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I need some advice on hosting plans

by AshTJ
20 replies
Hey guys, I'll try and cut this down as much as possible...

I started a new site about 2 weeks ago as an addon domain on my Hostgator Shared plan (The baby plan).

I wasn't really expecting the website to take off so quickly, but over the last couple of days I've averaged about 15,000 uniques per day, my hosting can't keep up.

I just got an email saying my site is using too much CPU, and that I'm going to have to upgrade to a better plan.

I'm just wondering what the best plan would be, considering the amount of traffic I'm likely to be receiving.

The last few days have definitely been a fluke, but in the future I'm hoping to be seeing ~30,000+ uniques per day.

I would prefer to stick with Hostgator as everything is already done through them and changing would be a hassle, but if another company is better I'll definitely consider them too.

Anybody have some advice? I've kind of got no idea when it comes to dedicated hosting!

Thanks in advance.
#advice #hosting #plans
  • Profile picture of the author AshTJ
    This is a graph of my CPU usage over the last 24 hours.
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  • Profile picture of the author sam070190
    When choosing a web hosting, be sure to research first and maybe some reviews will help you decide to what web hosting provider you will choose.
    When comparing hosts, look for RELIABLE user reviews. Some companies may be well-known but in reality give poor service.hope it will help you
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  • Profile picture of the author AshTJ
    Some more info:

    I estimate the average page on my website to be 2MB (way way way higher than it actually is), and assuming each user visits 5 pages (they won't, the average is ~2), that's 10MB per user. In this overly generous calculation, 30,000 unique users per day would use roughly 300GB a day, or 9TB a month.

    The smallest dedicated plan with Hostgator is 10TB, would that be suitable considering these traffic projections?

    Also, what's the difference between choosing a Linux or Windows server?

    EDIT:

    Just found out about VPS hosting, is there any downside to this?

    It's much more affordable than dedicated and the 1.5-5TB bandwidth would be enough (I think) for the time being, and apparently it's easy to upgrade to the higher VPS plans when needed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    Just curious, what type of marketing have you done to receive that much traffic?

    As for hosting, Hostgator is not a recommended host around these parts. Any web host owned by Endurance group is to be avoided, due to bad quality of hosting, especially shared hosting.

    But if you must stay with them, then just contact their support and ask them what hosting plan would be best for your site. I'm sure they will help you.
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    • Profile picture of the author AshTJ
      Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post

      Just curious, what type of marketing have you done to receive that much traffic?

      As for hosting, Hostgator is not a recommended host around these parts. Any web host owned by Endurance group is to be avoided, due to bad quality of hosting, especially shared hosting.

      But if you must stay with them, then just contact their support and ask them what hosting plan would be best for your site. I'm sure they will help you.
      I've been writing articles that are incredibly clickbaity and sharing them to Facebook pages with 5k-500k page-likes, and getting them to (hopefully) share them for me. It snowballs from there really, I've had 2 or 3 now in the last couple of weeks that have been shared by really big pages and they bring a lot of traffic.

      I emailed support and they said that their shared hosting was better than their VPS hosting (despite being 5x cheaper), so not really sure what to make of that. I'm not really keen to be paying $200 a month either, certainly not at such an initial stage.

      I think the CPU over use was an error or something because on CPanel it shows 1-3% is being used (my cap is 25%), but in the email they sent me they said it peaked at 71%, so again, I'm not really sure what to make of it.

      I think for the moment though I'll stick with my shared and if anything happens again I'll look elsewhere for something similar but with a bit more grunt.

      Thanks for reply!
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      • Profile picture of the author Nick Sammut
        This is a great problem to have here. If you are not willing to spend $200 a month, then stick with Hostgator, but maybe upgrade to a different plan.

        Originally Posted by AshTJ View Post

        I've been writing articles that are incredibly clickbaity and sharing them to Facebook pages with 5k-500k page-likes, and getting them to (hopefully) share them for me. It snowballs from there really, I've had 2 or 3 now in the last couple of weeks that have been shared by really big pages and they bring a lot of traffic.

        I emailed support and they said that their shared hosting was better than their VPS hosting (despite being 5x cheaper), so not really sure what to make of that. I'm not really keen to be paying $200 a month either, certainly not at such an initial stage.

        I think the CPU over use was an error or something because on CPanel it shows 1-3% is being used (my cap is 25%), but in the email they sent me they said it peaked at 71%, so again, I'm not really sure what to make of it.

        I think for the moment though I'll stick with my shared and if anything happens again I'll look elsewhere for something similar but with a bit more grunt.

        Thanks for reply!
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  • Profile picture of the author vishwa
    I recommend you to use VPS hosting for your website. Hostgator isn't is a good solution. You better move to Bluehost or some other VPS providers like photon VPS, Liquidweb, Siteground etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author 60MinuteAffiliate
    Haha, obviously you are very good at writing clickbait articles. And have come up with a fantastic strategy there. Hopefully people will read your post and get inspiration.

    Good luck with everything. Too many visitors is a great problem to have .

    Have a blissful day.

    Colleen
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    Want To Learn How To Make 7K A Month In Minutes A Day?

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  • Profile picture of the author nwik
    Just look for a better plan on Hostgator if you still can't find a new web host.

