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Pressable WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

Pressable participated for the second time in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. Their last participation was in the original which was performed in 2013. They've undergone major changes since then and are now owned by Automattic. This year they had the most plans entered of any company at five into the following ranges: $25-50/month, $51-100/month, $101-200/m, $201-500/month and Enterprise ($500+/month).

Products

Company / Price Bracket Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
Pressable 25-50 5 Sites $25 60,000 Unlimited Unlimited 5
Pressable 51-100 20 Sites $90 400,000 Unlimited Unlimited 20
Pressable 101-200 Agency 1 $135 600,000 Unlimited Unlimited 30
Pressable 201-500 Agency 3 $225 1 Million Unlimited Unlimited 50
Pressable Enterprise VIP 1 $750 5 Million Unlimited Unlimited 100

They made it clear to me that the products are identical until the VIP level, each site has equal resources, the only difference in plans is that more sites are allowed.

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company / Price Bracket 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)
Pressable 25-50 394405 26 294.6 219.11 15101 226 16.4 13.32 9.111
Pressable 51-100 569095 0 441.43 316.16 3152 239 24.35 20.19 13.53
Pressable 101-200 724499 1090 562.12 402.5 15024 447 30.91 26.07 17.17
Pressable 201-500 896616 12256 740.88 498.12 6362 450 37.87 33.8 21.04
Pressable Enterprise 1538237 7255 1162.63 854.58 15099 733 29.18 21.95 16.21

LoadStorm test logged in thousands of users to simulate heavy uncached load on the server, scaling up with more users on larger plans after the $25-50/month range. Pressable overall did very well. Earning top tier status in four our of five. The 201-500 price bracket had a bit of difficulty with the increased load which disappears at the Enterprise level.

Blitz Results

Company / Price Bracket Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
Pressable 25-50 25914 0 2 432 134 134 136
Pressable 51-100 51781 0 0 863 135 134 136
Pressable 101-200 77652 0 4 1294 134 141 133
Pressable 201-500 77850 11 1 1298 132 131 135
Pressable Enterprise 129866 13 2 2164 132 131 139

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. If the LoadStorm test was a clinic, this was absolute perfection. Pressable had zero issues with the Blitz tests across every plan. Their caching is certainly up to snuff.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
Pressable 25-50 99.91 99.92
Pressable 51-100 99.93 99.95
Pressable 101-200 99.96 99.94
Pressable 201-500 99.88 99.9

Oddly enough, Uptime was one of the biggest struggles for Pressable. The 201-500 plan didn't earn top tier status because it fell below the 99.9% threshold averaging 99.89 between the two monitors. The rest were closer to the 99.9% mark than the 100% mark which, while above the expected threshold, I'd like to see a bit of improvement in.

Uptime wasn't tracked on most Enterprise level plans because they are just so expensive that it felt wasteful to run them for a long period doing nothing but monitoring uptime if the company had other plans in the testing which could also be measured.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

Conclusion

Pressable managed to earn four Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performances out of five plans. Overall, the performance is excellent and they can scale from $25/month to Enterprise size workloads. I'd like to see some minor improvements in uptime, but apart from that small issue, they don't have much else to improve on. It's great to see a strong competitor at virtually every price level in the space.

pressable234x60

 

Pressidium WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

Pressidium participated for the second year in a row in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They had four plans entered into the following ranges: $51-100/month, $101-200/month, $201-500/month and Enterprise ($500+/month).

Last year, Pressidium earned top tier status, this year they managed a repeat on every plan.

Products

Company / Price Bracket Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
Pressidium 51-100 Professional $69.90 149.90 100,000 20 GB Unlimited 10
Pressidium 101-200 Business $199

$299

 500,000 30 GB Unlimited 25
Pressidium 201-500 Premium $499

$599.90

 1 Million 40 GB Unlimited 50
Pressidium Enterprise Enterprise-1 $1,300 1.5 Million 60 GB Unlimited Unlimited

Prices have increased since the original tests, the original prices are crossed out, with the new pricing listed.

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company / Price Bracket 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)
Pressidium 51-100 429538 0 335.78 238.63 3030 306 16.11 13.26 8.951
Pressidium 101-200 563624 0 435.43 313.12 3561 272 30.82 24.44 17.12
Pressidium 201-500 697020 0 547.88 387.23 4894 266 38.16 31.05 21.2
Pressidium Enterprise 1349118 3792 1076.52 749.51 11798 324 73.63 60.18 40.91

LoadStorm test logged in thousands of users to simulate heavy uncached load on the server, scaling up with more users on larger plans after the $25-50/month range. Pressidium was perfect on the first three tests and did excellent at the Enterprise level. Zero errors on the first three tests and only a handful on the Enterprise test which nobody achieved a zero on.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
Pressidium 51-100 57348 1 0 956 27 25 30
Pressidium 101-200 85916 6 0 1432 27 25 31
Pressidium 201-500 85439 11 14 1424 31 25 82
Pressidium Enterprise 143452 0 2 2391 26 24 35

