Tag Archives: review

Kinsta Review (2018)

Kinsta participated for the fourth time in our WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2018). This review is based off the results of that test. This year Kinsta participated in the 25-50, 51-100, 101-200, 201-500, and Enterprise price tiers.

In the previous test, Kinsta earned Top Tier status in all four price brackets it entered.  In 2018, Kinsta started offering cheaper plans and has competed in an additional, lower price tier.

The Products

Plan Name Plan Monthly Price Plan Visitors Allowed Plan Memory/RAM Plan Disk Space Plan Bandwidth
Plan Sites Allowed
Starter $30 20000 - 5GB Unlimited 1
Pro $60 40,000 - 5GB Unlimited 2
Business 1 $100 100,000 - 10GB Unlimited 3
Business 2 $200 250000 - 20GB SSD Unlimited 10
Enterprise 1 $600 1 Million - 80GB SSD Unlimited 60

Performance Review

Load Storm

Plan Tier 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)
$25-50 294,176 3 225.5 163.43 10,036 355 21.38 17.58 11.88
$51-100 425,597 1 332.65 236.44 10,017 377 30.98 25.62 17.21
$101-200 556,007 48 436.15 308.89 10,101 375 40.45 32.44 22.47
$200-500 688,856 0 543.12 382.7 4,407 358 50.08 40.47 27.82
Enterprise 1,720,465 0 1,391.42 955.81 3,906 417 112.7 91.9 62.61

The Load Storm test is designed to simulate real users coming to the site, logging in and browsing the site bursting some of the caching mechanisms typically found on managed WordPress hosts.

Kinsta aced the Load Storm tests across every tier. Zero errors in multiple price tiers and minimal errors in the others. The response times were kept fast and stable. It scaled up from the smallest test to Enterprise test without issue.

Load Impact

Plan Tier Requests Errors Data Transferred (GB) Peak Average Load Time (Seconds) Peak Average Bandwidth (Mbps)
Peak Average Requests/Sec
$25-50 337031 0 18.05 0.41 304 694
$51-100 672240 0 36 0.416 583 1300
$101-200 1016163 0 54.42 0.395 863 1920
$200-500 1014718 0 54.34 0.411 866 1930
Enterprise 1367747 0 73.4 0.802 1120 2540

The Load Impact test makes sure static caching is effective so that if a page gets a lot of traffic the site will keep responding without issue.

Perfection. Zero errors across 5 separate tests.

Uptime

Plan Tier UptimeRobot StatusCake
$25-50 100 100
$51-100 100 100
$101-200 100 100
$200-500 100 100
Enterprise 100 100

Perfect. 100% across 5 plans and two separate monitors.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

Plan Tier $25-50 $51-100 $101-200 $200-500 Enterprise
Dulles 0.387 0.373 0.377 0.396 0.382
Denver 1.287 1.163 1.411 1.134 1.245
LA 0.833 0.79 0.81 0.832 1.154
London 1.076 1.104 1.073 1.177 1.331
Frankfurt 1.014 1.009 1.01 1.031 1.103
Rose Hill, Mauritius 2.436 2.446 2.433 2.439 2.444
Singapore 1.902 1.729 1.728 1.712 1.774
Mumbai 2.114 2.279 2.221 2.119 2.108
Japan 1.186 1.183 1.234 1.268 1.281
Sydney 1.609 1.766 1.763 1.772 1.611
Brazil 1.513 1.364 1.384 1.508 1.404

WPT test results looked normal.

Plan Tier PHP Bench WP Bench
$25-50 8.853 1036.26943
$51-100 8.783 1173.70892
$101-200 8.974 1100.110011
$200-500 9.048 1047.120419
Enterprise 8.787 1207.729469

The WPPerformanceTester results looked normal. The WP Bench results stood out though. The database connections are consistently very fast compared to their competitors at higher price tiers when plans tend to run separate and/or multiple database servers.

