How a Growing WordPress Publisher Cut Costs and Boosted Speed by Switching from Apache to LiteSpeed

How a mid-market WordPress publisher hit a performance ceiling at scale
FoodFast, a recipe and food-review site, peaked at 3 million monthly pageviews in its second year. Revenue was split between ads and affiliate links. Growth was healthy but costly: the engineering team was spending more time on server patches, brittle caching plugins, and emergency scaling during traffic spikes. Visitors complained about slow pages, bounce rates rose on article pages, and ad viewability dropped. The CTO knew the stack was part of the problem: WordPress, PHP, MySQL, and Apache running on a small fleet of VPS instances with Cloudflare in front.

What followed was a focused experiment. The team compared hosting types and webservers across three options: stay with Apache and scale, switch to Nginx with PHP-FPM and a page cache, or adopt LiteSpeed Enterprise with the LSCache plugin and LSAPI PHP handler. The goal was clear: lower TTFB, increase cache hit rate, reduce server count, and keep monthly hosting costs under control.
The server bottleneck: why Apache started failing at scale
Traffic was fine for static pages, but dynamic article pages—rich with images, ad scripts, and third-party embeds—kept tripping PHP worker limits. Symptoms included:
Average TTFB climbing from 250 ms to 600 ms during peak hours Full page loads averaging 4.2 seconds on mobile High CPU usage and frequent spikes triggering autoscaling Poor cache hit rates because many requests bypassed the software cache
Apache was configured with mod_php in the legacy setup. That meant a heavy process footprint and slower request concurrency. The built-in caching solutions and page caches used by the WordPress stack were inconsistent under real-world traffic, and .htaccess overhead hurt performance for high request rates. Fixes were piecemeal: more RAM, faster CPUs, heavier caching plugins. Costs rose quickly without delivering the desired reliability.
Choosing LiteSpeed: why they tested an alternative webserver
The engineering lead proposed a controlled swap to LiteSpeed Enterprise on a test cluster for these reasons:
LiteSpeed's LSAPI PHP handler is significantly faster than mod_php and often faster than PHP-FPM for WordPress workloads LSCache integrates at the server level, allowing cached content to be served without invoking PHP Native HTTP/3 and QUIC support promised lower latency for mobile users Better concurrency profile - fewer workers required under high request rates https://saaspirate.com/best-wordpress-hosting-for-agencies/
They also considered Nginx. Nginx + PHP-FPM performs well and avoids LiteSpeed licensing costs. But Nginx lacks the tight server-plugin cache integration LiteSpeed offers, and the team valued the ease of WordPress-oriented caching rules exposed by LSCache. OpenLiteSpeed (the free edition) was evaluated too, but the production feature set and support of LiteSpeed Enterprise tipped the balance.
Implementing the migration: a 90-day timeline with checkpoints
The team planned the move in four phases: audit and benchmark, pilot on staging, phased production rollout, and optimization. Each phase had measurable milestones.
Days 0-14: Audit and baseline benchmarking Collected real user metrics: TTFB distribution, page load times, bounce rates, and cache hit rates from existing monitoring Baseline load test on production replica: 10,000 concurrent users simulated peak, results recorded Cost assessment: current monthly hosting + autoscaling spend = $1,350 Decided target metrics: TTFB under 150 ms, full load under 1.8 s for 75% of users, cache hit rate > 80% Days 15-40: Build and test on staging Provisioned two identical VPS nodes with LiteSpeed Enterprise (small license at roughly $45/month per instance) and MariaDB on a managed cluster Installed the LSCache plugin, configured LSAPI, enabled HTTP/3, tuned keepalive and worker limits Simulated real traffic and measured: initial results showed TTFB dropping from 600 ms to 120 ms on cached pages Identified compatibility issues with some WordPress plugins that performed on-the-fly rewrites; fixed rules using LSCache ESI (edge side includes) or replaced plugins Days 41-70: Phased production rollout Started by routing 10% of traffic to the LiteSpeed cluster via weighted DNS and Cloudflare load balancing Monitored error rates, cache hit ratios, and ad render metrics closely Scaled gradually to 50% after two weeks, then to 100% when metrics stabilized Kept Apache fleet on warm standby for 14 days in case of rollback Days 71-90: Post-migration tuning and automation Tweaked LSCache TTLs, improved cache purging rules, enabled object cache with Redis for logged-in users Added server-side compression and tuned TLS settings for TLS 1.3 Refined autoscaling rules - the cluster now needed one fewer node on average during peak From slow and costly to fast and efficient: measurable results in six months
Quantified outcomes after 6 months:
TTFB median dropped from 450-600 ms to 90-130 ms on cached content Full page load time median from 4.2 s to 1.3 s on mobile; desktop saw similar proportional gains Requests per second capacity increased from 650 RPS to 3,400 RPS on the same hardware during tests Cache hit rate rose from 42% to 86% for public pages Server CPU utilization during peaks dropped roughly 40%, letting them decommission one VPS and avoid autoscaling events Monthly hosting bill fell from $1,350 to $980 after accounting for the LiteSpeed license cost and fewer nodes - net saving about $370/month Bounce rate on article pages dropped 12%, ad viewability improved, and monthly ad revenue increased by an estimated 8% attributed to faster page loads
Those numbers matter. Faster pages led to better ad metrics and higher user engagement. The cost reduction mostly came from needing fewer servers and fewer emergency scale-ups. The LiteSpeed license was a small fraction of the savings but required careful vendor negotiation for multiple nodes.
Three hard lessons that mattered more than marketing claims
1) Server software is not a magic fix. Switching webservers produced big wins because the team paired it with proper cache rules, HTTP/3, and object caching. Simply flipping to LiteSpeed without rethinking cache TTLs, purge hooks, and plugin behavior would have given smaller gains.

