Slow website with Shared Hosting?

by nicoli
25 replies
Hey all,

I have had many a client complain recently about their shared hosting, specifically with HG in regards to performance.

While HG and every other hosting company under the EIG umbrella is packing their servers far beyond acceptable limits, users with wordpress are also affected with shared hosting when trying to run more than 25 executions at once (think heavy plugins/javascripts) and this is turn has been seeing more and more 500 errors when the site has heavy load (100+ visitors)

I know a lot of you will (or should) already know this, but if it helps at least one person, then my deed for the day is done.

Try cloudflare. Seriously guys, the free account will be enough for a lot of you who have outgrown the EIG shared hosting crap, but are not making enough $$ yet to justify dedicated/VPS.

And no, I am not in any way, shape or form affiliated with Cloudflare, just an honest opinion that I am sure can help some of you.

nic
#hosting #shared #slow #website
  • Profile picture of the author OnlineAddict
    I have many websites on shared hosting for 10 years and never had speed issues. I don't use the biggest companies, though.
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  • Profile picture of the author eltasweeq
    Originally Posted by nicoli View Post

    Hey all,

    I have had many a client complain recently about their shared hosting, specifically with HG in regards to performance.

    While HG and every other hosting company under the EIG umbrella is packing their servers far beyond acceptable limits, users with wordpress are also affected with shared hosting when trying to run more than 25 executions at once (think heavy plugins/javascripts) and this is turn has been seeing more and more 500 errors when the site has heavy load (100+ visitors)

    I know a lot of you will (or should) already know this, but if it helps at least one person, then my deed for the day is done.

    Try cloudflare. Seriously guys, the free account will be enough for a lot of you who have outgrown the EIG shared hosting crap, but are not making enough $$ yet to justify dedicated/VPS.

    And no, I am not in any way, shape or form affiliated with Cloudflare, just an honest opinion that I am sure can help some of you.

    nic
    iam suffered for slow website
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  • Profile picture of the author eltasweeq
    iam also suffered from slowely website
    http://eltasweeq.blogspot.com/
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  • Profile picture of the author OnlineAddict
    Btw cloudflare is not hosting, its just protection for a shared or any other hosting. It doesn't make the server better, just stops some unwanted traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by OnlineAddict View Post

      Btw cloudflare is not hosting, its just protection for a shared or any other hosting. It doesn't make the server better, just stops some unwanted traffic.
      We don't provide protection only. We also act as a CDN and this can help take a decent amount of the load off of your server.
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    • Profile picture of the author nicoli
      Originally Posted by OnlineAddict View Post

      Btw cloudflare is not hosting, its just protection for a shared or any other hosting. It doesn't make the server better, just stops some unwanted traffic.
      I think they make that quite obvious to the newbies who land on their site. It does make a server better, indirectly, by reducing a MASSIVE load from it. Cloudflare rocks
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      • Profile picture of the author OnlineAddict
        Originally Posted by nicoli View Post

        I think they make that quite obvious to the newbies who land on their site. It does make a server better, indirectly, by reducing a MASSIVE load from it. Cloudflare rocks
        I wouldn't use the word massive...most users don't even notice couldflare on their server, unless they use really shitty hosting. Cloudflare is more of a marketing hype than anything else.
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    CloudFlare actually slows down sites on high-quality server. I've tested this many times, as have many others -- both hosts and non-hosts.

    Only if your host is overloaded (ie, EIG, Dreamhost, etc) does it help any.
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post

      CloudFlare actually slows down sites on high-quality server. I've tested this many times, as have many others -- both hosts and non-hosts.

      Only if your host is overloaded (ie, EIG, Dreamhost, etc) does it help any.
      Not true at all. We have plenty of well-known sites that would say otherwise. If you had an issue of some sort with performance, you should have reported it to our support team. Many hosting providers would not partner with CloudFlare if we were consistently slowing sites down.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicoli
    Yep, perfect for shared peeps outgrowing EIG shit
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  • Profile picture of the author lucidzfl
    Originally Posted by nicoli View Post

    Hey all,

    I have had many a client complain recently about their shared hosting, specifically with HG in regards to performance.