Conclusion

Kinsta earned itself five Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance Awards in 2018. It had perfect uptime across every plan. It had zero errors on Load Impact. It had 2/5 Load Storm tests without any errors and only 52 errors total from 3.685 million requests. No signs of stress showed on any test. Kinsta has consistently brought their A game to WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks, this year was no exception. It's nice to see them offering newer, cheaper plans that allow people on smaller budgets access their offerings. A huge congratulations to them for earning the most Top Tier Hosting Performance awards of any company in 2018.

CloudWays Review (2018)

CloudWays participated for the fourth time in our WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2018). This review is based off the results of that test. This year CloudWays participated in the 25-50, 51-100 and 201-500 price tiers.

In years past it's been interesting to see CloudWays compete with the same stack on different platforms. This year is the furthest departure from that we've seen so far. It's also the first time CloudWays has earned Top Tier status for two out of three plans that competed this year. It's also important to note, the Digital Ocean plan was originally $70 when testing started but Digital Ocean reduced their pricing causing the cost of the plan to drop dramatically to $42 hence the competing in a different tier above (51-100).

The Products

Plan Monthly Price Plan Visitors Allowed Plan Memory/RAM Plan Disk Space Plan Bandwidth
Plan Sites Allowed
Vultr 4GB New York $44 Unlimited 4GB 60GB SSD 3 TB Unlimited
DigitalOcean 4GB $42 Unlimited 4GB 80gb 4TB unlimited
AWS EC2 - 2XL - USA N.Virginia $495.50 Unlimited 32GB Starts from 4GB (variable) 2GB Unlimited

Performance Review

Load Storm

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)
CloudWays AWS 770,304 822 607.12 427.95 15,083 324 52.27 42.27 29.04
CloudWays Vultr 328,015 0 249.5 182.23 7,372 360 22.27 18.55 12.37
CloudWays DO 442,424 243 331.95 245.79 15,097 1,131 30.11 21.79 16.73

Sources: AWS, Vultr, DO

The Load Storm test is designed to simulate real users coming to the site, logging in and browsing the site bursting some of the caching mechanisms typically found on managed WordPress hosts.

The Vultr plan had no issue, the AWS and DO had a few errors but around 0.1% which is negligible. The big issue was Digital Ocean's response time started to increase as the load increased which knocked it out of earning Top Tier status. AWS and Vultr did great overall. With the price change, I wonder if the smaller test would have been handled better though.

Load Impact

Requests Errors Data Transferred (GB) Peak Average Load Time (Seconds) Peak Average Bandwidth (Mbps)
Peak Average Requests/Sec
CloudWays AWS 1049669 0 57 0.36 908 1990
CloudWays Vultr 335275 0 18.21 0.544 278 624
CloudWays DO 457906 30 24.89 1.92 312 702

Sources: AWS, Vultr, DO.

The Load Impact test makes sure static caching is effective so that if a page gets a lot of traffic the site will keep responding without issue.

AWS and Vultr handled it perfectly with zero errors. Digital Ocean had a miniscule 30 errors but an increased response time as the test went on. Great showing overall on the Load Impact test for AWS and Vultr.

Uptime

UptimeRobot StatusCake
CloudWays AWS 100 100
CloudWays Vultr 100 100
CloudWays DO 100 100

Perfect. Across the board, perfect uptime.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

PHP Bench WP Bench
CloudWays AWS 8.831 266.5955745
CloudWays Vultr 9.616 346.1405331
CloudWays DO 13.421 135.7036233

The WPPerformanceTester results are normal.

CloudWays AWS CloudWays Vultr CloudWays DO
Dulles 0.312 0.33 0.328
Denver 1.137 1.305 1.101
LA 0.924 1.014 1.069
London 0.763 0.725 0.718
Frankfurt 0.816 0.785 0.819
Rose Hill, Mauritius 1.867 2.497 1.86
Singapore 2.281 2.163 2.25
Mumbai 1.65 2.287 1.646
Japan 1.578 1.613 1.573
Sydney 1.837 1.978 2.068
Brazil 1.1 1.195 1.172

The WPT tests look good. The Dulles test scores were some of the fastest, especially the CloudWays AWS server which was located in the same testing data center.

