One fact about shared hosting is that it is the cheapest way to host one’s website. This is what makes it popular for many websites including blogs, businesses, portfolios, and even new sites. Nevertheless, as the number of people who visit your site increases, the question to answer becomes, “How much traffic can shared hosting handle?”
Learning more about how “shared hosting resources are allocated” may assist you to know if your hosting service is adequate for your site. It is not possible to have one figure that would work for all users of shared hosting.
A site that gets several thousand visitors each month could easily cope with the capacity of shared hosting, but there is a possibility of slowing down at sites with less traffic.
Herein, you will learn about traffic handling through shared hosting, factors affecting its capacity, symptoms of reaching maximum capacity for your site, and when you should consider switching to another type of hosting.
Table of Contents
Shared Hosting Defined
Shared hosting is a type of hosting where several sites run on one server that they share. It is possible for shared hosting to be based on CPU, RAM, storage space, bandwidth and other resources of a server.
The most significant benefit here is that of low cost. You do not need to rent a whole server for your website because all you will be using is part of it.
On the downside, the shared nature of the hosting service means that your site runs under the confines of the hosting package and server.
Should you be new to shared hosting, then the guide on how shared hosting works will give you additional information on the pros and cons of this hosting type.
How Much Traffic Can Shared Hosting Accommodate?
The website under the shared hosting plan can accommodate thousands or even much more page views per month, yet it does not depend only on the amount of traffic.
Take two websites for example:
- Website A gets 20,000 visitors per month and delivers lightweight and cached blog pages.
- Website B has 8,000 visits per month and is powered by the heavy-weight WooCommerce platform with many plugins.
Website A may have to make use of much less server power although there are more visits.
This explains why most hosting services do not measure their capacity in terms of a particular number of visits their packages can support.
It all comes down to the amount of server processing required per visit and traffic distribution.
Factors that Decide the Traffic Your Shared Hosting Plan Can Manage
Several considerations play a vital role in deciding how much traffic your shared hosting package can manage.
1. Server Resources
Processor and memory are the two things that really matter in this case.
With every visitor, there will be requests for server resources. When there is a sudden spike in requests to your website, the use of resources can rapidly increase.
There are also other constraints that might apply, including:
- Page load procedures
- PHP handlers
- I/O capabilities
- CPU capacity
- RAM memory
- Database connections
These can cause pages to load slowly or even be unable to load at all.
Our guide to shared server resources discusses the effects that can be caused by limiting resources in relation to websites running on shared servers.
2. Website Type
The former tends to place less burden on a server than the latter, which has to perform complex processing operations for each visitor.
This is because a static or highly cached website can handle huge traffic with minimal resources. The same is true of a WooCommerce store, membership website, forum, training site, or web application because such requests tend to be dynamic in nature.
This implies that two websites that have the exact number of visitors can have entirely different hosting needs.
3. Website Page Size and Website Performance
The size of pages in a website also affects the server and network processing requirement.
Big pictures, inefficient codes, too many plugins, third-party calls, and inefficient database management can slow down the time taken by pages to load, hence consuming more resources.
Improved website performance  thus help you accommodate more traffic within your existing web hosting capacity. This is especially important as it’s possible that some of the most popular pages might not always need to be generated from scratch by WordPress each time someone accesses the page.
4. Caching and Content Delivery
Caching can have a big impact on traffic handling capabilities. When caching is applied, some of the visits may get the cached page without having WordPress and PHP generate it yet again.
Moreover, the CDN will be useful in the delivery of static files like images, CSS, JavaScript, and other file formats from places closer to your visitors. It takes off some of the load off of the origin server.
Nevertheless, caching is not a replacement for proper hosting of resources. The dynamic requests will still use server resources especially on those sites where users log in, search for something, add products to their cart, and submit some forms.
5. Traffic Spikes
The numbers of monthly visitors can be deceptive.
If a website has 30,000 visitors evenly distributed over one month, then that website will not be stressed as much as if it had 10,000 visitors in a few hours.
This traffic spike could happen due to:
- Viral social media postings
- Advertising
- News
- Product launch
- Seasonal events
- Search Engine visibility
- Email campaigns
If you know that there will be a large increase in traffic coming to your site, see if your hosting services are sufficient.