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. If the LoadStorm test was a clinic, this was absolute perfection. Pressidium had near perfect tests at every level: almost no errors/timeouts and stable response time. The only exception was the 201-500 range, it had a minor spike at the end which increased the response time to a measley 82ms.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
Pressidium 51-100 100 99.99
Pressidium 101-200 99.97 99.99
Pressidium 201-500 99.95 99.99

Uptime wasn't tracked on most Enterprise level plans because they are just so expensive that it felt wasteful to run them for a long period doing nothing but monitoring uptime if the company had other plans in the testing which could also be measured.

Pressidium did well in the uptime monitoring, keeping above 99.95% on all monitors.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

Conclusion

Pressidium managed to earn four Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performances, an impressive feat. Another year, another excellent performance like what I am beginning to expect from these guys.

pressidium336x280

 

LightningBase WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

LightningBase participated for the third year in a row in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They had three plans entered into the following ranges: <$25/month, $25-50/m, and $51-100/month.

LightningBase is one of the most unspoken about companies in the space and I really don't know why. In the past two previous years of testing they earned top tier WordPress hosting performance awards. This year was no exception.

Products

Company / Price Bracket Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
LightningBase <25 Personal $9.95 Unlimited. 10,000 suggested 1 GB 10 GB 1
LightningBase 25-50 Medium $49.95 Unlimited 15 GB 100 GB 10
LightningBase 51-100 Large $99.95 Unlimited 30 GB 250 GB 25

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company / Price Bracket 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)
LightningBase <25 314439 5 238.68 174.69 8989 255 16.24 13.24 9.023
LightningBase 25-50 315348 1 238.4 175.19 3567 272 16.34 13.47 9.077
LightningBase 51-100 456430 0 356.3 253.57 3909 261 23.65 19.41 13.14

LoadStorm test logged in thousands of users to simulate heavy uncached load on the server, scaling up with more users on larger plans after the $25-50/month range. LightningBase put on an absolute clinic here. No requests hitting the timeout (15,000ms), keeping a very quick average response time in the 200ms range and virtually no errors across all the plans including an actual zero in the largest test.

Blitz Results

Company / Price Bracket Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
LightningBase <25 27488 0 0 458 71 71 72
LightningBase 25-50 27460 0 0 458 72 71 72
LightningBase 51-100 54946 0 0 916 71 71 73

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. If the LoadStorm test was a clinic, this was absolute perfection. LightningBase had zero errors. Response times are nearly identical across every plan with a total of 3ms spread between all three plans.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
LightningBase <25 99.99 100
LightningBase 25-50 100 100
LightningBase 51-100 100 100

LightningBase was virtually perfect with 100% uptime on every plan and monitor except one which showed 99.99%.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

Conclusion

LightningBase easily earned their top tier performance award this year for the third consecutive time. Their results were consistently near (or actually) perfect. I still can't wrap my head around why nobody is talking about them, their performance is absolutely fantastic.

lightning-base-logo

SiteGround WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

SiteGround participated for the fourth year in a row in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They had four plans entered into the following ranges: <$25/month, $25-50/m, $51-100/month, and $201-500/m.

SiteGound is one of the largest and most popular companies in the web hosting space. They are big sponsors of WordPress as well. They've gone strongly after the WordPress market by building some very high performance tools to allow their normal shared hosting customers get high end WordPress performance from their plans with a custom module called SuperCacher. Last year they earned the honorable mention for a pretty good performance, but just outside of the top tier.

SiteGround also has the honor of being the highest rated shared hosting company on Review Signal with 72% positive rating, which is 14% higher than the next highest rated shared hosting company and based on over 3,600 reviews.

Products

Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
SiteGround <25 GrowBig $14.95 25,000 20GB Unlimited One Main Site
SiteGround 25-50 GoGeek $29.95 Unlimited 30GB Unlimited One Main Site
SiteGround 51-100 Business Cloud Hosting $80 Unlimited 40GB 5TB Unlimited
SiteGround 201-500 Enterprise Dedicated Server $429 Unlimited 4 x 500GB 5TB Unlimited


View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company /Price Bracket 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)
SiteGround <$25 301722 1 230.45 167.62 9374 447 15.9 13.76 8.833
SiteGround $25-50 300999 0 232.75 167.22 10926 462 15.83 14.35 8.972
SiteGround $51-100 449038 742 352.05 249.47 11247 383 22.93 19.26 12.74
SiteGround $201-500 640337 48537 507.98 355.74 15564 1549 30.64 24.25 17.02

SiteGround's two shared hosting plans (<25, 25-50) did fantastic with only 1 error between the two of them. The cloud (51-100) did excellent as well with minimal errors. Unfortunately, the dedicated server didn't fare as well, ultimately struggling with the enormous LoadStorm test which sent 5000 users at it. Please note each pricing tier after the $25-50/month had an increased number of users sent at it, which is why you see more requests for the $51-100 and $201-500 brackets.

