Reduced Time To First Byte by 72%
Increased flexibility and scalability of hosting services
Earned customer trust with a new standard of service reliability
Elementor, a leading website builder platform, leverages Google Cloud’s robust infrastructure to provide hosting customers with new levels of reliability, flexibility, and scalability.
Elementor, a leading website builder platform, leverages Google Cloud’s robust infrastructure to provide hosting customers with new levels of reliability, flexibility, and scalability.
When a prominent electronics retailer prepared for Black Friday, their plan covered irresistible offers, ingenious advertising, and conversion optimization. They were ready. Or so they thought.
Theoretically, they were successful: instead of the usual 15,000 daily visitors, their Black Friday marketing drew an impressive 400,000. Unfortunately, nearly 300,000 of those visitors never reached the retailer’s site—because the traffic overload crashed it. Close to a million dollars in potential sales, months invested in preparation—all lost.
In the pre-Elementor Host ecosystem, preventing site crashes on Black Friday and during similar high-traffic events meant that businesses had to scale up their hosting plans in advance, and then remember to scale them down afterwards. Additionally, they had to hope that with all the traffic, the site would load fast enough to keep those impatient customers from bouncing.
Elementor was convinced that website hosting could do better. Leveraging Google Cloud, they created a hosting service that does.
Elementor is best known for its no-code Wordpress website builder product, which currently powers over 18 million websites: about 12% of the entire web. But a best-in-class website builder was only the tip of the iceberg for Elementor. Their goal of empowering any website creator—from small business owners to web design agencies—propelled them to supply that audience’s other critical needs, such as image optimization, AI-powered site development tools and hosting. Being Elementor, they would settle for no less than a best-in-class hosting service.
“We built Elementor’s hosting service from day one with scalability and performance in mind,” explains Chen Levi Elenberg, Director of Hosting and DevOps at Elementor. “Our goal was that even during Black Friday or other high traffic events, our hosting customers could rely that their sites would be up, responsive and not missing potential conversions. They wouldn’t have to worry, or make any manual changes. We’ve achieved that goal, and it would not have been possible without Google Cloud’s infrastructure.”
Our goal was that even during Black Friday or other high traffic events, our hosting customers could be confident that their sites were up, responsive and not missing potential conversions. We’ve achieved that goal, and it would not have been possible without Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
Chen Levi Elenberg
Director of Hosting and DevOps, Elementor
Leveraging Google Cloud capabilities to offer auto-scaling hosting service
The worst fear for a website owner is having an amazing deal or viral content inspire hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of visitors to visit the website, only to have those potential customers encounter a “site not available” error caused by the strain on the site’s infrastructure. Opportunity of a lifetime—eliminated.
Elementor was determined that their hosting clients should never have to worry about that. Their innovative solution: An auto-scaling mechanism, built into all of their hosting plans.
When we bill ourselves as ‘worry-free hosting,’ we really mean it. Our customers don’t have to even consider how their site will handle Black Friday or other high-traffic events. The hosting auto-scales exactly as they need it, without them having to think about it. It’s liberating.
Ido Navarro
Product Manager, Elementor
To successfully develop an auto-scaling capability, Elementor identified the need for a container-based, serverless architecture. Using Google Cloud’s infrastructure and services such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), they were able to automate the entire scaling process.
“We were drawn to Google Cloud because we felt GKE was the most reliable and stable Kubernetes service,” explains Elenberg. “We weren’t disappointed.”
Ido Navarro, Product Manager at Elementor, explains how Google Cloud has enabled Elementor to differentiate itself in the hosting ecosystem: “When we bill ourselves as ‘worry-free hosting,’ we really mean it. Our customers don’t have to even consider how their site will handle Black Friday or other high-traffic events. The hosting auto-scales exactly as they need it, without them having to think about it. It’s liberating.”
The reliability and scalability of Google Cloud translates directly into the reliability and scalability that Elementor can offer its customers, providing a stand-out product when it comes to performance.
“We wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what we did in terms of the architecture and interface without Google Cloud,” says Elenberg. “Today, Google Cloud is our go-to, default cloud provider. We auto-provision every new product there.”
Reducing Time To First Byte by 72% to increase positive user experience and conversions
People and businesses build websites because they have a goal and a purpose.
If a website doesn’t convert visitors—whether that means content was consumed, leads were generated, gated content was downloaded, donations were made, or products were purchased—it has not achieved its purpose.
Elementor knew that a foundational element of a converting website is speed. Webpages that take even a few seconds to load are often abandoned by potential site visitors, causing conversion rates to plummet. In addition, search engines tend to take loading speed into account when calculating how high to rank pages, so lower-than-average speed can directly impact SEO efforts.
This reduction of initial loading time by 72% is an incredible gain for website creators when it comes to both user experience and SEO. Google Cloud helped position us to deliver this advantage to our customers.
Ido Navarro
Product Manager, Elementor
As part of creating a best-in-class hosting service, Elementor was determined to provide exceptionally fast loading speed. They chose Kubernetes during the initial design, in part because of its potential for performance efficiency. The resulting hosting product was fast—but not fast enough for Elementor’s vision.
“We worked hard, both with Google Cloud’s compute-optimized C2 machine series and internally, to create a load balancer and other solutions,” explains Elenberg, “and we reduced Time To First Byte (TTFB) at the 75th percentile from 2.5 seconds to under 700 milliseconds, and at the median (P50) to under 100 milliseconds.”
“This reduction of initial loading time by 72% is an incredible gain for website creators when it comes to both user experience and SEO,” notes Novaro. “Google Cloud helped position us to deliver this advantage to our customers.”
Elementor’s customers are highly appreciative of the benefit to their sites. The Elementor team is proud to read positive reviews like this one: “Moved over to Elementor from my previous hosting company that had dropped the ball. The migration was seamless, the website performed 30% faster and the support has been brilliant. The financial savings were the cherry on the cake.”
Contributing as a true ally, not just a cloud vendor
A vendor provides a product only; an ally offers a relationship. According to Elementor, there is no doubt that Google Cloud is in the latter category.
“When we need to make critical decisions or to explore technical decisions that involve our Google Cloud infrastructure, it’s natural for our dev team to jump on a call with a tech expert from Google Cloud to get their okay or their recommendations,” observes Gali Taub Sarig, Hosting General Manager at Elementor. “They feel like an extension of our team.”
The dynamic relationship with the Google Cloud team is a force multiplier for the benefit that Elementor receives from Google Cloud’s products. As Elementor moves forward, they intend to leverage that benefit for the sake of their customers.
“We’re already serving 12% of the web through Elementor’s website builder,” notes Taub Sarig. “Our goal is to provide all of these users with best-in-class hosting, and the complete package of tools they need to successfully scale their business. We are their ally—and Google Cloud is ours.”
When we need to make critical decisions or to explore technical decisions that involve our Google Cloud infrastructure, it’s natural for us to jump on a call with a tech expert from Google Cloud to get their okay or their recommendations. They feel like an extension of our team.
Gali Taub Sarig
Hosting General Manager, Elementor
Elementor is the leading website builder platform for professionals and business owners on WordPress. With over 18 million websites that use its page builder, Elementor powers 12% of the internet. Elementor also offers a full suite of tools for web creators, providing everything they need to effectively manage and scale their online presence.
Industry: Technology
Location: Israel
Products: Google Kubernetes Engine, CloudSQL, Compute Engine, Filestore, Memorystore, Monitoring, Networking
