Scalability refers to the ability of a website or web application to handle different levels of user traffic without impacting performance or user experience. A scalable website can save money, better prepare you for future growth or quieter periods and keep your site performing at its best.
To keep it short and sweet, scalability is all about adapting your resources and systems to meet demand.
You are working hard to expand your site and business and reach new goals, don’t let your website fall behind. When you build a scalable website, you can be confident it will easily handle all the growth coming your way.
Building a scalable website has many benefits
Building a scalable website at the beginning of your web development process can save you time and energy down the line. Say you were to put off scalability until your traffic doubled, you’d quickly notice that your site is moving slowly and regularly crashing. By the time you start to tackle scalability, user experience has already been impacted and you’re likely losing out on conversion opportunities.
When you do focus on creating a high-performing, scalable site, you’ll notice many benefits:
- Improved user experience: A scalable website ensures a consistent and fast load time and a smooth user experience at all times, even during high-traffic periods.
- Business growth: A high-performing, scalable site supports business growth by accommodating more user demand, products and services, including a wider geographical audience.
- Cost efficiency: You can save time and money when maintaining a scalable website, as there is a reduced need for frequent overhauls and major redesigns.
- Competitive advantage: You are more equipped to respond to market demands and changes with a scalable site. A high-performing site also improves user satisfaction, potentially increasing your revenue.
- Improvement opportunities: Most scalable architectures are easy to edit, maintain and improve upon. This allows you to update or grow certain features of your site without impacting uptime or user experience.
Scaling out and scaling up
There are two types of scalability: vertical (scaling up) and horizontal (scaling out). Vertical scaling is related to the capacity of a singular machine, while horizontal scaling is related to the total number of machines.
When you’re scaling up, you’re adding more power to an existing server by improving CPU or RAM. You will maintain a single server, but will increase the capacity of the server to handle additional data and tasks more efficiently. When you’re scaling out, you’re increasing the number of servers, so there are more resources available to distribute increasing data loads, ensuring one server isn’t doing all of the work.
- Vertical scalability: Adding more power, such as CPU or RAM, to an existing server.
- Horizontal scalability: Adding more servers to distribute the load.
There are pros and cons to both, and there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Determining how and where to scale up, down or out depends on your individual needs and resources. Here are some factors to consider while weighing your options:
- Costs: When it comes to the price, horizontal scaling upgrades typically cost more than vertical scaling upgrades in initial stages.
- Future options: When thinking about the future of your site and scaling options, there are fewer limitations with horizontal scaling than vertical scaling. You will always have the ability to build out, but there are limits to how much you can build up.
- Flexibility and upgrades: It is easier to manage or upgrade any web applications that are on individual machines (due to horizontal scaling) without impacting your entire site.
- Simplicity: If you are just starting out and are looking for a simple scaling option, vertical scaling may be right for you. It’s more affordable, less complex and generally easier to implement.
- Data consistency: Vertical scaling options are less complex than horizontal scaling, as all data resides on a single server.
- Downtime: Scaling up may require that your site is unavailable while updates are being made. When you scale out, you can make upgrades to one server at a time, avoiding the need for downtime.
- Server failure: In the event of a server crash or failure, horizontal scaling may allow your site to continue running, as a different server can take over. With vertical scaling, there is a single point of failure and no immediate backup option.
- Geographic distribution: Having multiple servers through horizontal scaling gives you the option of distributing servers geographically, potentially improving user experience across a wider geographic area.
In summary, there are likely more opportunities for growth and improvements with horizontal scaling, but vertical scaling is more affordable and can sometimes be more straightforward. You should move forward with whatever scaling option makes the most sense for your website needs.
Scalable applications
For most websites to be functional, they require the use of a web application. Web applications help power things like online shopping carts, games, video streaming, forms and more.
We need web applications for functionality and user engagement, but web apps can also cause lags on your website if they aren’t developed properly. This is where scalable web application development comes in.
Common web applications include
- Streaming services
- Ride-share apps
- Social media applications
- Design apps
- Google Workspace
To support application scalability, you should focus on the following:
- Application programming interface (API): To have a scalable web app, a scalable API is a must. A scalable API has factors such as statelessness, loose coupling, efficient database usage and more.
- Application architecture: Web apps can have a monolithic, serverless or microservice architecture. Monolithic architectures are straightforward, but can be difficult to maintain and grow. Microservices offer a lot of flexibility, but can be more complex to update, and serverless are very scalable, but often have certain vendor-specific limitations.
- Hardware and cloud services: Different cloud services will vary in their scalability features, and hardware capacity (storage, processing capacity and data handling) can have a significant impact on scalability.
- Code efficiency: An app’s data-handling capabilities are impacted greatly by its code. An efficient code can improve overall website performance and reduce server load.
Breaking down web hosting options, caching and load balancing
There are many other factors that can influence your site’s performance and scalability, from your hosting plan to load balancing your servers.
Shared hosting plans
Shared hosting plan means sharing one server across multiple websites. While this is a more cost-effective option, spikes in traffic or heavy processing on someone else’s website may impact your own site’s performance. Scaling options with a shared hosting plan may include paying for package upgrades, which can become costly. Additionally, a shared hosting plan often means that security, plugin updates and more are up to you to manage.
Managed hosting plans
A managed hosting plan means all of your server management tasks are taken care of, from updates, to security, to backups. If your site were to experience a large influx in traffic, your web host will help you manage it, so you don’t have to worry about your site crashing or user experience being impacted. Managed hosting can be more expensive, but comes with many benefits and additional services that a shared hosting plan doesn’t provide.
Caching
A cache is a high-speed data storage layer, often stored in hardware such as a RAM. Caching can reduce server load by storing frequently used data and decreasing the number of requests sent to a server. This can be helpful for reducing downtime, improving speed and optimizing user experience.
Load balancing
Load balancing is a service that may be offered by some hosting providers. A load balancer spreads out operations across various resources so that one server isn’t taking on all of the work. This can improve performance and ensure that your server doesn’t crash or overload.
Future-proof your site
Website scalability is important for any website that is targeting a growth in traffic, and allows your site to meet increasing demands without compromising performance or user satisfaction.
There is so much more we could cover about building scalable web applications, databases, hosting options, web app development, the list goes on. It is no small feat to build a high-performing, scalable website, but it is an important part of future-proofing your site. I hope that I’ve covered some of the basics to help you begin your scalability journey.
If you’re looking for website experts, Orbit can lend a hand. Our web developers, designers, copywriters, strategists and SEOs can build you a quality website designed to bring in leads and increase conversions. Orbit also offers hosting services, so you can ensure your site is always available and up-to-date.
