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

Performant Websites, Presslabs, Scaleforce, Servebolt (both) and WordPress VIP all handled this test without issue.

Cloudways ran into issues around 1500 VUsers where login stopped responding and caused errors. The numbers appear artificially low because of this.

Raidboxes started slowing down around 3700 VUsers with errors kicking in around 4600 VUsers.

Overall, it's impressive how fast most of these companies are. With the exception of Raidboxes (and Cloudways gets an asterisk), every host is loading pages under 300ms. More than half the companies are loading assets sub 30ms. At the high end, you really have a lot of high performing globally available options.

K6 Static Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

Every company handled this test very well. It is very clear which companies have CDNs setup though based on the average response times. The P95 of all but two companies being under 60ms is just impressive.

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

Every company with the exception of Cloudways had 100% on at least one monitor. Cloudways had very different uptimes as measured by the two providers (happened across multiple plans tested). But the higher of the two uptime monitors showed 99.99%+ which seems to indicate the server was responsive.

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

Presslabs is the obvious standout here with 10/12 of the fastest response times alongside the fastest average response time at a snappy 0.1735s.

WPVIP and Performant Websites managed to grab the other two fastest response times. They also managed the second and third fastest averages respectively.

Raidboxes and Cloudways stood out on the slower end because of the lack of CDN setup in this configuration.

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 led the way here. They took the top two spots in both tests. Presslabs was third in both tests.

Scaleforce shows us that raw single threaded speed doesn't make or break an enterprise configuration. Despite having the slowest WP Bench and one of the slowest PHP Bench scores, a clustered configuration can handle massive scale and perform well in real world delivery.

SSL Testing Results

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

Results Table

Discussion

Everyone got an A+ except Cloudways which 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