Only just joined the group but have a question about hosting. I’ve created a website with WordPress and Elementor and even after downloading certain plugins that supposedly help speed it up and optimizing the larger images the website still gets a poor score on website speed testers. This leads me to my question, is HostGator a good host to use? That’s who I’ve been using (I’m US/UK based) and I’m still very new to all of this. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Answers:
Look at what the speed testers say, rather than the scores. Focus on load time, first contentful paint and less on the scores.
Check what they say about image sizes (optimisation and serving scaled images are two different things, but both must be done – not one without the other). Check what file size it says your homepage is.
Hostgator is not the best – but check the TTFB with the speed testers using a blank HTML page to determine if the host is slowing it.
Again – scores are just vanity metrics – the real test is visual load time (does it visually load quickly and become interactive quickly). If the answer to that is yes, it doesn’t matter if other things load in the background – or if the speed score is low. Scores are not speed related – just automated assessments of things that could be done, but may not need doing depending on what it is they suggest.
A higher score isn’t necessarily a faster site.
If you can post a URL of a speed test from gt metrix and that’ll give info with hosting, and other things.
Hostgator is no good, got direct experience. For US, UK I’m using hostxnow, they have latest Ryzen based servers, Litespeed, Redis and very fast support.
I’d recommend you look at 20i, guru.co.uk and wpmudev hosting (choosing a UK location, obvs). That’s pretty much in cost and performance order. However, beware speed optimising plugins, which as often as not end up fighting with whatever your chosen host has to offer. For the first two, 20i has some very beneficial extras for WordPress, including a nice easy staging. Guru’s support is just brilliant.
Wpmudev divides opinion. I can’t fault them for support or performance, and their tool set added to Elementor gives you a stable base. But some people can’t stick ’em, so just remember YMMV
They are not a good host and have slow servers which is why you aren’t seeing much improvement with optimization plugins.
I’m US, uk based and host 140 plus sites. I use 34SP and Guru as my hosts and no complaints at all with site performance or their support. Happy to chat.
HG is garbage. Horribly slow. And the plugins you added may have made it worse. I left Hostgator a couple months ago and ended up with Liquid Web. Unbelievable difference. HG is trash.
HostGator is not a performance focused provider (they’re a budget provider owned by a large company called Endurance International Group which also own BlueHost, HostMonster and many others).
Are your target audience based in the US? AFAIK HG doesn’t have US/UK based servers which is what you will want as the latency will be much lower for you and your website visitors.
If you can get out of your hosting service with them (like if you’re under their money back guarantee period or if your service is due soon), I do recommend moving off them.
Definitely look into hosting providers with US,UK based servers.
Okay I’ll take a look into that now, do you recommend any good hosts with UK,US servers?
NoFrillsCloud has servers in London while KnownHost and HawkHost have servers in Amsterdam. MDDHosting is decent as well but they only have US based servers.
All of the providers are cPanel based so it is easy for you to move (they can transfer your site for free) and are powered by the excellent LiteSpeed Enterprise Web Server with LiteSpeed Cache that’s sure to give your site a huge speed boost.
No matter which provider you go with, I do recommend that you pay month to month at least for a start so you have the flexibility of moving if things doesn’t work out for any reason.
IONOS WordPress Pro is a decent choice. Also WPEngine has servers in London. Depending on your requirements and skill level you can find Siteground or Cloudways to be good choice.
Besides there are many small hosting companies offering great value for money and tailored solutions.
I was in a near identical situation, running a simple WordPress site with Elementor page builder on HostGator.
My time to first byte was deplorable, around 5.8 seconds!
I considered Cloudways, the darling of this group, but decided my dev skills were too basic, and instead went for a Managed WP host (Kinsta).
New TTFB results … 53ms.
Hostgator is part of EIG (who are not well regarded here).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_International_Group
Better hosting may help achieve a better score but it needs to be part of an optimisation strategy. I am in the UK and use Elementor and Woocommerce (plus far too many plugins for my own good) and have been able to achieve GTMetrix ‘A’ scores and page loading times of under a second.
A faster load time (and good user experience) is more important than a high % score and that is what you should be aiming for. The two articles below summaries this really well. Also, consider WPRocket and Perfmatters if you haven’t done so already.
I use Cloudways London HF Vultr server which is best for my particular needs/budget. They offer a free trial so you can take them for a test drive. I am not an affiliate.
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