Website speed
Can shared hosting slow your website down?
Key takeaway
Shared hosting can place hundreds of websites on one server, but the number alone does not tell you how fast your site will be. Capacity, resource limits, traffic and website design all matter. Compare real performance and the service behind it. Lightning’s standard plans use managed AWS infrastructure, rather than promising a dedicated server per customer.
In this guide
Can hundreds of websites share one server?
Yes. Hostinger’s explanation says that a shared server can carry hundreds or even thousands of websites. That describes a possible arrangement, rather than a fixed count for every provider. It is not evidence of how many websites sit beside yours today.
Shared hosting is designed to make efficient use of capacity. A collection of quiet information pages can create a different workload from a few busy shops. Ask what resources and support your plan provides instead of judging the service by a website count alone.
Compare shared, VPS and managed hosting
Sources: Hostinger: how shared hosting works (opens in a new tab)
The busy periods are worth understanding
Websites can need processing power, memory and other server resources at the same time. Providers may set account limits to manage that demand. If the resources available to a website do not match its workload, visitors can experience delays or errors.
GoDaddy documents several resource limits for its shared hosting plans. The practical lesson is to ask which limits apply to your website, what happens when it reaches them, and who investigates if performance changes.
What makes website hosting reliable
Sources: GoDaddy: how resource limits affect a website (opens in a new tab)
The website itself still matters
A waiting page can have more than one cause. Connection steps, website processing and the response beginning to arrive all contribute to the first wait. Heavy pictures, plugins and code can create further work after that.
Check the pages customers use, on a phone as well as a computer. Compare a simple contact page with a gallery or booking page. Those observations help separate a hosting problem from work the website itself needs.
Find the cause of a slow websiteTest website speed in a useful way
Sources: Google: understanding the first server response (opens in a new tab)
Our AWS setup also needs sensible capacity
Lightning Web Hosting runs its managed platform on AWS. Standard plans can share hosting infrastructure; they do not give every customer a separate physical server or dedicated CPU. Our platform uses AWS servers, with CloudFront for public content delivery.
Cloud infrastructure still needs a suitable configuration and capacity. AWS recommends considering more than one performance measure when assessing a Lightsail plan. The useful promise is an understood service and an assessed website, supported by the actual setup.
Sources: AWS: choosing capacity for a Lightsail workload (opens in a new tab)
Compare the foundation and the ongoing help
Thunder is NZ$55 + GST per website a month. Lightning is NZ$99 + GST and includes everyday changes through Arc. Both include CloudFront CDN, SSL, platform security, daily AWS website backups, domain registration and DNS.
Tell us which pages feel slow and what the business needs them to do. We assess the website before confirming the moving route. If changes to its code or design are needed, we agree that work first. Hosting billing starts when your website is live with us.