tl;dr – JointsWP.com runs 2-4x faster after moving to WP Engine.
Update: Although this article may make it seem like I hate HostGator, that couldn’t be any further from the truth – I still host many sites on HostGator shared services, including some of my own personal sites. With packages starting under $4 a month, their shared servers are great for hosting small or personal websites. I ran many websites, including some large websites, on cheap HostGator packages for many years without any hiccups at all.
A few months ago, while enjoying a nice weekend at home binging on Walking Dead reruns I started getting emails from clients along the lines of “why my website no work!?”.
It turns out our host was doing maintenance to their database server when they ran into some issues. To make matters worse, they were also having trouble restoring the backups they had – leaving all of our websites with a lovely “Database not found message.”