Conclusion

Hard work does pay off. CloudWays has been participating for years and continually has been improving. Two Top Tier awards for AWS and Vultr plans. The Digital Ocean plan unfortunately didn't share the same honor but it seems it was competing above its weight with a price drop that would have put it one cost tier below now.

Pressable Review (2018)

Pressable participated for the third time in our WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2018). This review is based off the results of that test. Pressable participated in the following price brackets: <$25, $51-100, $101-200, $201-500, and Enterprise.

In the previous test, Pressable earned four Top Tier status out of 5. This year Pressable earned 5/5 Top Tier awards.

The Products

Plan Name Plan Monthly Price Plan Visitors Allowed Plan Disk Space Plan Bandwidth
Plan Sites Allowed
5 Sites $25 60,000 pageviews unlimited unlimited 5
20 Sites $90 400,000 pageviews unlimited unlimited 20
Agency 1 $135 600,000 pageviews unlimited unlimited 30
Agency 3 $225 1,000,000 pageviews unlimited unlimited 50
VIP 2 $750.00 5 million pageviews unlimited Unlimited 100

Performance Review

Load Storm

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)
<$25 330,412 487 249.85 183.56 10102 268 21.65 17.38 12.03
$51-100 475,785 1,112 371.22 264.32 10,192 318 31.17 25.48 17.32
$101-200 622,516 1,555 490.82 345.84 15,063 320 40.76 32.76 22.65
$200-$500 766,477 2,603 610.07 425.82 15,273 355 49.98 40.48 27.77
Enterprise 1,480,277 1,901 1,180.13 822.38 10,719 484 102.15 81.81 56.75

Sources: <25, 51-100, 101-200, 201-500, Enterprise

The Load Storm test is designed to simulate real users coming to the site, logging in and browsing the site bursting some of the caching mechanisms typically found on managed WordPress hosts.

The error rates were a bit higher than before on Load Storm but they seemed to almost exclusively be an issue with the Tokyo testing location for Load Storm. There wasn't any other real noticeable impact, but it was a consistent minor issue in all the tests. The average response times were excellent and error rates were still under control given the Tokyo issue.

Load Impact

Requests Errors Data Transferred (GB) Peak Average Load Time (Seconds) Peak Average Bandwidth (Mbps)
Peak Average Requests/Sec
<$25 326903 21 17.73 0.486 482.1 1060
$51-100 656609 3 34.75 0.443 573 1260
$101-200 979942 21 53.2 0.462 685 1900
$200-$500 977315 27 53.06 0.475 831 1820
Enterprise 1389420 0 77.63 0.773 1150 2520

Sources: <25, 51-100, 101-200, 201-500, Enterprise

The Load Impact test makes sure static caching is effective so that if a page gets a lot of traffic the site will keep responding without issue.

Pressable across the board did fantastic. The enterprise level even managed a perfect run without any errors.

Uptime

UptimeRobot StatusCake
<$25/month 99.99 99.99
$51-100/month 99.94 100
$101-200/month 100 99.99
$200-$500/month 99.93 100
Enterprise 99.98 99.99

Overall every plan maintained above 99.9%. I'd like to see it closes to 100 than 99.9 given their past issue was uptime in the previous test, but overall they improved this year keeping every plan above 99.9% which is great.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

PHP Bench WP Bench
<$25/month 10.87 562.7462015
$51-100/month 10.998 556.7928731
$101-200/month 10.803 471.6981132
$200-$500/month 10.797 540.8328826
Enterprise 10.924 529.1005291

The WPPerformanceTester results were pretty uniform across all the price tiers. Given the infrastructure is shared this makes a lot of sense. You get the same performance from the lowest price to the enterprise tier.

