Do you already have websites hosted on DigitalOcean? Or are you considering DigitalOcean as your hosting solution? Before choosing it, you might want to know how much traffic can DigitalOcean handle.
This guide will cover all the answers you are looking for.
We will compare various scenarios and droplet plans. Let’s start with the base question.
How much traffic can DigitalOcean handle?
The traffic DigitalOcean can handle depends on the droplet you pick. It can range from a few thousand visits to millions of monthly clicks.
The droplet is not the only thing that decides the traffic capacity of a cloud. These are the top 4 factors responsible for the traffic your cloud can handle.
- The number of websites you have running in the cloud.
- The total size of each site and the average page size.
- The amount of traffic each website is receiving (visitors and pageviews).
- Lastly, the droplet you are using.
To find out the answer, you can try load-testing your website with multiple concurrent users.
It’s a lengthy process and will take a lot of your time. So, we are here for the rescue. We have taken a few different scenarios with different hosting plans and multiple website sizes.
With this, we will see if your X type of website can handle Y amount of traffic.
To begin with, if we optimize the 512 MB droplet (it costs $4) on a normal WordPress website. Roughly 100 to 120 posts can easily handle more than 1000 real-time visitors. It offers 500 GiB of monthly traffic.
Assuming you optimize it using advanced techniques, it can easily handle more traffic. On the other hand, if your website has 1000 or more articles, you will have to upgrade your server as it will take more load.
Is DigitalOcean $6 month enough for my approximately 10000 visitors per day WordPress site?
Yes, you can efficiently serve 10,000 visitors daily or even more on the $6 server from DigitalOcean.
You need to understand a few things before you assume you can have 10k visitors. When we count traffic, there are multiple factors affecting it.
The $6 plan gives 1000 GiB traffic per month.
Assuming your page size is 1 MB, 10000 (visitors) * 1 (page size) * 30 (days) gives you roughly 300k MB of traffic. So, as long as an average visitor views 3 pages, it’s completely fine. So, 10k users won’t be a problem.
CDN, such as Cloudflare, distributes the traffic coming to your website. You can try using it so your website can handle more visitors. The results we discussed are based on an automated test.
Here, there were 50 users per second, browning 5 pages each.
This might be a tough choice, as if the same amount continues for 1 hour, there will be a 180k users cap. So, the total page views are 900k.
Now, if every user just views one page, the total user cap will skyrocket to 900k/hour cap.
These calculations are only made for peak hours and not for a normal case scenario. Having these many visitors may expire your monthly traffic limit. So, it’s essential to optimize individual cases based on your requirements.
If you have an unusual number of high visitors to your website, you should consider running benchmarks for your case.
The first few plans by DigitalOcean offer limited resources. Here are a few things you can do to optimize.
- Use a CDN such as Cloudflare.
- It’s good to have a decent caching system like Varnish or Memcached.
- Prefer the Ngnix server instead of going with Apache.
So, as long as you don’t have too many concurrent users, 10k visitors won’t be an issue.
How many unique visitors can DigitalOcean’s $12 plan handle per day on WordPress?
A $12/m plan from DigitalOcean can easily handle 10,000 visitors per day on WordPress. Heck, it can even handle more if you use a CDN.
The $12/m plan has 2000 GiB of traffic allowed. If your page size is 2 MB, 10k visitors will use 600 GB of bandwidth monthly. Each visitor can view 3 or more pages without any issues.
If your page size is less, more visitors can be served.
If you have more visitors, you should consider Cloudways + DigitalOcean. The standard plan will cost you $11/m, and the premium plan with the same specs will cost $14/m.
Due to their advanced optimization, the server can handle more traffic.
So, to know the exact answer on how many unique visitors DigitalOcean can handle, you must consider various factors. If your website is properly optimized with their custom CDN and Breeze Cache plugin and the page size is small, your server can handle 20k visitors.
However, if it includes video streaming, it will be hard for you to serve even 10k visitors.
Therefore, if you have enough visitors daily, you can consider DigitalOcean on Cloudways as it gives easy scalability and a better-optimized cloud.
You can use their additional bandwidth addon if you wish to stick with DigitalOcean.
By now, you must have a rough idea about “How much traffic can DigitalOcean handle?” Let’s look at how much traffic the $48 droplet plan handles.
How much traffic per second can DigitalOcean’s $48 optimized droplets plan handle?
The $48 droplet from the basic plan allows you to have a monthly traffic of 5000 GiB. It also includes 8 GiB RAM and 4 vCores CPU. These are decent specs for any normal website.
Even if you are expecting spikes, this plan will suit your needs.
The amount of traffic it can handle will depend on the resources your scripts are using. It depends on whether you use MySQL optimized database or a PostgreSQL database.
Even the image size plays a very important role while counting the traffic it can handle.
Every website is built differently. Some websites have a few articles and run on a CMS such as WordPress, whereas others might run a resource-intensive application.
So, if you have less than 100 articles, MySQL query will take less time to execute and will also use fewer resources. On the other hand, if you have 10k articles, the query takes too long to execute with intense use of resources.
The same thing applies to PHP and Apache.
Now, if you are running complex queries, it might take more time to execute. So, the total resource usage increases.
Further, if you need more, you can upgrade to a higher plan or buy bandwidth.
Conclusion
If you have less than 10k visitors, you can go with the $12 plan, as it can easily handle it. For CPU-intensive websites, their $24 plan with 4 GB RAM and 2 dedicated vCPU is perfect.
Luckily, DigitalOcean offer extra bandwidth at an affordable rate. Additionally, you should prefer adding Cloudflare and caching. It allows you to multiply the visitors your droplets can handle.
When to use DigitalOcean:
- If you are a small business looking for a fast server for cloud computing.
When not to use it:
- If you expect a lot of traffic, consider other options. Sometimes, it becomes harder for DigitalOcean to handle large traffic.
Depending on this, you can choose your preferred plan and consider going with DigitalOcean or other alternatives.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
How much traffic can a DigitalOcean droplet handle?
The traffic the DigitalOcean droplet can handle depends on the plan. You can expect somewhere between a few thousand to a couple of million in monthly traffic.
Does DigitalOcean charge for traffic?
The droplet comes with a fixed traffic limit. If your traffic limit exceeds, you will have to pay extra.
How many visitors can Digital Ocean handle?
Depending on the plan, you can expect the DigitalOcean droplet to handle traffic from around 10k visitors to a few million.
What happens when I hit the bandwidth limit digital ocean?
DigitalOcean charges $0.01 per GiB for extra outbound bandwidth. The inbound bandwidth remains free.
How many websites can I host on DigitalOcean?
You can have as many websites as you want in DigitalOcean droplets.
How many requests can a droplet handle?
You can manage 5–10 requests per second for the second droplet plan. After adding a load balancer, you can handle up to a million requests per second or one million simultaneous connections.
