Skip to main content

Website Performance: Handling High Website Traffic

Bluehost's high-powered servers can support several hundred websites. Bluehost has taken many steps to make your site popular without degrading service. However, users share certain resources, including disk space, processor (CPU), and bandwidth limits (the speed and capacity of the Internet connection). If one website becomes extraordinarily popular, it can threaten the normal speed of access you have been accustomed to, so handling high website traffic is important.

  • CPU Protection
  • CDN
  • Dedicated Hosting
  • Summary

CPU Protection​

Shared servers from Bluehost are monitored to ensure each customer gets their fair share of the server's resources. This software is in place to have a low chance of being affected by abusive users on the server. When a server's performance is being affected by an abusive user, we can identify the user and take corrective action.

CDN​

  • If you are worried about a sudden website traffic spike, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Cloudflare, is a great way to handle this increased traffic. Check out How to Enable Cloudflare CDN for instructions.
  • If you have SiteLock, check out the following articles to learn more about CDN and how to access SiteLock:
  • SiteLock: Content Delivery Network (CDN)
  • Getting Started: How to Access and Use SiteLock

Dedicated Hosting​

If your website becomes very popular (with tens of thousands of simultaneous users), please consider looking into a dedicated hosting solution. Due to our shared server model, Bluehost can offer unsurpassed prices and the best customer support that will not be found easily and cheaply elsewhere. Many customers who left come back and choose to stay with us and just move portions of their site to the dedicated solution. Customers who need Flash Servers or game servers commonly leave their websites and emails with us and move the content that demands a dedicated solution. This is the most economical solution for most customers.

Summary​

Bluehost shared servers can support multiple websites. However, users share resources, such as CPU, disk space, and bandwidth. Although Bluehost monitors server performance and identifies abusive users on shared servers, we highly suggest our customers consider a dedicated hosting plan to prevent server overload or your website from crashing caused by overwhelming traffic, especially if a site becomes highly popular with high traffic.