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HostGator hosting: MySQL Performance review
October 13th, 2008I want to follow up on my last week (Maybe more) post “Google loves fast hosts“. In that post I talked about how switching to a HostGator reseller account helped me increase the number of pages crawled everyday by Google, but also cut by more than half the average load time of a page. Some people asked for a follow up on that to make sure Google wasn’t just very nice with me. Even if Google is rarely nice just for the fun of being nice, I’ll provide a little more to you guys.
I’m covering something I don’t think has been covered a lot before. Most people don’t care about database performance because most people don’t use 1% of their host capabilities. The website I’m talking about in this article was extremely resources hungry and was reaching the limits of the host. I think that’s why I didn’t find a single database performance review of HostGator when I wanted to switch host, but here it is.
Why MySQL Performance?
Before switching hosting company, I ran a lot of tests on the website and one of the most important test I did was to enable GZIP on the website. Enabling GZIP actually cut the size of files like .js and .css by about 85% because it compresses all of them before sending them to the client. What was the result of enabling GZIP on the website? No result. The site wasn’t any faster! The bottleneck really was the database because of the number of entries and that’s where the MySQL performance issue comes into play.
What database are we looking at?
The database is a 150mb database with 975,000 records total and most of these records are stored in three out of the 19 tables. So you can imagine where the requests happen the most right? Most of them happen in these three tables.
Test One
I simply ran two very simple tests. The first one was to run a page load (By making sure to delete the browser’s cache before) with Firebug. If you guys don’t know what Firebug is, it is a VERY useful Firefox plugin for web developers and you can get it here. I ran this test before and after switching hosting company and here are the results:
Before: 48 requests, 275kb, 11.57s
After, with HostGator: 48 requests, 275Kb, 3.94s
To understand these numbers, we have to understand how Firebug calculates the time to load a page. It’s not the actual time it took to display the page, but it’s the time it took to download every single file, added up. The time taken to download the page is actually more like half of that time because a lot of data get processed simultaneously.
Test Two
For the second test, I simply trusted Google. Here are two screen shots from Webmaster tools that show the Google bot activity on the website:
On these two charts, we first see the number of pages crawled per day and the time spent downloading a single page. The red box represent the new host and everything prior to that is the old host. We can clearly see that the time spent downloading a single page went from a top value of something like 3 seconds to an all time low value of about 0.4s! To me, this is what I call a great improvement.
On the first chart we can easily see that because Google spends less time downloading a page, the bot crawls more page every day.
Reseller Vs Shared
I know you guys are saying: “Yeah right, but I won’t pay 25$ a month for a reseller account, my website doesn’t even make 25$ a month! I know, but I tested the shared hosting as well! Ain’t it nice? I know. The results are slightly less impressive, but really good as well so you can go for it without any problems.
Wrapping up
I did not do this to promote HostGator. You know why? Because I think I provided probably the most complete review of HostGator out there by providing real numbers and real results. I didn’t just say: That host’s great man! Cut the crap, there are thousand of great hosts out there! I didn’t just say I like the host, I frickin’ liked my old hosting company and I was really feeling bad to leave them. I did that review because HostGator really is a nice host, with great customer service and the performance is really good.
You know what pissed me off when I tried HostGator? I couldn’t find a single database performance review! What? We’re building websites here, websites receiving thousand of visitors every day, can I care about the load time of my websites? So here it is, HostGator performs really well on resources hungry websites.
29 Responses to “HostGator hosting: MySQL Performance review”
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Hi Ben, much of what you wrote about is way over my head but I certainly agree with you about HostGator. Two months ago HostGator informed me that one of my sites, 4U2BN.com, which is where we run the script for our ad tracking site had out grown the reseller’s server and we needed to upgrade to a dedicated server. It’s expensive, $174/month, but wow what a difference. I don’t even log into the WHM panel to see if the yellow dot is getting too close to red anymore. I was a little frustrated with HostGator at first because I didn’t want to pay that much money but after a lot of research I am certain HostGator offered the best deal. I’m glad I made the move because now I’m free to promote our site without worrying about the bandwidth causing a shutdown.
Brian D Hawkinss last blog post..Getting Your Site Indexed By Google
I so agree mate, it’s all about peace of mind! I also don’t have to bother if my website will be able to handle 5,000 or 10,000 visitors! The bandwidth thing is a good thing as you mentioned, I really don’t give a damn about bandwidth now
I wonder why reseller is better than shared. I checked hostgator site and shared plan has more bandwidth than the reseller
Husseins last blog post..You Follow, I Follow
Yep, I asked my self the same question. The reason shared has more bandwidth is for marketing reasons. People are going so sign up just because they have gazillion of terabytes bandwidth limit and HostGator knows these people won’t use 1% of the resources. Many people said they got “Strongly suggested” by HostGator to move to a reseller or they’ll have to close their account because they where taking way too much of the resources.
With a reseller account, HostGator is less generous on resources because they know webmasters will mostly use them.
