Is it possible to outgrown WordPress?

Should edit that to a designated server would NOT solve my problem!

Has this happened to anyone else?

Can I ask how you know that a dedicated server won’t solve your problem? Have you tried it already, or has someone jsut told you that?

WordPress will scale to a lot more then you’re asking it to. Look at the big news sites that use it. I’ll bet they have a whole lot more than 80,000 comments, and they work fine.

If a single server doesn’t handle it, you might need to look at something a bit more hard-core, like a load-balanced multi-server system.

you should definitely take professional advice, independent of your hosting company about what steps to take…

you could try offloading a lot of content to a content delivery network server like amazon AWS or Rackspace. i’ve not done it myself but it could free up a lot of the load.

Thanks for the feedback. Bluehost told me this nonsense that I was too large for WP.

And also that a dedicated server wouldn’t solve my problem. I’m not an IT geek, but even I see how nuts that is!

Fact is, I’ve outgrown even the most amped up shared hosting they have on offer, and I’m looking at moving to VDS, virtual dedicated server? with WPEngine.

Jack, I don’t know what a content delivery network is, but I will totally look into it.

Catacaustic — I have tried designated service, but that’s what I’m moving toward now (with all that expense too!) I think it has to be better than what I’ve got going now.

Thanks!

ETA, I have NOT tried a designated server, but I will now!

if you find a solution that works could you post a quick breakdown of what you did for others to find if they’re in the same situation?

Absolutely. Will do!

I did not realize that this was a problem that could happen. So, I’ll definitely let you know how the transition goes and if things improve.

FWIW, no one in the history of WordPress has ever outgrown it. There are no known limits beyond the limits of the server itself.

It is entirely possible that you may have outgrown shared hosting, as many large/popular sites do. With shared hosting, “unlimited” is never truly unlimited, as you are sharing the same box with hundreds (thousands? millions?) of other sites. The cheaper the “unlimited” shared hosting, the more people are crammed into the same box with you.

You don’t have to make the costly leap to dedicated, but it may be time to leap away from Bluehost regardless (since apparently they think a dedicated server won’t even work for you). Moving to a VPS or Managed WordPress host would probably be a better next step, and far less expensive.

I’m considering moving to WPEngine — and it’s going to be $600 a month.

I wanted the $250 a month Virtual Dedicated Server option (which tops out at 400K views a month), but they’re (of course) recommending the $600 dedicated option.

Is this Cadillac-ing?

I just want my site to be steady and secure and never ever crash like this again. It’s only limping along right now because I took Vault Press and Sucuri off. Scary!

Start low and grow as needed. I’m always weary of people dropping me into the highest plan at the start.

You said you only had 280k views per month, so the $249/month should work for you under their plans.

Personally, I use DreamPress which is still managed hosting on a VPS, but there is no view cap, and it’s only $19.95/mo https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/wordpress/ however my site isn’t nearly as popular as yours. ??

https://pagely.com/plans-pricing/managed-wordpress/ is another reputable name in the Managed WordPress Hosting industry and they have no view cap either, but I have never used them. https://getflywheel.com/pricing/ is too, but it looks like you’ll need to go custom so there’s no direct price quote that would fit you.

You may also want to consider simply managing your own VPS.

https://hostingreviews.io/ is a great review aggregator, but do note that where one hosting provider may suffer because their shared hosting gets a bad rap, their Managed and VPS products may be pretty solid.