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Best Hosting for High Traffic Sites 2021

Web Hosting

With thousands of visitors every day on high traffic sites, hosting becomes a priority. High traffic sites require hosting that is not so much money-oriented as compared to performance. This implies that they tend not to make their decision on a platform according to how cheap it is, but on how well it will be able to support such a high flow of visitors. Having this is mind, the list we have compiled below will definitely not include the cheapest hosting options available. However, each platform is currently in use by a high traffic site and is guaranteed high-level performance in exchange for the fee they charge.

Selection Criteria of Hosting for Hight-Traffic Site

Before we delve into the sites, here’s a few hints that will guide selection when it comes to high traffic sites and their hosting:

  • Uptime

Uptime, for, a high traffic site is extremely important. An SLA (service legal agreement is what a company should carefully scrutinize before selecting an appropriate Hosting platform. The SLA will clearly outline the uptime and guarantee it. A poor percentage of uptime in  high traffic site means that the visitors, who number in their thousands as established, will be susceptible to downtime. This will eventually lead to losses.

  • Capacity for growth

A high traffic site also has room for extra growth. This is what the owners of the site should consider. A platform for such a site should contain enough options to handle a spike in traffic when it happens and also deal with increased number of customers when the business scales.

  • Resources that are fully dedicated

Shared resources might cheap but they are not tailored for high traffic sites. A site that handles a large number of visitors should have resources that are dedicated only for their use.

  • CDN

CDN (Content Delivery Network) gives the site static content from a network of worldwide servers rather than just the one that is hosting the site. This means that the server’s load will be minimized ad the load times, globally that is, will be speeded up.

Reviews of 5 Best Hosting Providers for High-Traffic Websites

Having gone thgrough our short guidelist, let us embark on reviewing each of the top web hosts for high traffic websites in 2020:

#1. Kinsta

 This is a hosting provider that is a managed WordPress platform. Its infrastructure uses Google Cloud Platform to power it. Google Cloud Platform is a premium tier tool that is also used By Google for its services. So, just from this, Kinsta is popular, highly recommended, and tops our list.

Not only is Kinsta tailored towards high performance, but it also perfectly featured for WordPress by providing such features as a hosting dashboard that is customized, automatic backups that can either be daily or as frequent as possible for an extra fee, etc. Their dashboard also provides for easy monitoring of usage through a detailed analytics tool.

And they get more than 10,000 visits a day which places them on the right spot to handle issues that come with high traffic.

Kinsta is easy to navigate for beginners but also packed with powerful features for developers.

This site is fully managed therefore giving users time to focus on their businesses while they cover the handling of the site. Dedication of time is vital to the growth of a business.

When it comes to uptime, Kinsta’s SLA guarantees 99.9% uptime so clients won’t be worried about their sites going down on customers. And when the customers, known as visitors, swell in numbers and turn into a traffic surge, Kinsta has a policy that allows their clients to pay a fee for overage based on the traffic. The fee is absolutely transparent.

Speed in Kinsta is also enabled by a Content Delivery Network known as KeyCDN. They also use Nginx web server and PHP 7.4.

Scalability is availed since the plans on this platform are either upgradable or down-gradable according to client preference. The pricing of Kinsta is as follows:

  • Starter

This plan’s price $30 a month. With this plan, clients get 1 WordPress install with up to 20,000 visits. Storage is catered for by a disk space of 10GB. SSL is present for security purposes coupled with an incorporated CDN.

  • Pro

Pro goes for $60 a month. The WordPress installs in this plan are 2 with up to 40,000 visitors supported. A 20 GB disk space caters for storage. The plan also includes CDN and SSL.

  • Business 1

At $100 a month, this plan has 5 WordPress installs and supports upto 100,000 visits. The disk space is 30GB and as the other plans, free SSL and CDN is included.

  • Business 2

 Business 2 is $200 a month. Worpress installs are 10 with a support of upto 250,000 visits. Storage is 40GB and a free SSL and CDN included.

  • Business 3

This plan’s price is $300/month. It has 20 WordPress installs and supports 400,000 visits. Free SSL and CDN is provided plus 50GB diskspace for storage

  • Business 4
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Business 4 is priced at $400 per month.  It includes 40 WordPress installs with 600,000 visits supported. 60GB disk space caters for storage and free SSL and CDN is included.

