7+ Seconds for HTTPS request (using Let's Encrypt SSL via Siteground)

[shiftisnow]

I am wondering if you can help me with an issue I’m having.

I have a site hosted on Siteground that is the only one of around 10 I have on my account there that has very long load times between transferring from http to https. Here are two GTMetrix reports that show you what the load times are like when, for some reason, sometimes there is hardly any load time between the http to https transfer (very rare and brief). The second report shows you what is almost always the case…there is 6-7 seconds of load time when going from http to https.

Fast http to https: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/upliftguide.com/MQj905Ls
Slow http to https: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/upliftguide.com/mnGyRkUU

I’ve spoken with my webhost (Siteground) already and even after using the Better Search Replace plugin to replace all http links with https, I’m having this issue. They assured me there’s no issues on the server-side, but I don’t know what the exceptionally long https request load time could be stemming from.

Any ideas what could be the issue here? I am using Let’s Encrypt for the SSL, which comes as an option to turn on in the cpanel. I don’t have https enforce activated on this or any of my other sites; just have Let’s Encrypt active. I’m on a shared hosting server with no dedicated IP address.

Here’s another one of my sites on the same server also using Let’s Encrypt, and loading https very fast: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/hiptreasure.com/w0YEnWfM

Is this something you are able to help me with?

My domain is: upliftguide.com

My web server is (include version): 35.222.138.69 (Shared)

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): CentOS

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: Siteground

I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don’t know): I don’t know

I’m using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel): the latest stable version

[JuergenAuer]

Hi @shiftisnow

@shiftisnow

Slow http to https: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/upliftguide.com/mnGyRkUU

that’s not a certificate relevant question. So it’s outside of this forum.

But read your output - the answer is simple.

7 seconds to create the Html-Content. That’s terrible. May be a slow database, may be missing or wrong indices.

[shiftisnow]

Ah OK. I thought it was related to Let’s Encrypt because the 7.48s seconds was for the loading of https. The http loaded in 121ms. I now see from your screenshot the SSL itself loaded in 117.5ms

Thanks for confirming that this is not being caused by Let’s Encrypt.

[9peppe]

Adding on the slow database: maybe not enough or too many php-fpm workers, maybe not enough cpu cores, maybe you should just add some caches (php opcode, generated html…)

[shiftisnow]

I worked this out and it turns out, Siteground’s SG Optimizer plugin has an option to configure the site to work correctly via HTTPS and forces a secure connection to your site, so once that was disabled, there’s no more long load times of https. I really thought it was something more complex than that, but there it is!