Brendan Tully0 Comments
March 28, 2022
We started optimizing customer websites for speed as part of our web agency work and ultimately created an entirely new business focussed on Wordpress Speed Optimization – WPSpeedFix.com. Through WP Speed Fix we’ve seen and optimized 100s of Hostgator sites over the last 2 years. The process below works for most Hostgator sites.
That said, let me be blunt before we kick-off here, Hostgator (HG) isn’t a great quality host – they’re a low to mid tier host. Their parent company EIG (Endurance International Group) is well known for cheaply priced but poor quality hosting – effectively the 2 dollar store version of web hosting.
That said, you *can* get a Hostgator hosted site running quite fast if you have a relatively simple website if you follow the steps below BUT if you’re looking to get your site running as fast as physically possible, it’s not going to happen with Hostgator – you’ll need to move hosts.
Often moving to a better quality Wordpress host will cost you only a tiny bit more (like Siteground from $4.95/month or a dedicated Cloudways server from $10/month) AND the site will loading lightning fast.
Check out our article on the FASTEST Wordpress Hosting for the full list of high quality, high performance Wordpress hosts. (most of these hosts will migrate you for FREE too)
What Hostgator will tell you about site speed….
A heads up – there’s a fairly common process Hostgator run through if you contact their support for help about your website speed or website being slow.
You’ll most likely get upsold to a dedicated server being told your site requires more server resources etc etc. That may be partially true but the problem is you’re still hosted on Hostgator – their business model is to stack as many sites on a server as possible and run their servers as hard as possible, NOT to be the fastest host.
The problem with being upsold to a better plan or dedicated Hostgator server is that you’re still hosted with HG, it’s like getting the premium option at the 2 dollar store, no matter how fancy they tell you the premium option is, you’re still in the $2 store!
Contents
Ok so before we get started it’s probably a good idea to do some speed testing so we have a benchmark to measure against to ensure our changes are actually improvements.
Our speed test tool of choice is SiteSpeedBot – https://SiteSpeedBot.com
It’s a free tool that will give you detailed recommendations on your site speed in under 60 seconds.
In an ideal world we want to see the site loading in between 1-2 seconds in the country the site is hosted in. 1 second is a magical tipping point where the page load begins to feel instant.
Now, depending on what you’re running on the site that may not be possible – on a FAST host, we can easily get the core of the site loading in 600-800ms BUT if you have a ton of marketing tools installed like a Facebook Pixel, Hubspot or some other CRM tracking software, Hotjar or Luckyorange or basically any third party tools you’re probably going to struggle to get under 1 second.
Generally speaking, around 1.5 seconds should be fairly achievable and is what we’d say is acceptable in terms of speed.
Other speed test tools:
There are a number of speedtest tools on the market. Two other popular tools are GTMetrix.com and Google Pagespeed Insights.
We like SiteSpeedBot because it’s the closest to real world speed and it measures speed whereas Google Pagespeed Insights measures your site against a technical checklist and gives you a score vs actually measuring the speed.
It’s worth doing a few speed tests to get an average. SiteSpeedBot stores your site speed history so you can go back and see how changes improve speed.
You’re never going to squeeze a lot of juice out of Wordpress without Caching.
Caching prebuilds each page on your website so it’s ready to go when a visitor hits your site. Without caching in place, every time a visitor hits the website the server needs to execute PHP code, do MySQL database lookups, execute more PHP code and then generate a HTML file to send to the visitor.
With a good caching plugin, that HTML file is already prebuilt and ready to send to the visitor.
There’s really one of two options here:
WP Rocket is the caching plugin of choice for the DIY-er or if you’re less tech savvy. It’s easy to use and will give you an excellent boost in performance. It’s a paid plugin (dirt cheap) BUT probably the easiest caching plugin to use on the market. If you don’t have caching right now and are seeing 5+ second load times, you’ll see an immediate drop of a few seconds getting a caching plugin installed.
W3 Total Cache is free and by far the fastest caching plugin BUT is very technical to configure so probably not ideal for the DIYer (**IF you do go this route, ONLY use the Browser and Page Caching – the database and object caching are not for use on Hostgator)
Some hosts like WPEngine, Siteground and Cloudways have caching built-in or their own caching plugin which is part of the reason why they run so fast.
NEVER install two caching plugins, they’ll conflict. If you don’t have deep technical skills or much Wordpress experience WP Rocket is the way to go here.
Cloudflare.com is a content delivery network (CDN) and 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) to your visitors instead of your hosting server having to do it.
Cloudflare has a network of over 150 locations worldwide which makes it one of the biggest CDNs and also one of the fastests.
