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.
WPX handled this test without issue and despite P95 being above 1000ms, was still in Top Tier status because of the geographic bias towards US servers for this metric.
Cloudways started to show signs of load around 1300 VUsers and response times started to spike.
DreamHost started showing signs of load around 800 VUsers and eventually erroring as well.
Raidboxes started slowing down around 500 VUsers and eventually errored as well.
SaveinCloud started showing signs of load around 1200 VUsers.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
Cloudways, MechanicWeb, Pressable, Presslabs, Raidboxes, SaveinCloud, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX all handled this test without issue.
DreamHost handled this test pretty well but start to show signs of slowing down a little bit towards the end of the test around 1600 VUsers.
It's really impressive to see four companies have average response times sub 50ms.
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
Cloudways
99.998
99.8701
DreamHost
100
99.9995
MechanicWeb
99.998
99.9977
Pressable
99.998
100
Presslabs
100
99.9996
raidboxes
100
99.9991
SaveinCloud
99.851
99.8521
Scaleforce powered by Virtuozzo
100
100
Servebolt
100
99.9644
WPX
99.906
100
Discussion
Cloudways had the same error across every tier where one monitor showed a down window while the other still had it resolving.
SaveinCloud fell below the 99.9% uptime threshold.
Everyone else remained above 99.9%.
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
Company
Virginia
California
Salt Lake City
London
Frankfurt
Cape Town
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Dubai
Average
Cloudways
0.181
0.319
0.356
0.489
0.538
1.189
1.103
1.052
0.81
1.005
0.692
1.043
0.7314166667
DreamHost
0.203
0.421
0.407
0.518
0.769
1.215
1.37
1.098
0.936
1.119
0.691
1.052
0.8165833333
MechanicWeb
0.626
0.82
0.862
0.161
0.193
0.834
1.419
0.736
1.36
1.482
1.054
0.667
0.8511666667
Pressable
0.303
0.236
0.28
0.485
0.223
0.233
0.254
0.264
0.311
0.225
0.347
0.434
0.2995833333
Presslabs
0.163
0.137
0.261
0.163
0.181
0.24
0.157
0.445
0.216
0.62
0.147
0.535
0.2720833333
raidboxes
0.617
0.92
0.865
0.26
0.224
0.884
0.905
0.802
1.28
1.57
1.19
0.703
0.8516666667
SaveinCloud
1.122
1.049
0.975
1.081
1.578
1.822
2.021
2.254
1.844
2.057
0.28
1.875
1.4965
Scaleforce powered by Virtuozzo
0.301
0.197
0.279
0.236
0.236
0.281
0.22
0.22
0.308
0.15
0.248
0.953
0.3024166667
Servebolt
0.377
0.327
0.428
0.616
0.603
0.969
0.91
0.921
0.835
1.001
0.726
0.987
0.725
WPX
0.186
0.19
0.202
0.124
0.13
0.842
0.143
0.15
0.126
0.162
0.128
0.237
0.2183333333
Discussion
WPX had the fastest average and picked up 8/12 fastest response times in different locations.
Presslabs picked up 2 of the fastest response times with the second fastest average response time.
Pressable and Scaleforce picked up the other two fastest response times and were third and fourth average respectively.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Cloudways
6.352
1445.086705
DreamHost
10.199
928.5051068
MechanicWeb
4.952
2958.579882
Pressable
9.936
1355.01355
Presslabs
6.942
1180.637544
raidboxes
10.954
952.3809524
SaveinCloud
10.613
711.7437722
Scaleforce powered by Virtuozzo
10.459
1144.16476
Servebolt
5.848
2197.802198
WPX
7.094
2597.402597
Discussion
MechanicWeb picked up the fastest scores in both PHP and WP Bench. Servebolt picked up the second fastest PHP Bench and WPX picked up the second fastest WP Bench.
DreamHost, Presslabs and Raidboxes picked up A+'s while everyone else earned A's.
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.
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.
Cloudways handled the Static test with ease. Cloudways ran into the same issue across every server this year where Hetrix Tools showed a short downtime but Uptime Robot did not. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test proved too much for the server.
DreamHost had perfect and near perfect uptime. Unfortunately, both load tests caused some issues. The Static test went mostly ok but did show signs of slowing down a little towards the end. The Load Storm test did overwhelm the server though.
MechanicWeb had the fastest wp-login speed on the Load Storm test. MechanicWeb had excellent uptime with both above 99.99%. MechanicWeb also stood out on the PHP and WP Bench scores where it had the fastest scores. While MechanicWeb may not have the global CDN reach as some of their competitors, it's shown it has some seriously fast infrastructure powering their servers which earned this new comer a Top Tier award.
Pressable had the fastest average (5.9ms) and p95 (19ms) in the Static test. Pressable had the third fastest login and page cumulative averages on Load Storm. Pressable had perfect and near perfect uptime. A consistently fastest performance earns Pressable another Top Tier award.
Presslabs had the fastest login cumulative average and second fastest wp-login, p95, page response times on the Load Storm test. Presslabs had perfect and near perfect uptime. Presslabs had the second fastest WPT average response times. It's always a good sign when you're using the word fastest a lot when analyzing these results - A Top Tier performance from Presslabs.
Raidboxes had perfect and near perfect uptime. Raidboxes also handled the static test without issue. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test overwhelmed the server.
SaveinCloud handled the Static test without issue. Unfortunately SaveinCloud fell below the 99.9% uptime threshold and the Load Storm test slowed the server down quite a bit.
Scaleforce had the fastest page load speed on the Load Storm test. Scaleforce had the second fastest average (9.5ms) and p95 (28ms) in the Static test. Perfect uptime was nice to see. Undoubtedly a Top Tier performance for Scaleforce.
Servebolt had the fastest P95 and second fastest asset and login cumulative average on Load Storm. Servebolt had the second fastest PHP Bench. It also handled the Static test with ease and had perfect uptime on one monitor. Overall, another Top Tier showing from Servebolt.
WPX had the fastest asset load times on the Load Storm test. WPX had the third fastest average and p95 in the Static test. WPX Had the fastest WPT average and location scores in 8/12 locales. Overall, WPX had an excellent performance, and the adjustment for accepting P95 scores slightly above 1000ms was added this year was precisely to recognize companies like WPX. Congrats on another Top Tier award.
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.
Cloudways competed with a Digital Ocean Premium 4GB droplet.
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.
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
Company
Uptime Robot
Hetrix
Cloudways
100
99.8438
GreenGeeks
99.999
99.9988
Krystal Hosting
99.992
99.9897
MDDHosting
100
99.9949
Pressable
99.996
100
Presslabs
100
99.9987
raidboxes
100
99.9996
SiteGround
99.986
99.9995
WordPress.com
100
100
WPX
99.989
100
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
Company
Virginia
California
Salt Lake City
London
Frankfurt
Cape Town
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Dubai
Average
Cloudways
0.215
0.429
0.358
0.44
0.514
1.174
1.197
1.087
0.872
1.117
0.653
1.042
0.7581666667
GreenGeeks
0.266
0.25
0.261
0.354
0.413
0.819
0.696
0.721
0.557
0.629
0.478
0.695
0.5115833333
Krystal Hosting
0.593
0.833
0.76
0.229
0.258
0.824
1.864
1.693
1.93
2.064
1.114
0.706
1.072333333
MDDHosting
0.368
0.244
0.326
0.644
0.768
1.347
1.14
1.389
0.733
0.952
0.897
1.266
0.8395
Pressable
0.307
0.21
0.353
0.235
0.243
0.269
0.255
0.182
0.32
0.2
0.263
0.403
0.27
Presslabs
0.16
0.158
0.264
0.149
0.184
0.245
0.16
0.403
0.288
0.621
0.179
0.582
0.28275
raidboxes
0.566
0.902
0.835
0.235
0.19
0.882
0.867
0.747
1.253
1.514
1.12
0.677
0.8156666667
SiteGround
0.49
0.642
0.517
0.91
0.95
1.738
1.601
1.764
1.299
1.572
1.229
1.627
1.194916667
WordPress.com
0.29
0.341
0.509
0.313
0.281
0.316
0.285
0.237
0.403
0.265
0.294
0.377
0.3259166667
WPX
0.206
0.138
0.193
0.155
0.131
0.84
0.128
0.124
0.131
0.139
0.137
0.264
0.2155
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.
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.
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.
Cloudways had perfect uptime on one monitor while Hetrix Tools showed a much lower number across every plan for some reason. Cloudways had the second fastest PHP Bench. Cloudways also handled the Load Storm and Static tests without issue. Given the overall good performance, the only possible detraction is the uptime monitors which showed very different numbers, my third monitoring system broke so I don't have a tie breaker, I will err on the side of good faith. Cloudways put together a Top Tier performance that handled all the tests well.
GreenGeeks had the fastest wp-login speed on the Load Storm test. GreenGeeks had excellent uptime. They also handled the Static test without issue. It's nice to see GreenGeeks earn itself another Top Tier performance.
Krystal had excellent uptime. Krystal also handled the Static test very well. The Load Storm test also went smoothly and despite a p95 above 1000ms, it earned Top Tier status because of the geographic bias towards US based servers. Congrats to Krystal.
MDDHosting tied for second fastest wp-login on the Load Storm test. MDDHosting had perfect and near perfect uptime. MDD did very well on the Static test. MDD also picked up the third fastest PHP Bench score. It is nice to see a company come back with improved services and excel in these tests. Congrats to MDDHosting for earning their first Top Tier award.