    While HG and every other hosting company under the EIG umbrella is packing their servers far beyond acceptable limits, users with wordpress are also affected with shared hosting when trying to run more than 25 executions at once (think heavy plugins/javascripts) and this is turn has been seeing more and more 500 errors when the site has heavy load (100+ visitors)

    I know a lot of you will (or should) already know this, but if it helps at least one person, then my deed for the day is done.

    Try cloudflare. Seriously guys, the free account will be enough for a lot of you who have outgrown the EIG shared hosting crap, but are not making enough $$ yet to justify dedicated/VPS.

    And no, I am not in any way, shape or form affiliated with Cloudflare, just an honest opinion that I am sure can help some of you.

    nic
    Do you know if the hosting is due to CPU cap or bandwidth capping?

    If you don't want to relocate hosts, you would do wise to find out if its a CPU issue (reduce the amount of server side programs) or bandwidth (reduce the size of your graphics)

    EDIT: Also, have you tested your sites total speed to make sure that even under load the site is fast?
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    • Profile picture of the author nicoli
      Originally Posted by lucidzfl View Post

      Do you know if the hosting is due to CPU cap or bandwidth capping?

      If you don't want to relocate hosts, you would do wise to find out if its a CPU issue (reduce the amount of server side programs) or bandwidth (reduce the size of your graphics)

      EDIT: Also, have you tested your sites total speed to make sure that even under load the site is fast?
      Yes I know all of this. Quick example, a client of mine with 6 plugins in a wp install couldnt handle anymore than 65 users on the site at once. Integrated cloudflare and boom, over 300 simultaneous users. Tested with 10k users using load impact and it passed every test.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
        Originally Posted by nicoli View Post

        Yes I know all of this. Quick example, a client of mine with 6 plugins in a wp install couldnt handle anymore than 65 users on the site at once. Integrated cloudflare and boom, over 300 simultaneous users. Tested with 10k users using load impact and it passed every test.
        I'm a little skeptical of this unfortunately - on a case by case basis, we've actually begun to recommend people to "not" use it. There's always mysterious issues the we ultimately get the blame for. One is slowing down sites (some, not all) and the other is the DNS problems with CloudFlare randomly saying our servers are inaccessible. With load impact, most of those "would be" users probably hit a challenge page with CloudFlare. CF caches static content.

        It does help block a lot of bad bots/countries/spammers etc however, trying to boost performance, I wouldn't recommend it. Find yourself a better host with a lower density & quality hardware with optimal configurations.
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        • Profile picture of the author nicoli
          Originally Posted by Kingfish85 View Post

          I'm a little skeptical of this unfortunately - on a case by case basis, we've actually begun to recommend people to "not" use it. There's always mysterious issues the we ultimately get the blame for. One is slowing down sites (some, not all) and the other is the DNS problems with CloudFlare randomly saying our servers are inaccessible. With load impact, most of those "would be" users probably hit a challenge page with CloudFlare. CF caches static content.


          It does help block a lot of bad bots/countries/spammers etc however, trying to boost performance, I wouldn't recommend it. Find yourself a better host with a lower density & quality hardware with optimal configurations.
          I agree with you
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        • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
          Originally Posted by Kingfish85 View Post

          most of those "would be" users probably hit a challenge page with CloudFlare. CF caches static content.
          One of my favorite visit-daily joke sites was blocked for 6+ months, and I couldn't get on, because of the stupid CloudFlare crap. The "challenge" never worked, and would instead die with errors. Other times, it wasn't even found (bad DNS). The site lost a bunch of traffic, and didn't know why. Lo and behold, it was CloudFlare that blocked users and drove the traffic down for months. The site got off "cheap + CF" hosting and onto "quality + no CF" hosting.

          CF takes the "we're fine" head-in-sand approach to everything.

          Terrible free CDN.
          Terrible paid CDN.
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          • Profile picture of the author nicoli
            Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post

            One of my favorite visit-daily joke sites was blocked for 6+ months, and I couldn't get on, because of the stupid CloudFlare crap. The "challenge" never worked, and would instead die with errors. Other times, it wasn't even found (bad DNS). The site lost a bunch of traffic, and didn't know why. Lo and behold, it was CloudFlare that blocked users and drove the traffic down for months. The site got off "cheap + CF" hosting and onto "quality + no CF" hosting.

