Performance profile · Software Startups & Launch Sites
Web hosting for software startups — Rehearse the launch before the launch rehearses you
The whole quarter's traffic arrives in one afternoon, on the page you rewrote that morning — which is exactly the combination worth testing in advance.
The short answer
A launch is the easiest hard problem in hosting: thousands of logged-out visitors asking for one identical page. Cached, that page is served by LiteSpeed from stored HTML without touching PHP or MySQL, so concurrency costs almost nothing — provided nothing on the template is uncacheable and nothing is being deployed while the traffic arrives.
So rehearse it. Warm the cache, hit the URL under concurrency from a machine that is not the server, and watch cPanel's Resource Usage while you do. If CPU barely moves, you are serving from cache and the launch is a good afternoon; if it climbs, something on the page is dragging a full build behind it and you have found it a week early.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
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Two systems get confused in early-stage companies: the product and the page that sells it. They have opposite requirements. The application is stateful, authenticated and uncacheable; the marketing site is a handful of documents that every visitor can be handed the same copy of.
Keeping them apart is the single highest-leverage decision on this page. It means a front-page spike cannot touch anybody who is actually using the product, and it means marketing can rewrite the positioning weekly without a release window — which is what actually happens in month three.
The rest is instrumentation. Take a median TTFB with curl, take LCP and INP from a throttled Lighthouse run, and know both numbers before launch day rather than reconstructing them from a graph afterwards.
Keep the launch page off the application's blast radius
Run the marketing site on its own account and the product wherever it belongs. The separation is not aesthetic: it means a link aggregator sending twenty thousand people at your landing page cannot consume the CPU your logged-in users are relying on, and a marketing deploy cannot take the app down at four in the afternoon.
It also decides who can ship. A CMS gives the marketing side autonomy over copy and campaign pages, and keeps those changes out of the product release cycle. Engineering reviews code; nobody should be reviewing a headline in a pull request.
Rehearse the spike with the cache warm
Warm the page first by requesting it once, then run concurrent requests against it from somewhere other than the server — and watch two things: the response times, and the Resource Usage graph in cPanel. Flat CPU under load means LiteSpeed is answering from stored HTML. Rising CPU means part of the page is being rebuilt per request, and that part is your bug.
Common culprits: a live counter, a personalised greeting, an A/B test that runs server-side, a form nonce embedded in the cached HTML. Move anything genuinely dynamic into a fragment or the browser, keep the page itself static from the cache's point of view, and re-run the rehearsal until the graph stays flat.
Take the numbers you will be asked about
Median TTFB from five runs of `curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{time_starttransfer}'`, plus LCP and INP from three throttled Lighthouse passes on Slow 4G. Google's thresholds are 800 ms, 2.5 seconds and 200 ms. Record them with the date, because the day after launch somebody will ask whether the site was slow and a graph beats a recollection.
Keep the launch page light while you are at it: every third-party script is another main-thread competitor on the one day you cannot afford one. Analytics, a chat widget and a video embed will each cost you more INP than the entire rest of the page.
What the account gives you, and where it stops
SSH with Git and Composer means the marketing site deploys like code rather than by hand, and staging copies mean the launch-day rewrite is measured before it goes out. On the Nitro tier there are 2 cores and 4 GB of RAM, 200 GB of NVMe, and Node.js, Python and Ruby pre-wired if the landing page has a build step behind it.
Past that, the honest answer is a VPS: KVM virtual servers with full root access, when the thing you are running is genuinely an application rather than a document. Knowing which of those two you have is the difference between buying capacity and buying complexity.
For teams who instrument before they announce
The marketing site should be the least exciting thing you own on launch day: cached HTML, NVMe underneath, a London origin, and a graph you already know the shape of.
HostingFast gives you the tooling to make that true — SSH with Git and Composer, staging copies, per-site PHP switching, real logs, and Resource Usage graphs to rehearse against.
