Best hosting for small personal site with no CPU limit surprises

[TanyaHelena]

Hey all, I plan to build my first personal site, WordPress-based, initially expecting less than 10,000 visitors per month, but with POTENTIAL for "going viral" at least on specific days.

After some research my understanding is that most basic level hosting packages like SiteGround and TSOHost would work, but I am a bit concerned that the site will be immediately suspended / go down in case there might be occasional "viral events" - because these hosting providers act strictly in case the CPU limit or visitor limit is exceeded.

By "viral event" I mean, for example, if I speak at a few conferences and give the attendees a link on my website to e.g. fill a survey and this might bring the count over 10,000... but not on a regular basis.

What would you suggest in this case? I really expect to get more "direct" traffic rather than online.

 

[ryedale]

To be honest, I don't think you'll have a problem. A lot depends on what they are accessing when they visit the site of course - e.g if every visitor comes to the site to download a 1GB file then you might have problems but if they are just visiting simple pages, then it should be fine.

If you are concerned, then you may be better working with a smaller provider with more direct support who would get in touch with you first if there was an issue over usage rather than just an automatic suspension.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi Tanya,

Welcome to the forums.

You can add a service such as CloudFlare - which is a free CDN (you can pay for more features if you want). That can help deal with spikes and take strain off your site.

You can also add a caching plugin or similar - so if the same pages are requested by a surge of visitors, the cached page can be served instead, again reducing the potential load.

I'd also recommend selecting a host that has uncrowded servers, and provides high resources to begin with.

If you do a search on the forums you'll find a lot of people have been having issues with the likes of TSOHost who likely now have far too many users on their servers.
So response times can be very slow.

Obviously if you start with hosting with fast response times, then there's more scope and your website will likely cope better with a surge of traffic.

I wouldn't worry too much.

Get some good quality hosting with the level of support you need. Build your website and start growing your idea. If it takes off and you find you need more resources, you can always look at upgrading to a cloud VPS or similar - which can scale with traffic spikes.

However I wouldn't overestimate that at the start and just get a solid foundation in a quality web host that can provide the support you want, and focus on building your website and audience.

If you have any questions then feel free to get in touch.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

[profitxchange]

Why not have a chat to tsohost I used them for years very helpful and supportive,

 

[arnydnxluk]

Rather than looking at your hosting setup, the best thing you can do initially is to optimise your website for performance. WordPress isn't a great start but I understand the functionality is probably a must. So, in that case, make sure you're using a minimal amount of plugins, your theme is optimised and caching is in place. With full page caching in place, I think you'd be surprised how much traffic a basic web hosting account can handle.

I would also think outside the box a little bit. For example, these surveys, do they have to be hosted on your website? Perhaps they can be created using a 3rd party service such as Google Forms, then linked to from your website (or perhaps even embedded on your website). In this setup, your website (with caching) can essentially be static during a conference and the "heavy lifting" will be handled by the survey service.

Focusing on the website help it to handle spikes while keeping your costs down. However the moment you begin to have issues with shared hosting, any good provider should be able to advise and seamlessly upgrade you to your own server if necessary.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Hey all, I plan to build my first personal site, WordPress-based, initially expecting less than 10,000 visitors per month, but with POTENTIAL for "going viral" at least on specific days.

After some research my understanding is that most basic level hosting packages like SiteGround and TSOHost would work, but I am a bit concerned that the site will be immediately suspended / go down in case there might be occasional "viral events" - because these hosting providers act strictly in case the CPU limit or visitor limit is exceeded.

By "viral event" I mean, for example, if I speak at a few conferences and give the attendees a link on my website to e.g. fill a survey and this might bring the count over 10,000... but not on a regular basis.

What would you suggest in this case? I really expect to get more "direct" traffic rather than online.

10K a month is pretty low. As Dan said, a decent hosting company coupled with a good CDN - CloudFlare or something.

Also make sure the provider you choose is using real, server-grade hardware. Xeon CPUs and recent, fast ones. Plenty of RAM, full SSD disks, a solid network. Real server grade hardware will easily handle WordPress - and multiple WordPress sites in a shared hosting environment. Desktop grade hardware will often struggle, especially under concurrent load.

And do full due diligence on who you end up choosing. Someone financially secure. Can you pull their accounts at Companies House? Are they worth more than 7p with sensible cash reserves?

 

[Alan]

Depends what you really want your website to do. But if it is pretty static in design and you want to do some basic blogging using simple markdown formatting, you would possibly do well with a static site generator such as Hugo which is ideal for blogs / portfolios etc. ( and pick from many free themes )

Then you can host it effectively for free, e.g. as a GitHub site - or indeed Google's Firebase - none of these platforms will have any issue at all with performance.

And you will have a static site that will fly in terms of performance, is virtually unhackable, doesn't require maintenance etc.

This for instance is a Hugo site of mine running on Firebase hosting https://gs.fullworks.net/

Too many people go the WordPress route when they don't need to, WordPress is heavy on resources, heavy on hosting costs, heavy on maintenance, weak on security. What WordPress is good on - is there are so many plugins - if you want something like e-commerce or a membership site or multi user access with different permissions or other advanced features beyond a blog / portfolio / contact form, then WordPress is one of the choices.

 

[webhostuk]

I agree with optimization part.. we have done it for few of our new customers facing such issues and the results where really surprising .. From host to host things might differ but if you find a host that can secure and optimize your site most of the issues can be avoided.