            CF takes the "we're fine" head-in-sand approach to everything.

            Terrible free CDN.
            Terrible paid CDN.
            6 Months? I would hardly blame CF for that. Sounds like a terrible webmaster. Had it indeed been CF it would have been a simple change of the NS and within 48 to 72 hours the problem would have been resolved. Smells fishy
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    Many hosts are telling their clients to NOT use CloudFlare, as it can make the sites slower, or causes odd errors. It goes both ways. The service has issues for many.

    And I've not heard of at least 2/3rds of those sites before. They're not that famous.
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post

      Many hosts are telling their clients to NOT use CloudFlare, as it can make the sites slower, or causes odd errors. It goes both ways. The service has issues for many.

      And I've not heard of at least 2/3rds of those sites before. They're not that famous.
      Oh, you haven't heard of some of the largest providers like:
      Hostgator
      Mediatemple
      Bluehost
      1and1
      Dreamhost

      We are partnered with all of them & they are among some of the largest hosting providers in the world. They wouldn't be offering our services if we were consistently causing issues for their sites that use us.

      If any user has issues using CloudFlare, or if they see some sort of performance issue, they should open a support ticket for investigation. Not every site performance or offline issue is our fault (the site's server could be struggling, the site's server could be down, etc.).
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  • Profile picture of the author yoangov
    If you google it, and make some research, you will find ways to buy a very cheap VPS (~$7) and use it without cpanel. Believe me, this is 100x times better than using HG shared plans...
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  • Profile picture of the author steven8433
    Digitalocean offers $5/month VPSes ^^. Beats using $7/month VPSes lol
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  • Profile picture of the author nicoli
    Buying hosting based on price, i.e cheap, and not on value is just plain stupid
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  • Profile picture of the author vishwa
    I will suggest you go with any Non EIG group hosting site like Dreamhost, Hawkhost, Stablehost etc.
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    Techbizmasters.com- Blogging, Technology, and Digital Marketing
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  • Profile picture of the author greg80221
    I as well am not sold on cloudflare. I will admit that the time I tried it I was adding content and seeing it appear several seconds later was a slight inconveniance. seeing testing with a WP site with 5 articles load faster with w3 cache installed was the reason I took it off. The best part is that there is no way to reset the service or cancel it if you start from HG cpanel which was another thing that made me a little miffed. Will I try it again? probably not I do not like to have to go to yet another provider when sites have issues. I get sick of playing the blame game when you have more than a couple providers of content. and damoncloudflares little snippy response is par for the course when dealing with additional content providers.
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by greg80221 View Post

      I as well am not sold on cloudflare. I will admit that the time I tried it I was adding content and seeing it appear several seconds later was a slight inconveniance. seeing testing with a WP site with 5 articles load faster with w3 cache installed was the reason I took it off. The best part is that there is no way to reset the service or cancel it if you start from HG cpanel which was another thing that made me a little miffed. Will I try it again? probably not I do not like to have to go to yet another provider when sites have issues. I get sick of playing the blame game when you have more than a couple providers of content. and damoncloudflares little snippy response is par for the course when dealing with additional content providers.
      Not being snippy at all. The simple fact of the matter is that hosting providers would not be partnering with us if we were consistently causing issues for sites that are using.

      "The best part is that there is no way to reset the service or cancel it if you start from HG cpanel which was another thing that made me a little miffed"

      If you're active within the control panel at a hosting provider, you should have the option of toggling CloudFlare off simply by clicking on the orange cloud to move us to gray (turns us off). We don't lock you into our service signing up through a partner & you can turn us off whenever you would like.

      " tried it I was adding content and seeing it appear several seconds later was a slight inconveniance"

      We would only factor in if you were making changes to static content that we would cache (changing css, images, javascript, etc.) If you're doing something such as a new post (dynamic updates) we do not impact this by default.
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