If you are a WordPress user, you have thought about this at least once. Although, this isn’t a question that can be appropriately answered. Why? Because it depends on various factors.
WordPress can handle much more traffic than you can imagine. Like all the other resources, if you know the proper use. In this article, you will be able to find out your answer. We will cover how much traffic WordPress can handle to how to increase it.
How WordPress Manages Traffic?
WordPress stores data in databases. The database has tables in it where the data gets stored. Whenever a request is sent to request the data from the site. WordPress has to go to the database and fetch the data. Then this data is shown in the front end.
What Happens When the Traffic is Huge?
For small businesses, any hosting plan is sufficient. The reason behind this is their motive is to be on the internet. Likewise, they only have a few visitors. But the problem arrives when you have too much traffic. As you already know, WordPress stores data in a database and fetches the data every time someone requests it.
When the Traffic is high, WordPress has to repeat the process repeatedly, which causes problems. However, this will be fine if your website is on a good server. Likewise, if your website is on a server with low bandwidth and storage, it will create issues.
Overall, how much traffic WordPress can handle depends more on how much traffic handling capacity your server has. The reason behind this is WordPress itself is just a content management system.
What is a Server?
In simple words, a server is a computer where data is stored. In a big organization, a server can be a group of computers. Some Popular Servers are these.
A faster web server makes the process faster. In comparison, a slower web server does the exact opposite.
How Much Traffic can WordPress Handle?
The best and simple answer to the question is unlimited. Yes, you heard it right. WordPress can handle massive traffic if appropriately managed. However, how you optimize your site and the hosting company, you choose to decide it.
This happens because it doesn’t matter what tools(plugins/themes/page-builders) you use. You can’t use them without hosting. I think it’s clear how vital hosting is. Well, we will discuss everything about hosting in detail.
Types of WordPress Hosting
There are mainly two types of hosting available. Shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting. We will discuss both in detail.
Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common and budget-friendly hosting. It is best for small businesses and blogs. To provide good services to all the customers, a shared hosting company sets various limits.
Although shared hosting is cheaper than other hosting plans, shared WordPress hosting is suitable for monthly 10,000 to 1,00,000 page views.
Still, some companies provide excellent services. They offer fast data centers with high bandwidth. Even though shared hosting is suggested for small blogs/businesses, it can handle a decent amount of traffic if appropriately managed with good customization.
While some companies do the exact opposite, to cut down the cost, they offer low data centers with low bandwidth. Because of this, the user experience becomes terrible.
In such cases, the database has to cancel the requests whenever the traffic is high. That’s why choosing the right hosting is very important for increased traffic.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is a type of hosting that is designed especially for WordPress. This type of hosting is far better than shared hosting. It can handle around half a million traffic to unlimited page views.
Managed hosting is faster, more secure, and more reliable than shared hosting.
In all the other types of hosting, you have to manage everything on your own. For example, you have to create backups regularly on your own. At the same time, managed WordPress hosting lets you focus on your work.
The hosting company will manage the rest of the things on your behalf. This is why managed WordPress hosting is the best hosting for most people.
Now you know why this is called Managed WordPress hosting. However, it is expensive compared to shared WordPress hosting. But that is worth it when you don’t have to manage anything.
Benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting
- Takes care of updates.
- Manages performance and optimization
- Configure your servers
- Additional supported
What you Can do Yourself
Although, the traffic handling capacity of your site mostly depends on the hosting company you choose. Still, there are some things you can do to improve it.
Choose The Right Theme
A theme is one of the essential parts of a site. It doesn’t just control how the site will look. But also affects your site’s traffic handling capacity. Regarding WordPress, you should look for what gets the job done for you.
Don’t always go by the theme’s design because unnecessary flashy features make your site load slower. This becomes even more important when your site has good traffic.
So you can choose a theme that is lightweight and decent looking. This is because you can do everything with a plugin if needed.
Use a Cache Plugin
WordPress is always dynamic. WordPress has to pass a query to the database whenever someone requests data. Because of this, the performance decreases.
So what can you do to avoid this? You can use cache plugins. A cache plugin creates a static copy of our HTML pages. So whenever someone requests data, WordPress shows that copy of the page. This makes the page load way faster than without the cache plugin.
Compress Your Images
Images are one of the most significant parts of a site. Whenever a person visits your site, WordPress has to download all photos. As a result, the site loads slower.
You will not see much difference if you have low traffic. But the situation begins to change when the site has enormous traffic.
Luckily some tools can compress images without reducing quality. So it is essential to optimize them properly. If not done correctly, they can badly affect your site’s performance.
If you want to know more about image optimization, you can check our detailed guide on optimizing images for web performance.
Final Thoughts
WordPress can handle unlimited traffic, which is why WordPress powers 43 percent of the web.
Please choose the right hosting provider and do some optimization work. That’s it. WordPress itself will manage the rest of the things. I hope you enjoyed the guide.