Pressable had the second fastest login cumulative average and third fastest P95 on the Load Storm test. Pressable had the second fastest average (6.1ms) and p95 (19ms) in the Static test only .1 and 1 ms behind its sister company. Pressable had perfect and near perfect uptime. Pressable had the second fastest WPT response time average. Pressable has been consistently excellent earning themselves another Top Tier performance.
Presslabs had the fastest login cumulative average, as well as the second fastest P95, Page and wp-login on the Load Storm test. Presslabs had perfect and near perfect uptime. Presslabs had the third fastest WPT average response time. Throw in an excellent Static test and there's very little left to desire from their performance. A well deserved and earned Top Tier performance for Presslabs.
Raidboxes had perfect and near perfect uptime. Raidboxes handled the Static test without issue. Unfortunately the Load Storm test proved to be too much for the server.
SiteGround had the fastest P95 and Page, along with second fastest asset load speeds on the Load Storm test. SiteGround had the third fastest p95 and fourth fastest average response time in the Static test. SiteGround had excellent uptime on both monitors. A great showing from SiteGround earned them another Top Tier award.
WordPress.com had the fastest average and p95 in the Static test with 6ms and 18ms respectively. WordPress.com handled the Load Storm test easily. WordPress.com had perfect uptime on both monitors. WordPress.com also had the second fastest WP Bench. Unquestionably a Top Tier performance from WordPress.com.
WPX had the fastest asset response times on the Load Storm test. WPX had the third fastest average response time and fourth fastest p95 in the Static test. WPX had perfect and near perfect uptimes. WPX had the fastest global response times on WPT. WPX had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores. WPX overall did an amazing job, and the adjustment for accepting P95 scores slightly above 1000ms was added this year was precisely to recognize companies like WPX. A well deserved Top Tier status.
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.
Cloudways competed with a Digital Ocean Premium 1GB droplet.
VapourHost started to show signs of load around 1000 VUsers.
SiteGround picked up the fastest P95 and page load times.
ICDSoft picked up the fastest login cumavg and tied for fastest wp-login with MechanicWeb.
WPX picked up the fastest asset average.
20i, Eco Web Hosting and WPX all had P95 response times over 1000ms but showed no signs of load increasing and were awarded Top Tier status because their server locations potentially favored US locations over other locations for the P95 metric.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
ManagedWPHosting had a few minor spikes where load time went up.
Everyone else handled the Static test without issue.
It's truly impressive to see how much performance has come along even from the year before where multiple companies seriously struggled with this test.
Pressable had some very fast average and p95 response times at 5.9ms and 18ms respectively.
WPX and SiteGround were not far behind at 15ms and 19ms average response times. 20i and EcoWebHosting were tied at 55ms average response times.
It's almost unbelievable the slowest average response time was a mere 267ms and p95 was 575ms. That means for <$25, you could pick any of the 25 companies tested and your website would be delivering static homepages within a quarter of a second on average globally or in about half a second for the 95th percentile of users. Incredible.
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
20i
99.999
100
34SP.com
99.999
99.9943
Cloudways
100
99.8342
DreamHost
99.997
99.9991
EasyWP by Namecheap
99.961
99.9414
Eco Web Hosting
100
100
GoDaddy
99.985
99.9973
GreenGeeks
99.999
99.994
HostXNow
99.99
99.9406
ICDSoft
99.959
99.948
InMotion Hosting
99.988
99.9707
Krystal Hosting
100
100
Lightning Base
99.998
99.9982
ManagedWPHosting
99.999
99.9969
MechanicWeb
99.998
99.9971
Nexcess
99.875
99.8823
Pressable
99.997
100
raidboxes
99.999
99.9981
RSHosting.com
99.969
99.9651
Sailed.io
100
100
SiteGround
99.99
99.9959
VapourHost
99.806
99.8007
WPCycle
99.688
99.6575
WPX
100
100
Discussion
Cloudways had an issue with Hetrix Tools on every plan tested this year which showed very different result because of downtime which Hetrix Tools reported but UptimeRobot had no issues during the window.
Nexcess, VapourHost and WPCycle fell below the 99.9% uptime threshold.
Every other company was above the 99.9% threshold.
20i, EcoWebHosting, Krystal, Pressable, Sailed.io and WPX all reported perfect uptime on at least one monitor.
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
Company
Virginia
California
Salt Lake City
London
Frankfurt
Cape Town
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Dubai
Average
20i
0.373
0.216
0.805
0.144
0.222
0.244
0.325
0.718
0.302
0.84
0.687
0.692
0.464
34SP.com
0.625
0.854
0.838
0.223
0.222
0.866
0.93
0.763
1.457
1.437
1.039
0.738
0.8326666667
Cloudways
0.177
0.422
0.344
0.431
0.515
1.23
1.191
1.085
0.895
1.107
0.67
1.017
0.757
DreamHost
0.22
0.419
0.416
0.521
0.799
1.213
1.295
1.08
0.988
1.124
0.718
1.092
0.82375
EasyWP by Namecheap
0.479
0.236
0.356
0.857
0.877
1.582
1.037
1.368
0.811
1.18
1.007
1.39
0.9316666667
Eco Web Hosting
0.329
0.207
0.522
0.165
0.196
0.213
0.322
0.717
0.211
0.832
0.71
0.708
0.4276666667
GoDaddy
0.303
0.471
0.471
0.459
0.47
1.536
1.124
1.396
0.815
1.242
1.031
1.259
0.8814166667
GreenGeeks
0.258
0.246
0.261
0.319
0.495
0.813
0.699
0.721
0.588
0.641
0.482
0.695
0.5181666667
HostXNow
0.53
0.856
0.877
0.202
0.366
0.865
1.5
0.819
1.366
1.504
1.065
0.688
0.8865
ICDSoft
0.273
0.479
0.47
0.592
0.64
1.231
1.425
1.117
1.02
1.204
0.83
1.088
0.8640833333
InMotion Hosting
0.203
0.52
0.399
0.548
0.818
1.425
1.472
1.262
1.205
1.648
0.849
1.252
0.96675
Krystal Hosting
0.22
0.511
0.485
0.49
0.546
1.348
1.318
1.214
1.21
1.416
0.736
1.241
0.8945833333
Lightning Base
0.317
0.342
0.335
0.601
0.791
1.383
1.035
1.327
0.799
1.035
0.848
1.345
0.8465
ManagedWPHosting
0.641
1.009
0.935
0.225
0.159
1.026
1.355
0.867
1.605
1.748
1.275
0.817
0.9718333333
MechanicWeb
0.605
0.821
0.848
0.122
0.189
0.845
1.501
0.768
1.403
1.467
1.105
0.681
0.8629166667
Nexcess
0.33
0.486
0.454
0.55
1.192
1.669
1.34
1.454
1.009
1.618
1.154
1.845
1.09175
Pressable
0.279
0.336
0.318
0.226
0.205
0.286
0.272
0.449
0.309
0.253
0.248
0.482
0.30525
raidboxes
0.603
0.915
0.824
0.183
0.176
0.878
0.924
0.712
1.285
1.539
1.134
0.673
0.8205
RSHosting.com
0.647
0.265
0.238
0.848
0.901
1.499
1.081
1.372
0.788
0.957
1.069
1.427
0.9243333333
Sailed.io
0.227
0.45
0.375
0.472
0.529
1.22
1.214
1.049
0.822
1.123
0.69
1.003
0.7645
SiteGround
0.564
0.637
0.518
0.886
0.972
1.747
1.621
1.77
1.353
1.517
1.203
1.608
1.199666667
VapourHost
0.718
0.925
0.874
0.27
0.209
0.889
0.889
0.727
1.243
1.56
1.214
0.696
0.8511666667
WPCycle
0.333
0.459
0.412
0.626
0.845
1.344
1.28
1.221
0.911
1.165
0.835
1.131
0.8801666667
WPX
0.17
0.165
0.192
0.126
0.138
0.851
0.129
0.147
0.133
0.17
0.128
0.236
0.2154166667
Discussion
WPX had the fastest average response times and was the fastest in 10/12 locations.
MechanicWeb and EcoWebHosting picked up the other two fastest single location scores.
Pressable had the second fastest average and EcoWebHosting the third fastest average.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
20i
9.289
489.7159647
34SP.com
12.977
474.3833017
Cloudways
7.523
1007.049345
DreamHost
10.188
773.3952049
EasyWP by Namecheap
9.465
848.1764207
Eco Web Hosting
11.879
369.139904
GoDaddy
12.715
534.1880342
GreenGeeks
14.119
1392.75766
HostXNow
5.077
4032.258065
ICDSoft
10.106
1221.001221
InMotion Hosting
10.698
1461.988304
Krystal Hosting
8.768
1769.911504
Lightning Base
7.975
749.6251874
ManagedWPHosting
13.23
139.0240512
MechanicWeb
5.08
2777.777778
Nexcess
7.734
985.2216749
Pressable
10.006
1349.527665
raidboxes
11.122
435.5400697
RSHosting.com
8.974
309.5975232
Sailed.io
10.341
635.3240152
SiteGround
9.757
1295.336788
VapourHost
6.081
2398.081535
WPCycle
15.634
698.8120196
WPX
6.893
2347.41784
Discussion
HostXNow had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores which was the fastest WP Bench of any plan this year.
MechanicWeb was neck and neck with HostXNow on the PHP Bench and a clear second place on the WP Bench.
