When a Cape Town-based creative agency came to SpeedCounts.io, their biggest frustration wasn’t their design, content, or marketing — it was their website’s speed. Despite their site being beautifully built with Elementor and optimized on the front-end, it still struggled with sluggish performance and poor Core Web Vitals.
Let’s take a look at how switching their hosting transformed everything from load times to search rankings — and what you can learn from their experience.
The Problem
The client was hosted on a well-known shared hosting platform. On paper, it promised 99.9% uptime and “WordPress-optimized” features. But in practice, their site was:
- Taking 6–8 seconds to load
- Scoring poorly on PageSpeed Insights (LCP consistently over 4 seconds)
- Experiencing random admin panel slowdowns and timeouts
- Falling behind in search rankings for their most competitive keywords
Their developers had optimized everything they could on the front end. The bottleneck was clearly the server.
The Migration
SpeedCounts.io offered a free, zero-downtime migration. Here’s what we did:
- Created a staging environment to test the site on our infrastructure
- Activated server-side full-page and object caching
- Enabled Redis for dynamic content handling
- Integrated our global CDN to reduce asset load times
- Monitored for TTFB, LCP, and FID improvements
Once confirmed, we scheduled the DNS cutover outside of business hours. The site was live on SpeedCounts within minutes, with no impact on users.
The Results
Load Time: Reduced from 6.7s to 1.3s
Pages that previously took multiple seconds to load now loaded nearly instantly. The homepage scored 98/100 on desktop and 92/100 on mobile using PageSpeed Insights.
Core Web Vitals: All in the Green
- LCP dropped from 4.2s to 1.7s
- FID improved from 130ms to 35ms
- CLS was already stable, but saw minor improvements due to faster rendering
SEO Rankings
Within four weeks of switching hosting (with no new content added), they saw:
- +28% increase in organic traffic
- Page 1 rankings restored for three high-value keywords
- Increased average time on site and decreased bounce rate
Admin Panel Performance
The WordPress dashboard, which previously lagged and timed out during edits, became snappy and stable — even with heavy plugins running.
The Business Impact
The client was able to:
- Take on more projects without worrying about performance
- Cut back on caching and performance plugins
- Focus on growing their content and marketing — instead of battling hosting
What This Means for You
If your website is well-designed and well-built but still underperforming, don’t assume it’s a front-end issue. Your hosting might be the bottleneck — and upgrading could be the easiest win you’ll get this year.
SpeedCounts.io provides the infrastructure, caching, CDN, and support to unlock your site’s full potential.
Want to see what a difference hosting can make? Reach out and we’ll show you — just like we did for this agency.