Enterprise WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2019)

The full company list, product list, methodology, and notes can be found here.

This post focuses only on the results of the testing in the Enterprise ($500/month) price bracket for WordPress Hosting.

Hosting Plan Details

Click table for full product information.

Load Storm Testing Results

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Results Table

Company Name Total Requests Total Errors Peak RPS Average RPS Peak Response Time(ms) Average Response Time (ms) Total Data Transferred (GB) Peak Throughput (MB/s)
Average Throughput (MB/s)
Flywheel 1,785,867 0 1,455.38 992.15 6,239 426 107.29 89 60
Kinsta 1,755,316 0 1,418.63 975.18 2,511 426 107.69 87 60
Liquid Web 1,029,906 722 703.58 572.17 15,878 2,346 57 39 32
Pantheon 1,957,349 1,920 1,536.00 1,087.42 15,110 235 112.45 90 62
Pressable 1,961,025 359 1,563.13 1,089.46 10,021 432 107.97 86 60
Presslabs 2,229,984 47 1,773.15 1,238.88 12,135 208 112.54 91.02 62.52
Servebolt.com 2,851,014 109 2,290.83 1,583.90 15,106 121 106.81 86 59
SiteGround 2,496,158 18 2,019.62 1,386.75 5,767 97 116.58 95 65
WordPress.com VIP 1,865,399 9 1,512.27 1,036.33 7,123 100 155.98 129 87

Discussion

Flywheel [Reviews], Kinsta, Pantheon [Reviews], Pressable, Presslabs, Servebolt, SiteGround [Reviews], and WordPress.com VIP all handled this test without issue. The fastest average response time was a miniscule 97ms from SiteGround with WordPress.com VIP right behind it at 100ms.

LiquidWeb [Reviews] experienced increased response times during the test.

Load Impact Testing Results

Load Impact is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

Results Table

Company Name Requests Errors Data Transferred (GB) Peak Average Load Time (ms) Peak Average Bandwidth (Mbps) Peak Average Requests/Sec
Flywheel 1490818 0 83.1 673 1290 2830
Kinsta 1465982 0 81.49 644 1280 2820
Liquid Web 459063 1384 25.58 8790 271 589
Pantheon 2154844 4 123.95 65 1980 4200
Pressable 1391512 0 79.12 818 1290 2770
Presslabs 2006864 0 112.9 170 1760 3830
Servebolt.com 1906013 7 115.32 169 1690 3410
SiteGround 1825573 6 102.9 219 1470 3180
WordPress.com VIP 2103974 0 126.72 67 1960 3960

Discussion

Flywheel, Kinsta, Pantheon, Pressable, Presslabs, Servebolt, SiteGround, and WordPress.com VIP all handled this test without issue. Pantheon led the pack with a 65ms average response time with WordPress.com VIP right behind them at 67ms.

LiquidWeb struggled with this test and had substantially increased response times.

Uptime Monitoring Results

Results Table

Company Name UptimeRobot StatusCake StatusCake Avg Response Time
Flywheel 99.979 100% 0.390s
Kinsta 100 100% 0.515s
Liquid Web 99.999 100% 0.789s
Pantheon 100 100% 0.085s
Pressable 100 99.96% 0.618s
Presslabs 100 100% 0.153s
Servebolt.com 100 100% 0.085s
SiteGround 99.995 100% 0.400s
WordPress.com VIP 100 100% 0.249s

Discussion

Near perfect with everyone above 99.9%. Only Flywheel and Pressable dipped below 99.99% on individual monitors with the majority having 100% uptime overall.

WebPageTest.org Results

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 11 different locations around the world.