VapourHost had the third fastest PHP and WP Bench scores.
DreamHost, EasyWP (NameCheap), GreenGeeks, ManagedWPHosting, Raidboxes, and WPCycle all scored an A+.
Everyone else scored an A with the exception of InMotionHosting which scored a B.
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.
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.
20i was tied for 4th fastest average response time and 5th fastest p95 on the Static test. 20i handled the Load Storm test with ease and fell under the new evaluation criteria about P95 scores barely above 1000ms but with stable results. 20i also had perfect and 99.999% uptime. A Top Tier performance for the second year in a row.
34SP handled both the Load Storm and Static test without issue. It had near perfect uptime with both monitors showing in excess of 99.99%. In a crowded field it's hard to stand out, but 34SP put up a Top Tier performance without a single error this year. Well done, after two Honorable Mentions in a row, 34SP finally moved up showing that hard work does pay off.
Cloudways handled the Static test with ease. Cloudways had the same uptime monitoring issue with Hetrix Tools on every plan this year but Uptime Robot showed a perfect uptime. Unfortunately, Cloudways struggled with the Load Storm test which caused the server response times to go very high.
DreamHost handled the static test without issue. DreamHost also had excellent uptime with both monitors above 99.99%. Unfortunately, DreamHost had trouble with the Load Storm test which never errored but did slow down beginning around 450 VUsers.
NameCheap has had a difficult year with much of their staff being based in Ukraine and almost didn't complete the tests this year. They reported that they have been under multiple DDoS attacks and it took an incredible effort to find the resources to participate in the benchmarks. Despite all the adversity, EasyWP had the second fastest login average, third fastest page and fourth fastest P95 on the Load Storm test. EasyWP also handled the Static test without any issues. EasyWP stayed above the 99.9% threshold despite the DDoS attacks. These benchmarks have a no withdrawal policy once the benchmarking is done and NameCheap's situation tested the limit of the policy, but instead of a withdrawal, it is with great pride I can give EasyWP by Namecheap a Top Tier award.
Eco Web Hosting was tied for fourth fastest average response time and had fourth fastest p95 on the Static test. Eco Web Hosting picked up the fastest speed in Cape Town on the WPT benchmark and third fastest average. Eco Web Hosting also handled the Load Storm test without issue. Throw in some perfect uptime on both monitors and you've earned a Top Tier award. Congrats.
GoDaddy handled the Static test without issue. GoDaddy also had excellent uptime. GoDaddy mostly handled the Load Storm test well, the only downside was that the wp-login response times were almost 2000ms which kept it out of award contention.
GreenGeeks had the third fastest wp-login on the Load Storm test. GreenGeeks handled the Static test effortlessly. Both uptime monitors showed over 99.99% uptime. Overall, it was a Top Tier performance from Green Geeks.
First time participant HostXNow had the fastest PHP and WP Bench (the fastest of any plan at any price tier). HostXNow also handled the Load Storm and Static test without issue. The blazing fast PHP and WP Bench scores definitely helped this new comer stand out and earn a Top Tier award on their first attempt. Congratulations!
ICDSoft had the fastest login average and tied for fastest wp-login speed, it also had the second fastest page and third fastest p95 on the Load Storm test. ICDSoft was on the faster end of the spectrum on the Static test as well. They kept their uptime above 99.9%. ICDSoft definitely upped their game from last year where they earned an Honorable Mention; this year ICDSoft deserves the Top Tier recognition for their performance. Well done.
InMotion Hosting handled the Static test well. InMotion Hosting also had solid uptime. Unfortunately, there appeared to be some rate limiting blocks on the Load Storm test which caused 429 errors and kept them from earning any recognition this year.
Krystal had perfect uptime. Krystal also handled the Static test easily. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test caused a little stress on the server and slowed down below award recognition levels.
LightningBase handled the Load Storm and Static test without issue. LightningBase had near perfect uptime with both monitors showing above 99.998%. LightningBase is the longest continuous participating company in these benchmarks and it's nice to see them continually do well. They don't always stand out in having the absolute fastest scores or a brand that everyone talks about, but LightningBase has been a model of quiet excellence. LightningBase has earned Top Tier marks from 2014 onwards and this year is no exception. Congrats again on extending the Top Tier streak.
ManagedWPHosting had excellent uptime with both monitors above 99.99%. Unfortunately, the Load Storm and Static test both stressed the server a bit and caused increase response times which keeps them out of award contention.
MechanicWeb tied for the fastest wp-login speed on the Load Storm test. MechanicWeb had the second fastest PHP and WP bench scores. MechanicWeb also had the fastest WPT score in London. MechanicWeb also had excellent uptime with both monitors showing above 99.99%. MechanicWeb also handled the Static test without issue. This first time participant definitely stepped into the ring prepared and put on a good show, congrats on earning Top Tier status MechanicWeb.
Nexcess had the fourth fastest asset and login average speeds on the Load Storm test. Nexcess handled the Static test without any problems. Unfortunately, the uptime fell just below the 99.9% threshold required to earn recognition.
Pressable had the second fastest p95, third fastest asset and login average and fourth fastest page load speed on the Load Storm test. Pressable had the fastest average and p95 on the Static test at a blazing fast 5.9ms and 18ms respectively. Pressable also had perfect and near perfect uptime. Pressable had the second fastest WPT average response time. Pressable put on quite a show of consistently being one of the fastest, well done, Top Tier.
Raidboxes handled the Static test effortlessly. Raidboxes also had near perfect uptime with both monitors showing 99.99%+. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test overwhelmed the server causing slower response times and errors. I hope to see a bounce back next year from Raidboxes.
RSHosting did well on the Static test. RSHosting also kept above the 99.9% uptime threshold. Unfortunately, the Load Storm test started to slow down around 550 VUsers, I hope next year proves the old adage 'Third Time is a Charm' true for RSHosting.
Sailed.io is a first time participant and a bit different from the competition. Sailed.io offers a free and open source platform/tool for you to use to deploy your WordPress sites onto Digital Ocean. They have a premium option with paid support as well, but you're responsible to deploy Sailed onto your own droplets. Sailed.io asked to participate in the benchmarks to show their performance and after some discussion, I accepted and I'm happy to have them. But I also want to make sure readers are aware that Sailed isn't like a traditional WordPress host.
Sailed had perfect uptime. It also handled the Static test without blinking. The Load Storm test did overwhelm the server starting at 900 VUsers where it slowed down a bit. Overall, it was a pretty good first run. For a tool that's available for free to deploy on your own Digital Ocean machines, it certainly puts pressure on the competition.
SiteGround had the fastest P95 and page load speeds along with the second fastest asset response times on the Load Storm test. SiteGround had the second fastest p95 and third fastest average response time on the Static test. Both uptime monitors showed 99.99%+ which is excellent. A definite Top Tier performance from SiteGround.
VapourHost had the third fastest PHP and WP Bench scores. VapourHost handled the Static test without issue. Unfortunately, VapourHost had some issues with uptime and it fell below 99.9%. It also struggled with the Load Storm test around 1000 VUsers. VapourHost showed some promise with some fast PHP/WP Bench scores, hopefully this new comer earns some awards next year.
WPCycle had the fourth fastest wp-login speed on the Load Storm test. WPCycle also handled the Static test without issue. Unfortunately the uptime fell below the 99.9% threshold and kept WPCycle out of award contention. Definitely looks promising performance wise, just needs to make sure it is stable to get an award next year.
WPX had the fastest asset load times on the Load Storm test. WPX had the second fastest average response time and third fastest p95 on the Static test. WPX had the fastest average response time in WPT and had fastest single location score in 10/12 locales. WPX did very well and earned itself Top Tier status again.
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.
WooCommerce Hosting Performance Benchmarks is spawned off WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks and is designed to create a consistent set of benchmarks showing how WooCommerce specialized web hosting companies perform. The focus of these tests is performance, not support, not features, not any other dimension. These benchmarks should be looked at in combination with other sources of information when making any hosting decision. Review Signal’s web hosting reviews has insights for some of the companies with regards to aspects beyond performance. That said, for the performance conscious, these benchmarks should be a good guide.
The major differences from the WordPress methodology are the following:
Setup
All tests were performed on an identical WooCommerce dummy website with the same plugins except in cases where hosts added extra plugins or code. The Storefront theme was used with the following sample products. The following Plugins were installed: WooCommerce, and WP Performance Tester.
k6 Load Storm
The process for LoadStorm was the unique WooCommerce specific test emulated from last year into k6. There were four different profiles created and given their own user distributions (in % after profile), all with 5-10 second page think time. The test scaled from 4 to 1000 concurrent users over 40 minutes and stayed at 1,000 concurrent users for 20 minutes (60 minute test, 20 minute peak).
Profile 1 (20%): Buyer – Homepage, add item to cart, go to cart, checkout (doesn’t submit order)
SiteGround had good looking tests, just the response time was a little on the slower side with p95 of 1071 and 3/4 profiles loading over 1000ms on average.
Cloudways started slowing down around 200 VUsers with errors kicking in around 450 which is when login stopped functioning.
Nexcess and Raidboxes both started slowing down around 600 VUsers.
SaveinCloud actually had a great run if you removed a 3 minute window where auto scaling started kicking in. The auto scaling caused some errors/load time increases while getting started, but once it was running the performance was solid and completely recovered.
Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile
This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.
