By HigherHost · June 2026 · 5 min read
We migrated incubategrowth.agency — a live digital marketing agency site — to our infrastructure and re-ran the PageSpeed tests. No code changes. No redesign. Just a server swap. Here's what happened.
Speed is infrastructure. That's not a hot take, it's what the numbers keep saying. Total Blocking Time dropped from 1,960ms to 110ms — an 18× reduction — purely by moving the site to HigherHost servers. The performance score jumped from 60 to 88 on mobile.
This post walks through the before and after, what was causing the slowness, and why the fix required zero developer effort.
The before: original hosting
The site at incubategrowth.agency was on its original hosting setup when we ran the first PageSpeed Insights audit on May 26, 2026.
Mobile — May 26, original host
Desktop — May 26, original host
SEO and Best Practices were already perfect — this is a well-built site. The performance problem was entirely infrastructure, not code quality. The key numbers that hurt:
- 🔴 Total Blocking Time (mobile): 1,960ms — nearly 2 full seconds where the browser is locked and can't respond to input
- 🔴 Render-blocking requests — estimated savings of 2,570ms on mobile
- 🔴 Main-thread work: 9.5s on mobile, 5.1s on desktop
- 🔴 JavaScript execution time: 3.5s — 20 long tasks blocking the main thread
- 🟡 Unused JavaScript — estimated savings of 681 KiB
- 🟡 Speed Index: 4.1s on mobile
The migration: server swap only
We copied the site to incubate.higherhost.net — a subdomain on our infrastructure — and ran the exact same PageSpeed audit four days later on May 29, 2026. Zero code edits. Same WordPress install, same theme, same plugins, same content.
Our infrastructure runs on enterprise-grade cloud compute with a global CDN, PHP 8.x, FastCGI proxy caching, and HTTP/3. We also allocated sufficient RAM to run Elementor properly — something budget hosts routinely skimp on. Nothing exotic — just configured correctly and not oversold.
"No redesign. No developer hours. Same WordPress. Just a different server."
The after: HigherHost infrastructure
Mobile — May 29, HigherHost servers
Desktop — May 30, HigherHost servers (warmed cache)
By May 30th, the desktop score hit 91 after the server-side cache warmed up:
The numbers, side by side
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile performance | 60 | 88 | +28 points |
| Desktop performance | 65 | 91 | +26 points |
| TBT mobile | 1,960ms | 110ms | 18× faster |
| TBT desktop | 1,810ms | 200ms | 9× faster |
| LCP mobile | 3.1s | 3.0s | Stable |
| Speed Index | 4.1s | 3.5s | Improved |
Why this matters for your business
Google uses Core Web Vitals — which include Total Blocking Time, LCP, and CLS — as a ranking signal. A TBT drop from 1,960ms to 110ms is the kind of change that moves the needle on organic visibility, not just user experience.
For e-commerce stores on WooCommerce, the stakes are higher. Every second of load time costs conversions. Research consistently shows that a 1-second delay in page load reduces conversions by 7%. If your store is doing €10K/month, that's €700 left on the table per second of slowness — per month.
The accessibility score dipped slightly in the migration (80 → 75) because those flags — missing button labels, contrast ratios, heading order — were pre-existing in the site's code and became more visible under the stricter audit environment. These are fixable in the site itself and have nothing to do with hosting.
What didn't change: SEO stayed at 100, Best Practices stayed at 100. A clean migration keeps what's working.
Want to see what your site looks like on our servers?
We offer a free speed demo. We copy your current site to a HigherHost subdomain, run the PageSpeed comparison, and show you the numbers side by side. No commitment, no obligation — the copy gets deleted if you don't move forward.
If the numbers don't improve significantly, we'll tell you that too.
Get your free speed comparison →
No credit card. No contract. Your site is deleted after the demo if you don't migrate.