How Do You Know That Your Shared Hosting Is Running Out Of Resources?
Here are some signs that show that your website is close to its hosting limits:
- Slow loading pages at the times of peak traffic
- Timeout errors
- Exceeding PHP workers/entry process limits
- Server errors
- 5xx errors
- Database connection errors
- High CPU utilization
- High memory utilization
- Failed background WordPress operations
- Unexpected downtime
A one-time high usage does not necessarily mean that you have to switch hosting providers. But if resource capacity is constantly reached, especially at normal traffic times, then it makes sense to find out why.
Resource capacity can usually be checked by using your hosting control panel. If you don’t know how to interpret the data, then the hosting provider can help you.
Will Increased Bandwidth Equal Increased Capacity for Traffic?
No, not always.
Bandwidth means the total data transmission between the website and its users. The traffic capacity is more comprehensive and involves the use of processing power.
For instance, the website may be equipped with sufficient bandwidth, but the speed may still be affected if its CPU or PHP processes are overloaded.
On the other hand, a well-optimized website with proper caching will provide services to numerous users without straining the server much.
But when making comparisons on hosting, bandwidth is not what you should consider. Think about the total amount of resources allocated and the technical constraints of the account.
How to Increase Traffic Handling Capacity of the Shared Hosting?
There are quite a few things you can do to increase traffic handling capacity before upgrading your plan.
1. How to Optimize Your WordPress Website?
Uninstall unneeded plugins, compress images, update your WordPress site, and minimize scripts or features you don’t really need.
2. Optimize Your Database
Your database may be large or badly maintained and slow down certain processes in WordPress.
3. Take Advantage of Caching
There is a potential for cutting down on unnecessary processing through page caching and browser caching.
4. Use a CDN
The CDN may take care of delivering static content while reducing the load on your origin server.
5. Check Your Resources
Instead of waiting for your site to go down, monitor your CPU usage, memory, incoming processes, storage space, and any other resource metrics that you have available.
Our WordPress Troubleshooting Guide may also be helpful if your performance issues come alongside WordPress problems.
How To Know If You Need A Better Web Host?
One does not always need to move away from shared hosting because the site is growing.
This would be a more justifiable move where:
- The resources have become depleted constantly.
- There is an increase in traffic constantly.
- CPU or memory requirements are high.
- The success of your company relies on dependable performance.
- Running heavy resource-consuming applications.
- The need for more control at server level.
- Performance optimization cannot solve resource limitations anymore.
Upgrading to a more optimal WordPress web host might be the next best move for some expanding WordPress websites. If you require better management of the server settings, then maybe you need to go with VPS hosting.
Shared Hosting and VPS Hosting with Regard to Traffic
A shared hosting plan is normally more appropriate when the site runs efficiently in a shared resource environment.
On the other hand, a VPS hosting plan gives a site a more secluded hosting environment and also more control over server resources.
Nevertheless, virtual private server hosting also usually entails higher technical involvement and may prove more expensive. It is not only the plan with better specification that makes the best option. It must correspond to your website’s real needs.
Can a Small Site Outgrow Shared Web Hosting?
Yes.
A website is not required to be hugely popular before the need for more hosting arises. Simply adding a WooCommerce store, member logins, a media gallery, a powerful search engine, automation systems, or resource-intensive plugins will add to server demands despite small visitor numbers.
This is why website owners need to consider resource utilization together with web traffic. It is not about finding the web host that can accommodate the maximum amount of users.
It is all about choosing the hosting environment that can meet the requirements of your website without constantly running out of resources.
Conclusion
A universal visitor limit does not exist for shared hosting. An effectively optimized website with caching and light web pages could manage high amounts of traffic using an appropriate shared hosting service, but a high resource website might run into its limits much sooner.
Manage the use of your resources, improve your site, expect peak traffic times, and upgrade your server when you need more resources than what you currently have to provide.
Need Scalable Shared Hosting For Your Site?
If your website is getting too big for its current hosting environment, then picking the correct hosting solution will prevent further performance issues.
Explore reliable hosting solutions for your website that will be shared and WordPress-based on HarmonWeb and select an environment which would be best for your website in terms of traffic now and in the future.
Are you ready to get the right hosting? Migrate your website to HarmonWeb right away!