Results Table

Company Name WPT Dulles WPT Denver WPT LA WPT London WPT Frankfurt WPT Rose Hill, Mauritius
Flywheel 0.527 0.778 0.72 0.895 0.909 1.984
Kinsta 0.56 1.072 0.757 0.984 1.079 2.295
Liquid Web 0.535 1.09 0.879 0.883 0.993 2.286
Pantheon 0.418 0.702 0.56 0.404 0.68 1.607
Pressable 0.589 1.987 1.847 1.217 1.298 3.876
Presslabs 0.531 1.216 0.548 0.401 0.412 1.272
Servebolt.com 0.381 0.595 0.888 0.375 0.412 0.498
SiteGround 0.585 1.017 1.427 0.91 1.054 2.522
WordPress.com VIP 0.443 0.869 0.748 0.355 0.661 1.487

 

Company Name WPT Singapore WPT Mumbai WPT Japan WPT Sydney WPT Brazil
Flywheel 1.5 1.794 1.104 1.305 1.144
Kinsta 1.685 2.054 1.243 1.53 1.357
Liquid Web 1.817 1.836 1.216 1.827 1.19
Pantheon 0.969 0.92 0.817 0.955 0.812
Pressable 3.158 2.68 2.358 2.669 2.129
Presslabs 0.477 0.642 0.682 0.527 1.484
Servebolt.com 0.436 0.563 0.393 0.355 0.393
SiteGround 1.667 1.816 1.229 1.598 1.338
WordPress.com VIP 1.302 1.076 1.007 1.266 0.768

Discussion

The results of the WPT are a non impacting and it's nice to see that with almost every provider, nearly everywhere around the world the page would load under two seconds. Dulles continues to be the fastest for everyone, with the slowest load at snappy 0.589 seconds. Rose Hill also was ~300ms faster than the slowest and fastest measurements last year. WPT continues to show companies are delivering content faster around the globe to users.

Servebolt was the fastest in 9/11 locales.

Presslabs was first in 2/11 locales and second in 5/11 locales.

Pressable was the slowest in 11/11 locales.

WPPerformanceTester Results

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is blue in the chart, PHP Bench is red.

Results Table

Company Name PHP Bench WP Bench
Flywheel 9.426 264.9006623
Kinsta 10.643 1013.171226
Liquid Web 11.17 731.5288954
Pantheon 9.356 256.6735113
Pressable 11.016 393.236335
Presslabs 6.704 706.2146893
Servebolt.com 3.804 1712.328767
SiteGround 8.16 314.6633103
WordPress.com VIP 7.82 918.2736455

Discussion

Servebolt stands out as the fastest PHP and WP Bench.

Qualsys SSL Report Grade

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

Results Table

Company Name Qualys SSL Report
Flywheel A
Kinsta A
Liquid Web A
Pantheon A
Pressable A
Presslabs A+
Servebolt.com A+
SiteGround A
WordPress.com VIP A

Discussion

Everyone earned an A. Presslabs and Servebolt earned A+.

Conclusion

Top Tier

Flywheel [Reviews], Kinsta, Pantheon [Reviews], Pressable, Presslabs, Servebolt, SiteGround [Reviews] and WordPress.com VIP all earned Top Tier status and didn't have any issues.

Honorable Mention

None.

Individual Host Analysis

Flywheel [Reviews]

Zero errors on both load tests and a 99.979% and 100% uptime. Flywheel's first entry into the enterprise space looks strong and earned itself Top Tier status.

Kinsta

Flawless load tests and perfect uptime. Another Top Tier award.

LiquidWeb [Reviews]

LiquidWeb had 99.99% and 100% uptime which is a great start. The problem was the Load Storm test slowed down during the test considerably as did the Load Impact test.

Pantheon [Reviews]

Pantheon had perfect uptime and Load Impact went though fine, Load Storm had a few errors but nothing significant. Top Tier performance indeed.

Pressable

99.96% and 100% uptime. Excellent load test results. Top Tier performance from Pressable.

Presslabs

Perfect uptime. Near perfect load tests. The fastest in 2/11 locales in WPT, and second fastest in 5/11. Awesome performance from Presslabs earning them Top Tier status.

Servebolt

Perfect uptime. Nearly perfect load tests. Third fastest average response times in both load tests too. Fastest WPT test results in 9/11 locales and second fastest once. Servebolt also had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores. Easily a Top Tier performance from Servebolt.

SiteGround [Reviews]

Near perfect uptime with 99.995% and 100%. 24 cumulative errors. The fastest average response time for the Load Storm test. SiteGround earned itself Top Tier status.

WordPress.com VIP

Perfect uptime. The second fastest response times in both load tests. WordPress.com VIP earns itself another Top Tier award.

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Kevin Ohashi is the geek-in-charge at Review Signal. He is passionate about making data meaningful for consumers. Kevin is based in Washington, DC.

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