 

<$25 51-100 101-200 201-500 Enterprise
Dulles 0.468 0.479 0.474 0.495 0.563
Denver 1.366 1.334 1.384 1.315 2.261
LA 1.008 0.879 1.037 0.971 1.304
London 0.862 0.856 0.868 0.856 1.161
Frankfurt 0.947 0.923 0.881 0.863 1.334
Rose Hill, Mauritius 2.347 2.355 2.362 2.36 3.823
Singapore 2.436 2.224 2.223 2.339 3.068
Mumbai 2.59 1.828 2.558 2.555 2.447
Japan 1.698 1.733 1.748 1.579 2.106
Sydney 1.923 1.903 1.932 1.912 2.771
Brazil 1.389 1.375 1.444 1.397 1.897

The WPT tests look relatively normal. The only strange thing I noticed is that the Enterprise tier was slower in almost every case compared to the other plans. I have no idea why, could just be a timing issue when the tests were run.

Conclusion

This year Pressable stepped up their performance game just that extra bit to push all five plans into earning Top Tier status. When you're near the top it's those little gains that make all the difference. A well earned 5/5 Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance from Review Signal in 2018.

pressable234x60

Incendia Web Works Review (2018)

Incendia Web Works (IWW) participated for the second time in our WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (2018). This review is based off the results of that test. This year IWW entered in the same <$25/month price tier.

In the previous test, IWW aced the load tests but fell a bit short on the uptime monitors which prevented them from earning Top Tier status.  In 2018, IWW improved on their first year performance all around and earned themselves Top Tier status from Review Signal.

The Product

Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
Enterprise WordPress Ultimate SSD $16.49 N/A 10 GB 750 GB 1

Performance Review

Load Storm

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)
294,518 0 222.42 163.62 4,070 348 21.29 17.14 11.83

Source: https://pro.loadstorm.com#!test/562123

IWW performed great in the Load Storm test. The Load Storm test is designed to simulate real users coming to the site, logging in and browsing the site bursting some of the caching mechanisms typically found on managed WordPress hosts. The most important number is zero errors, every request was responded to. The average response time was 358ms which is also fantastic and good for third best average out of the 15 companies tested in this price bracket.

Load Impact

Requests Errors Data Transferred (GB) Peak Average Load Time (Seconds) Peak Average Bandwidth (Mbps) Peak Average Requests/Sec
339517 0 17.06 0.414 253.9 617

Source: Load Impact Results

IWW managed zero errors again for the Load Impact test. The Load Impact test makes sure static caching is effective so that if a page gets a lot of traffic the site will keep responding without issue. They also had the second lowest peak average load time (second by a mere 2ms). Another great performance for IWW.

Uptime

IWW had 99.99% uptime on UptimeRobot and 99.97% uptime on StatusCake.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

PHP Bench WP Bench
6.63 749.6251874

The WPPerformanceTester results were the fastest of any company in the price tier for PHP bench.

WPT Location Load Time
Dulles 0.366
Denver 1.21
LA 1.094
London 0.791
Frankfurt 0.894
Rose Hill 1.988
Singapore 2.243
Mumbai 2.432
Japan 1.713
Sydney 2.081
Brazil 1.207

Not a whole lot to say about the WPT results. IWW had the fastest response time in Brazil of any company in the price bracket.

Conclusion

Incendia Web Works had some uptime issues last year which marred their results. This year no such thing happened. IWW continued to have great load testing results and earned itself Top Tier status. They had flawless load test results being the only company with 0 errors on both LoadStorm and LoadImpact. It's nice to see companies improve their consistency and earn a higher ranking.

WordPress.com VIP Hosting Review (2016)

WordPress.com VIP participated for the first time in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They were easily the most expensive service tested, clocking in at $5,000/month. They also host some of the most popular WordPress sites on the web and being Automattic's flagship hosting product, it has some huge expectations riding on it.

