$201-500/Month WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2022
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.
Servebolt submitted two plans, the ACD plan is utilizing their Accelerated Domains addon, which adds performance, scalability and security enhancements.
Cloudways competed with an XL AWS instance.
The Companies and Products
| Company | Plan Monthly Price | Plan Visitors Allowed | Plan Memory | Plan Disk Space | Plan Bandwidth | Plan Sites Allowed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | $275 | Unlimited | 16 GB | 20 GB | 2 GB | Unlimited |
| Nexcess | $299 | unmetered | 20 GB RAM base with burst | 300 GB | 5 TB | 50 |
| Pressable | $350 | 1,000,000 | 512 MB / Process | 200 GB | Unlimited | 50 |
| Presslabs | $299 | 500,000 page views | Dinamically allocated up to 10G | 15 GB | Unmetered | 1 site |
| raidboxes | 300€ | Unlimited | 32 GB | 40 GB | Up to 10Gbit | 1 |
| Servebolt | $492 | Dynamic Requests are set per plan | Umetered | 34 GB | Unlimited | 30 |
| Servebolt Accelerated | $248 | Dynamic Requests are set per plan | Unmetered | 6 GB (+flex) | Unlimited | 5 |
LoadStorm Testing Results
The Load Storm test (in k6) is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.
The key metrics are:
- Total Requests - Number of requests k6 made
- Total Errors - Number of error requests
- p95 - The 95th percentile response time
- Page Cum Avg - Cumulative average response time for Pages (html)
- Asset Cum Avg - Cumulative average response time for Assets (css, js, images)
- Login Cum Avg - Cumulative average response time for Login (wp-profile.php)
- WP-Login Avg Response Time - Average response time for login (301 redirect which validates credentials)
Results Table
| Company | Total Requests | Total Errors | Peak Rps | Average Rps | P95 | Page Cum Avg | Asset Cum Avg | Login Cum Avg | Wp-login Average Response Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 1301563 | 176659 | 1128.75 | 711 | 671 | 227 | 293 | 276 | 157 |
| Nexcess | 948173 | 30 | 796.25 | 515 | 509 | 300 | 149 | 291 | 267 |
| Pressable | 1063060 | 0 | 870.83 | 578 | 309 | 195 | 70 | 230 | 205 |
| Presslabs | 1103227 | 0 | 909.08 | 601 | 219 | 158 | 13 | 166 | 151 |
| raidboxes | 771253 | 0 | 627.17 | 418 | 2831 | 1580 | 326 | 1647 | 1465 |
| Servebolt | 1212499 | 0 | 1062.17 | 659 | 256 | 213 | 19 | 217 | 199 |
| Servebolt ACD | 1209573 | 3 | 1069.5 | 657 | 271 | 229 | 25 | 229 | 221 |
Discussion
Nexcess, Pressable, Presslabs, and both Servebolt plans handled this test without any issues.
Cloudways started erroring around 900 VUsers.
Raidboxes started to show signs of load around 1900 VUsers and had increasing response times.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 1486443 | 0 | 3280.33 | 212 | 1630 | 489 |
| Nexcess | 1442703 | 0 | 3181.67 | 248 | 1580 | 473 |
| Pressable | 1790953 | 0 | 3939.5 | 5.9 | 1966 | 19 |
| Presslabs | 1777006 | 0 | 3908.67 | 14 | 1946 | 53 |
| raidboxes | 1431664 | 0 | 3158.17 | 258 | 1572 | 583 |
| Servebolt | 1531572 | 9 | 3368.67 | 176 | 1629 | 283 |
| Servebolt ACD | 1737929 | 0 | 3849.33 | 37 | 1908 | 50 |
Discussion
Every company handled the static test near flawlessly. Zero total errors for all companies. The average and P95 response times show which companies have CDNs (or more relevant CDN locations for our test). The difference between Servebolt and Servebolt with Accelerated Domains is pretty clear here, ACD is adding a lot of speed.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 99.996 | 99.8954 |
| Nexcess | 99.996 | 99.9926 |
| Pressable | 99.994 | 100 |
| Presslabs | 100 | 99.9955 |
| raidboxes | 99.991 | 99.99 |
| Servebolt | 100 | 100 |
| Servebolt ACD | 100 | 99.9888 |
Discussion
Everyone except Cloudways had near perfect uptime. Cloudways had an issue across multiple tests where one monitor struggled for a short window but the other was reporting it fine.
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 | Salt Lake City | London | Frankfurt | Cape Town | Singapore | Mumbai | Tokyo | Sydney | Brazil | Dubai | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | 0.179 | 0.389 | 0.362 | 0.47 | 0.52 | 1.205 | 1.136 | 1.119 | 0.825 | 1.064 | 0.658 | 1.011 | 0.7448333333 |
| Nexcess | 0.334 | 0.525 | 0.469 | 0.586 | 1.056 | 1.701 | 1.34 | 1.432 | 0.903 | 1.596 | 1.162 | 1.821 | 1.077083333 |
| Pressable | 0.215 | 0.335 | 0.315 | 0.231 | 0.187 | 0.254 | 0.244 | 0.661 | 0.245 | 0.174 | 0.316 | 0.467 | 0.3036666667 |
| Presslabs | 0.173 | 0.14 | 0.262 | 0.152 | 0.184 | 0.21 | 0.148 | 0.167 | 0.17 | 0.15 | 0.161 | 0.14 | 0.1714166667 |
| raidboxes | 0.687 | 0.93 | 0.875 | 0.222 | 0.226 | 0.895 | 0.91 | 0.801 | 1.267 | 1.57 | 1.155 | 0.703 | 0.8534166667 |
| Servebolt | 0.356 | 0.297 | 0.433 | 0.577 | 0.678 | 0.988 | 1.017 | 0.972 | 0.774 | 0.842 | 0.677 | 0.961 | 0.7143333333 |
| Servebolt ACD | 0.414 | 0.452 | 0.49 | 0.297 | 0.3 | 0.277 | 0.468 | 0.477 | 0.498 | 0.262 | 0.528 | 0.279 | 0.3951666667 |
Discussion
Presslabs went a perfect 12/12 as the fastest in every region. Pressable was the second fastest with Servebolt + ACD not far behind.
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 | 8.993 | 478.6979416 |
| Nexcess | 7.728 | 1044.932079 |
| Pressable | 10.013 | 1347.708895 |
| Presslabs | 6.89 | 1538.461538 |
| raidboxes | 7.971 | 1466.27566 |
| Servebolt | 5.86 | 2222.222222 |
| Servebolt ACD | 5.865 | 2207.505519 |
Discussion
Both Servebolt plans stood out as having the fastest scores in both tests which were near identical to one another.
SSL Testing Results
The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Results Table
| Company | Qualsys SSL Grade |
|---|---|
| Cloudways | A |
| Nexcess | A |
| Pressable | A |
| Presslabs | A+ |
| raidboxes | A+ |
| Servebolt | A |
| Servebolt ACD | A+ |
Discussion
Everyone got an A with Presslabs, Raidboxes and Servebolt+ACD Earning A+.
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.
No company achieved this status.
