend moving away from shared hosting if at all possible. VPS hosting is a fairly affordable option, and it’s head and shoulders above shared. Do your research and make sure you’re getting something that’s a step up from what you have now.

 

2. Optimize Your Website

Thankfully, there are things you can do apart from your web host to boost the speed of your website. Try taking some of these steps:

  • Remove plugins you aren’t using
  • Eliminate unnecessary page redirects
  • Compress every image (existing and new)
  • Set browser caching to “enabled”
  • Use a content delivery network ‘
  • Consider a new DNS provider

 

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you’re a WordPress site or use another platform. Your web host can make or break the success of your website. It’s like giving your baby to a babysitter while you go out and do something else—you wouldn’t just hand them over to anyone without thorough research, would you?

Why do that with your web host? Your business is important, so make sure you’ve got the right one from the start. When you understand how your website hosting affects your website’s speed and performance, it’s a no-brainer!

Even if you’ve got great web hosting, it’s worthwhile implementing the extra steps to speed your website up even more. After all, more than half of your visitors will leave if the page isn’t open in the blink of an eye… Give your people what they want!