5 Best Hosting for Heavy Traffic- April 2016
Let’s assume for a moment you are a website that has recently experienced a massive boost in traffic. Before you celebrate and start planning vacation trips, ask yourself this question: Will my current hosting provider be enough to accommodate this increase of traffic?
Increased traffic means more resources and in some cases, may require a VPS or even dedicated plan rather than standard shared hosting. RAM, CPU speed, storage, and reliability are all highly influential factors when it comes to finding the right hosting for a heavy traffic site. Building your site on advanced hardware will also not only increase your site’s loading time, but also create a more reliable site that avoids downtime.
Luckily for you, we’re here to help when it comes to finding the best hosting for heavy traffic sites. Take a look at our top five list below to see our picks for heavy traffic hosting, with a mix of shared, VPS, and cloud-based hosting providers.
Best Hosting for Heavy Traffic Summary
WINNER
DigitalOcean
5/5
Best Hosting for Heavy Traffic
ProsPROS
55 second setup time
SSD storage
Hourly pricing
KVM virtualization
ConsCONS
No live chat or phone support
No mone back guarantee
Digital Ocean has emerged as the most popular cloud hosting providers on the Internet today, showcasing an explosion of growth that only began with the company’s inception in 2011. With an advertised 55-second setup time from signup to launching your “droplet” (DO’s term for cloud instances), the ease of use and general cleanliness of Digital Ocean is what makes it so attractive for developers and beginners alike.
All servers are built on Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC RAM and RAID-10 SSD storage, while KVM virtualization used for each droplet ensures peak security and performance. Cloud servers are also ultra-reliable, and Digital Ocean backs this up with a 99.99% up time guarantee, meaning you won’t be worrying about losing any traffic due to downtime. They have standard plans starting at $5 a month ($0.007 hourly) which come with 512 MB of RAM and a single core processor, while high volume plans start at $160 a month and include a stunning 16 GB of RAM as well as boasting a eight core processor.
While Digital Ocean might require slightly more advanced knowledge of Unix command line and doesn’t offer some of the extra features that other providers tend to oversell, the bottom line is that you get the best resources and hardware per dollar spent with Digital Ocean, period.
Give Digital Ocean a try today!
Visit DigitalOcean »
2ND PLACE
WPEngine
4.4/5
WP Engine
ProsPROS
90 day money back guarantee
Free Snapshot Backups
EverCache custom caching
ConsCONS
Prices are slightly higher than the industry norm
With WordPress accounting for nearly 25% of all websites on the Internet today, the need for a provider who specializes directly in fully managed WordPress hosting is crucial. WP Engine takes care of all your hosting needs, with plans specifically tailored for high traffic WordPress blogs.
WP Engine offers a mix of shared and dedicated hosting plans, although the dedicated options are meant for businesses who have over a million visitors a month. Their personal shared plan starts at $29.99 a month, which include 1 WordPress site, 10 GB of storage, and up to 25,000 visits a month. All plans are built on a Xen-virtualized environment with enterprise grade hardware, but the real star of the show is their EverCache caching system, which optimizes all WordPress sites on WP Engine to run at peak efficiency.
With over 250,000 installations of WordPress, WP Engine is the number one choice if you are running a WordPress site and run into heavy traffic. With full server management and loads of custom WordPress tweaks, signing up for their service is an easy decision to make. Check them at no risk to you with their 60 day money back guarantee!
Visit WP Engine »
3RD PLACE
Site5
4/5
Site5
ProsPROS
Free site migration
30 day free trial
Servers all around the world
ConsCONS
Backups/Control panel cost extra for VPS plans
Site5 is present on a lot of our top lists, as they provide an overwhelmingly positive experience when it comes any sort of hosting requirements you may have. With data centers in nine different countries and unlimited storage and bandwidth, Site5 is a great option if you have heavy traffic, no matter where in the world you might be.
