If you own an eCommerce website, you have probably heard of all the good things about Magento but at the same time you might have also heard of the fact that Magento needs more than just the average web hosting account to run. Following our recent post on how to improve Magento website speed, we want to show you how we speed up Magento website by 122 times faster, in comparison to the average web hosting environment. 

The Benchmark

Without further ado, let’s see the benchmark result first – screenshot of Google Chrome Developer Tool:

This is a client’s eCommerce website that required 7.98 seconds to load on an “average web hosting environment”. After the optimisation and acceleration, it loads at a blazing speed of 0.065 seconds (or 65 mili-seconds) — we have successfully speed up Magento website by 122 times!

The Control Parameters

To ensure that the test is as fair as possible, first we commissioned the test environment on cloud server with identical server specification. Then we installed cPanel control panel before we proceed to using Apache as the webserver to mimic the typical setup on an “average web hosting environment”.

The time to load the client’s special deal page (special-deals.html) was then determined by loading the website on an Incognito browsing window with Chrome Developer Tool enabled to obtain the total time to load the page.

Once the data is captured, we proceed to install Litespeed webserver with LiteMage Cache, as well as enabling the respective Magento plugin before conducting the test once again in Incognito browsing mode. The total time to load the page was finally taken.

Throughout the test, we used M1 Fiber Home Broadband, performed ping test and speed test before each attempt to obtain the page loading time, to ensure consistency in the home broadband performance. Home broadband was used once again to mimic the typical internet connectivity an eCommerce customer would use in Singapore.

The secret behind Magento Acceleration

As you have read in the Control Parameters above, you can see that our recipe to speed up Magento website, which is to obtain a page loading time that is 122 times faster is none other than Litespeed webserver + LiteMage Cache + the respective Magento plugin, which is best illustrated in the diagram below:

There is a very detailed explanation of the technology used by Litespeed but in a very summarised context, the Litespeed webserver knows which data should be stored in cache and which data within the cache should be refreshed (warm cache) so your visitor does not miss out on the important updates you made to your Magento website. With all the cache means greater loading speed on the customer’s web browser, as well as lower load to the server which hosts your website.

What about Nginx + Turpentine + Varnish?

Similar to Apache, Nginx is an open source webserver albeit it is lightweight in terms of the resources it requires to run. Using Nginx + Turpentine + Varnish, with detailed and correct configurations, will offer speed improvement over Apache webserver but both these setup are far outpaced by the combination of Litespeed and Lite Mage.

How can I use Litespeed + Lite Mage for my Magento?

If you are currently using a cloud server or dedicated server, you can purchase Litespeed Webserver Licence & LiteMage upgrade for your server. However, if you are currently using a shared web hosting service for your Magento, you should probably be looking at moving to a Managed Magento Hosting that uses this technology.

SecureAX is a Fully Managed Cloud Server provider in Singapore which specialises in high performance and high security platforms. Contact us to find out more about our Managed Magento Hosting packages or how we can help you improve your Magento websites speed!