Results Table
Company
Buyer Profile
Customer Profile
Browser Profile
Home Profile
Cart Response Cumavg
Cloudways
51967
50943
49663
51455
7416
GreenGeeks
727
643
623
607
155
ICDSoft
423
411
419
453
164
Nexcess
7423
7231
3962
6911
2586
Pressable
563
401
250
299
204
raidboxes
7167
6911
6175
6527
3852
SaveinCloud
911
639
607
555
377
Servebolt
495
429
403
369
216
SiteGround
1279
1055
855
1031
805
WordPress.com
987
651
373
431
344
Cloudways is the unfortunate standpoint with their response times nearly maxing out.
Nexcess and Raidboxes also slowed down a significant amount on every profile.
Pressable had 3/4 fastest profiles.
Servebolt was consistent top 3 in every profile.
ICDSoft was the fastest in one profile and top 3 in another.
WordPress.com was in the top 3 twice.
GreenGeeks had the fastest cart response time.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
GreenGeeks, Pressable, Raidboxes, SaveInCloud, Servebolt, SiteGround, and WordPress.com all handled this test without issue.
Cloudways and ICDSoft started getting a few minor spikes towards the end of the test, but nothing major.
Nexcess struggled towards the end of the test with response times exceeding 2000ms.
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
Cloudways
99.985
99.8499
GreenGeeks
99.992
99.9895
ICDSoft
99.957
99.9476
Nexcess
99.89
99.8951
Pressable
99.997
100
raidboxes
99.99
99.9882
SaveinCloud
99.85
99.8476
Servebolt
99.998
99.9657
SiteGround
100
99.9942
WordPress.com
100
100
Discussion
GreenGeeks, ICDSoft, Pressable, Raidboxes, Servebolt, SiteGround, and WordPress.com all had good uptime.
Nexcess and SaveInCloud fell just below the 99.9% threshold expected.
Cloudways showed good uptime on one monitor while the second showed good uptime. The issue seemed to be resolving the hostname from HetrixTools. Unfortunately, I don't a third monitor to tie break in this instance.
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
Company
Virginia
California
Salt Lake City
London
Frankfurt
Cape Town
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Dubai
Average
Cloudways
0.574
0.912
0.994
1.019
1.081
2.25
2.239
2.053
1.591
2.053
1.249
2.5
1.542916667
GreenGeeks
0.366
0.393
0.425
0.492
0.586
1.061
1.001
1.03
0.885
0.856
0.693
1.065
0.73775
ICDSoft
0.698
0.901
1.037
0.954
1.152
2.071
2.435
1.901
1.622
1.996
1.274
2.257
1.524833333
Nexcess
0.761
0.87
1.042
1.002
1.542
2.154
1.737
1.817
1.39
2.002
1.537
2.462
1.526333333
Pressable
0.741
0.667
0.933
0.906
0.622
0.91
0.754
1.118
0.886
0.664
0.726
1.403
0.8608333333
raidboxes
1.195
1.552
1.389
0.697
0.57
1.633
1.65
1.25
2.323
2.807
2.117
2.112
1.607916667
SaveinCloud
1.604
1.839
1.676
1.956
2.221
3.038
3.452
3.79
3.087
3.519
0.722
2.977
2.490083333
Servebolt
0.806
0.645
0.946
1.028
0.985
1.54
1.361
1.394
1.125
1.389
1.256
2.448
1.243583333
SiteGround
1.153
0.923
1.218
1.124
1.204
2.274
1.441
1.823
1.383
1.485
1.885
2.935
1.570666667
WordPress.com
0.612
0.551
0.873
0.588
0.608
0.915
0.644
0.602
0.999
0.617
0.638
1.736
0.7819166667
Discussion
GreekGeeks is the surprising standout this year with the fastest average response time globally and notching itself 6/12 fastest response times.
WordPress.com was fastest in 4/12 locations with sister company Pressable just edging it out by 5ms in Cape Town. German company Raidboxes picked up the final fastest location out of their home country with the fastest speed in Frankfurt.
What is impressive is the fastest average time last year was 1.15, this year it was .73 (GreenGeeks) with two more companies - Pressable/WordPress.com - coming in faster than fastest average last year. The second slowest average (1.6) would be the third fastest speed the previous year.
Everyone, especially consumers, looks like a winner given the historical context.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Cloudways
7.568
963.3911368
GreenGeeks
14.88
1148.105626
ICDSoft
10.152
1426.533524
Nexcess
7.732
966.1835749
Pressable
10.13
1356.852103
raidboxes
7.964
737.4631268
SaveinCloud
10.914
560.2240896
Servebolt
5.839
2178.649237
SiteGround
9.406
1468.428781
WordPress.com
9.647
2463.054187
Discussion
Version 2 of the plugin was used, so we cannot compare against previous years.
Servebolt was the fastest by a decent margin on the PHP Bench.
GreenGeeks was the slowest with a score almost 3 times as high as Servebolt. It does show us that raw CPU doesn't necessarily translate to the best performance though.
WordPress.com had the fastest WP Bench with Servebolt not too far behind.
Cloudways, Nexcess, Raidboxes and SaveInCloud had the slowest WP Bench scores, which interesting correlated with who struggled on the Load Storm test (although SaveInCloud's autoscaling handled it). A database heavy system like WooCommerce might have more correlation with WP Bench scores in terms of performance.
In the words of Oprah, you get an A, you get an A, you get an A.
Everyone gets an A.
GreenGeeks, Raidboxes and WordPress.com all got 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.
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.
Cloudways had a pretty good static test, a few bumps but nothing much to complain about there. Cloudways unfortunately struggled tremendously on the WooCommerce (Load Storm) test. I can't help but wonder if the low WP Bench score correlates with difficulty on the WooCommerce test. Would a faster CPU/DB help?
A huge congratulations to GreenGeeks who elevated from Honorable Mention to Top Tier status this year. After being on the edge previously, they continued to improve. GreenGeeks had the second fastest Asset/Login CumAvg and the fastest wp login. However, the biggest surprise was GreenGeeks had the fastest WPT test average and was the fastest in half the testing locations. Well done.
First time participant ICDSoft made quite a splash this year. The WooCommerce test had ICDSoft with fastest Login CumAvg and buyer profile. It was also pretty consistently in the top 4 on most of the other metrics on that test. It did respectably in all the other tests. The only minor issue was the static test, the average response time started go over 1000ms towards the very end of the test. ICDSoft earned itself a very honorable mention.
Nexcess had the third fastest PHP bench score. Overall, nexcess had another difficult year on these bechmarks Both load tests caused some struggles and the uptime fell just below the 99.9% threshold. I hope to see some big improvements next year.
Pressable's third Top Tier performance in a row. Consistent excellence. The fastest p95 and the fastest in 3/4 WooCommerce profiles. The second fastest Static load speeds. 100% and 99.99+% on uptime monitors. They had third fastest WPT average. Undoubtedly Top Tier.
The bright spots for Raidboxes were they were the fastest response time in Frankfurt, Germany. They also had excellent uptime and an A+ rating on their SSL certificate. The static load test was also very good, it was perfectly flat showing zero signs of stress. The less fortunate side was it struggled tremendously with the WooCommerce (Load Storm) load test quite a lot.
SaveInCloud's first foray into the WooCommerce benchmark was a mixed experience. The WooCommerce (LoadStorm) test showed so much promise, if we simply removed a 3 minute window of auto scaling it would have been excellent. But the auto scaling did cause errors and load time increases. There looks to be a lot of potential in SaveInCloud's product, hopefully next year it will come back and earn Top Tier honors.
Servebolt earning Top Tier status shouldn't come as any surprise. They've been one of the most consistent Top Tier performers in these benchmarks. Servebolt had the fastest PHP Bench, the second fastest WP Bench. Their load tests had the strange pattern of actually getting faster as the test sent more users. They were in the top 3 for every different customer profile and had the second fastest p95 in the Woo specific load test. Easily a Top Tier performance.
Overall a great performance from SiteGround this year. It had the third fastest static load speeds. It had 100% and 99.99+% uptime. It had the third fastest WP Bench. The only knock on SiteGround was the p95 and some of the profiles in the WooCommerce test just went over 1000ms. SiteGround has earned itself a very Honorable Mention this year.
The fastest p95 on the static test at 21ms shows WordPress.com's global caching is excellent. WordPress.com also had the fastest Page load speeds (PageCumAvg). The only company with perfect uptime on both monitor. The fastest WP Bench. The second fastest WPT average and fastest in 33% of locations. Another well deserved Top Tier award for WordPress.com.
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.
Flywheel, GridPane, Jelastic, Pantheon, Pressable, Presslabs, Seravo, Servebolt and WPVIP all handled this test without issue. It's impressive how the average response time for every company was below 200ms.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
No company struggled with the Load Impact test. Jelastic had a very strange looking graph with response times bouncing up and down, possibly an auto scaling issue? GridPane's graph looked like there was an increasing in load but the peak was under 300ms, it really isn't an issue.
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
Flywheel
100
100
GridPane.com
100
100
Pantheon
100
100
Pressable
100
100
Presslabs
100
100
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
99.979
99.99
Seravo
99.984
100
Servebolt
99.581
100
99.99
WordPress VIP
100
100
Discussion
No companies had any uptime issues.
