Performance
Speed comes from the stack, not from a plugin. LiteSpeed with server-level caching, Enterprise SSD storage and low-contention servers in a Sydney data centre.
Four things decide how fast a site feels
The web server, the storage under it, how many accounts share the machine, and how far the machine is from the person loading the page. Get those right and a normal WordPress site is quick without heroics. Get them wrong and no amount of optimisation inside the site will rescue it. Here is what we run, and why each part of it matters.
LiteSpeed web server
We run LiteSpeed rather than a stock Apache setup. It handles concurrent connections far more efficiently, which is what keeps a site steady when a campaign, a newsletter or a mention sends everyone at once.
Server-level caching
Caching happens at the server, not just inside WordPress. A cached page is served straight out of the cache without waking PHP or touching the database, so repeat visitors get an immediate response.
Enterprise SSD storage
All accounts sit on Enterprise SSD storage. Database queries, plugin file reads and media delivery all come off solid state hardware built for sustained server workloads rather than desktop use.
HTTP/3
Modern browsers connect over HTTP/3, which sets up faster and handles packet loss better than what came before. It shows up most on mobile connections, where the loss is real.
Low-contention servers
We deliberately limit how many accounts go on each server. Fewer neighbours means more of the machine is available to your site, and one busy account cannot flatten everyone else on the box.
Hosted in Sydney
Your site is hosted in a Sydney data centre and your domain resolves against DNS nodes in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. For an Australian audience that removes latency you cannot optimise away.
Loading a page takes several round trips before any content appears: the DNS lookup, the connection, the TLS handshake, then the HTML, then every asset the HTML references. Each round trip costs the time it takes to reach the server and come back.
That cost is set by physical distance and it applies to every visitor, every time. A server on the other side of the Pacific starts each page behind, and the deficit is repeated for every asset on it.
Hosting in Sydney and answering DNS from around the country removes that overhead for the people most Australian sites are actually built for. It is the cheapest performance improvement available, and it happens before your site does any work at all.
What you can do on top of the stack
The server does the heavy lifting, but a few choices inside the site make a visible difference on top of it.
- Install and enable the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. It is what connects WordPress to our server-level cache, and it does far more than a generic caching plugin can on our stack.
- Optimise your images. Resize them to the dimensions they are displayed at, serve modern formats, and let the plugin handle lazy loading below the fold.
- Run one caching plugin, not three. Stacking page caches on top of each other causes conflicts and usually makes a site slower.
- Audit your plugins occasionally. Deactivating what you no longer use removes queries and scripts from every single page load.
- Keep WordPress, themes and plugins current through WP Toolkit. Newer releases are generally faster as well as safer.
- Use staging before you change anything significant, so a performance regression is caught before your visitors find it.
Questions we get asked
Do I need a caching plugin if the server already caches?
Yes, use LiteSpeed Cache. The server-level cache does the work, and the plugin is how WordPress tells it what to cache and when to clear it, for example after you publish a post or someone adds to a cart. Without the plugin the cache cannot tell a stale page from a fresh one. On WordPress plans we set this up during migration.
What does "low contention" actually mean?
It means we cap how many hosting accounts we place on each server, well below what the hardware could technically hold. Shared hosting is only ever as fast as what is left over after your neighbours, so limiting the number of neighbours is the most direct way to protect your resources. It is also why we are not the cheapest option on the market.
Will moving to Skyrack make my slow site fast?
It will remove the hosting from the list of causes, which is often the largest single item. LiteSpeed, Enterprise SSD storage and a Sydney location fix the parts you cannot fix from inside WordPress. What we cannot fix for you is a page loading forty plugins or a two megabyte hero image. Migration is free and has no downtime, so trying it costs you nothing: see how migrations work.
Put your site on the fast stack
WordPress hosting from $4.98/month on LiteSpeed and Enterprise SSD, with free migration and hourly backups.