Server RAM needs for popular use cases
Here are some general RAM recommendations based on different dedicated server use cases:
1. Web and WordPress hosting
Web hosting provides the server space and technology needed for a website to be viewed on the internet. WordPress hosting is simply a type of web hosting that is specifically optimized for WordPress sites.
Small sites (blogs, portfolios): 8 GB
Growing sites (moderate traffic): 16 GB
High–traffic operations (multiple sites): 32 GB+
But raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. A WooCommerce store with thousands of products needs more memory than a simple blog with the same amount of traffic. Your plugin stack also matters, as page builders, security scanners, and backup tools are often memory-hungry.
Always think about your future traffic goals; starting with a bit more RAM can save you from performance headaches later.
2. E-commerce (Magento, WooCommerce)
E-commerce hosting is a specialized service that provides the resources needed to run an online store, handling everything from product catalogs to secure transactions.
Small store (a few hundred products): 16 GB
Medium store (thousands of products): 32 GB
Large store (high traffic, many transactions): 64 GB+
Online stores are database-heavy. Every customer search, product filter, and transaction queries your database. More RAM allows the server to hold frequently accessed data in its memory, which speeds up page loads and checkout – a crucial factor in keeping customers from abandoning their carts.
As your product line and customer base expand, your RAM needs will increase to keep the shopping experience fast and seamless.
3. Game servers (Minecraft, ARK, Rust, Palworld, etc.)
A game server is a dedicated server that provides the resources for players to connect and play a multiplayer video game online.
Small server (5–20 players, vanilla settings): 8–16 GB
Medium server (20–50 players, some mods): 16–32 GB
Large community (50+ players, heavily modded): 64 GB+
The number of players, the size of the game world, and any modifications (mods) all consume memory. A heavily modded Minecraft, Rust, or Satisfactory server for a large community will require significantly more RAM than a standard, “vanilla” server for a few friends. Higher tick rates for competitive games also demand more memory for faster updates.
If you plan on growing your player community or adding more custom content, choose a server with enough RAM to prevent frustrating lag.
4. Virtualization and cloud Hosting (VMs, Docker, Kubernetes)
Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual version of a server or operating system, allowing you to run multiple isolated environments on a single physical machine.
Light workloads (1–2 VMs, basic apps): 32 GB
Medium workloads (4–10 VMs, web apps): 64 GB
Heavy workloads (many containers, enterprise VMs): 128 GB+
Think of your server’s RAM as a pie that you’re slicing up. Each virtual machine (VM) or container needs its own dedicated slice to run its OS and applications. The system that manages them (the hypervisor) also needs its own piece. If the pie isn’t big enough for everyone, every VM will run slowly.
When planning, add up the RAM needed for each VM, plus a buffer for the hypervisor, and factor in any new instances you might launch in the future.
5. Database hosting (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB)
Database hosting provides a dedicated server environment optimized for storing, managing, and retrieving data for your applications.
Small databases (light queries): 16 GB
Medium databases (analytics, caching): 32 GB
Large databases (big datasets, real-time analytics): 64 GB+
Databases love RAM. The more memory available, the more data and indexes can be held for instant access, which drastically reduces the need to read from slower hard drives. This is critical for applications with high read/write loads, like logging systems or real-time analytics dashboards.
As your dataset grows, more RAM will be essential to maintain fast query performance and a responsive application.
6. Media streaming and video processing
This type of hosting offers the infrastructure needed to deliver audio and video to users in real time or to process media files by transcoding them into different formats.
Basic streaming (low quality, low traffic): 16 GB
HD streaming (multiple users): 32 GB
4K streaming or transcoding (heavy processing): 64 GB+
Tasks like video transcoding (using tools like FFmpeg) are incredibly intensive, requiring both CPU power and RAM. For live streaming, each simultaneous viewer consumes a slice of server resources. More RAM ensures you can serve high-quality streams to more people without buffering.
Growth consideration: Factor in both the quality of your streams and your target audience size, as both will drive up RAM and bandwidth needs as your business grows.
7. AI, machine learning, and big data
This hosting provides powerful servers designed to process massive datasets and run complex machine learning (ML) models.
Small models and basic AI tasks: 32 GB
Medium workloads (training small models): 64 GB
Enterprise/large-scale AI processing: 128 GB+
While graphics processing units (GPUs) do the heavy lifting for training AI models, RAM is crucial for holding the massive datasets that these models learn from. Before data even gets to the GPU, it must be loaded and prepared in RAM. Insufficient GPU memory can become a serious bottleneck, slowing down your entire data pipeline. For these workloads, it’s often best to consider specialized GPU server hosting.
As your AI models and datasets become more complex, your RAM requirements will scale up significantly.