- LiteSpeed serving the landing page from stored HTML under load
- Resource Usage graphs to rehearse a spike against
- SSH with Git and Composer, so marketing deploys like code
- Node.js, Python and Ruby pre-wired on the Nitro tier
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Concurrency that costs nothing
A cache hit never wakes PHP or MySQL, so twenty thousand identical requests is bandwidth rather than load.
A rehearsal you can watch
Resource Usage plots CPU, memory and entry processes live, so a load test tells you what is cached and what is not.
Marketing ships without a release
A CMS on its own account keeps campaign pages out of the product cycle, and a spike on one out of the other's way.
Deploys with a commit behind them
SSH with Git and Composer, so the landing page you rewrote at 9am is a reviewable change, not an FTP upload.
Runtimes ready when you need them
Node.js, Python and Ruby are pre-wired on the Nitro tier, and a KVM VPS is there when a document becomes an application.
Priced to stay out of the way
Flat renewals on every tier, because a marketing site should not be a line item anybody has to defend.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Split the site from the app
Marketing on its own account, product wherever it belongs. A front-page spike then cannot reach anyone who is using the product.
- 2
Warm the cache, then load it
One request to warm, then concurrent requests from off-box while you watch Resource Usage. Flat CPU means you are serving from cache.
- 3
Record TTFB, LCP and INP with the date
Five curl runs and three throttled Lighthouse passes. Do it the week before, not the morning after somebody asks.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Server-level LiteSpeed caching, so a launch spike is bandwidth not load
- cPanel Resource Usage: CPU, memory and entry processes, live
- SSH with Git and Composer for deploys with a commit behind them
- Staging copies for the rewrite you will do on launch morning
- Per-site PHP version switching from the control panel
- NVMe storage on every tier, including the entry plan
- Node.js, Python and Ruby pre-wired on the Nitro tier
- Daily backups with self-service restores from the panel
- In-place upgrades, or a KVM VPS with full root access
- Flat renewals — the rate you order at is the rate you renew at
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
How do I load-test a landing page without breaking it?
Warm the cache with one request, then send concurrent requests from a machine that is not the server, and watch the Resource Usage graph while it runs. Flat CPU means LiteSpeed is answering from stored HTML. Rising CPU means part of the page is uncacheable, and finding that a week early is the entire point of the exercise.
Why should the marketing site not sit on the same host as the product?
Because their failure modes are different and their traffic is unrelated. The marketing site is cacheable documents that occasionally get a huge crowd; the application is authenticated, stateful and uncacheable. Separating them means a front-page spike cannot consume the resources your paying users are relying on, and a copy change can never cause an outage.
Which element of a launch page usually breaks the cache?
Anything personalised. A live signup counter, a server-side A/B test, a greeting that names the visitor, or a form token embedded in the HTML will each force a full rebuild per request. Move it into a fragment or into the browser and the page becomes a static document again, which is what survives a launch.
When does a marketing site need a VPS instead?
When it stops being documents. If you are running a build pipeline, a queue, a long-lived process or a service the page depends on, a KVM VPS with full root access is the honest answer. If it is still pages plus a form, shared hosting with a cache in front will outperform a badly configured server every time.
Keep reading
Sports Clubs — Hosting Guide
A membership-shaped audience site with the same spike question and a very different cache profile.
Estate Agents — Hosting Guide
A listings site where the uncached search query, not the launch, is the constraint.
How to Keep Site Software Updated
Keeping a stack current without turning an update into an unplanned outage.
Laravel Hosting — Built for Software Startups
Laravel-ready hosting with Composer, SSH and Git-driven deploys when the page becomes an app.
VPS Hosting
KVM virtual servers with root access and one flat monthly price.
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.
Rehearse it this week.
Warm the cache, load the page, watch the graph — twenty minutes now beats a post-mortem later.
View Laravel Hosting — Built for Software Startups plans