When people order a server, they look at the specs. How much RAM, how many cores, how much storage for the money. Fair enough, those matter.
But there’s one setting on the order form that a lot of people click through without thinking: the data centre location. And it can make a noticeable difference to how fast your site feels.
If most of your customers are in Australia and your server is in Frankfurt, every request that needs the server has to make that trip there and back. Multiply that by every page, every visitor, every day. On the flip side, if you sell into three or four countries, there’s no perfect answer, only trade-offs. Let’s work through them.
Start with your users, not your office
Open your analytics. Where are your visitors actually coming from?
Not where the business is registered. Not where the owner lives. A company based in Melbourne might do most of its sales in the US. An internal staff tool, on the other hand, might only ever be used from one office in Brisbane.
Who counts depends on what you’re running. For a shop, it’s paying customers. For a portal, it’s whoever logs in. For an API, it’s the systems calling it most. Jot down your top two or three regions before you even look at locations.
Why distance matters (and why it’s not the whole story)
Every time a browser asks your server for something, the request travels across the internet and the reply comes back. That round trip is latency. Further away usually means a longer trip.
Usually. Geography is only part of it. Routing, peering between networks, congestion and the visitor’s own connection all play a part. A data centre that looks closer on a map might have a worse route to a particular ISP than one further away.
So a map is a decent first guess. It isn’t a speed test.
Test it instead of guessing
For a quick check, run a ping test from where your users are to the server (or to a test IP the provider gives you). Ping shows the round-trip time. Traceroute shows the path the traffic takes. Both are handy clues, but results change throughout the day, so run them more than once.
For a live website, look at the full page load as well. DNS lookup, the TLS handshake, server processing, database queries, caching and how images and scripts get delivered all add up. Plenty of “slow server” complaints turn out to be a sluggish database query, not the location at all.
A CDN (content delivery network) helps too. It serves images, CSS and other cacheable files from somewhere close to each visitor. What it doesn’t do is move your database or app logic. Your origin server’s location still matters.
Keep your app and database close together
This one catches people out. They pick a great location for the web server and forget about everything it talks to.
If your app is in Sydney and the database is in Los Angeles, every single query crosses the Pacific. An app that makes dozens of small database calls per page will feel that, badly.
Same idea for payment gateways, external APIs, login providers and internal systems. You can’t control where every third-party service lives, but you can map the important connections and avoid adding distance between the parts you do control.
Check your data and compliance rules
Some businesses have contracts, regulations or internal policies about where data can be stored or processed. What applies to you depends on your industry, the kind of data and the laws you fall under. If the data is sensitive, loop in whoever handles privacy or compliance. Don’t just tick a country box and hope.
Ask your provider three things: where the server physically runs, where backups are kept, and whether support staff or other services might access data from another region. Picking a country on an order form doesn’t answer all of that by itself.
Network quality counts as much as the pin on the map
A data centre connects to the internet through upstream providers. More transit carriers and internet exchanges means traffic has more than one way out. The quality of those links can matter just as much as raw distance.
Our network at VPSNerds is multi-homed, using multiple transit carriers and internet exchanges. Cloud Servers come with a 250 Mbps port and Dedicated Servers with a 1 Gbit port. Check the current product page for the exact plan you want, and ask us which locations and network options are available for it.
Make sure the location is actually available for your plan
A provider can advertise a big global footprint, but that doesn’t mean every product is in every city. Confirm the location for the exact service you’re buying (web hosting, cloud server or dedicated server) and check your preferred plan and operating system can be deployed there.
Our Cloud Servers are offered in regions across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, and you’ll find the specific locations on our cloud network locations page and in our list of data centres. Availability can change, so if a particular city matters to you, ask the team to confirm before you order.
Quick example: one shop, two markets
Say an online store is based in Australia but has a growing number of UK customers. Moving the whole thing to London might speed things up for the UK buyers and slow it down for everyone at home.
Before switching, the owner should check where orders actually come from, test response times from both countries, and see whether a CDN or better caching closes the gap without moving the origin at all.
If most orders still come from Australia, keep the main server here. If the UK overtakes it, revisit. Let customer behaviour and real measurements decide. “Nearest is best” is a rule of thumb, not a law.
Questions to ask before you order
- Which locations are available right now for this exact plan?
- Can I test latency from where my users are?
- What port speed and network capacity are included?
- Where are backups stored, and what data residency options are there?
- Can my app and database sit in the same region?
- What’s involved if I need to move to another location later?
Pick the location that suits your users
There’s no magic spot on the map. The right data centre location comes from balancing where your users are, real latency numbers, how your app is built, any data rules you have, and what the provider genuinely offers.
Start with your audience. Test the network. Check where the rest of your stack lives. Do that and you’ll make a better call than just picking the nearest-looking dot.
Comparing regions for a VPSNerds Cloud Server or Dedicated Server? Send us your main user locations and a bit about your app, and we’ll tell you what’s available.