Servebolt also had a discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake uptime. One showed a very low 99.581 and the other 100. The third monitor I setup showed 99.99%, so I went with the StatusCake number.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
Flywheel
0.351
0.433
0.352
0.353
0.371
0.417
0.41
0.439
0.381
0.4995833333
1.058
0.91
GridPane.com
0.45
0.783
1.054
1.032
2.091
2.443
1.581
2.161
1.179
1.451916667
2.321
1.547
Pantheon
0.472
0.569
0.61
0.632
0.885
0.988
1.006
0.954
0.688
0.9871666667
3.26
1.13
Pressable
0.473
0.957
1.238
1.172
2.309
2.039
1.85
2.335
1.322
1.654666667
3.217
2.027
Presslabs
0.66
0.854
0.369
0.389
0.367
0.565
0.604
0.468
1.556
0.7021666667
1.102
0.881
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
0.634
0.92
0.325
0.419
1.316
0.847
1.632
1.506
1.131
1.114166667
2.522
1.048
Seravo
0.342
0.401
0.46
0.345
0.527
0.57
0.368
0.438
0.35
0.5310833333
1.02
0.973
Servebolt
0.426
0.645
0.639
0.671
1.053
0.99
0.847
1.065
0.784
0.8994166667
1.769
1.213
WordPress VIP
0.421
0.531
0.704
0.722
1.618
1.451
1.037
1.271
0.698
0.989
1.593
1.16
Discussion
Flywheel and Seravo were neck and neck with Flywheel edging out Seravo by 31ms for fastest average load time. Pressable was the slowest in 7/12 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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Flywheel
8.852
357.1428571
GridPane.com
6.093
923
Pantheon
11.098
226.3980077
Pressable
6.284
1344.086022
Presslabs
6.712
1242.236025
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
7.524
314.861461
Seravo
6.12
820.3445447
Servebolt
3.292
2037
WordPress VIP
9.875
854.7008547
Discussion
Servebolt stood out being the fastest PHP Bench and WP Bench. GridPane, Pressable, Presslabs and Seravo all had faster PHP bench scores than the second fastest company last year (Presslabs); so it's nice to see the whole field getting faster.
*GridPane.com couldn't run the WPPerformanceTester plugin because of the database layer they run wasn't compatible (LudicrousDB). The same commands were executed manually that the WPPerformanceTester does against the system to replicate the numbers.
GridPane, Pantheon, Presslabs and Seravo all earned A+ ratings. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
Perfect uptime. The fastest WebPageTest average response time. Second and third fastest Load Impact and Load Storm average response speed respectively. A well deserved Top Tier performance.
One of the new entrants in this years test, GridPane only competed at the Enterprise tier to likely send a message that says we're here and we're serious. Well the results say, welcome to the club. Perfect uptime and the second fastest Load Storm average response time combined with a miniscule 3 total errors on both load tests say GridPane is here to perform. The only improvement I would like to see is better scores on WebPageTest where outside of US/Europe it wasn't as fast as some of the competition. Overall, happy to see GridPane show us that another Top Tier Enterprise performer is here.
Pantheon had perfect uptime and the third fastest Load Impact peak average response time. There isn't much to say other than they earned a Top Tier performance and had a nice improvement in the Load Storm test compared to last year with fewer errors and half the average response time.
Pressable had perfect uptime and only 5 total errors on both load tests. I'd like to see faster response times globally but it was a Top Tier performance for sure.
This small company has participated many years and continues to impress with yet another Top Tier performance. Perfect uptime. 1 error total on the load tests was the lowest total of any company. The third fastest average response time on WebPageTest. Well done Presslabs.
Jelastic competed in many tiers and I was excited to see them figure out a way to balance their slightly different billing scheme to fit into these tests. Their platform scaled all the way up to the Enterprise tier, showing that it can handle tremendous loads without struggling. It earned Top Tier recognition in yet another tier, well done.
The third new Enterprise Tier entrant didn't disappoint. Seravo was neck and neck with Flywheel for the fastest average response time globally on WebPageTest. They had a total of 6 errors on excellent load tests. Welcome to the Top Tier Seravo.
Servebolt continued it's dominance in the WPPerformanceTester results into the Enterprise Tier being the fastest by a solid margin again on both PHP and WP Bench. They also managed the fastest average response time on Load Storm and kept a global average response time under 1000ms on WebPageTest which put them in 4th place. Another Top Tier performance by Servebolt.
Perfect uptime. 3 total errors across both load tests. The fastest peak average response time on Load Impact. WordPress VIP continues to deliver Top Tier performances.
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.
Jelastic, Pressable, Raidboxes and Servebolt all handled the Load Impact test without issue.
Cloudways started to slow down around 3250 users and peak average response time increased to 1100.
Nestify started to slow down around 2500 users and peak average response time went to almost 1500ms.
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
Cloudways
100
100
Nestify
100
100
Pressable
100
100
RAIDBOXES
99.999
100
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
98.587
99.99
98.56
Servebolt
99.583
99.99
99.98
Discussion
Cloudways, Nestify, Pressable, and Raidboxes had perfect or 99.999% uptime.
Jelastic had very different uptimes based on the monitors with UptimeRobot showing 98.587% and StatusCake showing 99.99%. The third monitor showed 98.56% which was inline with UptimeRobot, so I went with that being correct.
Servebolt also had a discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake uptime. One showed a very low 99.583 and the other 99.99. The third monitor I setup showed 99.98%, so I went with the StatusCake number.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
Cloudways
0.337
0.639
0.658
0.732
1.722
1.55
1.273
1.525
1.019
1.11025
2.02
1.187
Nestify
0.486
1.13
1.697
1.623
3.246
3.538
2.357
2.903
1.815
2.174083333
4.26
2.077
Pressable
0.521
1.01
1.311
1.259
2.243
1.971
1.757
2.191
1.513
1.6685
3.31
1.92
RAIDBOXES
0.875
1.456
0.428
0.369
1.373
1.069
2.387
2.408
1.775
1.350333333
1.984
0.893
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
1.122
2.182
0.304
0.417
3.616
1.791
3.39
4.121
3.008
2.162083333
3.106
1.019
Servebolt
0.475
0.617
0.582
0.713
1.052
0.987
0.881
1.087
0.795
0.8981666667
1.68
1.218
Discussion
Servebolt was the fastest in 7/12 locations and had the fastest average response time. Jelastic was the slowest in 7/12 and fastest in 1. Nestify was the slowest in 5/12.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Cloudways
7.538
689.1798759
Nestify
7.486
742.9420505
Pressable
6.215
1367.989056
RAIDBOXES
5.644
938.0863039
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
7.649
1213.592233
Servebolt
3.281
1992.031873
Discussion
The speed on this test was impressive. Servebolt was clearly the fastest on both tests but the numbers were an astonishing improvement over last year. The second fastest score last year on PHP Bench was 9.388 and the slowest this year was 7.649, nearly a two second improvement. Some of this could be because there are a different mix of companies but three of them are the same. Servebolt got faster by ~500ms and ~500 queries per second. Pressable improved by 4000ms and 900 queries per second. Cloudways improved by 1900ms and 260 queries per second. It's nice to see continuous improvements being made across the board.
Raidboxes was the only company to achieve an A+ rating. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
Overall a very good performance from Cloudways. Perfect uptime. Improved speeds from last years WPPerformanceTester results. Just a minor slow down during Load Impact kept them from earning Top Tier honors.
Nestify had perfect uptime. A perfect looking Load Storm test with zero errors and flat response times. The only issue was Load Impact slowed down starting around 2300 users and kept climbing upwards to around 1.5s average response time. Very borderline on earning an Honorable Mention, just a bit better next year will earn some them recognition.
Pressable had perfect uptime and Load Impact test. In fact, they had the fastest peak average response time of any company in this price tier. The only issue was Load Storm caused some increased response times with it slowly climbing to over 1300ms at points. It was borderline on the honorable mention, but the response times went a bit too high. A little better and Pressable would be earning honors at this tier.
One of the standout new entrants this year earned Top Tier status right off the bat. 99.999% uptime and up. Zero errors on both load tests. Hard to ask for a better performance, but they also had the fastest PHP bench score of a company not named Servebolt across any price tier. Well done Raidboxes and congrats on the Top Tier marks.
Excellent performance from this new comer except for the uptime issue. They didn't have this issue in other tiers, so I am optimistic next year they will earn Top Tier status.
Speed, speed, speed. Servebolt had the fastest response times on Load Storm and WebPageTest. They also were in a class of their own on WPPerformanceTester. The Top Tier status was well deserved for Servebolt.
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.
Jelastic, Pantheon, Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt and WPOven didn't experience any issues with the Load Impact test.
1&1 IONOS ran into security measures again and experienced a lot of errors.
Cloudways experienced some stress and response times increased substantially starting around 1200 users.
Nestify started experiencing load around 2500 and increased slightly to 1s average response time.