Site5’s server hardware is top of the line, with each server utilizing at minimum: dual E5-2630 Sandy Bridge eight core processors, RAID-10 SSD storage, and 64 GB of RAM. Because of this commitment to network infrastructure, Site5 is ideal when it comes to hosting certain niches in web development, while a site with heavy traffic will also benefit from Site5’s hardware commitments.
With free site migration and a free 30 day trial, Site5 is an attractive choice if you should find yourself with a sudden burst in traffic for your site. With plans starting at $4.95 a month and a 45 day money back guarantee, give Site5 a try today!
Visit Site5 »
4TH PLACE
LithiumHosting
3.5/5
LithiumHosting
ProsPROS
Free 30 day trial
Free migration
Free domain with high end plans
Loads of helpful video tutorials
ConsCONS
99.7% uptime guarantee
No phone or live chat support options
Lithium Hosting lives on a motto of “good web hosting shouldn’t be expensive”, with a focus on straightforward pricing and avoiding the questionable business practice of advertising “unlimited” bandwidth and storage.
Plans start at $3.00 a month for their Economy plan which includes 100 GB of bandwidth and 3 GB of storage. For heavy traffic sites however, Lithium Hosting recommends their $9.00 a month Elite plan, which includes 15 GB of storage, 1 TB of bandwidth, and unlimited add on domains. The bandwidth and storage limits in place for Lithium are scalable, meaning if you reach your monthly limit you can easily and quickly upgrade your plan to fit your site’s increasing traffic.
Still not convinced by Lithium’s low prices? Lithium is one of the few providers who offer a 30 day free trial prior to signing up for their plans, meaning you can give Lithium a try at no risk prior to signing up!
Visit LithiumHosting »
5TH PLACE
FastComet
3/5
FastComet
ProsPROS
SSD storage
Free domain name
Free daily/weekly backups
45 day money back guarantee
ConsCONS
No site builder included
FastComet is another great option for heavy traffic websites, with SSD based, unlimited bandwidth plans starting at just $2.95 a month. FastComet is also a great option due to the dozens of perks in the form of discounts, free tools and SEO services, and loads of tutorials and site templates.
FastComet is a good option for heavy traffic websites with their blazing fast network architecture and their support for some of the most popular programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Bash. You also get a free CloudFlare CDN account, which is especially useful if you are encountering heavy traffic from various geographical locations.
FastComet also stands out for their five different layers of caching, daily and weekly backups, as well as unlimited FTP and email accounts. Still not convinced? Give FastComet a try today and take advantage of their 45-day money back guarantee!
Visit FastComet »
Three Important Tips Regarding Heavy Traffic
Let’s assume for a moment that your site has just gone viral and you are experiencing the same traffic in a single day you would experience over a three month period. Time to start looking at vacation packages to the Cayman Islands, right? Unfortunately, in order to keep your site best serving this influx of visitors, your site needs to be optimized and ready to handle such a sudden increase.
CloudFlare CDN
A content delivery network works much in the same way a traditional delivery service such as FedEx or UPS does, with a CDN helping to quickly deliver your site’s content to visitors from all around the world. Most hosting providers offer free integration with CloudFlare, one of the top choices when it comes to handling heavy traffic.
Learn more about CloudFlare and the benefits of a CDN here.
Image Optimization
If you site has a lot of images, your site’s speed could be suffering as a result. Additionally, mobile users might be encountering even slower speeds, as large image files can take even longer to download when browsing on a phone or tablet.
Compressing and optimizing your site’s images is what Kraken.io does best, with the benefits of an image optimization tool surely to increase your site’s accessibility.
Load Testing
Load testing refers to testing the capacity and performance of your site under different conditions prior to launching it. These tests will help you get a better understanding of how your site will function under various levels of traffic, allowing you to better prepare and optimize for the (hopefully) inevitable increase in visitors.
Test your site using LoadComplete, a load testing tool for websites and web apps.
Post a Comment