I am sure most of you would want to your site to run fast and if possible no downtime of your server at all. Sometimes we tend to think which site do we refer to in order to check how reliable the server is. This article is to highlight the usage of server speed checking tool which is brought to you by Bitcatcha.
Have you ever wondered how important your server’s respond time is? Most of us tend to neglect this particular subject as we don’t realize the loss that we are getting using a non-reliable web hosting. I’ll briefly explain my experience in choosing a reliable web hosting with great response time, which I am yet to overcome although its pretty decent at the moment. At first, my site was fully hosted on Google’s blogspot platform and we know how reliable and fast their server is. There was a need for me to jumpship to another CMS (content management system) due to the limited functionality that’s available in Blogspot. Therefore I tried WordPress and of course I had to get a web hosting to get it started.
After several searches, I tried Serverfreak and it is definitely one of the cheapest and most reliable web hosting I have ever used till date. I did not face any issues with their server and maintained with the for two years. There was a limit to the storage space which tempted me to try Exabyte instead where they have unlimited storage package for an affordable price tag. Of course it is definitely one of the best web hosting provider in Malaysia but I faced several server downtime and resource limit issues. After checking with their fast and efficient tech support department, they seem to acknowledge that it could be a problem from certain plugin that I am currently using. After disabling certain plugin, things started to get better.
My site was definitely faster with Serverfreak in terms of loading time which could be due to the server location that I choose which is placed in the US. Using Bitcatcha’s server speed tool, I managed to check out how reliable and the ping status from 8 different countries. I usually run about 5 tests in order to finalize the grade given to my hosting which most of the time is “C”. Probably I should ask Exabyte to relocate my hosting server to the one in US and check if there’s any improvement in terms of loading speed.
What I am trying to say is that such tool can definitely help in getting to know people’s or your potential client’s point of view when they visit your website from all over the world. I am pretty sure that one would prefer to spend some money on a fast and reliable website rather than only able to visit your site after a long wait or even having time-outs. Another advantage of using Bitcatcha will be the comparison of your site’s test results against top 10,000 websites which is handpicked from Alexa’s ranking.
This tool from Bitcatcha has convinced me to work on my site’s server response time. I will be definitely looking for a fix and if it does not work, I might even consider a new web hosting. We will never know until we try all the options available and choose the best of all.