Osad customers have reached out to us with concerns that certain websites are slow – they want to know if we can do something about it and whether the issue lies with our servers or something else. Here, I’ll try to explain where, what, and why – that is, what causes website slowness.
1. Internet connection
Let’s be honest – comparing mobile internet like “Edge/GPRS” (typical modem speed) to fast broadband at 150Mb/s is like racing a Lada against a Ferrari (both move, but the difference in both initial and top speed is massive).
2. Geographical location
Much depends on the target audience of the website. For Estonian users (and also Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian), it makes sense to host the website on servers located in Estonia. For websites targeting international users, it is advisable to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network), which brings the website files closer to clients via a proxy. When pinging a website from Estonia or other parts of the world, the responses vary – sites hosted in Estonia respond faster within Estonia than those hosted abroad.
3. ISP location
It matters where your ISP is located and whether the requests are routed through neighboring countries or directly. (For example, with a Tele2 USB modem, under certain conditions some requests go through Sweden, and with some Starman connections through Germany.) Even in Estonia, testing through different ISPs can produce different results (e.g. Zone may be faster from one network, Elion from another, and Radicenter from yet another).
4. Web server
It also depends on the server’s software, configuration, and performance. If the server is not very good, it will affect the result. Nowadays, service providers generally use fast and powerful servers and high-speed connections.
5. Website CMS and its plugins
Usually, most of the website slowness (up to 90%) is caused by the content management system. For example, WordPress is not the most optimized CMS (although it is one of the simplest and most widely used). It also depends on what plugins are used and how optimized they are. (For instance: a basic WP installation works relatively fast – but once you start adding various “cool/modern/eye-catching” plugins, some of them may massively increase the number of requests and thus drastically affect page load speed.)
The golden rule for larger websites is to use a CDN and/or various caching solutions, which accelerate page load speed and reduce server load – the page load then depends mainly on the performance of the visitor’s device. If the website has suddenly become slower, it’s worth checking what plugin or feature was recently added and whether it impacted the speed.
There are also many so-called “pagespeed” tools online (like Pingdom, etc.) – these tools may not provide 100% accurate speed results for sites hosted in Estonia, BUT it’s still useful to check what they say about the causes of slowness! If it shows that many files are being opened at once, or some scripts are unoptimized, or too many requests are being made, it’s worth considering their optimization suggestions.
You can always contact our support team with additional questions about website slowness – we’ll do our best to find a suitable solution for you or help identify where the exact issue lies.
In conclusion:
I’ve seen large online stores that load as fast as a “simple five-page website” and simple five-page websites that load as slowly as major e-commerce platforms with thousands of products.
So, while the server and geographic location do play some role, 85–95% of the perceived slowness usually comes down to website optimization.
