Important remark about Hostgator
Before we kick it off with our step-to-step guide on how to fix slow Hostgator websites, we’d like to say a few words about this hosting provider. And we’re going to be honest here – Hostgator is actually not that great of a hosting provider. Sure, they’re cheap, but they’re a low tier hosting provider when it comes to speed, uptime and reliability.
This being said, you certainly can get a Hostgator site to run fast provided your website is simple, and you follow the steps outlined below; but, if your goal is to make your site run as fast as it can, that’s not going to be possible with Hostgator, ideally if this is your goal you should look at a better hosting provider.
A higher quality faster host won’t cost you much more than a cheap host like Hostgator – take Siteground for example, which starts from $4.95/month or a dedicated Cloudways server which starts from $10/month.
Make sure to read our article on the fastest WordPress hosting, where we’ve also included a full list of high performance WordPress hosts. Another great thing about them is that most of the hosts there will also migrate you for free!
Typical Hostgator Response When Complaining About Slow Site Speed
Another thing that’s important to mention before we begin with our guide is what to expect when you call Hostgator customer support and complain about slow loading times.
Most likely, they will try upselling you to a dedicated server, after being told that your site needs more server resources. Although this is, in part, true, the problem here is that you’re still on Hostgator – their business model is built around being cheap not fast. Their fast option is still slow in comparison to a quality host. They’ve got a business model which requires them to stack up as many sites as possible on a single server and then running that server to its limits.
- Speed Test Your Site – How to Do It and What is Considered Fast
Speed testing your site is a very significant first step when it comes to improving its speed because it allows you to set a benchmark against which you can measure the changes and improvements you want to make to it.
Ideally, we’re looking for a load time of under 1 second in the country your site is being hosted. This is a tipping point through which you begin to feel the page load as instant.
Speed can vary though, depending on what you’ve got running on the site it may not be possible. On a fast host, yes, we can get the site core to load in 600-800ms, but if you’ve got numerous marketing tools installed, for example Facebook Ad Pixel, ActiveCampaign or some other CRM tracking software, Hotjar or Visual Web Optimizer, coming under the 1-second mark becomes increasingly harder.
Broadly speaking most sites even with a bunch of marketing tools installed, 1.5 seconds is achievable mark and is a very acceptable as speed as well.
- Use Caching
Without caching, WordPress won’t run superfast.
Caching prebuilds each page on your website in advance before the visitor arrives. Without caching, with each new visitor, the server has to execute PHP code, do database lookups, then execute some more PHP code which then generates an HTML file to send to the visitor.
But with a good caching plugin, the HTML file is already prebuilt and ready for sending to the visitor.
- Use Cloudflare and/or a CDN
Cloudflare.com is a CDN, a content delivery network, and it’s something that will immediately speed up your website, especially for international visitors.
A CDN is a network of servers that deliver the static assets from your website (image files, JavaScript and CSS files).
Cloudflare has a network of more than 150 locations throughout the world, making it one of the biggest and fastest CDNs out there.
With a CDN in place, the visitors outside the country where the site is hosted (like someone from Australia visiting a site hosted in the US) will have a faster loading experience because a large portion of the files are actually being loaded from the Australian local Cloudflare servers versus the server located in the US.
- Compress the Website Images
Usually, most website images can be compressed without any reduction in file quality. Often, they will end up 20-50% smaller and this is something that makes a huge difference to the site’s loading speed, especially for users on slow connections.
The plugin that we use for this is Shortpixel as it’s fast, lightweight and also does advance Nextgen image optimization which many other plugins won’t and, they also got a FREE plan available, as well as a tool that will analyze your website and tell you how many on the images there you can compress, as well as how much space you’ll save in the process.
- Switch to HTTPS for HTTP2 Protocol support
The entire web is moving to HTTPS type encryption (Google has openly stated that site’s which are encrypted will rank higher than non-encrypted ones), which means it’s to switch your site to HTTPS (encrypted mode) if it’s not already.
HTTPS also enables the web browser software to use a faster and newer protocol (the HTTP2 protocol) so it can download assets from your website much faster.
- Disable Any Unnecessary Plugins
Lots of sites have plugins installed that are no longer being used, which also contribute to the site’s slow loading times. From a performance perspective, you want as few plugins as possible.
Make sure you go through the plugins you’ve got installed and disable/delete any not actively being used.
Final Words
We understand that the article is a bit technical. If you still have any questions about the topic or want to go deeper in detail, contact us, and we will be happy to answer.
