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

Cloudways, GreenGeeks, MDDHosting, Pressable, Presslabs, SiteGround, and WordPress.com didn't have any issues with the Load Storm test.

Krystal Hosting and WPX handled this test without issue and despite P95 being above 1000ms, their results were still in Top Tier status because of the geographic bias towards US servers for this metric.

Raidboxes unfortunately slowed down and errored out on this test.

K6 Static Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

Every company handled the Static test with ease.

WordPress.com edged sister company Pressable out by .1 ms on average and 1ms on the p95 to have the fastest speeds.

WPX, SiteGround and Presslabs were all under 50ms average as well.

There is an impressive amount of performance in this group.

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

Cloudways ran into the same issue across every server this year where Hetrix Tools showed a short downtime window while Uptime Robot had them online.

Everyone else did excellent or perfect in the uptime department.

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

WPX was the fastest average and fastest in 9/12 locations.

Presslabs picked up the other 3 fastest speeds and managed third fastest average. Pressable snuck into second fastest average between those two.

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

WPX had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores.

Cloudways had the second fastest PHP Bench.

WordPress.com had the second fastest WP Bench.

SSL Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

GreenGeeks, Presslabs, Raidboxes and WordPress.com all earned A+.

Everyone else earned an 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.

No company achieved this status.

Individual Host Analysis