$51-100/Month WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2021
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.
The Companies and Products
Company | Plan Monthly Price | Plan Visitors Allowed | Plan Memory | Plan Disk Space | Plan Bandwidth | Plan Sites Allowed |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | $87 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | Based on usage. Up to 8 GiB | Based on usage. Up to 20 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
ICDSoft | $99.00 | Unlimited | 8 GB | 200 GB | 25000 GB/mo | 1 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | CHF 74 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | Based on usage. Up to 8 GiB | Based on usage. Up to 20 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
IONOS | 100$ | Unlimited | 10 GB | 100 GB SSD | Unlimited | 10 |
Lightning Base | $99.95 | 100,000 Guideline | 8 GB | 30 GB | 1 TB cap | 25 |
MDDHosting | $99.99 | Unlimited | 10 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Nexcess | $79 | unmetered | cloud - variable bursts | 40GB | 3TB | 5 |
Pressable | $90 | 150,000 | 256GB | 30GB | Unlimited | 10 |
Presslabs | $99 | 150000; These are the included pageviews in the plan, the extra pageviews are charged with $0.30 for every 1,000 additional pageviews. | Unmetered | 5GB | Unlimited | 1 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | BRL 510 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | Based on usage. Up to 8 GiB | Based on usage. Up to 20 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | $99 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | 8 GiB | 15 GiB | Unmetered | Unlimited |
Servebolt | $99.00 | 1 000 000 Dynamic Requests | Unmetered | 4 GB (+flex) | Unmetered | 3 (+ unlimited dev environments) |
WPX | $99.00 | n/a | 128 Mb per PHP process, 3 PHP processes per website | 40 Gb | Unlimited (reasonable use applies) | 35 |
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 857270 | 629 | 668.80 | 476.26 | 15434 | 113 | 37.07 | 29 | 21 | 468 |
ICDSoft | 576847 | 26603 | 419.63 | 320.47 | 8537 | 908 | 25.18 | 18 | 14 | 2672 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 818287 | 618 | 628.12 | 454.60 | 15109 | 101 | 36.73 | 28 | 20 | 507 |
IONOS | 382350 | 31 | 279.15 | 212.42 | 15100 | 506 | 18.63 | 14 | 10 | 1566 |
Lightning Base | 674251 | 47 | 521.78 | 374.58 | 10239 | 368 | 33.09 | 26 | 18.38 | 647 |
MDDHosting | 675986 | 9620 | 520.15 | 375.55 | 15147 | 492 | 33.46 | 26 | 19 | 1080 |
Nexcess | 754192 | 1603 | 576.35 | 419.00 | 7606 | 523 | 34.88 | 26.9 | 19.38 | 699 |
Pressable | 1741315 | 0 | 1338.92 | 967.40 | 5188 | 125 | 54.09 | 41 | 30 | 274 |
Presslabs | 874110 | 95 | 675.93 | 485.62 | 14789 | 193 | 33.87 | 26 | 19 | 411 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 769990 | 933 | 597.52 | 427.77 | 15301 | 126 | 35.83 | 28 | 20 | 663 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 775740 | 258 | 587.25 | 430.97 | 15250 | 81 | 35.98 | 27.6 | 19.99 | 278 |
Servebolt | 998403 | 19 | 757.80 | 554.67 | 15129 | 77 | 33.08 | 25 | 18.38 | 191 |
WPX | 753516 | 8 | 568.17 | 418.62 | 6167 | 83 | 34.4 | 26 | 19.11 | 254 |
Discussion
CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, LightningBase, Pressable, Presslabs, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX handled this test without issue.
Nexcess had a couple spikes and a few errors. SaveInCloud had a few errors.
ICDSoft slowed down and had high error rate. IONOS slowed down. MDDHosting slowed down and had errors.
K6 Testing Results
K6 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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 888297 | 77 | 1965 | 15 | 972 | 65 | 66 |
ICDSoft | 508495 | 10975 | 733 | 152 | 540 | 293 | 603 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 889764 | 117 | 1963 | 13 | 972 | 65 | 66 |
IONOS | 794960 | 77 | 1754 | 133 | 872 | 261 | 263 |
Lightning Base | 735541 | 0 | 1616 | 225 | 808 | 467 | 467 |
MDDHosting | 798088 | 0 | 1761 | 129 | 877 | 243 | 265 |
Nexcess | 734761 | 1422 | 1571 | 227 | 803 | 627 | 875 |
Pressable | 889938 | 0 | 1967 | 13 | 976 | 76 | 76 |
Presslabs | 838785 | 0 | 1847 | 74 | 920 | 245 | 245 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 889978 | 256 | 1957 | 13 | 976 | 60 | 61 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 891365 | 0 | 1961 | 11 | 977 | 42 | 42 |
Servebolt | 862174 | 1 | 1802 | 45 | 942 | 181 | 295 |
WPX | 867447 | 0 | 1898 | 39 | 952 | 186 | 186 |
Discussion
CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, IONOS, LightningBase, MDDHosting, Pressable, Presslabs, SaveInCloud, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX all handled this test without any issues.