With a CDN in place, visitors further away from your hosting (say a visitor from Australia hitting your hosting in the US) will get a faster experience because many of the files are loading from the local Cloudflare servers in Australia versus the US.
The free plan on Cloudflare is all you need in most cases however the $20/month paid plan does do more advanced image optimization and firewalling but if you’re looking at this option you should probably move to a better host first!
If you’re looking for a more comprehensive CDN solution, KeyCDN is also worth a look.
Most images on your website can be compressed to a degree without any loss of quality. In many cases they end up 20-50% smaller which can make a huge difference to load speeds especially on a slow connection.
Shortpixel is our image optimization plugin of choice as they have some advanced image optimization features most other plugins don’t have.
They have a FREE plan available and also a tool on their website that will analyze your site and tell you how compress-able your images are and how much space you’ll save.
Switch your site to HTTPS (encrypted mode). The entire web is moving to HTTPS encryption and Google have publicly stated that encrypted sites will rank higher than HTTP non-encrypted sites.
The other benefit of using HTTPS is that it enables web browser software to use a newer, faster protocol to download assets from your website, the HTTP2 protocol.
Check out short video below that compares HTTP 1.1 to HTTP v2
The server you’re on at Hostgator needs to support the newer protocol though (older plans may not) however enabling Cloudflare will enable this support (as Cloudflare is HTTP2 compatible).
If you are a business owner whose income is generated through a WordPress website of self-hosted WordPress blog, site speed problems can result in serious ramifications to your bottom line. At WPspeedfix.com, we have helped over 2000 businesses fix their slow WordPress website and our information comes from experience and expertise in the field. Of the factors that contribute to a WordPress site’s slow loading speed and navigation lag, the most important consideration is which web hosting company and the hosting plans you choose.
Follow the instructions in this hosting service guide and your HostGator website will experience quicker load time and operate more smoothly. The steps on how to fix slow WordPress web hosting on HostGator are the same for any WordPress site—regardless of the host. However, in order to fix your speed problem, you must first understand what factors make HostGator websites particularly prone to experiencing slow speeds.
PHP is the underlying programming language that Wordpress runs on and comes in several versions. Typically you’ll see version 5.6 (or lower) and versions 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2
Version 7.0 is approximately 30% faster than v5.6 and most sites built in the last 2 years easily support it.
Version 7.1 and 7.2 are another 10%+ faster on top of 7.0 so if your site is compatible with the newest v7.2 you should definitely be switching to that.
NOTE it’s important you test compatibility first before making the switch. There’s a free plugin provided by WPEngine that works on any web host that will test all your plugins and theme to confirm whether your site is PHP 7 or 7.1/7.2 compatible.
The video below is a good walk through of where to find the PHP settings in Hostgator:
Disable plugins you aren’t using – a pretty simple one. Most sites have plugins installed that are no longer in use. Each enabled plugin slows down the site to a degree so it’s important you run as few plugins as possible.
Go through each plugin you have installed and make sure it’s still in use – if not, disable it!
Here’s a few more advanced troubleshooting ideas for you:
Why is HostGator Hosting So Slow?
HostGator are well known as “cheap” hosting provider. Unfortunately due to their generous affiliate program you’ll see them recommended in thousands of places around the web even as a fast host, they’re not! Their focus is on low prices, not performance. To achieve their dirt cheap prices they stack their servers with 1000s of other sites leading to low performance. Low prices are great for beginner sites and personal blogs but in a commercial business environment cheap hosting ends up cost more in poor SEO rankings, lost traffic and poor conversion rates.
How do I test my website speed?
Try SiteSpeedBot.com – although it’s an advanced speed testing tool it’ll give you detailed, easy to understand recommendations in under 60 seconds. These recommendations will help whether you are on Hostgator or another host.
Who are EIG?
EIG is Endurance International Group. They the company that owns Hostgator, Bluehost and 50+ other hosting brands. They’re well known for buying hosting companies and turning them into “cheap”, low priced but poor performing hosts.
How do I speed up my HostGator hosting?
As explained in this article – using caching, HTTPS (instead of HTTP), using a content delivery network and updating your PHP version to the highest version your site can support will help boost your speed.
Should I move my hosting to another provider?
If speed is important for you then yes! Fast, high quality hosting won’t likely cost much more than cheap hosting in terms of monthly spend. Price difference is something like the difference between the price of a cup of coffee and the price of lunch!
HostGator say I should upgrade my plan, will that make it faster?
Not really. It’s just a more expensive “cheap” option. You might get a marginal gain in performance but overall the performance will probably still be poor because HostGator’s focus is on price, not performance or reliability.
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