I am developing a mobile which will be managed by Joomla as a backend. I am expecting about 500,000 monthly return users by 6 months after launch.
What I want to know if Joomla on a shared hosting can handle 500,000 users and over 2 millions user files.. The user files are created by them and can be accessed by any of the users.. averagely a user can query about 10 files a day from the database...
Thank you
On shared hosting? Joomla will be able to handle the amount of users, however I don't know a single hosting provider that will allow this amount of server requests on their shared hosting package.
I've seen a lot of people say "I expect X amount of users after X amount of time", but rather than taking wild guesses, only perform actions when required.
So I would recommend you start off with a shared hosting package (my personal choice would be Siteground), take daily readings of your server requests and see how close to the 24h limit it gets. When it starts getting fairly close to the daily limit, upgrade to a bigger shared hosting package, or Cloud hosting, or dedicated server.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Siteground in any way.
Can Joomla and MySQL handle that many access requests? Absolutely, IF (and it's a big if) your server that's hosting the site can handle that bandwidth and has the resources for the demand.
But don't expect that kind of performance, bandwidth availability, and resources necessary to handle that level of use on any shared host. Follow the recommendations others have given you for picking something for hosting that you can grow with. Monitor and upgrade as necessary.
Our experience is different with SiteGround, and I'm not sure I can recommend it the same way it is recommend it by others. In fact, we don't recommend any of the mainstream hosting providers to our clients (those with "gator", "monster", "ground", "daddy", "temple", and "cloud" in their domain), simply because they have the small client in mind and so: 1) they have all these draconian firewall rules, 2) they have aggressive caching methods, 3) it is often hard to get a real support person, and 4) they don't take the client's business seriously. (Note: I can easily elaborate on all of these 4 points.)
It is a good idea to search for a host which does not serve small clients, and only caters for medium to large clients. It is also a good idea to stick with a host in North America (avoid all these hosts that are based in Europe or Asia). Finally (for this subject), it is important that you choose a WHM based environment (make sure you have the root password). I have no idea why there are many servers using Plesk/Webmin/Other, which are a huge pain to work with.
Now, going back to your original question, unless I am very mistaken, you will not be able to get this working with a shared hosting package. 500,000 /month is around 15,000/day, which is a lot, for a Joomla website. You will need a dedicated server, with at least 16GB of RAM. You will also need to use InnoDB for your Joomla database as MyISAM is unreliable and slow (by the way, MyISAM used to be faster than InnoDB, but now it is no longer the case). Now, once your website is up, you will need to constantly monitor your slow query log and optimize any queries with the problem (optimize the core when you must). Always ensure that your load average is less than 2. Ideally, it should be less than 1.
If, by any chance, you get your Joomla website to work on a shared host, then you are likely paying for a shared host more than you are paying for a dedicated server, or it might be that your host is using some aggressive caching tactics that will make the management of your Joomla website a complete mess and an experience in misery.
I have to agree with Lodder. Siteground is one of the best hosting providers. But they can be quite expensive. So you have to choose between professionalism and cheap hosting :). I have a website hosted with them (ukbettips.co.uk) and in the last couple of months we are getting over the limits (GoGeek hosting account), so we have to find a more affordable hosting provider. But let us cut to the case. If you can afford it you can go with a Siteground cloud hosting package. Recommended :)