The first three plans were in the top tier performance wise, only the dedicated ($201-500) server didn't make it.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
SiteGround <25 26055 1 21 434 100 72 346
SiteGround 25-50 26623 1 26 444 86 71 255
SiteGround 51-100 83437 0 0 1391 58 58 60
SiteGround 201-500 82396 1 0 1373 71 71 72

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. The first thing I need to note is that I accidentally sent 1000 more users than I should have against the SiteGround cloud (51-100) plan and it performed flawlessly with zero errors and a 2ms response time spread which was only beaten by the dedicated server's incredible 1ms spread. The shared plans had little latency spikes, but considering the shared nature of these plans, they still delivered every request very quickly and had minimal error/timeouts. Every plan performed in the top tier here.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
SiteGround <25 99.97 99.98
SiteGround 25-50 99.99 100
SiteGround 51-100 100 100
SiteGround 201-500 100 99.99

Nothing to see here, SiteGround had near or actually perfect uptime ratings. 99.97%+ on every plan including three out four registering 100% on at least one monitor.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

Conclusion

SiteGround earned an honorable mention last year. This year they stepped up big and earned three Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance awards in the $<25/month, $25-50/month and $51-100/month tiers. The dedicated server struggled with an absolutely enormous 5000 logged in user LoadStorm test, but that may be the hardest test based on the fact only 2/8 companies earned top tier honors and 1 honorable mention, the fewest of any price bracket.

Combined with their outstanding customer reviews which has them at the top of the shared hosting category, SiteGround is an excellent choice for WordPress hosting both in performance and customer satisfaction.

Web Hosting

Kinsta WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

Kinsta participated for the third year in a row in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They had four plans entered into the following ranges: $51-100/month, $101-200/m, $201-500/m, Enterprise ($500+/m).

One of the smaller companies in the space, they are focused on the high end segment of the market with their cheapest plan starting at $100/month. Their infrastructure is entirely hosted on Google's cloud hosting. They appear to be laser focused on catering to clients that really demand top notch performance and are willing to pay for it.

Products

 Company /Price Bracket Plan Name Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
Kinsta $51-100 Business 1 $100 Unlimited 5GB SSD 50GB 1
Kinsta $101-200 Business 2 $200 Unlimited 20GB SSD 100GB 5
Kinsta $201-500 Business 4 $400 Unlimited 40GB SSD 400GB 20
Kinsta Enterprise Enterprise 4 $1,500 Unlimited 200GB SSD 1.5TB 100

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

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)
Kinsta $51-100 416335 544 324.57 231.3 15059 317 24.01 19.91 13.34
Kinsta $101-200 546252 0 425.67 303.47 9078 286 31.47 24.95 17.48
Kinsta $201-500 671665 47 528.38 373.15 9991 285 38.68 31.73 21.49
Kinsta Enterprise 1314178 274 1041.28 730.1 15014 340 75.7 60.75 42.06

These results are impressive. The worst issue was in the 51-100 range there was a tiny amount of errors towards the end of the test, resulting in a minuscule 0.13% error rate. As the tests scaled up from 2,000 to 10,000 users, Kinsta scaled well across price tiers and performed in the top tier of each price bracket.

Blitz Results

Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
Kinsta $51-100 54273 7 0 905 84 83 86
Kinsta $101-200 81397 3 0 1357 84 83 85
Kinsta $201-500 81386 3 0 1356 84 84 86
Kinsta Enterprise 135485 7 0 2258 85 83 87

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. Kinsta had 2ms response time spreads max and virtually no errors across every plan. It was incredibly stable and handled this test flawlessly at every price tier.

 

Uptime

StatusCake UptimeRobot
Kinsta 51-100 99.99 100
Kinsta 101-200 99.98 99.99
Kinsta 201-500 99.98 100

Kinsta was nearly flawless on both monitors with a minimum 99.98% observed uptime. Uptime wasn't tracked on most Enterprise level plans because they are just so expensive that it felt wasteful to run them for a long period doing nothing but monitoring uptime if the company had other plans in the testing which could also be measured.

 

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

 

Conclusion

Kinsta put on another marvelous performance across every single price bracket. For the third year in a row they earned Review Signal's Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance award. Since I don't have the graphical talent in house, I'm going to shamelessly steal one of their graphics which pretty much sums it all up.

top-tier-wordpress-hosting-performance

 

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