Hostinger cut server response times by 35%– here's how to speed up your website even further

Hostinger recently announced a 35% reduction in server response times, achieved without adding more hardware or infrastructure costs. Typically, such improvements would lead to higher subscription fees for users. To understand how they achieved this, I spoke with Mario Bañares Colastra, Head of Web Hosting at Hostinger. He explained that the company had already explored the hardware route, but found that upgrading servers would require doubling their server count, which was more costly than other solutions.

Instead, Hostinger focused on optimizing their code and architecture. They began by measuring server performance and monitoring the CDN's effectiveness based on real visitor experiences. This helped them identify that encrypted connections and image processing were the biggest CPU drains. They addressed these issues by switching SSL certificates from RSA to a more efficient ECDSA type and implementing kernel TLS with improved session resumption. This resulted in a significant reduction in CPU usage for SSL operations.

Additionally, Hostinger improved image processing by converting images once and reusing them across the network, rather than processing them multiple times. They also ensured that image conversions occurred in the CDN location closest to the website's hosting location, utilizing already open connections. As a result, the average wait time for website pages dropped from 965 milliseconds to 714 milliseconds, a 26% improvement.

These changes have been particularly beneficial for Hostinger's lower-priced plans, as they were previously more resource-intensive. The company plans to extend the CDN to subdomains in the near future, potentially increasing the performance benefits for a wider range of websites. With web page sizes continuing to grow, Hostinger advises small businesses to use modern image formats like WebP or AVIF, enable caching, limit plugins and scripts, implement lazy loading, and monitor resource usage to maintain optimal website performance.