$201-500/Month WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2020
Please read the Methodology to fully understand the scope of these tests.
Note: Please check company profiles for summary of performances across multiple tiers. Some companies also offer promotions or coupon codes for a discount as well.
Originally posted here.
LoadStorm Testing Results
Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.
Results Table
| Company | Total Requests | Total Errors | Peak Rps | Average Rps | Peak Response Time | Average Response Time | Total Data Transferred | Peak Throughput | Average Throughput | Wp-login Average Response Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 606481 | 0 | 521 | 336.93 | 3760.00 | 340.00 | 35 | 30 | 19 | |
| Nestify | 848046 | 0 | 668.7 | 471.14 | 4214.00 | 469 | 52.14 | 41.48 | 29 | |
| Pressable | 972232 | 22 | 708 | 540 | 12405 | 1086.00 | 49.91 | 37 | 28 | |
| RAIDBOXES | 1003451 | 0 | 773.97 | 557.47 | 10728 | 505 | 53.05 | 41.11 | 29.47 | |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 1153090 | 928 | 900 | 641 | 15315 | 124.00 | 61.27 | 48 | 34 | |
| Servebolt | 1381129 | 42 | 1090 | 767 | 15099 | 47.00 | 50.95 | 40 | 28 |
Discussion
Cloudways, Jelastic, Nestify, Raidboxes and Servebolt all handled this test without issue.
Pressable saw a slight increase in response times from 500 to 1200ms.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
Results Table
| Company | Requests | Errors | Peak Rps | Average Response Time | Average Rps | P95 | P99 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 1162068 | 15 | |||||
| Nestify | 1003582 | 0 | |||||
| Pressable | 1768926 | 0 | |||||
| RAIDBOXES | 1142240 | 0 | |||||
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 1696819 | 7 | |||||
| Servebolt | 1420760 | 0 |
Discussion
Jelastic, Pressable, Raidboxes and Servebolt all handled the Load Impact test without issue.
Cloudways started to slow down around 3250 users and peak average response time increased to 1100.
Nestify started to slow down around 2500 users and peak average response time went to almost 1500ms.
Uptime Testing Results
Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.
Results Table
| Company | Uptime Robot | Hetrix | Alt Uptime Monitor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 100 | 100 | |
| Nestify | 100 | 100 | |
| Pressable | 100 | 100 | |
| RAIDBOXES | 99.999 | 100 | |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 98.587 | 99.99 | 98.56 |
| Servebolt | 99.583 | 99.99 | 99.98 |
Discussion
Cloudways, Nestify, Pressable, and Raidboxes had perfect or 99.999% uptime.
Jelastic had very different uptimes based on the monitors with UptimeRobot showing 98.587% and StatusCake showing 99.99%. The third monitor showed 98.56% which was inline with UptimeRobot, so I went with that being correct.
Servebolt also had a discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake uptime. One showed a very low 99.583 and the other 99.99. The third monitor I setup showed 99.98%, so I went with the StatusCake number.
WebPageTest Testing Results
WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world. Result are measured in seconds.
Results Table
| Company | Virginia | California | London | Frankfurt | Singapore | Mumbai | Tokyo | Sydney | Brazil | Average | Rose Hill Mauritius | Israel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 0.337 | 0.639 | 0.658 | 0.732 | 1.722 | 1.55 | 1.273 | 1.525 | 1.019 | 1.11025 | 2.02 | 1.187 |
| Nestify | 0.486 | 1.13 | 1.697 | 1.623 | 3.246 | 3.538 | 2.357 | 2.903 | 1.815 | 2.174083333 | 4.26 | 2.077 |
| Pressable | 0.521 | 1.01 | 1.311 | 1.259 | 2.243 | 1.971 | 1.757 | 2.191 | 1.513 | 1.6685 | 3.31 | 1.92 |
| RAIDBOXES | 0.875 | 1.456 | 0.428 | 0.369 | 1.373 | 1.069 | 2.387 | 2.408 | 1.775 | 1.350333333 | 1.984 | 0.893 |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 1.122 | 2.182 | 0.304 | 0.417 | 3.616 | 1.791 | 3.39 | 4.121 | 3.008 | 2.162083333 | 3.106 | 1.019 |
| Servebolt | 0.475 | 0.617 | 0.582 | 0.713 | 1.052 | 0.987 | 0.881 | 1.087 | 0.795 | 0.8981666667 | 1.68 | 1.218 |
Discussion
Servebolt was the fastest in 7/12 locations and had the fastest average response time. Jelastic was the slowest in 7/12 and fastest in 1. Nestify was the slowest in 5/12.
WPPerformanceTester Testing Results
WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other is a PHP Bench. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better.
Results Table
| Company | PHP Bench | WP Bench |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 7.538 | 689.1798759 |
| Nestify | 7.486 | 742.9420505 |
| Pressable | 6.215 | 1367.989056 |
| RAIDBOXES | 5.644 | 938.0863039 |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 7.649 | 1213.592233 |
| Servebolt | 3.281 | 1992.031873 |
Discussion
The speed on this test was impressive. Servebolt was clearly the fastest on both tests but the numbers were an astonishing improvement over last year. The second fastest score last year on PHP Bench was 9.388 and the slowest this year was 7.649, nearly a two second improvement. Some of this could be because there are a different mix of companies but three of them are the same. Servebolt got faster by ~500ms and ~500 queries per second. Pressable improved by 4000ms and 900 queries per second. Cloudways improved by 1900ms and 260 queries per second. It's nice to see continuous improvements being made across the board.
SSL Testing Results
The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Results Table
| Company | Qualsys SSL Grade |
|---|---|
| Cloudways | B |
| Nestify | B |
| Pressable | A |
| RAIDBOXES | A+ |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | A |
| Servebolt | B |
Discussion
Raidboxes was the only company to achieve an A+ rating. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
Conclusion
There are two levels of recognition awarded to companies that participate in the tests. There is no ‘best’ declared, it’s simply tiered, it’s hard to come up with an objective ranking system because of the complex nature of hosting. These tests also don’t take into account outside factors such as reviews, support, and features. It is simply testing performance as described in the methodology.
Top Tier
This year's Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance Award goes to the following companies who showed virtually no signs of struggle during the testing.
Honorable Mention
The following companies earned Honorable Mention status because they did very well and had a minor issue or two holding them back from earning Top Tier status.