Nexcess had some errors, slowed down a little and had a few spikes,
ICDSoft had some errors.
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 |
---|---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 85.045 | 100 | 99.904 |
ICDSoft | 99.995 | 99.9964 | |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 85.044 | 100 | 100 |
IONOS | 99.822 | 99.9916 | 100 |
Lightning Base | 99.992 | 99.9932 | |
MDDHosting | 99.999 | 99.9983 | |
Nexcess | 99.921 | 99.9345 | |
Pressable | 100 | 100 | |
Presslabs | 97.82 | 100 | 99.983 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 85.033 | 99.9914 | 99.989 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 100 | 100 | |
Servebolt | 100 | 100 | |
WPX | 100 | 99.9983 |
Discussion
ICDSoft, LightningBase, MDDHosting, Nexcess, Pressable, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX all kept above 99.9% uptime.
CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, IONOS, Presslabs and SaveInCloud all had SSL issues which caused downtime to varying degrees.
WebPageTest Testing Results
WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.
Results Table
Company | Virginia | California | Salt Lake City | London | Frankfurt | Cape Town | Singapore | Mumbai | Tokyo | Sydney | Brazil | Dubai | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 0.836 | 1.299 | 1.448 | 0.676 | 0.626 | 1.066 | 1.235 | 1.436 | 1.632 | 1.765 | 1.435 | 1.594 | 1.254 |
ICDSoft | 0.872 | 0.888 | 1.016 | 0.874 | 0.977 | 1.395 | 1.496 | 1.6 | 1.182 | 1.377 | 0.999 | 1.29 | 1.163833333 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 0.807 | 0.797 | 1.397 | 0.649 | 0.659 | 1.008 | 1.247 | 0.969 | 1.726 | 1.833 | 1.328 | 1.635 | 1.17125 |
IONOS | 0.859 | 0.876 | 1.028 | 1.034 | 1.102 | 1.529 | 1.458 | 1.441 | 1.341 | 1.379 | 1.194 | 1.419 | 1.221666667 |
Lightning Base | 0.783 | 0.815 | 0.829 | 1.063 | 0.887 | 1.549 | 1.17 | 2.018 | 1.027 | 1.21 | 1.076 | 1.514 | 1.16175 |
MDDHosting | 1.081 | 1.049 | 1.239 | 1.158 | 1.274 | 1.756 | 1.586 | 1.879 | 1.258 | 1.807 | 1.493 | 1.684 | 1.438666667 |
Nexcess | 0.927 | 0.908 | 2.028 | 1.242 | 1.442 | 2.202 | 4.963 | 2.976 | 1.902 | 2.973 | 1.461 | 2.267 | 2.107583333 |
Pressable | 1.005 | 0.956 | 1.243 | 1.068 | 1.203 | 2.688 | 1.7 | 1.905 | 1.491 | 1.672 | 1.25 | 1.826 | 1.500583333 |
Presslabs | 0.708 | 0.636 | 0.897 | 0.7 | 0.644 | 1.971 | 0.566 | 1.288 | 0.912 | 0.872 | 1.22 | 0.989 | 0.95025 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 1.21 | 0.857 | 1.072 | 0.933 | 0.829 | 1.144 | 2.185 | 2.325 | 1.805 | 1.847 | 0.632 | 2.553 | 1.449333333 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 1.049 | 1.001 | 1.179 | 0.683 | 0.73 | 1.047 | 1.019 | 0.929 | 1.335 | 1.478 | 1.134 | 1.202 | 1.0655 |
Servebolt | 0.764 | 0.684 | 0.973 | 0.767 | 0.788 | 0.892 | 0.66 | 1.792 | 0.725 | 0.787 | 0.801 | 0.945 | 0.8815 |
WPX | 0.683 | 0.663 | 0.802 | 0.664 | 0.67 | 1.224 | 0.564 | 0.684 | 0.603 | 0.625 | 0.954 | 0.714 | 0.7375 |
Discussion
WPX stands out being the fastest in 7/12 locations and having the lowest average response time at 0.738 seconds. They were followed by Servebolt (0.822 seconds) and Presslabs (0.95 seconds).
At the other end you have Nexcess with the slowest average response time at 2.108 seconds average and slowest performance in 7/12 locations.
WPPerformanceTester Testing Results
WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. 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. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.
Results Table
Company | PHP Bench | WP Bench |
---|---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 9.495 | 794.9125596 |
ICDSoft | 10.549 | 1153.402537 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 8.498 | 1494.768311 |
IONOS | 10.746 | 474.3833017 |
Lightning Base | 6.625 | 717.3601148 |
MDDHosting | 11.954 | 292.7400468 |
Nexcess | 4.303 | 2016.129032 |
Pressable | 4.164 | 1145.475372 |
Presslabs | 5.048 | 905.7971014 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 11.298 | 639.7952655 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 8.017 | 1047.120419 |
Servebolt | 3.256 | 1745.200698 |
WPX | 7.058 | 1706.484642 |
Discussion
Servebolt was the fastest PHP bench achieving the only sub 4 second performance across all the tests. Pressable and Nexcess achieved PHP bench scores in the 4 second range. Nexcess also had the fastest WP Bench just breaking 2,000 queries per second, followed by Servebolt at 1,745.
