The Companies and Products

LoadStorm Testing Results

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Results Table

Discussion

CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, Pressable, SaveInCloud, Scaleforce, Servebolt, and SiteGround all handled this test without issue.

Cloudways slowed down substantially during the test. A2 Hosting had wp-login security issues which couldn't be worked around causing errors.

K6 Static Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

A2Hosting, CloudJiffy, Cloudways, Infomaniak, Pressable, SaveInCloud, Scaleforce and Servebolt had no issues with this test.

SiteGround slowed down substantially as the test went on.

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

Discussion

A2Hosting, Cloudways, Pressable, Scaleforce, Servebolt and SiteGround all had 99.9% uptime or higher.

CloudJiffy, Infomaniak and SaveInCloud all suffered the same SSL renewal error which caused downtime.

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

Discussion

It's rare I say there was an obvious winner because I'm not sure it's happened before. Servebolt was the fastest in every single location tested.

This price tier's WPT result is perhaps the least chaotic I've seen to date with companies generally staying relative to one another in so many 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

Discussion

Servebolt is the only company who has broken sub 4 seconds on PHP Bench. A2 and Pressable are close behind on the PHP Bench. Servebolt just slightly edged out A2 Hosting by 7 queries per second on having the fastest WP Bench in this price tier.

SSL Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

A's for almost everyone. A+ for Servebolt. Cloudways earned a B for supporting older TLS versions.

Internet.nl Testing Results

The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.

Results Table

Discussion

Servebolt had the highest score at 68. SaveInCloud scored 6.

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

Discussion

And the winner is... Servebolt with a D+ edging out every other company with F's.

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