When choosing a hosting provider, cost often plays a major role. However, if you run a high-traffic website, then other factors tend to take priority.
Fortunately, there are hosting providers that tailor their offerings to support thousands or even millions of visitors. By choosing one of these services, you’ll have access to the horsepower, reliability, and enterprise-grade security you need to keep your high-traffic site online.
In this post, we’ll explore the top features to look for in a web hosting provider. We’ll then share four hosts that can meet the needs of even the most demanding websites. Let’s get started!
If you’re searching for a hosting provider for your high-traffic website, chances are you’re already generating a healthy amount of revenue. As such, the cost of a host may be far less important compared to some other factors. For example, startups, hobby bloggers, and smaller businesses gravitate toward budget-friendly hosting providers.
Instead, your main concern will likely be finding a hosting provider that can keep your site online, even during its busiest periods. For example, your website may experience unexpected spikes in traffic.
Reliability is also a major factor. If your site goes offline even briefly, you may lose a significant amount of traffic. Depending on the nature of your website, you might even miss out on dozens of sales or advertising revenue.
With the stakes high, you’ll want to examine each provider’s uptime rates. Wherever possible, we recommend opting for a web hosting provider that offers an uptime guarantee. This indicates that the host is confident in its ability to keep your site online, even during periods of high traffic.
High traffic may also mean that your site collects large amounts of information. This data may include customer credit card details, passwords, or other forms of personally identifiable information.
When you have access to a wealth of data, you immediately become an attractive target for hackers. If your provider has a range of built-in security features, these can help you fend off those attacks. For instance, you should look for malware scanners, firewalls, and complimentary Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.
Now that you know what to watch out for, let’s take a look at some potential candidates. Here are four web hosting providers that we believe have something special to offer high-traffic sites.
Kinsta is a popular managed WordPress hosting provider that uses infrastructure powered by the premium tier of the Google Cloud platform. This is the same foundation that Google uses for its own services. As such, Kinsta should have no issues keeping high-traffic sites online.
To further boost your site’s performance, Kinsta offers a built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN) powered by KeyCDN. This HTTP/2 and IPv6-enabled CDN has over 200 locations, perfect for websites with global audiences.
Since performance is a critical factor for high-traffic sites, you might be happy to learn that Kinsta comes with four types of built-in caching. It includes bytecode, object, and page caching, which happen automatically at the software and server levels.
As the owner of a high-traffic site, chances are you have a long To-Do list. To help make your life easier, Kinsta offers several convenient features, including automated backups and easy staging.
Features:
Pricing: Kinsta’s plans start at $30 per month for 25,000 monthly visits. Its Enterprise 4 plan is capable of supporting 3,000,000 visits, with custom plans available for even larger sites.
Pagely’s infrastructure is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which delivers a high level of flexibility and scalability. This makes the hosting provider a good fit for websites that experience major fluctuations in traffic. This partnership with AWS also means that you can choose to leverage hundreds of AWS services, further reducing latency.
Continuing with the Amazon theme, Pagely offers PressDNS, a premium Domain Name System (DNS) powered by Amazon Route 53. It can deliver fast page load times and the reliability you need when running a high-traffic site.
On average, images make up almost 17 percent of a webpage’s total weight. If you want your site to run at peak performance, then optimizing your images is a great place to start. The good news is that Pagely offers a built-in image processor, known as PressThumb. You can use it to automatically generate and serve lightweight graphics on-demand.
Uptime is a serious concern for high-traffic sites. Here, Pagely stands out from the crowd by offering a 100 percent uptime guarantee. This promise makes the provider a desirable option for high-traffic e-commerce sites, where even a few seconds of downtime could result in lost sales.
It’s worth noting that Pagely is one of the more expensive hosting providers. However, if your site is attracting huge volumes of traffic, a budget-friendly host is unlikely to deliver the level of security, reliability, and performance you need.
Features:
Pricing: Pagely’s subscriptions range from $499 to $3600 per month.
WP Engine is a well-known WordPress hosting provider. If you run a high-traffic website, this host offers several performance-boosting features. For example, it includes server-level caching and a built-in CDN. According to WP Engine, customers experience a 40 percent improvement in site speed after switching to its services.
When your site attracts large volumes of traffic, performance becomes a major concern. With this in mind, you may be interested in WP Engine’s dedicated performance monitoring, which New Relic provides. You can use this technology to identify any weak spots that may prevent your site from efficiently processing multiple visitors.
WP Engine also has everything you need to easily manage your WordPress websites, such as automatic backups, updates, and managed upgrades. Without worrying about these daily maintenance tasks, you’ll have more time to focus on other areas. As the owner of a thriving website, chances are you have a long list of tasks to handle!
Features:
Pricing: WP Engine’s Managed plans start at $25 per month.
The Pantheon managed WordPress hosting provider offers scalable infrastructure built on the high-performing Google Cloud platform. In addition, the host offers server-level caching and a built-in global CDN. All of these features equate to a powerful platform for your high-traffic website.
Pantheon takes an elastic approach to hosting. This strategy could be perfect if your site experiences spikes in traffic. According to its website, Pantheon can scale to millions of pageviews without compromising performance. Additionally, the host offers a 99.95 percent uptime guarantee.
Keeping a high-traffic site in tip-top shape can be a challenge. However, Pantheon offers a wealth of features that can help lighten the load. For example, it includes automatic backups and updates, integrated version control, and multiple staging environments.
Features:
Pricing: Pantheon’s plans range from $41 to $160 per month when paid annually. When you’re crunching the numbers, bear in mind that Pantheon’s overage charges are significantly higher than some of its competitors.
These WordPress hosting providers may not be the cheapest options on the market. Still, they can deliver the firepower your high-traffic site needs. Without the help of a premium host, your website may struggle to process all of your visitors – and may even experience downtime.
To recap, here are four of the best hosting providers for high-traffic sites:
Do you have any questions about the best web hosting for your high-traffic site? Ask away in the comments section below!
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