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.

Other Price Tier Results

<$25/Month Tier $25-50/Month Tier $51-100/Month Tier $101-200/Month Tier $201-500/Month Tier $500+/Month (Enterprise) Tier

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.