Help needed with performace issues

We have just set up nopCommerce 3.70. Unfortunately I HAVE to use v3.70, since PayGate (our payment gateway) only supports a payment plug-in for v3.70.

Now our setup runs on a Shared Hosting server (web farm) at our hosting company, Afrihost.

The problem I have is that response time for browsing any page is extremely slow, most of the time bewteen 20-30 seconds.

1) Is this normal for nopCommerce v3.70, or does this have more to do with the hosting setup we run?

2) Would running the system on a dedicated server improve performance, and if so, by how much?

3) Is there anything at all I can do in terms of settings or configuration to improve performance?

You should turn on mini-profiler, or use YSlow to see what's going on.  Also, you may need to profile your SQL Server.

Also, post your shared hosting plan details..maybe you just need to request some additional RAM if the plan you are on has too little. Also, I assume your database is on a shared SQL server that the shared hosting plan includes.
Some hosts really overload their SQL Servers. You could try copying your database onto a remote SQL server and change your settings.txt to point to it. There are a few places out there that you can get your first month free. That's plenty of time to evaluate whether your problem is really the site hosting performance or the SQL server performance.

I checked the Windows plans at Afrihost just now and it looks to me like really the only difference in plans is the additional storage space, which isn't gonna help your performance. Not to disrespect Afrihost, but they appear to be an "all in one" solution, not dedicated to hosting at all...which in my experience limits the amount of willingness they'll have to provide you with any special attention, even for a fee.

You might be better off to have your site hosted by a company that specializes in .NET hosting and offers "add-on" plan upgrades, like RAM or CPU increases. Also, unless your target audience is just in South Africa, you don't need to stay local. You really need to try to have your site hosted wherever the majority of your target audience lives.

Hi Embryo,

Thanks for all the advice and info. Yeah, welcome to the wonders of a third-world country :)... Afrihost's core business is basically "mom and pop" wanting to get a basic cheap website for their home-based pottery business or guesthouse.

I am currently looking into another option they have, which is more suited for businesses. They have a few Dedicated Server options. So basically I can get my own physical server set up at Afrihost (they supply hardware) with Windows 2012 Standard running on it. From there I can then manage the server with full root access. So I can install and manage SQL Server and everything else I need myself. The big advantage is that I will be running my sites on a dedicated machine, and not share server resources with a few fundred other sites.

Its more expensive, but makes more sense going forward, as I have the ability to host unlimited domains on the server, at the same cost. So I think the server will start paying for itself after a few months, as I can host more client stores on the server. And obviously I can upgrade the server as the need arise for more resources and performance.

Ya, the advantages of a dedicated, or even a good virtual server far outweigh the added cost..if you can swing it financially. It kinda pushes you to be more aggressive with sales...