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
Cloudways
100
100
IONOS
99.986
99.99
Nestify
100
100
Pantheon
100
100
Pressable
100
100
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
99.99
99.99
Seravo
100
100
Servebolt
99.582
99.99
99.99
WPOven
100
100
Discussion
Every company did well maintaining above 99.98% uptime. The only issue was a strange discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake on Servebolt's uptime. One showed a very low 99.582 and the other 99.99. The third monitor I setup showed 99.99%, so the issue appears to be with Uptime Robot.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
Cloudways
1
0.623
0.698
0.743
1.638
1.538
1.139
1.577
0.992
1.1465
2.029
1.197
IONOS
0.675
0.697
1.006
1.141
1.834
2.047
1.239
1.882
1.454
1.42275
2.939
1.57
Nestify
0.475
1.148
1.432
1.518
3.229
3.533
2.598
2.92
1.823
2.118166667
3.775
2.047
Pantheon
0.436
0.588
0.534
0.59
0.875
0.874
1.092
0.896
0.673
0.9809166667
3.265
1.145
Pressable
0.391
1.008
1.224
1.188
2.322
2.226
1.78
2.245
1.324
1.646166667
3.367
1.868
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
0.822
1.563
0.384
0.361
2.815
1.518
2.76
2.965
2.317
1.658916667
2.12
0.976
Seravo
0.428
0.656
0.822
1.04
2.213
1.962
1.465
2.073
1.35
1.37025
2.474
1.379
Servebolt
0.454
0.59
0.561
0.652
1.047
1.182
1.045
1.092
0.749
0.9150833333
1.797
1.173
WPOven
0.43
0.76
0.903
0.907
1.796
1.671
1.459
1.659
1.02
1.22975
2.275
1.205
Discussion
Pantheon picked up the fastest response times in 5/12 locations. Servebolt ended up being the fastest in only two locations but had the fastest average overall being near the fastest in most locaations. Nestify didn't stand out well here being slowest in 6/12 locales and second slowest in 5/12. Jelastic was the slowest in 5 locations, second slowest in 2 locations and the fastest in 3 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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Cloudways
7.605
628.1407035
IONOS
10.029
370.5075954
Nestify
7.487
753.0120482
Pantheon
8.996
309.8853424
Pressable
6.213
1297.016861
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
7.888
1314.060447
Seravo
8.029
463.6068614
Servebolt
3.275
2049.180328
WPOven
11.831
497.2650423
Discussion
Servebolt blew away the competition on this test recording near 50% faster scores on both PHP bench and WP bench than the next fastest competitors. The competition wasn't slow either, Pressable's PHP bench was a near 50% improvement over their own score last year too.
No company achieved an A+ rating. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
1&1 IONOS was marred by security measures that couldn't be worked around. Their uptime was solid, but the load tests just had too many errors which seemed like were triggered by security features because response times were remaining flat.
Nestify's perfect uptime was a great start. 1 error total between both load tests. The only issue was the response times increased around 2500 users on Load Impact to over 1000ms which meant Nestify earned Honorable Mention status.
100% uptime. Effortless load test results including the fastest Load Impact average response time. Often the fastest response times on WebPageTest with the second fastest average load time overall. A solid showing earned Pantheon Top Tier status.
Perfect uptime. Incredibly fast Load Impact results with zero errors and second fastest peak average load time. The only thing that kept Pressable from earning Top Tier status was Load Storm slowing down responses from 500ms to 1100ms during the test. Honorable Mention well earned.
Servebolt prides themselves on speed. They were blazingly fast on WPPerformanceTester. They had the fastest average response time on WebPageTest. They had the fastest Load Storm average response time. Top Tier honors were easily awarded to Servebolt.
A relatively unknown provider which intermittently participates in these benchmarks. Each time they seem to do quite well earning Top Tier honors for the third time in a row this year. Perfect uptime and excellent load tests will do that. Well done and welcome back WPOven.
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.
1&1 IONOS, Cloudways, HighAvailability, Jelastic, LightningBase, Nestify, Pressable, Servebolt and WPX Hosting didn't have any issues.
A2 Hosting started slowing down around 1600 users and average response times went up substantially. DreamHost started slowing down around 1300 users but didn't have a single error.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
Cloudways, High Availability, Jelastic, LightningBase, Nestify, Pressable, Servebolt and WPX Hosting didn't have any issues.
1&1 IONOS slowed down around 1050 users. A2 Hosting collapsed with an average response time spiking to over 48 seconds. DreamHost started slowing down around 1400 users but didn't error out.
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
99.993
99.99
Cloudways
99.982
99.92
DreamHost
100
100
highavailability.io
99.997
100
IONOS
100
100
Lightning Base
100
100
Nestify
100
100
Pressable
100
100
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
99.99
99.99
Servebolt
99.583
99.99
99.99
WPX
100
99.99
Discussion
Every company did well maintaining above 99.9% uptime. The only issue was a strange discrepancy between UptimeRobot and StatusCake on Servebolt's uptime. One showed a very low 99.583 and the other 99.99. The third monitor I setup showed 99.99%, so the issue appears to be with Uptime Robot.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
A2Hosting
0.829
0.6
1.453
1.578
2.114
2.653
1.458
2.13
1.839
1.770833333
3.448
2.496
Cloudways
0.389
0.689
0.73
0.805
1.783
1.838
1.249
1.747
0.98
1.174083333
2.086
1.211
DreamHost
0.405
0.252
0.65
0.745
0.83
1.25
0.531
0.961
0.888
0.83125
1.734
1.174
highavailability.io
0.346
0.555
0.761
0.983
1.482
1.987
1.091
1.382
1.054
1.1535
2.272
1.337
IONOS
0.654
0.801
1.274
1.364
2.314
2.851
1.777
2.293
2.705
1.88775
3.877
1.875
Lightning Base
0.45
0.58
0.922
0.967
1.74
2.075
1.142
1.776
1.254
1.261416667
2.136
1.482
Nestify
0.446
1.151
1.522
1.628
3.259
3.496
2.454
2.971
1.828
2.152583333
4.156
2.015
Pressable
0.465
1.069
1.212
1.337
2.258
2.17
1.746
2.111
1.4
1.663166667
3.258
1.964
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
0.897
1.51
0.292
0.372
2.578
1.312
2.556
2.947
2.177
1.594416667
2.128
0.996
Servebolt
0.394
0.623
0.643
0.649
1.094
1.174
1.051
1.089
0.791
0.9419166667
1.758
1.209
WPX
0.421
0.667
0.918
1.183
1.682
2.61
1.337
2.192
1.92
1.469916667
2.781
1.391
Discussion
DreamHost did shockingly well being the fastest in 5/12 locations and the second fastest in 3/12. Servebolt was the fastest in 2 locations and second in 6 more. Jelastic had a confusing performance of being the fastest in 1 location and slowest in 3 and second slowest in an additional 3 more. Nestify didn't stand out in a good way being the slowest in 6/12 locales.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
A2Hosting
11.458
953.2888465
Cloudways
7.948
722.5433526
DreamHost
7.654
1013.171226
highavailability.io
10.23
29.64719834
IONOS
10.755
523.5602094
Lightning Base
6.383
871.0801394
Nestify
7.481
808.4074373
Pressable
7.904
877.9631255
Scaleforce powered by Jelastic
7.715
1503.759398
Servebolt
3.298
2155.172414
WPX
8.407
713.7758744
Discussion
Servebolt stole the show here with completing the PHP bench in nearly half the time of the next fastest competitor. Servebolt also had the fastest WP bench by over 40% and almost two orders of magnitude faster than the slowest WP bench. But both the slowest and fastest WP bench scores were able to handle the load tests without issue showing that different architectures with different trade offs can both perform well.
No company scored an A+. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
The good news was A2 Hosting had over 99.99% uptime on both monitors. The bad news is they failed both load tests with response times rising significantly. Not sure what happened this year but hopefully they make some improvements next year and do much better.
Zero errors on both load tests and no impact on response times, one of only two companies in this price tier that managed to pull off the perfect load tests. Congrats on earning Top Tier status.
DreamHost managed perfect uptime and zero load testing errors. DreamHost also had the fastest average load speed on WebPageTest. The problem was keeping the response times down during load testing, the servers slowed on both tests causing response times to rise substantially. DreamHost manages to do well, but just not well enough, I hope to see them do a little bit better next year and earn some more recognition.
Perfect uptime and an almost perfect Load Storm test were a great start. Unfortunately, the Load Impact test proved to be a bit too much. Hopefully next year improvements in the static caching will let them earn Top Tier status.
Consistency seems to define Lightning Base. Perfect uptime. Only 7 errors total on load testing. For the sixth year in a row across every tier they've participated in, Lightning Base has earned Top Tier status. This year is no exception, consistently excellent performance that doesn't get enough recognition.
Perfect uptime. 1 error during the load tests. The only thing I'd like to see improved is the global response times which are a non impacting measurement. Nestify definitely earned their Top Tier status this year. congratulations.
Shaky uptime was an issue in the past, but perfect uptime this year shows Pressable has really stepped it up. The load tests went well, especially having the fastest Load Impact response times. It's nice seeing positive improvements leading to Pressable earning Top Tier status again.
Servebolt's second year was kind to them. Their new servers blew away the competition on WPPerformanceTester and it wasn't even close. Servebolt also managed the fastest average response time on Load Storm and the second fastest average response time on WebPageTest. Servebolt is really pushing hard on the speed button and it earned them another Top Tier performance.
WPX had near perfect uptime and did excellent on both load tests. It wasn't flashy but they were the third fastest average response on Load Storm and second fastest on Load Impact. A consistently great performance which got them another Top Tier award this year.
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.
WordPress.com Business (Automattic), HighAvailability, Nestify, Onyx, Pantheon, Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt, SiteGround and WPX Hosting all handled this test without any issues.
1&1 IONOS and Cloudways slowed down but didn't error out.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
1&1 IONOS, WordPress.com Business (Automattic), HighAvailability, Nestify, Onyx, Pantheon, Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt, SiteGround and WPX Hosting all handled this test without issue.
Cloudways slowed down and had peak average response time climb to almost 1.5s.