2) Test compatibility first. A handful of plugins relied on request-level behaviors that changed under LiteSpeed. The staging period exposed these and saved a potential production rollback.

3) Total cost of ownership includes license, engineering time, and operational complexity. Open-source alternatives like Nginx and OpenLiteSpeed can be cheaper but may demand more engineering work for the same WordPress integration. For this team, the balance favored LiteSpeed Enterprise because of the time saved in tuning and the LSCache plugin.
A contrarian take: when Apache or Nginx still make sense
LiteSpeed shone for this publisher, but it's not always the right choice.
If you run very custom .htaccess-heavy setups or depend on legacy Apache modules, staying with Apache avoids migration work Large multi-tenant control panel environments sometimes favor Apache for .htaccess compatibility and established mod_security rules If budget is extremely tight and you have experienced ops staff, Nginx + PHP-FPM + advanced cache plugins can achieve similar raw performance at lower licensing cost
Each stack has trade-offs. LiteSpeed reduces engineering overhead for WordPress-heavy sites. Apache and Nginx offer broader ecosystem familiarity and no per-node license. These factors should influence a decision as much as benchmark numbers.
How your team can replicate this without costly mistakes
Follow this tested checklist rather than chasing benchmarks:
Benchmark current state: collect TTFB, full load, cache hit rates, and RUM metrics. Use real traffic patterns for load testing. Pick a low-risk pilot: one replica site or a canary route. Use staging that mimics production exactly. Validate plugin behavior: test caching plugins, ESI, login workflows, and purge hooks. Replace or rewrite plugins that assume mod_php behavior. Enable LSAPI and server-level cache first. Let the server serve cached HTML without invoking PHP for most anonymous traffic. Turn on HTTP/3 where possible. You will see gains on mobile and for high-latency users. Measure before/after across the stack: server CPU, memory, RPS, TTFB P50/P95, and business KPIs like bounce and ad viewability. Keep rollback plans ready and run the migration in increments with monitoring and alerts configured. Negotiate license terms. If you scale horizontally, license costs add up. Factor that into monthly TCO and decide whether vendor support justifies it. Final verdict - a pragmatic, data-first choice
For FoodFast, LiteSpeed ended a cycle of increasing hardware spend and brittle caching. The server-level cache and LSAPI gave tangible, repeatable improvements that translated into revenue gains. The migration required careful staging and a couple of plugin changes, not a rewrite of the application.

That said, this is not a universal recommendation. Teams with tight budgets and strong Nginx expertise can match performance with a different stack. Teams dependent on Apache-specific modules or complex .htaccess rules may find migration costs outweigh the benefits.

Make decisions based on measured baselines and an honest accounting of license costs, engineering time, and the risk of breaking plugins. When you do the math, LiteSpeed is often the fastest path to a better WordPress experience, but only if you treat it as part of a full-stack optimization effort, not a one-click cure.