Products

Company Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
WordPress.com VIP Basic $5,000 Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 5

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company 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)
WordPress.com VIP 4660190 8151 3726.38 2588.99 8186 101 197.82 158.29 109.9

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. WordPress.com VIP handled this test with minimal errors and never hitting the response timeout limit of 15000ms. In fact, it had the lowest average response time and and peak response time.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
WordPress.com VIP 146200 0 73 2437 6 3 21

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. WordPress.com VIP had a 17ms spread and a mere 73 timeouts out of 146,2000 requests. Certainly, top tier.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
WordPress.com VIP 100 100

Perfect.

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

WordPress.com VIP stepped into the Enterprise level of our testing and proved itself worthy and earned our Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance award. The huge expectations of being owned by the creator of WordPress, being one of the largest companies in the space and hosting some of the biggest brands in the world were met. The price for VIP is beyond what most site owners will ever likely spend, but for the few that can afford it, VIP's performance is certainly top notch.

wpvip

WPOven WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

WPOven participated for the second time in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. Last year they struggled with the LoadStorm test, but I'm happy to say that's no longer the case. They stepped up their performance including doubling the amount of memory for accounts while tests were on-going.

Products

Company Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
WPOven Personal $39.95 Unlimited 40GB 4TB No Limit

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 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)
WPOven 288369 0 217.85 160.21 5815 283 16.64 13.63 9.245

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. WPOven had no errors this year, a marked improvement and perfect result.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
WPOven 26687 0 0 445 103 101 104

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. WPOven again had zero errors and a 3ms response spread.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
WPOven 100 100

 

Perfect. Enough said.

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

WPOven put on an absolute clinic this year. On every test they performed perfectly. A whopping zero errors across all the load tests and perfect 100% uptime. WPOven easily earned the recognition of being a Top Tier WordPress Host.

wpoven

DreamHost / DreamPress WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

DreamHost participated for the third year in a row in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. Last year, I wrote:

DreamPress improved their performance a lot over last round. In fact they did fantastically well on every load test once I got the opportunity to actually work with their engineers to bypass the security measures. However, they failed pretty badly on the uptime metrics. I have no idea what happened but I experienced a huge amount of downtime and ran into some very strange errors. If it wasn't for the severe downtime issues, DreamPress could have been in the top tier.

This year, they made even further progress and earned that Top Tier status. DreamHost also are the second highest rated shared hosting company here at Review Signal in terms of customer opinion.

Products

Company Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
DreamHost DreamPress $19.95 Unlimited 30GB Unlimited 1

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company 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)
DreamHost 295685 43 224.1 164.27 15063 339 16.06 13.5 8.922

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. DreamHost did exceptionally well with almost no errors and fast aerage response time.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
DreamHost 29337 0 1 489 4 3 7

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. DreamHost was near perfect with a ridiculously quick 4ms average response time (which is likely due to being physically close to the testing server) and 4ms spread which is excellent.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
DreamHost 99.97 99.97

 

Not much to say here beyond DreamHost had good uptime at 99.97%.

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

DreamHost continues to step up their performance game. Last year, a severe uptime issue knocked them out of earning awards. This year, there were no such problems. They handled every test near flawlessly and earned themselves a Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance award. I always am happy to see companies continually improve their performance. It's good for the space to have another strong competitor at the entry level price range.

dreamhost

Pantheon WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

Pantheon participated for the third time in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They've done well in the past earning top tier status in both previous tests. This year they had four plans entered into the following ranges: $25-50/month, $51-100/month, $201-500/month and Enterprise ($500+/month).