SSL Testing Results
The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Results Table
Company | Qualsys SSL Grade |
---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | A |
ICDSoft | A |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | A |
IONOS | A |
Lightning Base | A |
MDDHosting | A |
Nexcess | A |
Pressable | A |
Presslabs | A |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | A |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | A |
Servebolt | A+ |
WPX | A |
Discussion
A's for everyone and an A+ for Servebolt.
Internet.nl Testing Results
The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.
Results Table
Company | Internet.nl |
---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 28 |
ICDSoft | 32 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 28 |
IONOS | 50 |
Lightning Base | 35 |
MDDHosting | 50 |
Nexcess | 47 |
Pressable | 50 |
Presslabs | 47 |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | 28 |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | 45 |
Servebolt | 68 |
WPX | 32 |
Discussion
Servebolt earned the highest rating at 68% while CloudJiffy, Infomaniak and SaveInCloud the lowest at 28%.
I'm not sure how much value there is in this metric, but the results are here for people to look at and evaluate for themselves.
Mozilla Observatory Testing Results
The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.
Results Table
Company | Mozilla Observatory |
---|---|
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | F |
ICDSoft | F |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | F |
IONOS | F |
Lightning Base | F |
MDDHosting | F |
Nexcess | F |
Pressable | F |
Presslabs | F |
SaveInCloud powered by Jelastic | F |
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic | F |
Servebolt | C- |
WPX | F |
Discussion
C- for Servebolt and F's for every other company.
I really don't know what to make of these results, when most companies are failing, I have to consider whether the test is useful, or are many companies not doing a good job securing the servers or are these measuring things which are beyond the hosting provider's scope and more on the user? Or is it something else? I don't have an answer, but I am publishing the results to add another data point to the discussion.
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
ICDSoft had 99.99% uptime which was great. The K6 test had some error issues. But the biggest shortcoming was the Load Storm test which was bottlenecked by CPU/RAM consumption and started to slow down and error as the test scaled up.
Infomaniak's highlight was probably earning second fastest average response time (tie) on the K6 test. The Load Storm test was also fine. Like two of its other Jelastic powered companies, it experienced an SSL issue which brought the uptime below 99.9% which keeps it ineligible for earning any awards sadly. One bug away from possibly earning Top Tier status is a great place to be for a first time participant.
IONOS had a good K6 run. Load Storm slowed down a little too much but had almost no errors. The SSL issue which caused downtime was unfortunate. There's signs of a good product that hasn't put everything quite together yet.
LightningBase earns yet another Top Tier award. The consistent good performance is impressive and they continue their streak as the longest consecutive Top Tier earning company in these benchmarks. Uptime was above 99.99%. The load tests both were smooth.
MDDHosting is a new comer to these benchmarks and put on a decent showing for a first time performance. Their uptime was over 99.99%. Their K6 test went smoothly. The only issue was the Load Storm test overwhelmed their server and caused some errors. A solid first performance with room for improvement. I hope to see MDDHosting earn a Top Tier next year.
Nexcess earned an Honorable Mention because on all three impacting measurements it was close to the edge. The Load Storm test had a couple spikes. The K6 test had a couple spikes, slowed down slightly and had a few errors. The uptime while above the 99.9% threshold was closer to 99.9 than 99.99. Their WPT tests were slowest of any company which isn't an impacting measurement. Nexcess' highlight was probably WPPerformanceTester results where it's WP bench was the highest in the price tier and PHP bench was third fastest. The product looks like it's on the edge of Top Tier status and I'm sure with some small improvements will earn that status next year.
Pressable had perfect uptime, zero errors and showed no signs of stress during either load test. Pressable also was tied for second fastest K6 average response time and third for WP-login response time on Load Storm. A Top Tier performance.
Presslabs has been a regular for many years on these benchmarks and this is the first time they didn't earn Top Tier marks that I can recall. Presslabs had excellent load tests, they were third fastest in WPT response times. The only problem was SSL renewal didn't go smoothly and caused some downtime which dropped them below 99.9% which is required to earn any awards. Overall, a solid product that continues to handle the tests well with one costly mistake this year.
SaveInCloud was a new entrant this year and performed quite well for a first time participant. The K6 test was good. The Load Storm test had just a couple too many errors. But the downfall was the SSL problem causing the uptime monitor to fall below 99.9% uptime.
Scaleforce earned Top Tier status again this year. While being powered by Jelastic, they seem to do things slightly differently than the rest of their peers which pushed them ahead. Their uptime was perfect. Their load tests went smoothly. Scaleforce had the fastest average response time in the K6 test and at (95/P99 levels as well).
Servebolt had 100% uptime on both monitors. It easily handled the load tests including the second fastest K6 average response time (tie) and the fastest average response time and WP-login response time on Load Storm. It had the fastest PHP bench and second fastest WP bench. It had the second best WPT average response time. Servebolt definitely earned Top Tier status again.
WPX earned Top Tier recognition. Near perfect load tests. Near perfect uptime. Fastest WPT average. An excellent performance, again.