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There’s no shortage of advice on the web covering how to grow an online business. Let’s say you’ve done your homework and adhered to the experts’ guidance on targeting audiences with customized content and employing user-generated reviews to boost sales and drive more traffic. It worked, and your eCommerce site has rapidly scaled and outgrown its shared hosting environment. Now what?
While this is definitely not a bad problem to have, it does present a crossroads where you’ll have to pick the best path to expand your site’s capabilities. There is an array of hosting options for high-traffic site owners who’ve graduated from shared hosting. Here, we’ll take a look at the best cloud, VPS, dedicated server, and managed WordPress hosting that can handle the large number of visitors your business depends on.
Cloud Hosting: Best Web Hosting for High-Traffic Sites
Cloud computing has been one of the biggest technology disruptions of the past 10 years, impacting the way we do business and deliver applications to the world. And the web hosting industry has embraced it. Cloud hosting is gaining in popularity with hosts and site owners, mainly due to the high performance and scalability the cloud provides.
A core benefit cloud hosting offers is the scaling potential, as your website’s hosting needs are distributed across a network of machines. This allows for virtually unlimited instance and hard disk scaling with a flexible pricing model (pay for what you use). Your business site can grow in tandem with your customer base, and you don’t even have to buy or maintain the hardware!
We provide a comprehensive review of the top recommended cloud hosting provider below.
1.
InMotionHosting.com
- Ranked #1 for cloud (VPS) hosting
- FREE SSD included and up to 8GB of RAM
- FREE control panel with SSL certificate
- Optional root access and managed servers available
- Unlimited MySQL databases and FTP accounts
- Get started on InMotion now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cloud Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 75 GB - 260 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.inmotion.com/cloud |
See more cloud hosting services »
Best VPS Hosting for High-Traffic Sites
Downtime — it’s every online merchant’s worst nightmare. In 2008, Debenhams, a major UK retailer, experienced a 24-hour period of downtime due to a traffic increase that led 48% of its visitors to turn to competitors’ sites. If the merchant’s eCommerce site had had a more reliable host, it could have avoided the lost sales and, more importantly, the damaged customer trust in its brand.
If you’re selling products online, it’s imperative you have a robust hosting solution, and VPS (virtual private server) hosting delivers. While not as cheap as shared hosting, the performance, scalability, and peace of mind a VPS provides are well worth the few additional dollars you’ll be spending each month. Below, we’ve compiled our top recommended VPS hosting providers. Deep dive into the full reviews to see how these hosts can keep you online and converting customers.
2.
InMotionHosting.com
- 50% off the first month with added discounts
- Real-time redundancy powered by a cloud infrastructure
- FREE cPanel licenses with enterprise-grade CentOS
- FREE server management for patches and updates
- FREE SSDs and SSL certificate for fast, secure hosting
- Get started on InMotion now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 75 GB - 260 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.inmotionhosting.com/vps |
3.
LiquidWeb.com
- Only pay for resources you use with daily billing
- 5TB of outgoing bandwidth and FREE incoming bandwidth
- API access and cPanel available
- Instant provisioning and SSD speed
- FREE Storm® Firewall and real-time server monitoring
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Liquid Web: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 50 GB - 1.6 TB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.liquidweb.com/vps |
4.
Bluehost.com
- 2-4 cores and 4-16GB of RAM
- Endorsed by the WordPress team
- Redundant storage and optional SiteLock security
- Seamless migration from Bluehost shared plans
- Get 50% off your first month (was $29.99, now $14.99)
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 30 GB - 240 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/vps |
Best Dedicated Servers for High-Traffic Sites
Just a one-second delay in load time on an eCommerce site can negatively impact conversion rates by up to 7%, industry reports show. If your site earns, say, $10,000 each day, a one-second break in load time can end up costing you more than $250,000 per year — a figure that can run into millions of dollars for higher-earning sites.
