$25-50/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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A2Hosting | $28.98 | Unlimited | 4GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Bluehost | $39.95 | 100,000/mo | n/a | 40 GB Storage | unlimited | 1 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | $50 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | Based on usage. Up to 4 GiB | Based on usage. Up to 20 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | CHF 45 | Unlimited (absolute maximum depends on available plan resources and code of the hosted websites) | Based on usage. Up to 4 GiB | Based on usage. Up to 20 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
IONOS | $40 | Unlimited | 4 GB | 40 GB SSD | Unlimited | 1 |
Krystal Hosting | £34.99 | 50,000 | N/A | 10 GB | Unlimited | 1 |
Pressable | $25 | 30,000/month | 256GB | 20GB | Unlimited | 1 |
Rocket.net | $25 | 25,000 | 1G PHP memory_limit | 10GB | 50GB | 1 |
Seravo | 45€ | 30000 on average | - | 30GB | - | 1 |
SiteGround | $39.99 | No hard limit but advertised as suitable for ~ 100,000 Visits Monthly | No hard limit - https://www.siteground.com/shared-hosting-features.htm | 40 GB Web Space | Unlimited | Unlimited |
WordPress.com | $25 | Unlimited | N/A | 200GB | Unlimited | 1 |
WPX | $49.99 | n/a | 128 Mb per PHP process, 3 PHP processes per website | 20 Gb | 200 Gb | 15 |
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A2Hosting | 531761 | 1722 | 649.52 | 295.42 | 15721 | 333 | 23.18 | 32 | 13 | 586 |
Bluehost | 426004 | 5 | 317.63 | 236.67 | 15070 | 623 | 20.3 | 16 | 11 | 1721 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 528769 | 286 | 385.72 | 293.76 | 15022 | 105 | 24.66 | 19 | 14 | 425 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 561738 | 472 | 403.43 | 312.08 | 15262 | 103 | 25.24 | 18 | 14 | 462 |
IONOS | 256585 | 413 | 195.22 | 142.55 | 15725 | 3168 | 13.14 | 9361 | 7301 | 7626 |
Krystal Hosting | 473257 | 226 | 353.67 | 262.92 | 15107 | 424 | 22.77 | 17 | 12.65 | 807 |
Pressable | 549062 | 0 | 406.72 | 305.03 | 8324 | 121 | 24.31 | 18 | 14 | 311 |
Rocket.net | 575260 | 1 | 454.07 | 319.59 | 15081 | 173 | 60.02 | 52 | 33.35 | 280 |
Seravo | 502661 | 27 | 379.88 | 279.26 | 15101 | 453 | 22.61 | 17 | 12.56 | 782 |
SiteGround | 506503 | 4 | 373.68 | 281.39 | 6984 | 205 | 24.03 | 17.99 | 13.35 | 234 |
WordPress.com | 1720764 | 0 | 1292.70 | 955.98 | 6825 | 134 | 45.76 | 35 | 25.42 | 274 |
WPX | 512121 | 10 | 383.75 | 284.51 | 3325 | 85 | 23.36 | 18 | 12.98 | 263 |
Discussion
CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, LightningBase, Pressable, Presslabs, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX all handled this test without issue.
Nexcess had couple small spikes in performance causing some errors but otherwise performed well. SaveInCloud had the most borderline performance in perhaps all of this years testing, the error rate was 0.12% where no company above 0.1% error rate gets Top Tier status on this test.
ICDSoft slowed down (CPU/RAM limit I believe) which causes the response time and error pattern we see. IONOS slowed down, we see average response time substantially increase and wp-login exceed 1500ms. MDDHosting's performance slowly degraded showing 500 errors as load increased.
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A2Hosting | 401848 | 0 | 885 | 121 | 440 | 235 | 236 |
Bluehost | 444942 | 0 | 981 | 13 | 488 | 21 | 32 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 444983 | 131 | 981 | 13 | 489 | 64 | 65 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 444893 | 109 | 982 | 13 | 486 | 63 | 63 |
IONOS | 397423 | 0 | 874 | 133 | 437 | 263 | 265 |
Krystal Hosting | 391005 | 0 | 866 | 152 | 429 | 283 | 487 |
Pressable | 444902 | 2 | 979 | 13 | 489 | 76 | 76 |
Rocket.net | 442673 | 0 | 974 | 18 | 487 | 30 | 56 |
Seravo | 393964 | 0 | 865 | 143 | 433 | 301 | 353 |
SiteGround | 396917 | 1 | 880 | 135 | 436 | 259 | 615 |
WordPress.com | 444796 | 0 | 981 | 13 | 489 | 74 | 74 |
WPX | 440383 | 0 | 965 | 23 | 484 | 125 | 126 |
Discussion
CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, IONOS, LightningBase, MDDHosting, Pressable, Presslabs, SaveInCloud, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX all handled this test without issue.
SiteGround took a little bit to warm up but ultimately handled the test well.
