How to choose the right server region for your website

Data travels fast, but not instantly. A visitor in Sydney loading a site hosted in London waits for every request to cross the world and back. That delay, called latency, adds up across the dozens of requests a page makes.

Start with your visitors

Look at your analytics and find where most visitors come from. Put the server as close to them as you can. A shop selling in Germany belongs in Frankfurt; a blog read mostly in the US East Coast belongs in New Jersey.

If your audience is spread out

Pick the region closest to your largest group, then use caching so repeat requests are fast for everyone. A central location helps too: for example, Europe sits between the Americas and Asia.

Other things to weigh

• Data rules: some businesses prefer, or are required, to keep customer data in a particular country or region.
• Your own services: if your site talks to an external API or database, hosting near it reduces delays.
• Price: some regions cost slightly more than others.

You are not locked in

Choosing a region is not permanent. If your audience changes, you can move a site to a server in a better place.

Netkeel offers 32 regions across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa, so there is almost always one near your visitors.