The Companies and Products

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

Discussion

Pressable, Presslabs, WordPress.com, and WPX all finished the LoadStorm test with zero errors and flat response times. The per-persona breakdown (below) is where the differences between them show up.

GreenGeeks handled the test with only 5 errors against 6.6M requests. Cart and login averages crossed 1 second at multiple points, so the test wasn't as flat as the four no-issue results above, but the server kept delivering through the run.

HostArmada was ok until around 600 VUsers when an error spike kicked off and response times started climbing for the rest of the run.

Seravo started having trouble around 700 VUsers and finished the test with 1.55M errors against 12M requests.

Trustdom looked great up to about 800 VUsers, then a security or rate-limiting layer cut in and started blocking everything — by the end of the test 6.36M of 8.52M requests had errored.

Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile

This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.

Results Table

Pressable was in the top three on four of the five personas (Cart 240ms third, Browser 7ms second, Buyer 104ms second, Homepage 8ms second) and fourth on Customer (138ms) by a 7ms margin. Consistent across the board.

Presslabs had the fastest Buyer (72ms) and Customer (89ms) profiles, and tied Trustdom for the fastest Cart at 207ms. Three of the five fastest persona times.

WPX had the fastest Browser (5ms) and Homepage (5ms) — their static-cache layer is fast — but the Cart slowed to 523ms. The gap kept WPX at Honorable Mention.

WordPress.com was top three on Browser (10ms), Homepage (14ms), and Customer (131ms). Cart at 407ms was middle of the pack.

GreenGeeks was middle-of-pack on every persona — never the fastest, never the slowest.

HostArmada was the slowest on Cart (2721ms), Buyer (1433ms), and Customer (1457ms). Seravo was the slowest on Browser (289ms) and Homepage (273ms), and second-slowest on the other three (Cart 1335ms, Buyer 783ms, Customer 872ms).

Trustdom's persona numbers look strong (Cart tied for fastest at 207ms, Buyer 126ms, Customer 125ms), but the LoadStorm test got cut off by the security layer mentioned above before reaching peak load. The per-persona Cumavg values cover the portion of the test that completed cleanly, not the full ramp.

K6 Static Testing Results

K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

Results Table

Discussion

Pressable had the fastest average response time at 5.6ms, WordPress.com was second at 7.6ms, and WPX was third at 8.0ms — all three under 10ms on the static test.

Presslabs (88.9ms), HostArmada (112.4ms), and GreenGeeks (119.4ms) sit in the next cluster, with Seravo (210.6ms) behind them.

Trustdom's 992.5ms average with 2,761 errors lines up with the same security cut-in seen on the dynamic test — once the rate-limiting layer kicked in, the static test slowed and errors started arriving.

Uptime Testing Results

Uptime is monitored by three sources: HetrixTools and StatusCake as third-party services, plus a self-hosted UptimeKuma instance for cross-reference in case of major discrepancy between the third-party monitors.

Results Table

Discussion

Pressable had 100% across all three monitors. WordPress.com was near perfect (99.9987% HT, 100% SC, 99.9959% UK). Trustdom cleared 99.9% on all three.

Presslabs is the same single-monitor outlier as the enterprise tier — HetrixTools 100% and UptimeKuma 99.9941%, but StatusCake came in at 99.38%. Top Tier stands; the StatusCake number is what's in the table.

WPX came in below 99.9% on StatusCake (99.83%) and UptimeKuma (99.78%). The 99.78% UptimeKuma value is the same one their WordPress results showed at $25, $50, and $100, which kept this result at Honorable Mention rather than Top Tier.

Seravo came in at 99.87% on StatusCake while the other two monitors had a clean year. GreenGeeks and HostArmada both came in below 99.9% on multiple monitors — GreenGeeks on all three (99.61% / 99.39% / 99.72%) and HostArmada on two (99.66% HT, 99.83% UK). Those are real uptime issues and contributed to keeping both out of awards.

GTmetrix Testing Results

GTmetrix loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world. (We switched from WebPageTest to GTmetrix in 2026.) Results are measured in seconds.

Results Table

Discussion

Pressable had the fastest average and was the fastest in 5 of the 12 locations (San Antonio TX, Cape Town, Mumbai, Brazil, and Dubai). WordPress.com had the second fastest average and won 4 locations (California, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney). GreenGeeks had the third fastest average and was the fastest in Virginia and Frankfurt. Trustdom was the fastest in London — their European peering looked good there.

WPX's Mumbai measurement above 5 seconds is more likely a routing event than a steady-state result and skews their average. The chart can be adjusted by clicking on a company to filter outliers.

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

Discussion

Trustdom had the fastest PHP Bench at 7.91s. Pressable was second at 8.10s and WPX was third at 8.15s — the top three were very close.

The WP Bench results were spread more widely. GreenGeeks had the fastest WP Bench. Presslabs was second and WordPress.com was third.

WPBenchmark Score

WPBenchmark is a hosting performance benchmark that produces a single composite score per server. Higher is better.

Results Table

Discussion

Pressable led the WPBenchmark.io scores at 8.3. Presslabs, WordPress.com, and WPX all tied at 7.1 just behind. HostArmada‘s 2.6 was the lowest score recorded at any tier this year.

SSL Testing Results

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

Results Table

Discussion

No B or A- grades at this tier this year.

HostArmada, Presslabs, and WPX earned A.

GreenGeeks, Pressable, Seravo, Trustdom, and WordPress.com earned 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.

Individual Host Analysis