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
Cloudways
100
100
highavailability.io
100
100
IONOS
99.999
99.99
Nestify
100
100
Onyx (Krystal Hosting)
99.998
100
Pantheon
100
100
Pressable
100
100
Seravo
100
100
Servebolt
99.946
99.96
99.94
SiteGround
100
99.99
WordPress.com
100
100
WPX
100
99.99
Discussion
Everyone maintained uptime above 99.9% including with 11/12 keeping 99.99% or higher.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
Cloudways
0.378
0.751
0.781
0.806
1.821
1.907
1.235
1.73
0.99
1.19075
2.076
1.147
highavailability.io
0.412
0.577
0.971
0.815
1.873
2.402
1.073
1.338
1.18
1.229416667
2.273
1.274
IONOS
0.663
0.925
1.212
1.52
2.905
2.593
2.974
2.684
1.769
2.0165
3.921
1.952
Nestify
0.485
1.145
1.536
1.601
3.138
3.531
2.469
2.913
1.911
2.162916667
4.197
2.036
Onyx (Krystal Hosting)
0.681
1.413
0.371
0.391
2.085
2.136
2.019
2.531
1.596
1.473833333
2.104
1.075
Pantheon
0.511
0.475
0.558
0.853
0.924
0.956
0.876
0.847
0.997
1.02275
3.391
1.115
Pressable
0.543
0.897
0.958
0.882
1.764
2.237
1.445
1.649
1.596
1.422666667
2.558
1.661
Seravo
0.513
0.68
0.942
1.13
2.23
1.964
1.532
1.855
1.426
1.36825
2.136
1.464
Servebolt
0.655
0.907
0.457
0.454
1.08
0.974
1.161
1.366
1.051
0.9669166667
1.584
1.058
SiteGround
0.549
0.796
1.072
1.158
2.425
2.421
1.737
2.39
1.602
1.60075
2.823
1.608
WordPress.com
0.768
0.588
1.109
1.206
1.068
2.122
0.798
1.16
1.22
1.278
2.938
1.581
WPX
0.47
0.657
1.026
1.081
1.748
2.427
1.44
2.245
1.919
1.499333333
2.825
1.445
Discussion
1&1 IONOS and Nestify stand out as the two slowest around the globe being first or second in 8/12 locales together. Onyx, the UK based company, was the fastest in London and Frankfurt, which is nice to see that geography seems to make an impact. Servebolt picked up the fastest average response time at just under a second average across the 12 locales.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
Cloudways
8.486
498.2561036
highavailability.io
10.392
27.53910553
IONOS
10.774
407.3319756
Nestify
7.486
777.6049767
Onyx (Krystal Hosting)
11.083
257.003341
Pantheon
9.793
273.5978112
Pressable
6.217
1375.515818
Seravo
7.926
485.2013586
Servebolt
2.436
2403.846154
SiteGround
7.425
1297.016861
WordPress.com
6.255
2066.115702
WPX
8.389
699.3006993
Discussion
The clear standout here is Servebolt with some of the fastest times I've ever seen. WordPress.com Business isn't too far back with both of them breaking them 2000 mark on WP bench (which is more than double WordPress.com Business' score last year). The highest score in any tier last year was in 1700 range (from Servebolt and High Availability[under old IWW brand]), so this is a drastic improvement.
Pantheon is the only company that achieved an A+ rating. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
Cloudways had perfect uptime on both monitors which was good. The problem was the load tests caused the server to slow down and have high response times.
100% uptime is really nice to see. 0 Load Impact errors and a miniscule 18 errors on Load Storm wrap up an overall excellent performance, well deserving of Top Tier honors.
1&1 IONOS overall had a much stronger showing here than in the tier below. The server didn't error out on any tests. It kept excellent uptime. The only issue was Load Storm seemed to slow down the server to over 2s average load times which kept it out of earning any recognition.
This UK brand (owned by Krystal Hosting) earned itself their first Top Tier honors ever. Dedicated to Managed WordPress Hosting, the new offering really showed off well with near perfect uptime of 100 and 99.998%. It was also the fastest in London and Frankfurt on WebPageTest.
Pantheon has historically done very well in these tests and this year was no exception. Perfect uptime. The absolute fastest Load Impact response time at a blazing 23ms. They were also the fastest on WebPageTest from 4/12 locales. A Top Tier performance without question.
Perfect uptime. The second fastest average response time on Load Storm (only beat by WordPress.com Business which are both owned by Automattic). Pressable also had the second fastest PHP bench score. Well deserved on another Top Tier performance this year.
The only truly new entrant in this price tier put on excellent showing with perfect uptime, zero errors on Load Impact and only three errors on Load Storm. Nice to see new entrant do so spectacularly and earn Top Tier status.
The second year for Servebolt has treated them well. They haven't missed a beat with near perfect load tests. They stood out the most on the WPPerformanceTester benchmark where they blew away the numbers from last year. Top Tier performance again.
Near perfect uptime. A total of one error on both load tests. It wasn't flashy in any of the results but it handled all the tests gracefully and earned another Top Tier mark this year.
The other Automattic brand. It appears there may be some similarities in infrastructure with sister brand Pressable. They had similar PHP bench scores which were very fast. They also shared perfect uptime. An excellent brand to be sharing a lot in common with. WordPress.com Business stood out in having the fastest average response on Load Storm and the second fastest on Load Impact. They also had the second fastest WP bench score. Another year, another Top Tier performance well earned.
WPX Hosting had 100/99.99% uptime marks. Their average response times on both load tests was in the snappy 100ms range. WPX earned themselves Top Tier honors again this year.
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.
34SP, A2 Hosting, DreamHost, GoDaddy, GreenGeeks, HighAvailability, Krystal Hosting, LightningBase, Raidboxes, SiteGround, TVC.Net, WPCycle and WPX Hosting all handled the Load Storm test without any issues. Wetopi had a few errors but overall quite good at a minimal 0.37% error rate.
1&1 IONOS appeared to have security features that couldn't be worked around, they maintained a constant response time and error rate. ChemiCloud had some wp-login security issues and hit the limitations of the plan. Cloudways slowed down and response times increased. Flywheel was overwhelmed by the test. InMotion Hosting was overwhelmed by the test as well. NameCheap struggled to keep up with the test.
K6 Static Testing Results
K6 Static test is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.
A2 Hosting, ChemiCloud, Flywheel, GoDaddy, GreenGeeks, High Availability, InMotion Hosting, LightningBase, Namecheap, Raidboxes, SiteGround, TVCNet, and WPX Hosting all handled the Load Impact test without any issues.
34SP had a couple spikes but overall did pretty well. DreamHost saw some small spikes and increased response times. Krystal generally handled it well except for a couple spikes.
Cloudways, Wetopi and WPCycle didn't error out but saw a substantial increase in response times.
1&1 IONOS had over 5000 errors on each test and slow response times which the company said was due to its webshield security features which couldn't be turned off.
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
34SP.com
99.963
99.94
A2Hosting
100
99.99
ChemiCloud
100
100
Cloudways
100
100
DreamHost
99.97
99.95
EasyWP by Namecheap
99.748
99.75
Flywheel
100
100
GoDaddy
99.993
99.96
GreenGeeks
99.894
99.96
99.9
highavailability.io
99.999
100
InMotion Hosting
99.938
99.94
IONOS Shared
99.994
100
IONOS WP
99.94
99.97
Krystal Hosting
99.999
100
Lightning Base
100
100
RAIDBOXES
99.999
100
SiteGround
100
99.99
TVC.Net
99.84
99.87
Wetopi
99.992
99.98
WPCycle
99.414
99.5
WPX
99.999
99.99
Discussion
Most companies did fine maintaining above 99.9% uptime.
GreenGeeks had conflicting monitors of 99.96% and 99.894%, so a tiebreak monitor was checked which showed 99.9% making it the most borderline result I've ever encountered.
Namecheap, TVCNet and WPCycle experienced downtime which kept them below 99.9% threshold.
*SiteGround had one downtime event which was caused by me not verifying the test domain which I discounted from the uptime monitoring.
