$101-200/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 | 405655 | 0 | 282 | 225.36 | 13206.00 | 2012.00 | 21 | 14 | 12 | |
| IONOS | 524757 | 41655 | 380 | 292 | 15593 | 505.00 | 23.53 | 17 | 13 | |
| Nestify | 692645 | 1 | 540 | 385 | 15054 | 523.00 | 42.65 | 34 | 24 | |
| Pantheon | 794976 | 132 | 621 | 442 | 15102.00 | 116.00 | 45 | 36 | 25 | |
| Pressable | 809307 | 0 | 587 | 450 | 12354 | 970.00 | 41.58 | 30 | 23 | |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 900234 | 1030 | 693 | 500 | 14609 | 219.00 | 48.21 | 37 | 27 | |
| Seravo | 765043 | 121572 | 531 | 425 | 5029 | 641.00 | 34.33 | 23 | 19 | |
| Servebolt | 926739 | 1038 | 879 | 515 | 15100 | 108.00 | 33.93 | 33 | 19 | |
| WPOven | 728369 | 94 | 577 | 405 | 15100.00 | 424.00 | 42 | 34 | 24 |
Discussion
Jelastic, Nestify, Pantheon, Servebolt and WPOven all handled the Load Storm test without issue.
1&1 IONOS may have run into some security issues which couldn't be turned off with a stable response time but high error rate.
Cloudways slowed down substantially with average response time going over 2000ms.
Pressable started to slow down with average response times rising from 500ms to 1100ms.
Seravo ran into an issue with docker proxy that couldn't be resolved which caused a high error rate.
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 | 578617 | 0 | |||||
| IONOS | 796414 | 5000 | |||||
| Nestify | 851045 | 0 | |||||
| Pantheon | 1289653 | 1 | |||||
| Pressable | 1337047 | 0 | |||||
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 1293290 | 9 | |||||
| Seravo | 881714 | 148 | |||||
| Servebolt | 1104070 | 5 | |||||
| WPOven | 895233 | 0 |
Discussion
Jelastic, Pantheon, Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt and WPOven didn't experience any issues with the Load Impact test.
1&1 IONOS ran into security measures again and experienced a lot of errors.
Cloudways experienced some stress and response times increased substantially starting around 1200 users.
Nestify started experiencing load around 2500 and increased slightly to 1s average response time.
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 | |
| IONOS | 99.986 | 99.99 | |
| Nestify | 100 | 100 | |
| Pantheon | 100 | 100 | |
| Pressable | 100 | 100 | |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 99.99 | 99.99 | |
| Seravo | 100 | 100 | |
| Servebolt | 99.582 | 99.99 | 99.99 |
| WPOven | 100 | 100 |
Discussion
Every company did well maintaining above 99.98% uptime. The only issue was a strange discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake on Servebolt's uptime. One showed a very low 99.582 and the other 99.99. The third monitor I setup showed 99.99%, so the issue appears to be with Uptime Robot.
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 | 1 | 0.623 | 0.698 | 0.743 | 1.638 | 1.538 | 1.139 | 1.577 | 0.992 | 1.1465 | 2.029 | 1.197 |
| IONOS | 0.675 | 0.697 | 1.006 | 1.141 | 1.834 | 2.047 | 1.239 | 1.882 | 1.454 | 1.42275 | 2.939 | 1.57 |
| Nestify | 0.475 | 1.148 | 1.432 | 1.518 | 3.229 | 3.533 | 2.598 | 2.92 | 1.823 | 2.118166667 | 3.775 | 2.047 |
| Pantheon | 0.436 | 0.588 | 0.534 | 0.59 | 0.875 | 0.874 | 1.092 | 0.896 | 0.673 | 0.9809166667 | 3.265 | 1.145 |
| Pressable | 0.391 | 1.008 | 1.224 | 1.188 | 2.322 | 2.226 | 1.78 | 2.245 | 1.324 | 1.646166667 | 3.367 | 1.868 |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 0.822 | 1.563 | 0.384 | 0.361 | 2.815 | 1.518 | 2.76 | 2.965 | 2.317 | 1.658916667 | 2.12 | 0.976 |
| Seravo | 0.428 | 0.656 | 0.822 | 1.04 | 2.213 | 1.962 | 1.465 | 2.073 | 1.35 | 1.37025 | 2.474 | 1.379 |
| Servebolt | 0.454 | 0.59 | 0.561 | 0.652 | 1.047 | 1.182 | 1.045 | 1.092 | 0.749 | 0.9150833333 | 1.797 | 1.173 |
| WPOven | 0.43 | 0.76 | 0.903 | 0.907 | 1.796 | 1.671 | 1.459 | 1.659 | 1.02 | 1.22975 | 2.275 | 1.205 |
Discussion
Pantheon picked up the fastest response times in 5/12 locations. Servebolt ended up being the fastest in only two locations but had the fastest average overall being near the fastest in most locaations. Nestify didn't stand out well here being slowest in 6/12 locales and second slowest in 5/12. Jelastic was the slowest in 5 locations, second slowest in 2 locations and the fastest in 3 locations.
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 | 7.605 | 628.1407035 |
| IONOS | 10.029 | 370.5075954 |
| Nestify | 7.487 | 753.0120482 |
| Pantheon | 8.996 | 309.8853424 |
| Pressable | 6.213 | 1297.016861 |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 7.888 | 1314.060447 |
| Seravo | 8.029 | 463.6068614 |
| Servebolt | 3.275 | 2049.180328 |
| WPOven | 11.831 | 497.2650423 |
Discussion
Servebolt blew away the competition on this test recording near 50% faster scores on both PHP bench and WP bench than the next fastest competitors. The competition wasn't slow either, Pressable's PHP bench was a near 50% improvement over their own score last year too.
SSL Testing Results
The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Results Table
| Company | Qualsys SSL Grade |
|---|---|
| Cloudways | B |
| IONOS | B |
| Nestify | B |
| Pantheon | A |
| Pressable | A |
| Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | A |
| Seravo | B |
| Servebolt | B |
| WPOven | B |
Discussion
No company achieved 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.