ICDSoft appeared to throttle but not degrade performance. Nexcess had a few errors and slowed down slightly.
Overall, everyone seems to have handled this test quiet well.
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 |
---|---|---|---|
A2Hosting | 99.941 | 99.8928 | 99.81 |
Bluehost | 97.582 | 98.2025 | |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 85.028 | 100 | 100 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 85.036 | 100 | 99.989 |
IONOS | 99.855 | 99.9782 | 99.975 |
Krystal Hosting | 99.906 | 99.9302 | |
Pressable | 100 | 100 | |
Rocket.net | 100 | 99.9216 | |
Seravo | 100 | 100 | |
SiteGround | 99.996 | 99.9939 | |
WordPress.com | 100 | 100 | |
WPX | 84.075 | 99.9967 | 100 |
Discussion
ICDSoft, LightningBase, MDDHosting, Nexcess, Pressable, Scaleforce, and Servebolt all had 99.9%. Impressively all of these except Nexcess had over 99.99%.
WPX had a typo with a DNS record that I personally screwed up which caused one uptime monitor to not properly track uptime because one record had the wrong IP address. 2/3 uptime monitors were able to failover and track the correct uptime, the other reported a wildly inaccurate uptime because of my mistake, so I am not penalizing the low score seen and giving them full marks for their performance.
I didn't expect SSL renewal problems to impact so many companies, but CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, IONOS, Presslabs and SaveInCloud all suffered downtime from SSL issues.
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A2Hosting | 0.908 | 0.899 | 0.987 | 0.924 | 0.997 | 1.411 | 1.569 | 1.43 | 1.175 | 1.362 | 1.118 | 1.355 | 1.177916667 |
Bluehost | 0.729 | 0.665 | 0.992 | 1.082 | 1.184 | 1.675 | 1.183 | 1.614 | 1.005 | 1.082 | 1.238 | 1.5 | 1.162416667 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 0.845 | 1.295 | 1.443 | 0.625 | 0.709 | 1.093 | 1.231 | 1.142 | 1.57 | 1.751 | 0.888 | 1.59 | 1.181833333 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 1.289 | 0.807 | 1.469 | 0.763 | 0.678 | 1.066 | 1.31 | 1.272 | 1.518 | 0.858 | 1.481 | 1.767 | 1.189833333 |
IONOS | 0.828 | 0.85 | 1.09 | 0.994 | 1.093 | 1.507 | 1.604 | 1.574 | 1.195 | 1.382 | 1.329 | 1.446 | 1.241 |
Krystal Hosting | 1.063 | 1.02 | 1.187 | 0.615 | 0.7 | 1.034 | 1.613 | 1.721 | 1.499 | 1.796 | 1.334 | 0.862 | 1.203666667 |
Pressable | 1.048 | 0.978 | 1.208 | 1.047 | 0.932 | 2.447 | 1.976 | 1.726 | 1.661 | 1.733 | 1.375 | 1.991 | 1.510166667 |
Rocket.net | 0.78 | 0.612 | 0.898 | 0.654 | 0.652 | 0.609 | 0.623 | 0.699 | 0.538 | 0.646 | 0.635 | 0.49 | 0.653 |
Seravo | 1.101 | 1.078 | 1.086 | 0.613 | 0.559 | 1.265 | 1.163 | 0.856 | 1.471 | 1.904 | 1.255 | 0.814 | 1.097083333 |
SiteGround | 0.849 | 0.879 | 0.866 | 1.065 | 1.143 | 1.746 | 2.185 | 1.804 | 1.348 | 1.566 | 1.274 | 1.564 | 1.357416667 |
WordPress.com | 0.802 | 0.754 | 1.028 | 0.787 | 0.745 | 1.557 | 0.757 | 1.03 | 0.876 | 0.765 | 0.806 | 0.862 | 0.8974166667 |
WPX | 0.437 | 0.37 | 0.812 | 0.347 | 0.329 | 0.878 | 0.606 | 0.988 | 0.322 | 0.678 | 0.418 | 0.704 | 0.5740833333 |
Discussion
Rocket stands out being the fastest in 5/12 locations and second in 4/12 locations. WPX also was the fastest in 5/12 locations and second in 3/12 locations earning the second fastest average response time.
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 |
---|---|---|
A2Hosting | 4.331 | 819.6721311 |
Bluehost | 8.762 | 366.9724771 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 9.5 | 1173.70892 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 8.457 | 1485.884101 |
IONOS | 10.781 | 491.1591356 |
Krystal Hosting | 6.058 | 478.2400765 |
Pressable | 4.224 | 1222.493888 |
Rocket.net | 7.616 | 892.0606601 |
Seravo | 5.346 | 305.9039462 |
SiteGround | 7.468 | 1408.450704 |
WordPress.com | 4.127 | 2450.980392 |
WPX | 7.158 | 1526.717557 |
Discussion
A2, Pressable and WordPress.com stand out on the PHP Bench finishing in under 5 seconds. WordPress.com also has one of the highest WP bench of any company in any tier this year, one of the highest scores I've ever seen.
