Best VPS Set Up For Multiple Wordpress Sites

Hello guys,

Here's the thing, for as long as I can remember I've always used CPanel for all my hosting needs. From the the time I started out on a shared hostgator acct in the days of dial up connections. I am not a coder or a technical guy. My thing has always been the digital marketing side of it, web development and SEO. But over the years I had to learn the basic so I could eventually set up my own VPS and have more flexibility and control over the multiple accts I manage for my clients. And I kind of got comfortable with the current set up I am using, which is basically the same for every new VPS I create. Centos 7 + Maria DB + Redis + Engitron (Nginx plug on Cpanel).

So here's my question to all those who are more experienced and knowledgable than me in this particular field, which is pretty much everyone. Isn't this set up a bit overkill? I am trying to streamline and maximise my VPS for speed. I only ran wordpress websites. I could use terminal to install new websites, ssl, create email accts and most other basic stuff. But my clients got used to CPanel, which is why I have been reluctant to let go off it. So I guess I will stick to Cpanel until I find a similar but cheaper alternative. I've tried CyberPanel but found it very buggy.

My sites are not slow to load, around 2.5s but I know they could be faster and I have never managed to bring this number down no matter how much I tweak my settings. So maybe I need a completely new approach or different set up. What set up could you suggest for a super fast wordpress hosting environment with a control panel?

Many thanks

super fast wordpress hosting environment with a control panel

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Managed VPS/dedicated server depending on your needs + directadmin. CPanel is very popular in USA, in middle europe most people use Direct Admin. As far as i remember current Cpanel pricing sucks and many companies just say no to Cpanel and switch to DA.

If you dont use woocommerce I think you can go faster than 2.5s? I use one site on genesis framework and get load 1.5s without cache plugin.
I would go for:
DirectAdmin + Centos 7 + Maria DB + Redis + Litespeed lsphp + Lscache (wp plugin)
If you dont use woocommerce I think you can go faster than 2.5s, what themes do you use? I have one site on genesis framework and get load 1.5s without active cache plugin.

Direct admin + vps is a perfect choice.

What are the specs of your VPS? HDD, SSD or NVMe SSD drives?
What is the node your VPS is hosted on like? Is it congested? A good way to tell would be to look at the steal amount from your top output.
Another test could be to purchase another VPS with similar specs from a different provider and rysnc(migrate) your data over. Use a free domain from freenom or just the IP and test your sites there. Is there any difference in performance?
If everything is okay with the hostnode, then lets concentrate on your VPS. While still in top, what are your average loads like? What is iowait like? What about free -h? slabtop?
If there are processes running wild such as database, you may need to limit (nice or ionice or cpulimit) them to get the best performance for your sites. Better yet, what about splitting them up and having a VPS dedicated to your database freeing up additional resources for your shared VPS.
Then, there is also your sites to look at. How well optimised are they? Do you have a cache plugin, CDN, optimised images, etc?

There is no one thing that will spontaniously make your sites performance better, but checking and optimising across the whole board will surely see increased performance.

As for me, I go with the Dedicated server+ Directadmin.