> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://documentation.ajaxsearchpro.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://documentation.ajaxsearchpro.com/performance-tuning.md).

# Performance Tuning

The search speed is influenced by various factors. The most important are:

* Server Speed
* Database Size
* Number and quality of plugins installed (very high factor)
* [Fine tuning the search configuration](/performance-tuning/fine-tuning-the-search-configuration.md)

## Server Speed

**Shared hosting packages** - Shared hosting providers usually have a paralell process execution cap (10-20 processes). While a shared server is fast, paralell connections or paralelly running processes can lead to extreme slowdowns. In this case I highly recommend [Disabling the search when typing](https://wpdreams.gitbooks.io/ajax-search-pro-documentation/content/performance/fine_tuning_the_search_configuration.html#1-disable-search-when-typing) and the [Autocomplete](https://wpdreams.gitbooks.io/ajax-search-pro-documentation/content/performance/fine_tuning_the_search_configuration.html#2-disable-autocomplete-or-use-only-google-as-autocomplete-source) plugin functions.

**VPS and Dedicated servers** - The demo runs on a 10$/month Digital Ocean VPS with ubuntu LAMP stack installed. It's a 1GHZ single core, 1GB ram server - thus it's extremely cheap, and not that powerful. Yet the response times are extrelemly low. VPS is Highly recommended.

## Database Size

An everyday blog user or shop owner does not exceed 5-10000 posts/products, which is absolutely fine. A few thousand records should not affect the search speed greatly.

Larger databases (10000 records and more) **may** require a better database environment. On shared hosts, you might experience issues with such number of posts (regardless of the search plugin). In this case you might want to consider switching to a basic VPS. It provides much better performance, yet it's still cheap.

## Number (and quality) of plugins installed

This is influences the search plugin the most. Usually a high number of (any number of low quality) plugins will decrease the overall WordPress performance - thus increasing the response time of any request, as well as ajax requests.

In my personal experience the wordpress site perfromacne strongly drops when:

* Using 15+ active plugins with similar performances
* ..or using "large" plugins like WooCommerce, BuddyPress, BBPress, JetPack etc.. at the same time.

Running a [performance profiler plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/p3-profiler/) might give you an insight on which plugins take the most resources during loading - but it might be different for ajax requests.

Using only the neccessary plugins makes your site faster and safer.

You can use the built in [performance tracker](/performance-tuning/ajax-performance-tracker.md) to compare the search function speed to the ajax response speed.