WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2020) – $25-50/Month

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 $25-50/month price bracket for WordPress Hosting.

Hosting Plan Details

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

Full interactive results can be referenced here.

Discussion

WordPress.com Business (Automattic), HighAvailability, Nestify, Onyx, Pantheon [Reviews], Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt, SiteGround [Reviews] and WPX Hosting all handled this test without any issues.

1&1 IONOS [Reviews] and Cloudways [Reviews] slowed down but didn't error out.

Load Impact Testing Results

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

Results Table

Full interactive results can be referenced here.

Discussion

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 Monitoring Results

Uptime is monitored by two companies: Uptime Robot and StatusCake. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

Results Table

Discussion

Everyone maintained uptime above 99.9% including with 11/12 keeping 99.99% or higher.

WebPageTest.org Results

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

Results Table

Results table can be referenced here. The radar chart does an excellent job without hiding any information.

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 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

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.

Qualsys SSL Report Grade

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

Results Table

Discussion

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

Top Tier

HighAvailability, Nestify, Onyx, Pantheon [Reviews], Pressable, Seravo, Servebolt, SiteGround [Reviews], WordPress.com Business, and WPX Hosting all handled the tests effortlessly and earned Top Tier honors.

Honorable Mention

None.

Individual Host Analysis

1&1 IONOS [Reviews]

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.

Cloudways [Reviews] (Vultr 4GB)

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.

HighAvailability

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.

Nestify

A whopping 1 error across both load tests with perfect uptime easily earned Nestify Top Tier status this year.

Onyx

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 [Reviews]

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.

Pressable

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.

Seravo

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.

Servebolt

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.

SiteGround [Reviews]

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.

WordPress.com Business

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

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.

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Kevin Ohashi

Founder at Review Signal

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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