SSL Testing Results
The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Results Table
Company | Qualsys SSL Grade |
---|---|
A2Hosting | A+ |
Bluehost | A |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | A |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | A |
IONOS | A |
Krystal Hosting | A |
Pressable | A |
Rocket.net | B |
Seravo | A |
SiteGround | A |
WordPress.com | A+ |
WPX | A |
Discussion
A2 Hosting and WordPress.com earned A+, everyone else earned an A except Rocket which earned a B for supporting TLS 1.0/1.1.
Internet.nl Testing Results
The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.
Results Table
Company | Internet.nl |
---|---|
A2Hosting | 35 |
Bluehost | 32 |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | 28 |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | 28 |
IONOS | 50 |
Krystal Hosting | 35 |
Pressable | 50 |
Rocket.net | 66 |
Seravo | 66 |
SiteGround | 30 |
WordPress.com | 52 |
WPX | 32 |
Discussion
Rocket and Seravo scored the highest while CloudJiffy and Infomaniak scored the lowest. It's interesting to see no company is scoring very highly on this test. One possible explanation is that some of the settings are more user driven than host driven.
Mozilla Observatory Testing Results
The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.
Results Table
Company | Mozilla Observatory |
---|---|
A2Hosting | C- |
Bluehost | F |
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic | F |
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic | F |
IONOS | F |
Krystal Hosting | F |
Pressable | F |
Rocket.net | D |
Seravo | C |
SiteGround | F |
WordPress.com | D |
WPX | F |
Discussion
Similar to the Internet.nl test, we see results not very high including a lot of F grades (8/12) with the highest being a C for Seravo and C- for A2 Hosting.
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
BlueHost has been a regular participant in these benchmarks for many years. This year they showed flashes of brilliance: the K6 test had BlueHost tied for fastest average response time and the fastest P95 and P99 by a decent margin. Unfortunately the Load Storm test slowed down substantially and had wp-login response time over 1700ms. The uptime results were also well below the 99.9% level required to earn any awards. There was an issue with the test account being accidentally deleted, but also some outages that brought it down. It looks like there is potentially a solid product there but it didn't live up to its potential in this years benchmark.
CloudJiffy powered by Jelastic came out very strong performance wise for their first time. Their results were nearly identical to Infomaniak. The load tests went relatively smoothly. They even tied for lowest average response time on K6. Unfortunately there was a problem with automatic SSL renewals which caused downtime putting them below the 99.9% threshold required to earn any awards. Without this bug it would have been winning some recognition.
Infomaniak powered by Jelastic came out very strong performance wise for their first time. The load tests went relatively smoothly. They even tied for lowest average response time on K6. Unfortunately there was a problem with automatic SSL renewals which caused downtime putting them below the 99.9% threshold required to earn any awards. One bug away from potentially earning Top Tier marks.
IONOS has been a regular under IONOS and its previous 1&1 branding. The SSL issue on the uptime monitoring hurt. The Load Storm test also slowed down too much, but it's good that it never really hit failure mode under all the stress. There's definitely room for improvement on the product but I hope the changes next year will fix these issues and have them do well.
Krystal's second year, this product was named Onyx last year and run under a separate brand which has been brought back into the parent company. Krystal earned Top Tier status. It was above 99.9% threshold for uptime. It handled the load tests without slowing down at all. It didn't stand out amongst its Top Tier peers but delivered a solid performance which may because of the UK focus, as the tests from outside European locations weren't as fast as some more globally focused brands.
Pressable has been a consistent presence in these benchmarks and earned Top Tier status again this year. The uptime was perfect at 100%. The load tests were relatively smooth with only 2 errors. Pressable had another solid year.
A new comer to the benchmarks and a welcome one. An outstanding performance earned Rocket Top Tier status this year. The load tests had a total of a single error and the K6 test had the second lowest P99 score. Rocket also stood out in the WebPageTest benchmark where it had the fastest global average response time.
Seravo earned Top Tier status again this year. Perfect uptime and smooth load tests. Seravo didn't stand out in any of the big tests, but just put up an overall solid performance. Seravo also had the highest Internetnl and Mozilla Observatory marks for what that is worth.
SiteGround earned Honorable Mention status this year. The Load Storm test was great and had the lowest wp-login response time. Uptime was above 99.99%. The only slight weakness was shown on the K6 test where it took a little while before the caches seemed to fully warm up and respond quickly.
WordPress.com earned Top Tier status again. There's really almost nothing to say since it had perfect 100% uptime on both monitors, zero errors across both load tests and the fastest WP bench of any company in any price tier this year. An overall flawless performance.
WPX earned Top Tier status again. They have been quite consistent earning Top Tier marks over the years. Beyond me screwing up a DNS record and a tiny spike in Load Storm it was a near flawless run. WPX even impressed on the WPT benchmark where their home rolled CDN seems to be paying off.