  • Enterprise 1

Enterprise 1 goes for a monthly price of $600. This plan has 60 WordPress installs and supports 1,000,000 visits. 100GB is availed for storage and include is free SSL and CDN.

  • Enterprise 2

This plan costs $900 per month. It has 80 WordPress installs and 1,500,000 visits supported. Storage is taken care of by 150 GB disk space. Free SSL and CDN also included.

  • Enterprise 3

Enterprise 3 requires $1,200 per month. This plans has 120 WordPress installs and supports 2,000,000 visits. 200GB disk space is present for storage.  Free SSL and CDN also included.

  • Enterprise 4

The pricing for this plan is $1,500. It includes 150 WordPress installs and 3,000,000 visits. The disk space for storage is 250GB and a free SSL and CDN included.

Here is a snapsot of their plans.

Form more, cjeck out more here.

All these plans have a 30-day guarantee and an offer of free 2 months usage if a clients opts for yearly payment.

Kinsta, however, lacks email hosting and doesn’t offer phone support for clients.

#2. Pagely

When it comes down to experience from prolonged service, Pagely deserves all the accolades. This platform was started by countless others that were forced to step down their prices and quality so as to attract the bigger market that is beginners and low traffic businesses. Pagely decided to upgrade its services and their performance geared towards high traffic businesses is excellent. And as the boast on their site, they now provide ‘durable WordPress Hosting for mission critical sites’.

 Pagely is recommended for a variety of reason:

When scalability is taken into consideration, this platform has dealt with some of the biggest brands in the world and has collected decades-worth of scaling from the experiences they’ve had. They assure their clients that they cannot outgrow Pagely.

Reliability on this platform is fully accounted for.  They have maximum uptime, 100% to be exact, provided via their SLA. No other platform on this list competes with such an uptime. On top of which, this platform has built-in redundancy to provide a quick backup or replacement in the event of any kind of unexpected failure.

Load times have no problem with lagging when it comes to Pagely. They offer On-Demand speed optimization that effectively speeds up load times for sites. On top of which, their sites have Premium DNS Powered by Amazon Route; and their cached content is handled by PressCache.

Daily automatic backups are also present to ensure data is secure. The backup is stored on Amazon s3. And in case the client has any problems or questions that need clarification, Pagely offers 24/7 customer support.

Pagely offers the following plans:

  • Performance

This plan goes for $499 per month with a High Availability Config for $1249 per month. It has 4GB RAM and 50GB SSD storage included with 2vCPU. And as resources go, the plan offers Dedicated Database resources.

Its configurations are flexible and it also offers Managed Support and DevOps.

  • Performance+

Performance+ requires $999 per month. Its High Availability Configs are charged $2249 per month.

This plan’s storage is 8GB RAM plus 50GB SSD. 4vCPU power this plan.

This plan also offers Dedicated Database resources and flexible configurations.

It also offers Managed Support and DevOps.

  • Scale

Scale starts from $2500 per month. It has a High Availability Config for $3600/month. The vCPU, RAM and SSD storage are all customized according to client preference.

And just like the other 2 plans, Scale offers Dedicated Database Resources, flexible configurations and Managed DevOps and Support.

      Apart from WordPress Hosting plans, Pagely offers Developer Hosting that is designed to be smaller and cost much less. Developer hosting contains two packages: Developer 1 and Developer 2.

  • Developer 1

This package costs $199 per month. It comes with 2vcpu, 2GB RAM and 30 GB SSD storage. Its database resources are Dedicated and it also offers Managed DevOps and Support.

  • Developer 2

Developer 2 costs $299 per month. It is powered by 2 vCPU which are burstable and contains 4GB RAM and 30GB SSD storage. Their database resources are also Dedicated and they offer Managed DevOps and Support.

No arbitrary limits on the number of visits are set on sites hosted by Pagely.

Apart from Pagely being a little pricey, something that they have compensated for by performing excellently, this platform has no downsides to it yet.

Here is a snapshot of their plans:

For more click HERE.

