Backbone notes · Amsterdam
Amsterdam: your seconds are in the images
You are a few milliseconds from the origin, sitting on one of Europe's best-connected networks, and the portfolio still takes four seconds to paint.
The short answer
When the network is already excellent, the payload is the whole story. Dutch traffic sits inside the 10–35 ms band we publish for Western Europe, so a slow portfolio is not paying for distance — it is paying for a 5 MB hero exported at 4000 pixels, a font family loading six weights and a slider fetching five frames to show one.
The platform closes the half that can be automated: WebP conversion built in, NVMe storage behind a server-level LiteSpeed cache, and free SSL on every plan from $2.42/mo. The export dimensions and the number of third-party scripts remain, correctly, your decision.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 12 August 2026
NVMe
Storage on every tier
Free
Domain, year one
99.9%
Uptime target, monitored
Flat
Renewal, unchanged
AMS-IX made this a junction of the European internet and the business culture switches into English mid-sentence. Design studios, SaaS teams and a logistics industry built on Schiphol and Rotterdam all trade far beyond the country's size, and all of them are judged on a page that has to paint before an opinion forms.
This page is about the part the backbone cannot help with: what the browser downloads, in what order, and how to tell which of your changes actually moved a visitor's number.
A portfolio fails on payload, never on the hop
Trace the page in DevTools and read the LCP marker — it names the element the browser is timing, and on a studio site that is the case-study hero almost every time. Then check three things: the export dimensions against the displayed size, whether the hero carries loading="lazy", and how much JavaScript runs before the image is even requested.
Deferring the hero is the most common self-inflicted regression on a design site: it looks like an optimisation, it is recommended by a hundred checklists, and it delays the exact element being measured. Set width and height attributes while you are there, so the layout does not shift as the picture lands and the CLS figure stays under 0.1.
What the platform converts, and what it cannot
WebP conversion is built in at no extra cost, so modern browsers receive a smaller file without anybody running a build step, and NVMe storage under a server-level LiteSpeed cache means assets are served pre-built rather than assembled per request. That handles format and delivery.
It does not resize your exports or reduce the pixel count, and the distinction matters more than it sounds: WebP on a 4000-pixel photograph is still a 4000-pixel photograph. Export at the size you display, at most double for a retina layout, and the same picture that took four seconds arrives in well under one.
The marketing site and the product are different problems
A SaaS company's public pages are entirely cacheable and behave beautifully from a London origin at 10–35 ms. The application behind the login is not: every screen is personal, every request runs the full distance, and no cache in the world applies to it. Treating those two as one hosting decision is how teams end up disappointed by a perfectly good platform.
So separate them. Marketing site, documentation and blog on shared hosting where caching does the work; the application wherever its architecture demands, with root access on a VPS if it needs one. We will say which side of that line your workload falls on before you pay rather than after you have discovered it.
Dutch and English without duplicating the cache
.nl commands unusual domestic loyalty and a bare .com reads as a foreign company here, so most Amsterdam businesses hold both. Serve one canonical hostname and 301 the other to it in exactly one hop — verify with curl -sIL, because a chain of three redirects costs three round trips and a TLS handshake before any HTML moves.
For languages, give Dutch and English their own URLs and declare hreflang in both directions. Both trees then cache independently and serve pre-built. Switching language on a single URL by cookie makes the response vary per visitor, at which point the cache stops storing it and the whole bilingual audience pays for a fresh render.
The half that is automated
WebP conversion, NVMe storage, a LiteSpeed cache built into the server, OPcache on current PHP 8.x and free SSL that renews itself — all from $2.42/mo, on every plan.
The other half is instruments: cache status in the headers, staging copies, per-site PHP versions, SSH with Git and Composer, and daily backups you restore yourself.
- WebP conversion built in at no extra cost
- .nl registered and renewed on the same account
- Cache hit or miss readable from every response
- Staging copies to compare a theme change like for like
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Format handled for you
Built-in WebP conversion means modern browsers get the smaller file whether or not the studio runs a build pipeline of its own.
Assets served pre-built
NVMe storage under a server-level LiteSpeed cache, so a heavy portfolio page does not slow down as the traffic climbs.
Like-for-like theme testing
Clone to staging, install the new theme, compare transfer size, request count and LCP element on the same URL, then promote.
A published band, not a boast
10–35 ms round trip for Western Europe, stated as indicative, so you can rule the network out and get on with the payload.
Mail on your own domain
IMAP, POP, SMTP and spam screening included, with MailChannels handling outbound so a proposal reaches the client's inbox.
Migration with the site still up
Engineers move everything at no charge while the current site keeps serving, and delegation changes only when you sign it off.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Name the LCP element
One DevTools trace. Until you know which element the browser is timing, every change you make is a guess with a stopwatch attached.
- 2
Fix the export, then re-measure
Display dimensions, no lazy attribute on the hero, width and height set. Same URL, same commands, and write the new figure next to the old one.
- 3
Confirm in the field
Wait for PageSpeed Insights field data at the 75th percentile to move. A lab improvement that never reaches the field never reached a client either.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Built-in WebP image optimisation at no extra cost
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, entry plan included
- LiteSpeed caching built into the server rather than patched in by plugin
- Staging environments for testing changes before they ship
- Current PHP 8.x with OPcache enabled from the start
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer-focused plans
- Daily backups, with self-service restores you run from the panel
- Free SSL on every plan, renewed automatically before it can expire
- WordPress and 400+ other applications installed in one click
- Human support on duty every hour of every day
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
The network here is excellent, so why is my site slow?
Because the network was never the constraint. At 10–35 ms round trip the hop spends a few per cent of an 800 ms first-byte budget. Trace the page instead: the LCP element, its export dimensions, whether it is lazy-loaded, and how much third-party JavaScript executes before it is requested.
Does built-in WebP mean I can skip resizing?
No, and this is the expensive misunderstanding on a portfolio site. WebP changes the format, not the pixel count — a 4000-pixel export stays a 4000-pixel export. Serve at display dimensions, at most double for retina, and let the platform handle the encoding from there.
Where should a SaaS product live if the marketing site is here?
Marketing site, docs and blog on shared hosting, where caching does almost all the work from a London origin. The logged-in application is uncacheable by nature and belongs wherever its architecture wants — a VPS with root access, most often. Ask before you buy and you will get that answer straight.
Do Dutch and English versions halve my cache hit rate?
Not if each language has its own URL with hreflang declared both ways, because each address caches independently and both serve pre-built. The arrangement that does hurt you is switching language on one URL by cookie: the response varies per visitor and the cache refuses to store any of it.
Keep reading
Hosting in the Netherlands
Rates in EUR, which domain endings we can register there, and how the tax works out.
Web Hosting in Bucharest
Bucharest, where the published band is 30–60 ms and the method still holds.
Web Hosting in Copenhagen
Copenhagen timed the same way, inside the same 10–35 ms European band.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) (Glossary)
What an edge network genuinely fixes, and the four things it never will.
Web Hosting
Shared hosting on NVMe with a LiteSpeed cache and free migration included.
Agency Hosting
Agency hosting where client sites sit isolated under limits you set yourself.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A straightforward sequence for a switch your visitors never feel: which files move first, how to shift email across without losing a single message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind almost all the downtime we get asked to rescue.
Rule out the network, fix the payload.
WebP built in, NVMe behind a server-level LiteSpeed cache from $2.42/mo, free SSL and a free migration — with staging to prove each change on.
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