 

[Alan]

I agree with optimization part.. we have done it for few of our new customers

Do you do this for free? Out of interest.

 

[ecenica]

I would keep with WordPress but as others have said, your first port of call should be to install and configure a WordPress caching plugin like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.

Caching can dramatically reduce CPU load by saving static copies of your pages on your web space. Static files use less CPU and memory and can help keep you within your shared-hosting limits

Also, if available enable server-side caching in your hosting control panel.

For example we have our Ecenica TurboCacher, which improves the performance and speed of your website by caching dynamic and static files in system memory. This reduces the load on your site meaning you can handle increases in visitors and improves page load times.

Whoever you choose, best of luck with your conferences!

 

[Alan]

As with anything, its not as simple as saying - do this & do that, installing a caching plugin can and does often slow a low volume site down.

Server side and web caching (e.g. Varnish) are more effective.

Even simple stuff like gzip and expires headers are often not done.

Optimisation is a technical skill and as such 'costs' ( whether explicitly paid for or not ).

I would keep with WordPress

There is a saying 'why use a sledge hammer to crack a nut?' and certainly for a large number of simple websites WordPress is the sledge hammer, where there are perfectly easy to use nut crackers out there.

 

[ecenica]

We're yet to see a correctly configured caching plugin slow a site. WordPress recommend using a plugin.

WordPress caching is the fastest way to improve performance. If your site is getting hit right now install W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.​

Sure there are alternative CMS choices, but the OP says they wish to use WordPress so hence my recommendation. A well configured WP site on a decent hosting platform can easily handle the volume of traffic.

We currently host a large UK-based website. It's a huge WordPress multisite with a large number of active sites. Back in 2012 they asked us to host a special ticketing site for a London Olympics event. There were 10,000 tickets available. Their site went live at 10am and all tickets were sold out in less than 3 minutes. Their site stayed online and quick throughout.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

Depends what you really want your website to do. But if it is pretty static in design and you want to do some basic blogging using simple markdown formatting, you would possibly do well with a static site generator such as Hugo which is ideal for blogs / portfolios etc. ( and pick from many free themes )

Then you can host it effectively for free, e.g. as a GitHub site - or indeed Google's Firebase - none of these platforms will have any issue at all with performance.

And you will have a static site that will fly in terms of performance, is virtually unhackable, doesn't require maintenance etc.

This for instance is a Hugo site of mine running on Firebase hosting https://gs.fullworks.net/

Too many people go the WordPress route when they don't need to, WordPress is heavy on resources, heavy on hosting costs, heavy on maintenance, weak on security. What WordPress is good on - is there are so many plugins - if you want something like e-commerce or a membership site or multi user access with different permissions or other advanced features beyond a blog / portfolio / contact form, then WordPress is one of the choices.

Agree with this 100%.

Everyone thinks WordPress is the answer to everything, but it's not.

OP, I can't add much to what has already been said, all great advice. A decent small host with proper server hardware and some caching will do the job just fine. Good luck on your search.

 

[webhostuk]

Do you do this for free? Out of interest.

Yes we all that needs to be done on server end and some tweaks on website , stuff that does not includes any coding part is done free.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Agree with this 100%.

Everyone thinks WordPress is the answer to everything, but it's not.

OP, I can't add much to what has already been said, all great advice. A decent small host with proper server hardware and some caching will do the job just fine. Good luck on your search.

I disagree.

For ease of use, speed of deployment, sheer flexibility - nothing beats WP.
The minor additional effort required to keep it updated (an hour, 2 per week?) is considerable less than getting other sites online.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

I disagree.

For ease of use, speed of deployment, sheer flexibility - nothing beats WP.
The minor additional effort required to keep it updated (an hour, 2 per week?) is considerable less than getting other sites online.

You think Wordpress is the answer for everything?

Im not saying WordPress is rubbish/useless. WordPress is great for a lot of things.. 'speed of development' is not one of them.

If I was building a project with fast development in mind i'd be looking at something like Laravel. Not the technical mess that is WordPress.

Not only can it become really slow, really quickly.. It's bloated, resource heavy, messy code, attracts spammers, relies heavily on plugins for functionality that could contain any old code.

Each to their own, but after working with WP for many years i try to avoid it where possible.

My response was to Alan who sums it up great:

"Too many people go the WordPress route when they don't need to, WordPress is heavy on resources, heavy on hosting costs, heavy on maintenance, weak on security."

 

[makeusvisible]

If you are planning to have a serious business website, that is going to generate revenue, then I would definitely suggest paying for decent hosting. For Wordpress WP-engine provide a superb platform if you are going to manage the hosting yourself.

Even most basic Wordpress hosting platforms should be able to handle 10k visits in a day....that isnt a huge number in terms of visitor count so you should be ok.

As people above have mentioned, you might want to look at some Caching plugins, such as W3 Total Cache. Also tools such as SmushIt which will reduce your image files sizes. Caching plugins are rarely click-and-go, and you have to be extremely careful, but once optimised they can work well. If you also add amazon cloud hosting into the mix that will also improve your speed....but I dont think at the levels you've mentioned it is something you need to do.

 

[Deleted member 281732]

My personal site sometimes sees traffic spikes of 50,000 hits in an hour. Never had a problem. If I were using WordPress, I'd definitely have a problem.

I run my personal site and a bunch of marketing sites with static site generators. There are plenty of them, for just about any programming language.

I don't need to spend time tweaking plugins and caches.

How much does it cost me to host these sites? £0.

In fact, I wouldn't go near WordPress these days. For anything.