Slow after moving from Afrihost or xneelo to Hostinger

01

The big difference is distance

Both local hosts keep their servers in South Africa. xneelo says its own data centre is centrally located in Johannesburg. Afrihost hosts in Victory Park and Gallo Manor, Johannesburg, and its help centre describes moving its hosting from the Gallo Manor data centre to the new one in Victory Park (last checked November 2026).

Hostinger's support docs list its web and cloud hosting data centres in Europe, Asia, North America and South America (last checked November 2026). None of them is in Africa. Hostinger's CDN does have a location in Johannesburg, which the same docs suggest using when your preferred region isn't available.

So after the move, a visitor in Durban or Cape Town is reaching a server in another continent for anything the CDN doesn't serve. That's mainly uncached pages, logged-in users, WooCommerce carts and checkout, and wp-admin. Static files and cached pages can come from the Johannesburg CDN location.

02

What to check

1. 01

   Which data centre the site is on. Check in the Hostinger dashboard. For a South African audience, pick the location with the best latency to your visitors, and test from South Africa, not from wherever the hosting panel suggests.

2. 02

   Turn on the CDN. Hostinger CDN has a Johannesburg location (last checked November 2026). Make sure it's enabled and serving your images and static files.

3. 03

   Get the page cache working. Install and configure LiteSpeed Cache, so most visitors get a cached page rather than a round trip to the origin server. Test logged out and check the response headers.

4. 04

   Remove the old caching setup. xneelo's help centre recommends plugins like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache or WP Rocket. If one of these came across, decide whether to keep it or replace it with LiteSpeed Cache. Don't run two page caches.

5. 05

   Check xneelo Site Cache leftovers. If you used xneelo's Site Cache, it worked through DNS changes. Make sure your DNS now points to Hostinger and not the old cache.

6. 06

   Enable Object Cache if your Hostinger plan includes it.

7. 07

   Check the PHP version in hPanel against what your plugins support.

03

Your .co.za domain

Moving hosting doesn't move your .co.za domain. It's often still registered at the old host, and the DNS may still be managed there. Check that:

• the A records point to the Hostinger server or CDN
• email records (MX, SPF, DKIM) are correct if your mail stayed with the old provider
• the domain renewal stays active at the registrar

04

Is offshore hosting the right call?

That depends on where your visitors are and what the site does. A brochure site with good caching and a CDN can work well from an offshore server. A busy WooCommerce shop with mostly South African customers sends more uncached requests, so the distance matters more. Measure Time to First Byte from South Africa before and after the move and decide from that.