Web Hosting for High Traffic Sites

Written by Web Hosting Expert

Reviewed by Web Hosting Expert

Updated January 6, 2023
Web Hosting for High Traffic Sites

If you’re running a high-traffic site, online store, or even a resource-intensive application (like a game or complex application), there are some special considerations that you need to be aware of when it comes to choosing the best web hosting for your needs. ​​

You will deliver a better experience for your users if you choose the right web hosting provider for your high-traffic website. The high traffic doesn’t necessarily lead to high conversion. In fact, it can be deceptive if your site is not ready for the amount of traffic it is getting. You need to know whether or not your website has problems with serving content and how to fix them before you experience a steep drop in conversion rates and trust from potential customers.

Paid vs. Free Web Hosting for High Traffic Sites


Paid vs Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting is not necessarily a good idea. In fact, there are many drawbacks to using free web hosting sites over a paid one — here are the top three issues to consider before signing up for free web hosting:

  • Ads

One of the most common things you will be trading off with free web hosting is ads. Whenever you decide to use a free, ad-supported eCommerce site or a free web host, you are going to be trading off aesthetics with your business. To provide hosting, companies need to spend money for the technology and space that is required to do that, and they need to make that money somehow since they aren’t getting it from you. One of the easiest ways to do this is by displaying ads on your website, from which you won’t make any cash.

  • Common outages

Solid uptime is one of the most important things that a proper web hosting provider needs to offer you. Even though outages are expected, and every web hosting provider will need to do maintenance at some point – resulting in your website being down, a proper web hosting provider will guarantee you a higher uptime than a free plan.

  • Limited bandwidth

The time your website takes to load will be affected by how much bandwidth you have. Your ranking in the search engines and the number of visitors that will stick around on your website will be influenced greatly if you have a slow loading time. Bandwidth is specifically important if you have a high-traffic website that has media elements such as animation, video, and audio, which need more bandwidth in order to load. When it comes to the amount of bandwidth available, it is important to mention that free web hosting often comes with limits on bandwidth.

While there may be some exceptions, often the most experienced and successful companies choose paid web hosting. If you have a high-traffic website, paid web hosting is absolutely essential for both its speed and security. Picking up this option will save you on costs in the long term, giving you dedicated server power with no limits or technical restraints.

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What to Look for in A Good Web Hosting Provider for High Traffic Sites?


Below, we will go over the things you need to look for when you search for a web hosting provider for your high-traffic website.

Scalability

Scalability

The increased capacity of your website should be handled properly by your hosting environment. If not, you can lose brand trust and sales when they matter the most. Your host needs to be able to adapt quickly if your website starts getting millions of hits.

Network capacity

Network capacity

Something that is absolutely essential for your website to load fast is bandwidth, and this is one of the reasons why shared hosting plans aren’t such a good choice when it comes to websites that receive high amounts of traffic.

 Location of the data center

Location of the data center

There is a pretty good chance that your content will have delays on delivery if your servers are located in a totally different part of the world from where you are. You can achieve an optimal user experience by being closer to your data center.

Resources

Resources

The foundation of a seamless user experience when there is high traffic on your website are RAM, CPU, storage spacet, and bandwidth. You should look for a web hosting provider the keeps its infrastructure up to date and offers SSD storage.

Additional features

Additional features

This is where advanced tools such as SSL accelerators, load balancers, and caching come into play. If you have a website that has a high amount of traffic, these things can significantly impact your site.

Suitable Types of Hosting for High Traffic Sites


Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of the best types of hosting for your high-traffic website.

Virtual Private Server Hosting

Virtual Private Server hosting, or VPS hosting, works on a single physical server that has several virtually-partitioned sections. For instance, when you compare VPS hosting and shared hosting, VPS hosting really peaks in customizability and performance, which is really important for your high-traffic website. Even though you share the same physical server as you do with shared hosting, VPS provides a much higher degree of isolation between users.

Virtual Private Server Hosting
Cloud Hosting

Cloud Hosting

The popularity of Cloud hosting has increased in the past couple of years due to the fact that it offers scalability and high performance, which makes it a perfect fit for your high-traffic website. The benefits of Cloud hosting are that you can customize your server as you see fit, and it offers a high degree of scalability to its users.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is well-known for handling high volumes of traffic. With dedicated hosting, you can configure your server to your liking, and you get a whole server for yourself. When it comes to web hosting, dedicated servers are basically a top-of-the-line option. If your website is getting a lot of traffic or you have an established website that needs access to powerful hardware, dedicated hosting is the perfect choice for you.

Dedicated Hosting
WordPress Hosting

WordPress Hosting

For businesses that are looking for heightened security and performance for their WordPress sites, moving to managed WordPress hosting is probably the right way to go. A top-notch hosting company will give you access to WordPress-specific perks, such as one-click installations and free plugin licenses.

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Summary


Now that you have a large amount of traffic on your website, it is time to update and expand your website and get a proper web hosting provider. Besides modernizing your website in terms of brand appearance and site design, make sure you don’t forget to update the infrastructure of your site as well. If you want your website to have long-term success, something that is vitally important is the stability, security, scalability, and speed of your website.

If you’re trying to decide which type of hosting will best meet the needs of your high-traffic website, the features we mentioned in this post are a great place to start your research. Managed WordPress hosting, dedicated servers, VPS, and Cloud solutions will help you handle the increased amount of traffic you’re experiencing as your business expands.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is cPanel?

cPanel is a Unix-based control panel for web hosting that provides automation tools and a graphical interface designed to simplify the process of hosting a site.

What are the disadvantages of shared hosting?

Even though it’s the least expensive type of hosting, shared hosting has the most disadvantages due to the fact that the resources that are available on the server are shared, and there aren’t many of them. A web server tends to slow down when it is shared by hundreds of websites, which will affect the performance of your site.

Who needs a dedicated server?

A dedicated server is a suitable candidate if you have a few websites that are successful or you have a large company. Dedicated hosting isn’t recommended if you’re just getting started with web hosting.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is the name of your website. A domain name is a word or a phrase that people enter in their browsers in order to be taken to a certain website on the Internet.

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