    If you are going to find a new web host make sure to check the comments section because you can find there honest feedbacks from the users.
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    Highly Engaging / NOT your usual low-cost SEO keyword content
    Click Here for SOLID SEO Keyword Content
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  • Profile picture of the author colrob
    I have used Beyond Hosting for the last 2 years and cannot speak more highly of them. 24/7 help coverage, with an average reply time of about 5 minutes. They've even helped me load files, fix up my coding etc

    More expensive than most, but well worth it.

    I'd love to send you an affiliate link, but that would detract from this post!
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  • Profile picture of the author danieldesai
    If you're using WordPress for your site the best choice is WP Engine.

    Their options for high traffic sites are reasonably priced and straightforward.

    I sincerely hope your hosting concerns get resolved soon; you'll be best off if you start using a dedicated server if you stick with HostGator.

    Regards,
    Daniel
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  • Profile picture of the author Glen Barnhardt
    If you're planning on having large amounts of traffic then a solution that includes load balancing is the route you should head.

    There are services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allow you to spin up additional instances when the CPU or Traffic gets too high. Then shut them down when the load gets normal.

    With these services you only pay for the resources that you use.

    The most important thing here is that you are monetizing the traffic. If you aren't making any money or building a list where you can continually push them to a lead magnet to make money then you will never be able to afford the kinds of systems needed to sustain this kind of business.

    Hope this helps,
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    • Profile picture of the author AshTJ
      Thanks for all of the replies guys, I appreciate the help!

      After doing a bit of research I found that admin-ajax.php was causing a lot of CPU related grief, so I removed Yoast SEO and a couple of other plugins that used the heartbeat API.

      This has brought my CPU usage down substantially, and even with 150 people on the website at any given time my CPU usage is around 3-4% (my max is 25%).

      Which is awesome!

      When I need to, I'll definitely look into some of the hosts mentioned, and probably go straight for the ~$200/month+ dedicated plans.

      Thanks again everyone!
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      • Profile picture of the author zcrafts
        Originally Posted by AshTJ View Post

        Thanks for all of the replies guys, I appreciate the help!

        After doing a bit of research I found that admin-ajax.php was causing a lot of CPU related grief, so I removed Yoast SEO and a couple of other plugins that used the heartbeat API.

        This has brought my CPU usage down substantially, and even with 150 people on the website at any given time my CPU usage is around 3-4% (my max is 25%).

        Which is awesome!

        When I need to, I'll definitely look into some of the hosts mentioned, and probably go straight for the ~$200/month+ dedicated plans.

        Thanks again everyone!
        Good to see that the optimization did the job for you.. VPS should add to speed up your VPS, try VPS server with apache booster or nginx webserver with SSD drive should help you keep your budget in control and speed up your website as well. You can take a look at Rshosting using there service from last 6 years great service at affordable price and free managed services.
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    • Profile picture of the author vedremo
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Glen Barnhardt View Post

      If you're planning on having large amounts of traffic then a solution that includes load balancing is the route you should head.

      There are services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allow you to spin up additional instances when the CPU or Traffic gets too high. Then shut them down when the load gets normal.

      With these services you only pay for the resources that you use.

      The most important thing here is that you are monetizing the traffic. If you aren't making any money or building a list where you can continually push them to a lead magnet to make money then you will never be able to afford the kinds of systems needed to sustain this kind of business.

      Hope this helps,
      Just to say this is 100% what I would recommend for scale. AWS has first 12 months free as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin McNally
    Hostgator wont want to keep you on a shared plan if you continue with that traffic for sure, they will insist on upgrading you probably and most shared hosting plans will be the same. Its a nice problem to have if you are monetizing the traffic well.
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  • Profile picture of the author deezer
    WPEngine is good solution with your wordpress site. But they are quite costly. With your requirements above, it will be better to purchase VPS or dedicated server. With shared hosting, I'm afraid that your account can be suspended by hosting provider.
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  • Profile picture of the author doublespaces
    Stay away from hostgator. Once you shift to dedicated servers, you'll encounter a different set of problems you're not used to with shared hosting. And when those responses to chat take an hour, and then they push you off to the ticket system and those responses can take days(While your site is down the entire time)...Just stay the heck away. Seriously, I've learned the hard way with them. Go to a smaller host who has good support, you get live chat responses immediately and technicians fulfill tickets nearly immediately. And most importantly, you'll deal with the same person instead of getting the canned responses which only cause frustration from 'generic' CS reps.

    My personal rule of thumb, if it takes more than ten minutes for someone to ACTIVELY be fixing your issue, then your host is either too big or their support to customer ratio is not in your favor.
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  • Profile picture of the author BlackCow
    You can get a dedicated server with 30 TB bandwidth and around 16 cores and 32 GB RAM for $99 a month.
    Let me know if you need any assistance.
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    24/7 Support - 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
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  • Profile picture of the author createregister
    I also face this issue, to resolve this issue I review various web hosting services, and during my analysis I found some server and these sever cop up these kind of issues. I suggest few of them, web hosting hub, bluehost, createregister and many more in the market, but these are tested on a high amount of traffic. One thing more which I want to suggest you If you run a high volume traffic load on your website, then always go to premium packages of hosting.
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