Server Size

Our Recommendations

  • For small brochure style sites, we recommend no more than 10-20 sites on a 1 CPU / 2 GB server
  • For sites that require more resources like WooCommerce installs, we recommend 1 site on 2 CPU / 4 GB server

Server Size

One of the first things you are asked when spinning up a new server in SpinupWP is which Server Size you would like to choose.

Choosing a Server Size

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question as the size of the server you should pick will depend on multiple factors:

  • How many sites you plan to host on this server
  • How much traffic the site(s) get
  • The type of site(s) you plan to host on this server (e.g. e-commerce)
  • The size of the site(s) database and uploads directory

While most server providers allow you to resize your server size at a later date, we don’t recommend this. Rather, we suggest creating a slightly larger server than what you need, with some wiggle room. If you do get to a point where you need to scale up, we have guides on how to do this.

Picking a Server Size

So what server size is right for you? Here are some things to consider:

  • We specify a minimum of 1GB for running a SpinupWP WordPress site properly.
  • For production sites we recommend you start with a 2GB+ server.
  • Lot’s of smaller sites can be hosted on a single server if page caching is enabled (we recommend 10-20 sites on a 1 CPU / 2 GB server).
  • For bigger, more intensive, or dynamic sites (such as e-commerce sites) we recommend hosting these on their own, slightly larger, servers. For example, if you have a high-traffic WooCommerce site, we recommend hosting it separately on a 2 CPU / 4 GB server.

In our testing, we actually discovered that a correctly set up server with proper caching enabled can theoretically handle 40+ million requests per day on a 512MB, $5/month server. While we wouldn’t recommend pushing your server to these kinds of limits, it goes to show that you might not need quite as big a server as you might imagine.

CPU-Optimized Servers

If your budget allows, consider bumping your server to a CPU-Optimized option. While a 2 CPU / 4 GB basic server might appear to have the same resources as a CPU-Optimized one, the virtual CPU hyperthread is dedicated to that virtual server in a CPU-Optimized instance. On virtual servers that share virtual CPUs, your processing threads may be shared by other virtual servers on the physical hardware. Not to mention that CPU-Optimized servers are much quicker!

When Should I Upgrade My Server?

Before you can decide if you need to upgrade your server, you will need to know how your server resources are being used. Most server providers offer some kind of resource monitoring (CPU, memory, disk space, etc.) as part of their service. If your server provider doesn’t offer this, you can SSH to your server and use tools such as top or htop to find the same information.

Using htop to check server usage

As a general rule, we recommend you try and keep server memory usage at 60% or below to allow for traffic spikes. If your server CPU usage or memory usage is consistently high then it might be time to upgrade your server.