Time to first byte for small teams

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Most advice about time to first byte assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Performance work is mostly subtraction, which makes it unpopular and effective. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What to keep

Slow server response caps how fast the page can ever be. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

The practical version

Cheap shared hosting shows up here first. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

In practice

Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. Three things worth confirming about time to first byte before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Cheap shared hosting shows up here first — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.