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
Company
Virginia
California
London
Frankfurt
Singapore
Mumbai
Tokyo
Sydney
Brazil
Average
Rose Hill Mauritius
Israel
34SP.com
0.823
1.334
0.521
0.393
2.013
1.269
2.35
2.935
1.731
1.453166667
1.885
0.889
A2Hosting
0.566
0.743
0.983
1.081
1.93
1.837
1.554
2.09
1.424
1.391916667
2.406
1.456
ChemiCloud
0.344
0.772
0.771
0.867
2.006
1.781
1.334
1.907
1.091
1.24175
2.176
1.273
Cloudways
0.426
0.685
0.681
0.798
1.772
1.903
1.296
1.781
0.987
1.193833333
2.177
1.235
DreamHost
0.531
0.284
0.88
0.744
0.805
1.361
0.55
0.964
0.877
0.8611666667
1.726
1.15
EasyWP by Namecheap
0.685
0.521
1.382
1.474
1.813
2.213
1.252
1.683
1.717
1.48675
2.623
1.815
Flywheel
0.362
0.374
0.412
0.346
0.352
0.414
0.373
0.463
0.368
0.48575
1.006
0.824
GoDaddy
0.604
0.896
0.909
0.989
1.505
2.38
1.292
1.972
1.704
1.446416667
2.338
1.58
GreenGeeks
0.533
0.616
0.744
0.818
1.699
1.545
1.264
1.917
1.218
1.18525
2.042
1.244
highavailability.io
0.458
0.513
0.868
0.958
1.554
2.222
1.249
1.334
1.102
1.198166667
2.263
1.246
InMotion Hosting
0.372
0.687
0.751
0.79
1.811
1.482
1.468
1.679
1.051
1.1845
2.252
1.185
IONOS Shared
0.63
0.739
1.136
1.219
2.02
2.258
1.453
2.062
1.479
1.527833333
2.987
1.572
IONOS WP
0.714
0.749
1.045
1.29
1.867
2.243
1.513
1.916
1.622
1.52675
2.964
1.598
Krystal Hosting
0.85
1.494
0.479
0.463
2.252
1.209
2.235
2.688
1.764
1.506583333
2.512
0.921
Lightning Base
0.478
0.577
0.901
1.081
1.614
2.167
1.139
1.831
1.374
1.278416667
2.109
1.423
RAIDBOXES
0.805
1.399
0.417
0.431
1.346
1.059
2.226
2.418
1.762
1.3325
1.941
1.089
SiteGround
0.526
0.711
0.88
1.082
2.059
1.902
1.711
2.138
1.543
1.4425
2.621
1.518
TVC.Net
0.737
0.603
1.248
1.359
1.755
2.172
1.055
1.478
1.621
1.4015
2.413
1.602
Wetopi
0.801
1.254
0.417
0.495
1.249
1.021
2.231
2.331
1.835
1.288916667
1.769
0.995
WPCycle
0.463
0.783
0.838
0.92
1.957
1.818
1.496
1.843
1.256
1.324083333
2.475
1.405
WPX
0.455
0.691
1.062
1.081
1.729
2.548
1.355
2.175
1.885
1.484166667
2.818
1.459
Discussion
Flywheel is the obvious standout being the fastest from 9/12 testing locations. DreamHost also stands out as the second fastest in many locations and the fastest in a couple. No company stood out as obviously the slowest around the world which is a good sign.
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
Company
PHP Bench
WP Bench
34SP.com
10.868
468.164794
A2Hosting
10.875
527.1481286
ChemiCloud
11.437
323.5198965
Cloudways
8.222
484.9660524
DreamHost
7.01
560.2240896
EasyWP by Namecheap
10.277
522.7391532
Flywheel
11.446
297.7963073
GoDaddy
10.712
279.173646
GreenGeeks
9.211
1305.483029
highavailability.io
10.396
30.6335008
InMotion Hosting
10.633
1077.586207
IONOS Shared
10.238
490.6771344
IONOS WP
11.52
235.349494
Krystal Hosting
8.636
1191.895113
Lightning Base
6.369
870.3220191
RAIDBOXES
8.546
312.1098627
SiteGround
7.43
1406.469761
TVC.Net
8.592
1356.852103
Wetopi
12.801
744.6016381
WPCycle
12.164
629.7229219
WPX
8.533
761.614623
Discussion
LightingBase and DreamHost stand out as the fastest PHP Bench scores. The WP Bench provides some interesting insight about why it may not correlate to performance at scale. High Availability has the slowest score by an order of magnitude but that's almost surely due to the high availability architecture which allowed it to handle all the load testing with ease.
A2, GreenGeeks, Namecheap, Raidboxes and WPCycle all earned A+ ratings. Every single B grade was for the following reason according to Qualsys: "This server supports TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. Grade capped to B."
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.
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.
This is the third year of participation for 34SP.com and it's fantastic to see them earn an honorable mention status this year. Last year they were almost there. A few spikes in the Load Impact testing kept them out of top tier status this time. Next year I hope to see them earning top tier status as they continue to improve.
A2 stepped up their game this year after struggling with Load Storm last year going from a 0.57% error rate to a perfect zero errors. With the uptime monitors showing 100 and 99.99% uptime, A2 earned Top Tier honors this year.
ChemiCloud is a first time participant and did an admirable job with perfect 100% uptime on both monitors. They handled the Load Impact test without issue but the Load Storm test proved to be a bit too much with a 2% error rate. I hope to see them return and make small improvements to do better next year.
Cloudways had perfect uptime at 100% on both monitors. The good news during the load tests were that they didn't have a single error. The bad news during the load tests was the response times increased substantially and the server slowed down under stress.
DreamHost did very well this year earning themselves an honorable mention. Their uptime exceeded the 99.9% threshold and their Load Storm test was excellent. The issue was Load Impact which slowed down and saw some small spikes as the test progressed but there were no errors. They also had some of the fastest response times on WebPageTest being first twice and second five times out of the 12 geographical locations.
It's nice to see a new entrant step into the ring. They almost participated last year, but finally bit the bullet in 2020. True to their name, they are one of the cheapest plans that competed in the cheapest price tier. They handled the Load Impact test well but sadly the uptime monitors were not kind where they experienced some network wide outages during the testing. The Load Storm test also proved to be too much for their containers but it failed gracefully with the requests that were making it through respond very quickly. I hope to see NameCheap return next year and deliver even better performance and value.
Flywheel's smallest plan got knocked down by Load Storm again. The test may be too much for the plan. The good news was the perfect uptime and being one of the fastest response times around the world a whopping nine out of twelve times.
A surprise from a company that is responsible for these tests ever being performed. GoDaddy recovered after last years less than ideal performance with a Top Tier performance this year. Their uptime was above 99.9% which was a problem last year. The load testing results didn't show much issue with the load this year once the security measures were worked around and they even handled the most total requests on Load Storm. Glad to see GoDaddy's engineering team doing well again.
GreenGeeks earned an honorable mention this year, a slight downgrade from last year's Top Tier honor. This was perhaps the most on the edge decision I've had to make. Their results on the load tests were good but the uptime monitors showed 99.96% and 99.894%. I added a third monitor this year in case something like this happened again to act as a tie breaker and it showed 99.9%, the exact threshold I keep between doing well enough and failure. Considering how borderline it was, I opted to give honorable mention status because the Top Tier companies unambiguously didn't struggle with any tests. Overall, it was a very good showing from GreenGeeks but they were kept out by the slimmest margin from earning Top Tier status this year.
Formerly Incendia Web Works, this multiple time participant is back in the Top Tier. Their 99.999% and 100% uptimes combined with doing well on the load tests showed they are highly available. The one test which made it clear that they were doing something different at this tier is the WPPerformanceTester WP Bench test where they have a very low score. One reason I don't use it as a meaningful metric is because of how architectures might impact the results. Latency between the database(s) and the web server will cause dramatic differences in the results and the load tests made it clear how real world performance may not correlate strictly with the WP bench result against other architectures. Great job by HighAvailability this year earning Top Tier status.
InMotion Hosting was brought down by Load Storm's test. Their uptime was above 99.9%. My contact there stopped responding and I wasn't ever able to get more details about any issues the server might have had security wise. Hopefully next time they will do better.
1&1's performance may have been marred by security measures which couldn't be disabled on both load tests. There may have been issues with handling the traffic too, it's hard to tell. But the problems on Load Storm and Load Impact tests held them back this year. The bright spot was the 99.99/100% uptime recorded by the shared plan.
1&1's performance may have been marred by security measures which couldn't be disabled on both load tests. There may have been issues with handling the traffic too, it's hard to tell. But the problems on Load Storm and Load Impact tests held them back this year. The bright spot was the 99.99/100% uptime recorded by the shared plan.
A second year entrant that almost earned honorable mention status last year, got over the hump and earned honorable mention status this year. The struggle was the Load Impact test again where last year it seemed to cause a bit too much stress, this year it was nearly under control with a spike keeping it just out of Top Tier status. The continued improvement from Krystal is excellent to see and I hope to see them be Top Tier next year.
Another year, another Top Tier honor for LightningBase. Perfect uptime. Only 15 errors total on Load Storm and perfect on Load Impact. LightningBase continue to be a model of consistent top tier performance. Congratulations for the longest streak of Top Tier honors of any company that has participated in these tests.
It's always nice to see a first time entrant just do flawlessly. With a whopping 0 total errors on their load tests and 99.999% and 100% on their uptime monitors, it's hard to ask for a better performance. Welcome to the show Raidboxes and congratulations on earning your first Top Tier honor, may you earn many more in the years to come.
SiteGround earned itself Top Tier status again this year after earning Honorable Mention status last year. The small issues with Load Storm tests seem to have disappeared and the uptime was excellent. Congrats to SiteGround on returning to Top Tier status.
TVC's second year participating. Last year they struggled with Load Impact, but they did excellent on both load tests this year. What held them back this year is they were just below the 99.9% uptime threshold at 99.87% and 99.84%. Hopefully it was just a little bit of bad luck and next year will see them earn Top Tier status.
Wetopi was another new entrant into the testing. As far as first performances go, Wetopi did pretty decently. Load Storm had a few errors. Load Impact had no errors but the response time elevated quite substantially by around 1s over the course of the test. The uptime was excellent. Handling Load Impact a little better would have earned them Honorable Mention status. Here's to hoping they improve earn some recognition next year.
The final new entrant in this years testing. Unfortunately WPCycle struggled with uptime and the Load Impact test. They did do very well on the Load Storm test which is a solid start considering it's often the most stressful load test. Hoping to see big improvements next year.
WPX Hosting earned another Top Tier award this year. There's not much to say, 99.999% uptime and almost perfect load tests will do that. Congrats on the repeat, keep up the excellent work.