*mutters* Talking about thousand visitors, running out of bandwidth again… Pity newbies a bit.
Nice review, Ben. I am on shared hosting (why waste money if there is no need to?). Wish I had to move up sooner, lol.
Rarsts last blog post..Cheap or not? MSI Wind U100 Vs HP Compaq 2510p
Haha
To say the truth Rarst, I would have stayed on shared if it wasn’t of that particular resources hungry website. Too bad it generates money, I had to go with a reseller…hehe 
For blogs, a shared is usually more than enough, even when driving 500-1000 visitors everyday. Wordpress isn’t too hard on resources and there are also some good plugins to enable caching.
If you aren’t making $25/month then how did you able to purchase a reseller hosting from gator?
Husseins last blog post..Question and Answer Round 2 Results and The Winner of 1000 EC
Hey man, great to see a performance review – a lot fo the work I’m planning on doing is using databases, so its good to see that Hostgator will be suitable for it – cheers
Dans last blog post..It’s Not Going Well…
@Hussein: I am making more than 25$/month for that other website!
@Dan: Hey, no problems Dan, glad to see you enjoyed!
So are actually saying we should get reseller account instead of shared? I guess I was a little confused with all that SQL thing. You know SQL and me doesn’t really get along well.
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..The Art of Writing Catchy Articles
Sorry if this was a little confusing mate, what I’m basically saying is that shared or reseller is great! As long as it’s hostgator, it’s good stuff
I concur, HostGator is awesome. Their customer service is second to none in my opinion!
Good stuff, Ben!
Freddies last blog post..Goal Setting Sunday: Week 7
@Freddie: Yep, I didn’t talk about the customer service but it is really impressive. I usually get an answer within 5 minutes when I send a request!
Hostgator told me to move one of my PHP sites to a dedicated server due to process issues. I could not afford it and move all my sites to Hostmonster, it works well without upgrading to a dedicated server
This is why I’m so glad I have a dedicated server (3, actually) because some people just don’t know how to properly use MySQL, and that can lead to chaos on your website. I learned this the hard way.
Now I run my entire server so 1) if something goes wrong I can fix it very quickly, and 2) things don’t usually go wrong since I have full control over everything.
Alexs last blog post..Parenting
@ZK: I’ve heard of Hostmonster before but read some reviews and wasn’t quite as good as hostgator. But I guess if you look at it, the important is that it works well for you and that you are 100% satisfied!
@Alex: 3 dedicated servers, that’s quite a lot. I don’t have the freedom of a dedicated server with a reseller account but it’s still very good. As you mentioned, I don’t have 50 users running on the host not knowing how to use mysql properly!
I wouldn’t trade my HG reseller for nuthin! Although (shh, I thought it was shared lol).
What’s GZIP?
Dennis Edells last blog post..Guest Post: DaBlogger Tells His Experiences with Social Bookmarking
@Dennis: It’s a compression algorithm and one of the many uses is to compress your web pages so it takes less bandwidth!
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gzip#Other_uses
How do I get it/use it though…is it in my CP and I don’t know it?
Dennis Edells last blog post..Contest Over: Prizes Coming – Link Love First!
Yeah very nice review. Hostgator is almost one of the best…
I have used Hostgator for about a year now and i love it. The only bad experience was when i had some plugin causing excessive load or something and all my pages got “locked” and when i reached support they rebooted my whole account and it was fine. I would rather see them calling me when all my sites get closed down.
This service gets pretty deep into the heart of the foundation of a website, and would probably be useful to those that are heavily optimizing their backbone. As has been stated here, most websites don’t make that much use of the resources that they are provided.
Armen Shirvanians last blog post..Quality Builds On Itself
@Armen Shirvanian:
I really enjoy reading your insightful comments everywhere around the blogosphere lately. What impresses me the most is that you don’t give the least impression that you are spamming it everywhere with your words like some do. Anyway, you have a great writing skill, no question about it.
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..A – Z Blogging Guide for Beginners
Your 100% right about Hostgator (beside the fact I hate them)
I left the Gator twice. 1st time because they cut me down because I payed the rent to late (it’s not easy to be International Truck driver and Military Historian in the same time), the 2nd time because the payment system drove me simply insane. They actually own me some 50 or 60USD but I don’t wanna hear something from the Gator.
One thing have to be said : they are great, the servers are prety good and the services to.
Nothing to say about this.
I agree that hostgator is good but there was a time, way back 2006 when I had an arcade site suspended without getting a notice. I’ve got the reason after filing a ticket. It was my arcade eating too much resources..That was before I became a part of a web hosting provider
I like the business information blog, and I enjoy a good template you have,thanks
I don't know anything about Hostgator. Just being honest.
Thanks for sharing.
I have had a gold reseller package from Hostgator for 2 years now, I have to say I have not had 1 problem with them. Great service as well as features. Pages load great. Granted, my databases are not as big as yours. Well see how it works out