AleForge had near-perfect uptime (99.9996% / 100% / 100%), the third fastest Static test at this tier (6.3ms), and the second fastest GTmetrix average. SSL was A+. Unfortunately the LoadStorm test ran into issues, things started to slow down around 300 VUsers and the error rate jumped around 500 VUsers. The errors were primarily 429s indicating a rate limit. The Static result was excellent on its own but the LoadStorm wall keeps AleForge out of award contention this year.

AleForge issued the following statement:

Aleforge recently participated in the WP Hosting Benchmarks evaluation. While we are satisfied with the platform's overall throughput and stability measures, we wish to clarify the technical parameters behind the 429 (Too Many Requests) errors observed in the review.

These errors did not indicate system faults or security policy enforcement. Instead, they resulted from resource-based rate limiting operating as intended during high-load simulation.

Here is what actually happened:

Extreme Uncacheable Load: The benchmark simulated logged-in user requests, bypassing all edge caching systems. The origin server workload rapidly increased from 2,000 to nearly 70,000 uncached, dynamic requests per minute.
Strict Worker Allocation: The hosting plan test limits the number of PHP worker processes to 3. Our dynamic request-queuing architecture successfully routed and executed thousands of incoming requests, but a 3-worker configuration cannot process 70,000 concurrent dynamic transactions per minute.
Expected System Response: Upon maxing out the processing queue, our platform initiated automated rate limiting to maintain server integrity, resulting in controlled issuance of 429 errors.


Importantly, despite this jump in uncacheable traffic, the site stayed online as measured by ReviewSignal at 99.9996%.

The 429 errors demonstrate our safeguards working effectively under extreme load. In real-life scenarios with tens of thousands of concurrent, logged-in users, more PHP workers would simply be provisioned.

We stand by the quality of our platform. Our infrastructure handles massive traffic spikes, and resource-limiting safeguards keep servers stable and online for users.