If you are a WordPress user, I am pretty sure you have thought about this at least once. Although, this isn’t a question that can be answered properly. Why? Because it depends on various factors.
Like all the other resources, if you know the proper use. WordPress can handle much more traffic than you can imagine.
In this article, you will get to know your answer. We will cover how much traffic WordPress can handle to how to increase it.
Table of Contents
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?
When the traffic is high, WordPress has to repeat the process again and again. Which causes problems if the server you use isn’t good. It will not be an issue if you have your website on a good server.
WordPress is just a platform where you create your website/blog. How will WordPress handles the traffic depends more on the server than WordPress itself.
What is a Server?
In simple words, a server is basically 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. While a slower web server does the exact opposite.
Can WordPress Handle High Traffic?
The best and simple answer to the question is unlimited. Yes, you heard it right. WordPress can handle huge traffic if managed properly. However, the way you optimize your site and the hosting company you choose decides 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 important 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, shared hosting company sets various limits.
Although shared hosting is relatively cheaper than other hosting plans. Shared WordPress hosting is suitable for 10,000 to 1,00,000 page views per month.
Still, some companies provide incredibly good services. They offer fast data centers with high bandwidth. Even though shared hosting is suggested for small blogs/businesses. If managed properly with good customization it can handle a decent amount of traffic.
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 high traffic.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is a type of hosting which 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 much 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. While managed WordPress hosting lets you focus right on your work.
The rest of the things will be managed by the hosting company 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 most important parts of a site. It doesn’t just control how the site will look. But also affects your site’s traffic handling capacity. When it comes to WordPress, you should look for what gets the job done for you.
Don’t always go by the design of the theme. Because unnecessary flashy features make your sites load slower. This becomes even more important when your site has good traffic.
So choose a theme that is lightweight and decent looking. The reason behind this is you can do pretty much everything with a plugin if you need.
Use a Cache Plugin
WordPress is always dynamic. Every time someone requests data, WordPress has to pass a query to the database. 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 biggest parts of a site. Every time when a person visits your site WordPress has to download all images. 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 huge traffic.
So it is very important to optimize them properly. If not done properly they can badly affect your site’s performance. Luckily there are tools that can compress images without reducing quality.
If you want to know more about image optimization, you can check our detailed guide on how to optimize images for web performance.
Final Thoughts
WordPress can handle unlimited traffic. Which is why 43 percent of the web is powered by WordPress.
You just need to 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.
