How each host handles a spike
| Host | What is limited | Over the limit | Fast way to add capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinsta | Visits (unique IPs in 24 hours) or bandwidth, depending on plan | Sites keep running; $0.50 per 1,000 visits or $0.50 per GB; an overage of at least the plan cost or $500, whichever is less, counts as extreme and access may be limited; alerts at 80% and 100% | Plan upgrade takes effect immediately and is prorated, but is not retroactive |
| WP Engine | Billable visits: one unique IP per day (UTC), known and suspected bots excluded | No throttling for a spike; $2 per 1,000 extra visits on Startup to Scale and Agency, billed monthly | Visits cannot be bought as an extension; upgrade the plan |
| SiteGround shared | CPU seconds per hour, day and month: StartUp 1,000 / 10,000 / 300,000; GrowBig 2,000 / 20,000 / 600,000; GoGeek 4,000 / 40,000 / 800,000 | Early warnings first; extreme or repetitive over-usage may lead to limited access until you act | Upgrade plan, or on Cloud enable autoscale at 75% of the last CPU or RAM unit with a monthly cap |
| DigitalOcean Droplet | The CPU and RAM you provisioned; outbound transfer above the allowance at $0.01 per GiB | No visit billing; capacity is whatever the Droplet has | Resize: power off, about one minute of downtime per GB of used disk; keep disk fixed to be able to downsize later |
Worked example: a launch week with 40,000 extra visits
Suppose your normal month fits your plan and the launch adds 40,000 visits above the allowance. That is a hypothetical figure. At Kinsta's published rate the overage would be 40 x $0.50 = $20. At WP Engine's rate it would be 40 x $2 = $80. The two hosts count visits differently, so the same audience can produce different visit numbers; the rate is not the whole story.
On a DigitalOcean Droplet you pay for capacity instead. Moving a $24 Droplet (2 vCPU, 4 GiB) to the $48 size (4 vCPU, 8 GiB) for one launch week costs about 168 hours x $0.07143 = $12.00 instead of 168 x $0.03571 = $6.00, so roughly $6 extra for the week at the listed hourly rates. The real cost is the two power-off windows needed to resize up and back down.
On SiteGround shared hosting the number to watch is CPU seconds per hour. Open Client Area, Services, Settings, Statistics, CPU Seconds, look at the busiest hour of your last promotion, and compare it with your plan's hourly threshold.
Cache rules to check
- The sales page should be fully cacheable for anonymous visitors; avoid per-visitor countdown timers or coupon logic that forces it uncached.
- Cart, checkout, account and lesson pages should be excluded from page cache, and nothing else.
- On SiteGround, enable the SuperCacher Dynamic cache; SiteGround lists it as the way to reduce executions.
- Block or slow abusive bots before launch; SiteGround notes bots can generate excessive executions.
- Disable chat or calendar widgets that refresh constantly on the sales page; SiteGround flags these as a source of executions.
- If logged-in pages are slow under normal load, fix that first; see our guides on logged-in caching and object caching.
Pre-launch checklist
- 14 days out: read your plan's limits, overage rates and enforcement wording; screenshot them with the date.
- 14 days out: confirm plan limit alerts go to an inbox someone watches during launch.
- 10 days out: decide whether to upgrade temporarily, and do any Droplet resize now, outside launch hours.
- 7 days out: run a full purchase in live mode at a low price, then refund it; confirm the enrolment email and course access.
- 7 days out: confirm payment webhooks reach the site and that failed deliveries can be resent.
- 3 days out: freeze plugin and theme updates until after launch.
- Launch day: one person watches the host dashboard and resource graphs, another watches orders against the payment processor.
- After launch: check the invoice for overages and downgrade any temporary capacity.
Support escalation plan
Know the support path before you need it. At SiteGround, requests start from the Client Area's Help Center, then Contact Us; for any other host, find and bookmark the ticket or chat route during setup rather than on launch day. Kinsta sends plan limit alerts by default, so make sure they reach someone during launch. On a self-managed Droplet there is no host engineer for your application, so the escalation path is whoever administers the server.
Write a one-page launch runbook: the account owner, who has login access, how to open a priority ticket, how to put the sales page into a static fallback if checkout fails, and how to pause email sends that drive traffic. A plan that only exists in one person's head fails when that person is answering customer emails.
Questions before you decide
Will WP Engine take my site offline during a spike?
WP Engine's billable visits article says it does not throttle sites for receiving a spike in visits; extra visits are billed as overages.
Does upgrading a Kinsta plan mid-month cancel overages already incurred?
No. Kinsta says the new plan takes effect immediately but is not retroactive, so earlier overages still appear on the next invoice.
Can I shrink a DigitalOcean Droplet after the launch?
Yes if you resized CPU and RAM only. DigitalOcean says a disk cannot be decreased, so keep storage fixed when you scale up if you want to scale back down.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- Kinsta: WordPress hosting overages Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine: Understand billable visits Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- SiteGround: Fair use of hosting services Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- SiteGround: CPU resource usage graph explained Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- SiteGround: Reduce the number of executions Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- SiteGround: Cloud server autoscale Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: Resize Droplets Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: Droplet pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: Droplet pricing details Accessed 29 Oct 2026
Sources link directly to providers. Product buttons may use separately labeled affiliate links. Read our disclosure.