It’s imperative that large-scale eCommerce sites with high traffic volumes invest in an ultra-reliable, performant hosting service — assurances for which dedicated servers are known. While the prices increase dramatically from those of shared, cloud, and VPS hosting, the benefits of having a server dedicated to hosting only your site are unmatched. Most of the top hosts offering the service provide around-the-clock support and monitoring and guarantee very high uptime rates. Our top three dedicated server hosts are below. Click on the reviews to read our comprehensive take on all the features and perks associated with going dedicated.
5.
LiquidWeb.com
- 100% network and power uptime guarantees
- Custom configurations, SSDs, and instant provisioning
- Auto-migrations, backups, and 24/7 Sonar Monitoring™
- Block/object storage and load balancer add-ons
- Our visitors pay $96.75/month! (usually $129/month)
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Liquid Web: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 211 GB - 1,775 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.liquidweb.com/dedicated |
6.
InMotionHosting.com
- Rebootless kernel updates
- 1-click installs and FREE SSDs
- cPanel/WHM licences with FREE SSL
- Tier 1 network with redundancy
- 99.999% net uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
- Get started on InMotion now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 500 GB - 1.2 TB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.inmotionhosting.com/dedicated |
7.
Bluehost.com
- RAID 1 mirrored storage
- Minimum 3 IP addresses per plan
- Modern hardware, spec'd and maintained in house
- 24/7 expedited support from the dedicated team
- Sign up today for 50% off first month
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 1 TB | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/dedicated |
See more dedicated server hosts »
Best WordPress Hosting for High-Traffic Sites
The numbers have been in for a while now. WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS and powers more than 27% of sites on the web. In fact, version 4.6 has been downloaded 21.7 million times. The platform is very popular with online merchants because of the versatility provided by the more than 51,000 plugins available to customize their sites.
For businesses seeking heightened performance and security for their WordPress sites, making the move to managed WordPress hosting might be the way to go. With this type of service, your host’s team of experts manage the technical aspects of your site, such as software updates and security fixes, so you are able to zero in on your business mission. This is especially useful for high-traffic sites where site owners need to focus on their products and customers without having to worry about availability, platform maintenance, and load times. If you’re using the WordPress software and this sounds like a fit for you, take a look at 2018‘s best managed WordPress hosting providers below.
8.
A2Hosting.com
- Ultra-performant Windows/ASP.NET hosting
- Support for ASP.NET 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x, plus Classic ASP
- Plenty of database storage and SQL support
- Option to upgrade to Turbo servers for added speed
- Easy ASP.NET hosting management with Plesk
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
A2 Hosting: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | ASP.NET Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anytime | Unlimited RAID-10 | $14.99 | www.a2hosting.com/asp-net |
9.
GoDaddy.com
- ASP.NET hosting on Windows Server 2012 R2
- Support for ASP.NET, Classic ASP, and SQL
- Plenty of database storage for dynamic websites
- 1-click installs for your favorite scripts
- Get started with a FREE domain name registration
- Get started on GoDaddy now.
GoDaddy: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | ASP.NET Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 100 GB - Unlimited | FREE (w/ annual plans) | www.godaddy.com/asp-net |
10.
HostGator.com
- ASP.NET Windows hosting with FREE migration
- 1-click installs for popular ASP.NET-friendly scripts
- Most recent ASP.NET versions supported
- Code dynamic sites using Python, PHP, and MVC, too
- 99.9% uptime guarantee (industry standard)
- Get started on HostGator now.
HostGator: Our Expert's Review
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | ASP.NET Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45 days | Unlimited | New or Transfer | www.hostgator.com/asp-net |
See more managed WordPress hosts »
Handle Traffic Spikes & Future Growth with a Scalable Hosting Service
Congratulations! You’ve successfully navigated the rocky roads of starting an online business. You now have a large customer base, so it’s time to expand and upgrade your site so they can see what’s next.
For sites with high-traffic demands, cloud, VPS, dedicated, and managed WordPress hosting ensure high performance.
If you’re at this crossroads and trying to decide which type of hosting will best meet your scaling business’s needs, or if you simply want to be prepared before you reach that fork, the hosts mentioned here are a great place to start your research. Cloud, VPS, dedicated, and managed WordPress hosting will help pave the wider paths your growing site needs to handle the increased flow of traffic.
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