Products

Company Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
Pantheon 25-50 Personal $25 10,000 5GB Unlimited 1
Pantheon 51-100 Professional $100 100,000 20GB Unlimited 1
Pantheon 201-500 Business $400 500,000 30GB Unlimited 1
Pantheon Enterprise Elite $1,666.66 Unlimited 100GB+ Unlimited Priced Per Site

View Full Product Details

Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company 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)
Pantheon 25-50 268164 866 205.5 148.98 14422 315 6466 4.927 3.592
Pantheon 51-100 409962 57051 325.53 227.76 11682 762 20.74 17.97 11.52
Pantheon 201-500 629578 49212 510.78 349.77 15091 1353 33.88 28.9 18.82
Pantheon Enterprise 1295178 9964 1014.58 719.54 15101 786 30.86 24.18 17.15

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. Pantheon did well at the entry level and the enterprise level. The 51-100 and 201-500 range the load exceeded the capacity of the containers hosting the sites. Pantheon showed they definitely can scale at the Enterprise level, but some of the mid-range of their lineup struggled to keep up with our tests.

Blitz Results

Company Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
Pantheon 25-50 27755 0 0 463 61 60 67
Pantheon 51-100 55499 0 0 925 61 60 64
Pantheon 201-500 83211 2 0 1387 61 61 68
Pantheon Enterprise 138607 4 27 2310 62 60 80

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. Pantheon had no issue with the Blitz tests at any level with near perfect results across every tier.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
Pantheon 25-50 100 100
Pantheon 51-100 100 100
Pantheon 201-500 99.98 99.98

2/3 were perfect and the third was 99.98%. Pantheon did excellent in the uptime department.

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

Pantheon earned two Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance awards this year, for their entry level Personal plan and their Enterprise level plan. They definitely can scale for enormous sites and compete with the biggest companies in the space. The only place they struggled this year was the mid-range of their offerings during the LoadStorm test. It's by far the most stressful test and the $201-500 range was the most difficult price/performance point of any of the price brackets. Pantheon has a very unique platform compared to the rest of the field that's exceptionally developer-centric and focused around building a toolkit for teams of developers to work on a site in an opinionated workflow. If you like that workflow, you get an amazing toolkit combined with scalable performance.

pantheon-logo-black

LiquidWeb WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

LiquidWeb was a first time participant in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They have been around for a long time in the managed web hosting space but only recently entered the WordPress space. They have consistently been one of the top companies tracked at Review Signal winning numerous awards for their shared and VPS hosting.

Those are some pretty big expectations to meet when you enter a space that is already full of many competitors and being the new kid on the block. The only other first time participant that did as well was WordPress.com VIP, which isn't a new entrant into the space, but only this testing.

Products

Company / Price Bracket Plan Monthly Price Visitors Allowed Disk Space Bandwidth Sites Allowed
LiquidWeb 51-100 Personal $89 Unlimited 100GB SSD 5 TB 10
LiquidWeb 101-200 Professional $149 Unlimited 150GB SSD 5 TB 20

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)
LiquidWeb 51-100 520072 2745 408.3 288.93 15322 525 24.04 19.69 13.35
LiquidWeb 101-200 635893 76 490.78 353.27 15097 360 31.3 25.19 17.39

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. LiquidWeb handled these tests with relative ease. The larger plan did better managing a faster average response time and having fewer errors. But both results were top tier performances.

Blitz Results

Company / Price Bracket Hits Errors Timeouts Average Hits/Second Average Response Time Fastest Response Slowest Response
LiquidWeb 51-100 54574 0 4 910 78 77 82
LiquidWeb 101-200 81393 47 10 1357 80 76 118

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. LiquidWeb had minimal issues with the Blitz test. A very minor spike up to 118ms on the bigger test is the only noticeable thing. Again, top tier performances.

Uptime

Company StatusCake UptimeRobot
LiquidWeb 51-100 100 100
LiquidWeb 101-200 100 100

 

Perfect.

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

LiquidWeb earned Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance for both plans it entered. It's product line starts in the mid-range price wise and goes up. They definitely have the performance to match the pricing. Absolutely perfect uptime was nice to see too. I'm pleased to see they bring their strong reputation to this market with a strong product that matches the quality people have come to expect from LiquidWeb.

liquidweb-wordpress

 

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.

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