Title: Load testing
Author: WordPress VIP Documentation
Published: October 24, 2023
Last modified: December 8, 2025

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 1. [Performance](https://docs.wpvip.com/performance/)
 2. Load testing

#  Load testing

The VIP Platform is designed to scale its resources under most conditions, making
it generally unnecessary to load test a site. Prior to initiating any **load or 
stress testing**, notify VIP by creating a [Support ticket](https://wordpressvip.zendesk.com/)
and outline the objectives and planned methodology of the load test.

VIP recommends [analyzing a site’s performance](https://docs.wpvip.com/analyze-your-sites-server-performance/)
prior to launching the site, and again after real traffic is reaching the site and
make adjustments where needed. Portions of application code that may not perform
well under load can be identified by looking at individual requests or a history
of activity.

Make use of front-end analysis tools in a browser, or via [webpagetest.org](https://webpagetest.org/),
to identify potential browser performance issues.

## General guidelines for load testing

 * If implementing and testing changes, a baseline test should be run before and
   after those changes are made.
 * Tests should be **stopped** as soon as the fail threshold has been achieved.
 * Traffic should be increased gradually (ramped-up) and take into account that 
   URLs that have been saved to the edge cache will have a much faster load time
   for future requests (hits).
 * When determining the number of concurrent users/second to test with, take into
   account that on average only 1/10th of the user requests would reach the origin
   datacenter. To make the test more realistic, use the total number of requests
   which should reach the origin datacenter.
 * The most critical aspects of site resilience and performance are cache hit rate
   and the speed of page generation for origin requests (i.e. uncached requests).
   Do not intentionally use cache-busting query parameters, non-GET requests, or
   [requests with cookies](https://docs.wpvip.com/caching/cookies/) that might invalidate
   caching at the edge.
 * Ideally, tests should come from different locations.

Last updated: December 08, 2025