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

When Hostinger told me that they had cut server response times by 35%, all without investing in additional hardware or infrastructure, I was both impressed and intrigued.

Typically, hosting providers have to invest a notable sum to improve response times – the cost of which is then handed back to users in the form of subscription increases.

I wanted to know more.

How did they do it? What does better server response times actually mean for users? Will subscription costs increase? I caught up with Mario Bañares Colastra, Head of Web Hosting at Hostinger , to get some answers.

Why did Hostinger decide to look at altering code and architecture instead of investing in more hardware or infrastructure? We had already looked at the hardware route.

Putting the CDN on all web hosting plans would have required roughly doubling our server count.

Making the CDN itself more efficient was the better option.

That worked.

We cut the computing resources needed to run the CDN by 45 to 50%, with no new servers or hardware.

The result is faster sites for customers.

Even sites that don’t use the CDN got faster because our servers are under less pressure overall.

Can you briefly walk us through the process you followed to audit your setup and identify areas where performance could be improved? We measured first, then fixed.

We set up dashboards for each server and monitoring based on real visitors’ experience, so we could see how the CDN performed in practice.

Then we looked closely at where the processing power (CPU) was going.