Minimum server requirements for casino software

Website Performance

The response time of the games is the most important asset of any successful online gaming business. The players cannot tolerate waiting "for the games to think". That is why, when we designed our platform and games, our goal was to make this as fast and efficient as possible. We are using the latest technology, with advanced caching, efficient queries and optimised code to ensure maximum performance.

The response time is influenced by the amount of users playing at the same time and by the power of the server hardware. Since the code and software are optimized, it is now the job of the server to have a good amount of resources from the hardware, to keep up with the requests. Below you can find multiple server recommendations based on the maximum number of players that you expect to have. All these recommendations are based on real tests that we performed on our software that we installed on various servers. CWSAPISOFT.com is our test domain used exclusively for server testing.

Tests

The tests below should help you understand what server to purchase based on the expected number of players.

Conclusion

The software is scalable vertically (by increasing CPU/RAM). Since we are using PHP-FPM, the server API automatically adjusts the workers (number of connections that it can handle) so you won't need to bother with handling the server configuration. The ratio between RAM, Users and Server Costs is almost the same, meaning that for every 1$ spent you can allow 1 more concurrent user, so spending 100$ can let you handle 100 concurrent users. As your server becomes larger, the RAM&CPU costs decrease, so you will be able to handle more users for a cheaper cost. EG: handling 500 users on 16GB RAM costs around 1$/user, whereas handling 3000 users on 128GB RAM will cost around ~0.57$/user.

IMPORTANT: The tests were performed using loader.io. We define "concurrent users" in our tests as being players who click SPIN in the exact same second. So 1000 concurrent users means 1000 players clicking SPIN every second in a slot game for example. However, in most games, after the player clicks SPIN/DEAL/PLAY the animations play for around 1-2 second so only at peak time you would have 1000 concurrent requests from 1000 users.

*Potential profit/month is estimated with a 2% house edge, assuming that players play 1$/spin and they click SPIN once every 3 seconds and that these events happens for only 12h/day (we exclude completely any low peak hours when players are not usually online, even if during those times you'd still have activity)

Recommended hosting companies: www.CloudWays.com if you need someone to help you with managing/monitoring the server, otherwise https://aws.amazon.com/ if you have a developer to manage/monitor the server.

Gaming Statistics

A top social casino has around 6 million users monthly, according to statistics gathered by statista.com.
According to statistics from casino.org, a player loses around 38$ in average, at slot games. If a player plays 1$ per round in any game, he would need to play at least 800 rounds, on a 95% RTP in order to lose 38$.

A careful monitoring of the response time, server uptime and server resources will ensure a pleasant experience to your players and will tell you when it's time to upgrade to better hardware.

We recommend that your server is monitored in the first few weeks of activity (by the hosting company) to ensure that there are no memory limitations or connection limitations put in place by the hosting company that could cause the games to respond slower. More specifically, depending on the number of users that you will have, you may need to have more RAM, more CPUs and/or a larger value for the apache "workers" and "children" settings.