#3. WP Engine

WP Engine prides itself as the first and only WordPress Digital Experience Platform. WP Engine is reputedly trusted by more than 120,000 customers in 140 countries as a platform for hosting their sites. On a worldwide scale, at least 5% of all visits to the internet ultimately end up on WP Engine and 2,000,000 attacks are blocked for customers too, every single day.

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This platform is structured around four main pillars that serve the needs of high traffic sites as seen below:

  • Agility

Agility means speed and flexibility. On WP Engine, developers are empowered with environmental sites (dev/stage/prod), Git and SFTP connections and core updates from WordPress. This pillar also encompasses the Genesis theme Framework and automated backups.

  • Performance

Performance is greatly boosted on WP Engine. Their platform is optimized to support sites that attract visits from a few thousand to millions. They use Google Cloud Platform and Amazon web services as powering tools to ensure that performance is optimized and therefore reassuring clients that they will always be reliable servers. Their uptime, guaranteed viA SLA, is 99.95%.S

Speed is also boosted by Proprietary EverCache which they use as a solution for cache strain on a business’s servers together with a fully managed Global CDN.

WP Engine claims that on average, their customers get load times that are 27% faster than any other platform.

  • Intelligence

WP Engine has integrated intelligence as a pillar through a variety of ways. For a start, clients don’t have to rely on rumors on how sites hosted by WP Engine perform, the platform itself contains a Performance Intelligence Suite for testing the site’s speed in real time. This type of monitoring is done by such tools as Google Analytics and New Relic that are integrated with WordPress Admin.

  • Integration

WP Engine integrates the genius art already contains with various other technological platforms that are focused on innovation. This is made possible by the open framework that is WordPress and the team that run WP Engine.

REST API from WordPress ensures that clients can integrate their WordPress experiences into their martech (marketing technology) stack. This increases insights and data that is cross-platform.

When it comes to pricing, WP Engine has the following options:

  • Startup

Startup includes all the basics that are needed to start a small website or blog. It costs $25.00 a month.

This supports 25,000 visits and has 1 site included. It has a local storage of 10GB with 50GB bandwidth per month.

  • Growth

Growth plan has features that are needed by a growing business. It sells at $95.83/month and comes with 10 sites offer. 100,000 visits per month are supported on this plan coupled with a local storage of 20GB. A monthly bandwidth of 200GB is also included.

  • Scale

Scale charges a monthly fee of $241.67 and includes 30 sites. A monthly 400,000 visits is also allowed together with a local storage of 50GB. The monthly bandwidth limit is 500GB FOR THIS PLAN.

  • Custom

This plan is meant for large businesses and mission-critical sites. It includes 30 sites and a local storage of from 100GB to 1TB.Their monthly bandwidth limit is over 400GB.

This plan also supports millions of visits per month.

The price for this plan can be acquired through calling their sales specialists.

Here is a screenshot of their plans.

For more, CLICK ME.

The main cons that come with hosting on WP Engine is that they offer no Email Hosting or Domain Registration and their websites are a bit complicated from the frontend.

#4. Pantheon

Pantheon offers WordPress Managed Hosting and is among the most popular hosting platforms in the world. Pantheon is loaded with a variety of tools that supercharge site development. And after the creation of this sites, they offer Git-based workflows for testing and launching of these sites. The performance of sites and applications can be monitored through New Relic.

Pantheon serves over 10 billion monthly pages and has launch success rates of 100%.

They boast hosting that is of high performance with their sites being built to be best in class both in Drupal and WordPress.

Their CDN is reputedly lightning-fast, according to their site anyway, and they also avail scalable infrastructure. In addition to this, they have server-level caching through the use of Varnish and Redis. And just to show how effective this is, Pantheon claims an uptime of 99.95 via SLA.

The pricing plans of Pantheon are 3 and they can be seen below

  • Basic

This plan is tailored for local businesses, small-sized blogs and static sites.

It starts at a monthly fee of $29 and allows for 25,000 visits per month. 20GB SSD Storage is available. In case of traffic overages, this plan charges $2.50 for every 1000 visits.

The plan so far serves 125,000 pages.

  • Performance

This plan is geared towards business sites that are goal-oriented. It has four main packages:

Small starts at $160 per month and allows for 25,000 visits per month. This plan serves 125,000 pages and offers a 30GB SSD Storage. It also incorporates 1 app server with failover.

