Case study · Hostfully · 2024 → 2026
Speed & hosting
Our host gave us a choice: pay 167% more or leave. We moved to our own server, then made the site the fastest in its market.
- mobile load time for real users
- −73%mobile load time for real users
- first-year hosting cost
- −61%first-year hosting cost
- desktop PageSpeed
- 43→99desktop PageSpeed
- fastest homepage on phones, of 7 platforms
- #1fastest homepage on phones, of 7 platforms
- Role
- Led the decision, the migration plan and the performance program
- Team
- With the second engineer on my team
- Timeline
- Sep 2024 → Jun 2026
- Stack
- AWS Lightsail, Ubuntu, Nginx, PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.4, Redis, FastCGI cache
01·The problem
September 2024.
Our managed host wrote to say hostfully.com was the heaviest site on its shared server, using a fifth of it, and that timeouts were hurting SEO and crawling.
Pay 167% more, or leave
Staying meant a dedicated plan at 167% more a month, at a time when the company was cutting costs.
Slow for real users
Mobile PageSpeed sat between 16 and 35, Google's lab test took up to 21 seconds to show the page, and real visitors on phones waited 4.5 s. Core Web Vitals failed.
Weight everywhere
A December 2024 diagnosis found seven causes: heavy resources, unoptimized images, unminified code, too many plugins and pixels, too many requests, no CDN and an over-complex layout.
02·The decision
Not a bigger bill. Our own server.
Instead of paying more for the same shared hosting, we moved to infrastructure we control, then fixed the site itself.
- 1
Our own server
Dec 2024: a dedicated AWS Lightsail instance (16 GB, 4 vCPU), Nginx, PHP 8.3, managed MySQL and daily backups. Subdomains consolidated.
- 2
Release discipline
Mar 2025: no more editing production live. Preprod, QA and a weekly release.
- 3
A lighter site
Symphony: one design system, SVG and WebP, video instead of GIFs, and in-house tools replacing third-party plugins (58 installed before, 41 active now).
- 4
Three-stage tune-up
Jun 2026: Redis object cache, rate limits for AI crawlers, then front-end work (deferred scripts, CSS, lazy CAPTCHA, a lighter hero video).
to stay on shared hosting
first-year cost on our own server
today, while also running preprod, the portal and internal tools
load balancers needed
Hosting shown as percentages only. The same account now also runs preprod, the Martech Portal and internal tools.
03·Speed
From failing to the fastest. Measured by real users.
PageSpeed, homepage
DesktopMobileLighthouse lab scores from captures taken since week one. October 2026 is the median of three runs.
Feel the difference
How long a visitor waits for the page on a phone.
Chrome UX Report, real-user p75 LCP on the mobile homepage, played at real speed (the pages are an illustration). Desktop went from 4.8 s in 2022 to 1.3 s.
Today
Desktop
peak, June 2026
Mobile
from 16 in 2022
The fastest homepage in our market.
Real-user load time on phones, against the six platforms Hostfully compares itself with.
- 1Hostfully1.43 s
- 2Competitor1.64 s
- 3Competitor1.75 s
- 4Competitor1.76 s
- 5Competitor2.05 s
- 6Competitor2.45 s
- 7Competitor4.86 s
Chrome UX Report, p75 LCP, average of 12 weekly readings, Jul–Oct 2026. Fastest in 9 of the 12 weeks.
What's next
Desktop passes every Core Web Vital. On mobile, load time is good but interactivity (INP, 222 ms in October 2026) still fails: that's the next fix.
04·Timeline
Two years, one direction.
- Sep 2024The host's warning: the site uses 20% of a shared server. Stay for +167% a month, or leave.
- Nov 20, 2024Migration plan to AWS Lightsail.
- Dec 2024Live on our own server. First-year cost: 61% lower than staying.
- Aug 2025A load balancer is proposed for traffic peaks. Optimization made it unnecessary: a cost avoided.
- Nov 26, 2025Real-user mobile load time rated “Good” for the first time: 2.1 s, down from 4.5 s.
- Feb 19, 2026Symphony launches on the same server.
- Jun 9, 2026Desktop PageSpeed 99. Blocking time −93%.
- Jul–Oct 2026Fastest homepage on phones among seven platforms in 9 of 12 weekly readings.
More case studies
Every figure on this page traces back to a system of record: Salesforce, Chrome UX Report, PageSpeed captures, WordPress databases, Jira and git. Business figures are shown as percentages or indexes.