Performance guide · Dublin
Dublin: the marketing site is not the product
Your app is somewhere else and behaves nothing like this. The docs, the pricing page and the blog are what a prospect meets first, and they are a completely different performance problem.
The short answer
Treat the marketing and documentation site as a caching problem and the application as an engineering one, because they fail differently: docs pages are logged-out reads that should be served from cache without loading PHP at all, while anything session-bound never can be.
HostingFast runs NVMe storage behind LiteSpeed from London — 5-15 ms from an Irish connection — with SSH, Git and WP-CLI on the account, free SSL and free migration. Entry pricing is $2.42 a month billed annually and the renewal rate matches it.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 12 August 2026
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Almost every company here runs two web properties: a product that lives behind a login, and a marketing site that has to load in a second. They are generally built by different people, on different stacks, to different standards.
For most of those companies the site being discussed here is the front of house rather than the product. That distinction drives the whole page: what caches, what does not, how to keep a deploy from regressing either, and what .ie actually does in the request path.
Docs and marketing cache beautifully; the app never will
A documentation page is the ideal caching candidate: identical for every visitor, changing only when you publish. A LiteSpeed hit serves it without loading PHP, so the number you should see is dominated by transfer rather than by anything your code does. Confirm it with the x-litespeed-cache header on the document request.
Anything with a session behind it is the opposite, and that includes the parts of a marketing site people forget — a gated asset, a logged-in trial dashboard, a personalised pricing calculator. Those pay for the full application path every time, so keep them off the pages that need to be quick.
Deploys, and keeping performance from drifting
SSH with Git and Composer on the account means a deploy can be a scripted, repeatable thing rather than a drag-and-drop, and WP-CLI covers cache flushes, search-replace and database work without touching a browser. Staging copies mean the version being measured is the version you are about to ship.
Add a measurement to the deploy routine: TTFB and total bytes on three URLs, recorded each time. Performance rarely collapses; it drifts, one plugin and one hero image at a time, and only a repeated measurement catches drift.
.ie, and what resolution costs you
.ie is the extension an Irish buyer reads as local, and it registers and renews on the same account as the hosting with the DNS aimed correctly from the start. There is no latency penalty attached to any particular extension — the resolution path is the same shape whichever ending you choose.
What does cost you is a messy chain: a CNAME pointing at a CNAME pointing at a third-party host, each hop with its own lookup, all of it happening before your first byte. Check it with dig +trace and flatten what you can.
The 5-15 ms question, answered with a number
That is the indicative round trip from an Irish connection to our London origin on a well-connected line. It is a range rather than a guarantee, and your visitor's own carrier moves it as much as the distance does.
Set against a cached page that leaves the server in single-digit milliseconds, it is not the variable worth optimising. Cache coverage, payload and query count are, in that order, and all three are within your control in a way that geography is not.
Tooling that suits a technical team
SSH with Git and Composer, WP-CLI, per-site PHP versions, staging copies and NVMe storage behind LiteSpeed caching. Enough to script a deployment, measure it, and roll it back without waiting on anybody.
Free SSL renews itself, migration is free and runs with the old site still serving, and the rate you sign up at is the rate you renew at.
- .ie registered and renewed alongside the plan
- SSH, Git, Composer and WP-CLI on the account
- Staging copies, cloned and rolled back in one click
- A renewal rate identical to the first term
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Deploys you can script
SSH with Git and Composer on the account, plus WP-CLI, so shipping a change is repeatable rather than a sequence of clicks.
Caching that suits documentation
Logged-out pages are served from LiteSpeed before PHP loads, which is exactly the profile a docs or marketing site has.
Staging per experiment
Up to ten staging copies on WordPress plans, so the thing you measured is the thing you ship.
A short hop to Ireland
The London origin sits 5-15 ms from an Irish connection, published as a range rather than dressed up as a guarantee.
Flat renewal pricing
Entry pricing is $2.42 a month billed annually and renews at the same figure, so the line item does not need revisiting each year.
Support at any hour
Engineers on shift around the clock, with a first reply inside two hours and inside one when a site is down.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Separate the two problems
List which URLs are logged-out reads and which are session-bound. They need different work and mixing them wastes both.
- 2
Confirm the cache is doing its job
Sample x-litespeed-cache across real docs and marketing URLs. A miss on a static page is a configuration fault, not a fact of life.
- 3
Flatten the DNS chain
dig +trace the hostname and remove the hops you do not need. Every one of them happens before your first byte.
- 4
Measure on every deploy
Three URLs, TTFB and total bytes, recorded each time. Drift is the failure mode, and only repetition catches drift.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Logged-out and session-bound URLs listed separately
- Cache hit confirmed on documentation and marketing pages
- DNS chain checked with dig and flattened where possible
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer-focused plans
- Staging environments for testing changes before they ship
- A performance measurement recorded as part of every deploy
- Free SSL that renews itself before it can lapse
- A daily backup you restore yourself, which is what makes a deploy reversible
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not just the expensive ones
- Human support on duty every hour of every day
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
Should an Irish company host in Ireland specifically?
For page speed, it changes very little: the Irish latency band to London is roughly 5-15 ms, which is beneath the variance of a mobile connection. Data residency is a separate question with its own answer, and it should be argued on those terms rather than dressed up as a performance requirement.
Can I deploy from Git?
Yes. SSH access with Git and Composer is on the account, so a pull-based deploy or a build step is straightforward, and WP-CLI covers cache flushes and database work from the same session. Staging copies let you rehearse the whole sequence before it touches production.
Why is our docs site slower than it should be?
Usually because it is not actually being cached. Check the x-litespeed-cache header on the document request; a miss on a static documentation page means something is excluding it — often a cookie set by analytics, or a plugin default nobody revisited. Fixing that is a configuration change rather than an optimisation project.
What does the entry plan cost, and does it change?
$2.42 a month billed annually, renewing at the same figure. No setup charge and no introductory rate that steps up in year two, which means the hosting line in a budget is a number you can leave alone.
Keep reading
Hosting in Ireland
Rates in EUR, which domain endings we can register there, and how the tax works out.
Web Hosting in Helsinki
Nordic connections, .fi, and a market that notices a slow page immediately.
Web Hosting in Leeds
Yorkshire professional firms, document weight and telling TTFB apart from LCP.
Domain and Hosting on One Order
Buying a name and hosting together, and what that saves you in DNS work.
Web Hosting
cPanel hosting on NVMe behind LiteSpeed, with SSL, migration and a year-one domain.
Domain Names
Find, register and transfer domains — first year free with annual hosting.
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.
Front of house, properly quick.
NVMe behind LiteSpeed from London, SSH and Git on the account, and a renewal rate that matches the first term.
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