Medium goes for a monthly fee of $275. This package allow 50,000 monthly visits with 250,000 pages served the moment. The storage included is 50GB. It also has 2 app servers that have their load balanced

Large costs $550 per month and comes with 3 app servers that are load balanced. This package serves 750,000 pages and allows for 150,000 visits per month. Storage is taken care of by an SSD Storage of 100GB.

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Extra Large is the last package at $916 per month. This package supports monthly visits that number up to 300,000 and serves 1.5 million pages. Its storage is 200GB SSD and 4 load balanced app servers are also available.

  • Elite

 Elite plan is for high traffic and mission critical sites. It can also suit enterprise. The price for Elite can be obtained by calling their web experts.

For more info on their plans, visit them HERE.

Pantheon also includes automated backups for the safety of data and guarantees the safety of its clients through the use of HTTPS certificates. And for migration purposes, their experts provide white-gloved migrations that are also well managed.

The platform has 24/7 live support in case of any difficulties.

#5. Siteground

As far as pocket-friendly budgets for WordPress hosting are being considered, Siteground can be easily mentioned. But their pricing shouldn’t be a bad sign for high traffic sites, SiteGround is packed with amazing features and is powered by Google Cloud.

They also offer shared plans that actually work quite well with high traffic sites. Their Go-geek Plan which also happens to be their highest tier, supports up to 100,000 visits per month with an option to go beyond with either optimization or smart caching.

Moreover, businesses that would want dedicated and managed resources can get them at a price that is friendlier than most other platforms.

Siteground is at the moment trusted by 2,000,000 domains that they are hosting. And with 99.99% uptime, these domains are more than happy with what they get from Siteground.

They also integrate free CDN through Cloudflare.

And in case of any problems encountered by their clients, Siteground has 24/7 technical support that can be accessed via phone, chat or ticket.

Having mentioned price-friendliness as a major theme on SiteGround, let us look at their plans

  • Startup

This plan goes for a regular fee of $11.95 per month. It includes 1 website in the offer and unlimited databases.

For startup, a monthly estimate of 10,000 visits is allowed and 10GB Web Space availed. Their traffic is unmetered and it also encompasses 100% renewable energy match.

In addition, the following are free on this plan: SSL, CDN, WordPress Installation and Email.

  • GrowBig

GrowBig plan has a regular monthly fee of $19.95 and also comes with unlimited databases. Their Web Space for storage is 20GB and a monthly estimate of 25,000 visits is supported. This plans traffic is unmetered.

SSL, CDN, WordPress Installation and Email are provided for free.

On top of all these, this plan provides on-demand copies of backup and offers Dynamic Caching. Transfer for potential clients is also included and is done by a team of professionals for free.

  • Go-Geek

Go-Geek plan goes for a regular monthly fee of $11.95 and offers unlimited websites an databases. An estimated 100,000 visits are supported on this plan coupled with a storage of 30GB Web Space. Traffic, just like on the other two plans, is also unmetered on Go-Geek.

SSL, CDN, Email and WordPress installation are provided for free of charge.

On top of this, Go-geek offers site transfers by professionals, copies of backup on demand and dynamic caching. All this can also be found on the GrowBig plan.

However, unlike GrowBig, Go-Geek also includes support that is prioritized and supports white-label clients.

This plan comes with resources that are high-tier.

You can find more on their pricing plans HERE.

Is GoDaddy WordPress Hosting Good for High Traffic Sites?

GoDaddy is a pretty good hosting service for small businesses but is not considered ideal for High Traffic Sites. GoDaddy, for one, isn’t known for its advanced options such as CMS or server-side caching. These options are vital if a high traffic site is to run smoothly and effectively. This implies that although GoDaddy might be a decently performing platform, they don’t reach the level of performance that a high traffic site requires.

GoDaddy prices might also be a bit high considering the level of performance they hit. And storage might seem generously handed out on the platform but the downside is they don’t offer loopholes for sudden traffic spikes. Instead of charging overages, GoDaddy will close a page if the traffic exceeds the supported limit. Downsides for high traffic sites is to be avoided completely.

Plus the service has no backups without purchasing their paid add-on, they have no free SSL and they offer no migration services.

In conclusion, high traffic sites should probably seek other platforms that have better offers than GoDaddy.