Development
WordPress speed: the 12 fixes that take a site from 40 to 95 on Lighthouse
A slow WordPress site is almost always fixable. These are the 12 fixes we apply, in order, to take a typical business site from…
· 8 min read
Most small business websites in the UK are on the wrong hosting. Either they sit on a £3-a-month shared plan that falls over the moment a newsletter goes out, or they have been put on AWS by a previous developer and the business is paying £250 a month for a brochure site that would run happily on a £25 server. We fix both.
Our cloud work is about the hosting behind websites, shops and web apps: where they run, how fast they are, whether the backups would actually restore, and whether the bill makes sense. We are not an office IT company and we won’t set up your laptops or Microsoft 365. We look after the servers your digital products live on.
Who usually calls us
- A retailer whose WooCommerce shop slows to a crawl during a sale or after a mention on television or a big Instagram account.
- A company with a custom web app or portal that has outgrown the single server it launched on.
- A business with a monthly AWS, Google Cloud or Azure invoice nobody can explain line by line.
- An organisation that has been asked by a client or a tender, often in the public or financial sector, to confirm where its data is stored.
- Someone whose previous developer has disappeared and who doesn’t know who holds the hosting login.
That last one is more common than you would think. The first thing we do is make sure the accounts are in your company’s name.
What we set up and look after
- Hosting matched to your traffic and budget, from managed WordPress hosting to a virtual server to a full cloud platform.
- UK data residency where it matters: AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure all run London regions, and plenty of good managed hosts use UK data centres.
- Cloudflare in front of the site for DNS, caching, SSL and firewall rules, which on its own often fixes speed and bot traffic problems.
- Daily automated backups stored away from the server, with a restore we have actually tested rather than one we assume works.
- Uptime and error monitoring that alerts a person, not just an unread inbox.
- Migration from your current host with DNS handled and the old host kept as a fallback.
- Cost reviews: right-sizing servers, removing forgotten resources and adding caching so you need less capacity in the first place.
Picking the right level of hosting
| Option | Good for | Indicative monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Good managed WordPress hosting | Most business websites and small shops | Roughly £15–£50 |
| Virtual private server (VPS) | Busy shops, several sites, simple web apps | Roughly £20–£80 |
| Cloud platform (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) | Custom apps, uneven traffic, several connected services | Usage based, tens to hundreds of pounds |
These ranges come from providers’ published prices, which change often, so treat them as a guide. Our opinion, after years of inheriting other people’s set-ups: the majority of business websites don’t need a full cloud platform. Over-engineered hosting costs more every month and needs a specialist to touch it. Under-engineered hosting costs you sales. The right answer is usually the boring middle.
Our approach
Audit
We look at what you run, where, what it costs, how fast it is from a phone on 4G, and how it is backed up. You get a short written report with what we would change and why. If the answer is “your hosting is fine”, we will say that and stop.
Build the new environment alongside the old
For a migration we build the new hosting first, copy the site or app across and test it on a temporary address. Forms, payments, scheduled tasks and email delivery all get checked, because those are what break silently in a move.
Switch at a quiet time
We lower DNS cache times a day ahead, switch at a quiet hour for your business and keep the old host running for a few days as a fallback. Most moves involve no downtime anyone notices.
Tune and measure
Afterwards we tune caching and check Core Web Vitals against Google’s published thresholds: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint within 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. A faster server rarely fixes a slow site on its own, so we will tell you if the theme or plug-ins are the real problem.
Technology we use
Managed WordPress hosts, Linux virtual servers, AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, CloudFront), Google Cloud and Firebase, and Cloudflare for DNS, caching and security. For custom applications we use containers where they make deployment simpler, and automated deployment pipelines through our DevOps service. We avoid exotic services that tie you to one provider unless there is a clear reason.
What it costs
Cloud work is booked as custom web development hours at £60 an hour excluding VAT, and hours never expire.
| Job | Typical hours | Price excl. VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting audit with written recommendations | 3–6 | £180–£360 |
| WordPress or WooCommerce migration with Cloudflare and backups | 6–12 | £360–£684 |
| Cloud cost review and right-sizing | 8–15 | £480–£810 |
| Cloud infrastructure for a custom app | 20–50 | £1,020–£2,400 |
Worked example: a 10-hour migration is £600 less the 5 % volume discount, so £570, or £684 including VAT. If it saves you £60 a month in hosting, it has paid for itself within a year. Hosting fees go directly to the provider, billed to you, so you always hold the keys. Many clients keep a small block of hours afterwards for updates and the occasional fix; our WordPress maintenance guide explains what that should include.
Where we are
The team is based in London and looks after sites for businesses all over the UK, from Bristol to Belfast. Hosting work is almost entirely remote. What matters is that when something breaks you reach the developers who set it up, by phone, rather than a ticket queue in another time zone.
Get a hosting review
Send us your website address and what you pay for hosting now. We will tell you whether it is right for you and what we would change. Contact us or call 020 3918 3814.
