No website can exist without website hosting. Your web host is a company that will store all of your site’s files on its servers, holding all the data associated with your website in a safe place that’s easily accessible when people browse your website.
If you want a website that works well, both from your side and from the POV of site visitors, then choosing a great web host plan is a must. The truth is that your chosen website hosting solution affects your site speed performance, amongst other things. Poor page loading speed is one of the leading reasons people bounce, so getting this right is kind of essential.
Keep reading to understand the effect your website hosting has on your site, your traffic, and ultimately, your business.
The Website Hosting Type You Choose
The type of hosting you use for your site makes a difference in its loading speed. It’s likely that you’re using one of three different types: shared, dedicated, or cloud hosting. Here’s how each one affects your website’s speed performance.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is economical, but it’s the most common type of hosting to have page speed loading problems. The problem here lies in the fact that you have multiple websites on one server, and the resources on the server aren’t divided equally between all those websites.
If one particular website suddenly gets a lot of traffic, your site is likely to slow down significantly because your available resources take a dip. There’s no way for you to control what resources get allocated to your site at any given time, so this isn’t the best choice if you want a speedy site.
Dedicated Hosting And Cloud Hosting
Dedicated hosting and cloud hosting offer much better page-loading speeds. They provide resources dedicated to your website, so there’s no up-and-down. Cloud hosting tends to be faster across the world, as your data is hosted on multiple virtual servers rather than a single physical server.
Types Of Hard Drives
The type of drive your web host is using also plays a role in your site’s speed. It’s a good idea to find out what kind of hard drive your host is using; solid-state drive or hard-disk drive. SSDs are notably faster than HDDs, so this is something to consider.
The size of the hard drive also makes a difference. Smaller drives will fill up faster, slowing down over time. Larger drives will typically be faster, especially when they’re still relatively empty.
Accounts Per Server
If you’re using a dedicated server, this isn’t likely to be an issue. But if you’re using shared hosting, the number of accounts on the server will also influence your website speed. The more accounts on the server, the slower it’s likely to be.
RAM: Random Access Memory
The RAM—random access memory—is how much information your server can store and how fast it can be processed and delivered by the server. Very basic websites only need about 2GB of RAM, but if your site is larger and more complicated, you’ll need quite a bit more.
The higher the GB value of your website host’s RAM, the faster your website will load. Each host has their own capacity, and if you’ve outgrown it, then it may be time to find a new web host.
Amount of Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the word for how much data your web host can transfer at one time. It’s also known as the data transfer rate. Bandwidth works like a train tunnel. If it’s wide and spacious—ie. A high bandwidth—a lot of information can fit through in one go.
On the other hand, if it’s small and narrow, not much can fit through it at one time. In this case, the bandwidth would be considered to be low. Sometimes, the network can become overloaded, and your bandwidth may drop. But in this context, it’s important to check the bandwidth capabilities of your website host to make sure they can handle things.
Amount Of Traffic To Your Website
If your website doesn’t get a lot of traffic, you’re unlikely to experience issues with speed. Sites that only get local traffic will probably be quite okay, but the more traffic comes to your website, the slower it can get unless your web host is designed to handle it.
When you’re getting traffic from multiple different places in the world at the same time, your web host has to work harder to deliver information to all those different places. If the server isn’t equipped to handle it, your site can slow down significantly.
In some cases, this will chase users away. In the worst-case scenario, your website won’t open at all for some users. Track your traffic so you can tell if it’s contributing to your slow page loading speed.
If you’re expecting your organic search traffic to grow—and you have the budget—go for cloud hosting. It’s scalable, so you’ll be able to increase the resources you need as your website grows and more traffic comes in.
Routing And CDNs
Distance makes a difference. If your server is in the USA and someone in New Zealand tries to visit your site, they’ll have to wait longer for the data to be transferred to their browser. This is where CDNs help. A CDN—content delivery network—stores your website data on servers around the world, so no matter where your users come from, it loads quickly.
Check if your web host uses a CDN. If they don’t, you may want to consider finding another web host or doing some research on how to use a CDN yourself. Check out Cloudflare, KeyCDN, or StackPath as a few great options.
Conclusion:
Now that you know how website hosting affects your site speed performance, you know what to look for when your page loading speed starts to drop. It’s bound to happen to us all at some point, but if it’s happening regularly or for extended periods of time, you need to take action to increase speed before your visitors begin to get annoyed!
You can’t afford to have bad page speed loading times. And if your current web host isn’t giving you speedy loading times, it might be time to consider moving to a new one. There are definitely things you can do yourself to improve your site speed, but you need a web host that will work with you.
About The Author
Paul Wheeler runs a web design agency that helps small businesses optimize their websites for business success. He aims to educate business owners on all things website-related on his own website, Reviews for Website Hosting, and other partners.
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