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Pay attention:
Because the results of what I’m about to share…
Choosing fast hosting solution is absolutely critical to the success of your business site, because if your WordPress website loads slowly you will suffer from-
Not only is site speed a critical factor for your visitors, but it’s also a confirmed Google ranking factor and it’s not often Google confirms an SEO rankings factors definitively.
But what does all of that mean in the real world?
Well you can use this calculator from Google to find out. For me, it meant that I would increase my bottom line by $28,464 if I increased website speed by 1 second-
So you need to make sure you are actually choosing the fastest Wordpress hosting provider which is absolutely critical because if you get it wrong, the consequences for your WordPress site could be far-reaching.
We’ve also seen some pretty bold claims from WP Engine recently stating their new Google C2 Infrastructure is “40 percent faster than anyone else in Wordpress”–
As you can imagine…
That led to some pretty heavy backlash which was doubled down by the founder blocking a number of industry leaders that asked them to provide data to back up their claim.
On top of that:
WP Engine’s article also says…
But that is also very misleading!
Because they don’t consider the $290 per month Scale plan hosting package a “premium” plan and they are VERY shy about sharing pricing for their “40% faster than everyone else” C2 setup-
But, I’ve got some great news for you.
After jumping through many many many hoops, I was able to get a site set up on the new WPEngine C2 platform for $600 per month-
So I am very much looking forward to putting the “40% faster than every Wordpress host” claim to the test because they are 1,100% more expensive than the next cheapest web host in this test.
This is also likely to be the only independent testing you’ll see of WPEngine’s new C2 hosting service because of the high pricing and the many barriers they have in place to get setup.
And just to add to the controversy:
Kinsta recently migrated all their customers to the same C2 Google Cloud Platform that WP Engine are claiming victory over-
But the key difference between the web hosting companies Kinsta & WP Engine…
Is that with Kinsta, the new C2 platform is default on all of their web hosting account plans which start from $30 per month versus the $600 per month cost and special setup requirements of WPEngine.
So with all this controversy over who actually are the fastest WordPress hosts…
…I decided to put 12 fast WordPress hosting providers to the test.
What Will I Learn?
I decided to test the 12 fastest WordPress hosting providers by comparing how they performed in terms of load speed, support and price.
The last time I tried to find the best managed Wordpress host, I only compared 7 hosts.
So this time I have increased this to 12 of the fastest WP host to find great hosting solutions.
Here’s a quick introduction to each host-
Kinsta is a premium WordPress hosting provider who is obsessed with fast speeds and top security. It uses a Google Cloud platform across its 24 data centres meaning a speedy and secure transfer of data.
Some of Kinsta’s best features are:
And they have a super user-friendly dashboard with access to 24-hour support from real WordPress experts at just the click of a button.
Kinsta has plenty of options when it comes to choosing a plan and they all come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The Starter Plan is priced at $30 per month and provides-
Other plans include Pro which is $60 per month, Business which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $100 per month and Enterprise which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $600 per month.
Siteground offers multiple types of hosting and their Managed WordPress Hosting services are welcomed by those on a smaller budget and they are recommended by some big names such as WordPress itself and Yoast.
Siteground offers:
And they also commit to a 100% renewable energy match with their data centre (Google Cloud).
They often have promotions running so you may see even lower prices available and all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The current Siteground Managed WordPress plans are-
Keep an eye on the pricing and try and lock the prices in for a longer period of time if you can afford the upfront payment.
WP Engine is a well-known host that caters specifically to WordPress sites. They boast of being the best platform for hosting a WordPress website and do offer a pretty good sales pitch.
With WP Engine plans you get-
We will see if the hype is real…
WP Engine has 3 set plans you can choose from which can be paid monthly or yearly. You can usually get a better deal if you go with the yearly option.
Custom plans are for those sites that are expected to receive more than 400,000 monthly visits and you need to discuss with a sales specialist to get a quote.
WPX Hosting offers a fantastic managed WordPress hosting service that has been proven to provide speedy load times backed up by an excellent level of support.
Their plans include:
And WPX Hosting CoFounder Terry Kyle is committed to using the success of this hosting provider to care for and improve the lives of hundreds of cats and dogs every day.
So as well as investing in a great service you are also contributing to the running of Every Dog Matters.
WPX Hosting plans are pretty competitively priced and all offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy.
The monthly price gets reduced if you purchase the yearly subscription.
A2 Hosting offers a ton of different budget-friendly hosting services. Their managed WordPress hosting packages include some pretty cool features that keep up with the other premium hosting services on the market.
Such as:
And they are available 24/7 to assist with any questions or problems you may have.
A2 Hosting provide a lot of hosting services but as we are focusing on WordPress hosting then I will run through their managed WordPress hosting plans-
And all plans use A2 Hostings Turbo servers, which boast of being up to 20x faster.
They also have a pretty impressive ANYTIME money-back guarantee.
Bluehost is a well-known hosting provider that was founded by Matt Heaton in 2003. They offer professional managed WordPress hosting services that are designed to help build and grow their client’s websites.
All Bluehost WP Pro plans include-
And all this is backed up by 24/7 customer support meaning you can pick up the phone or send a quick message anytime day or night and have no worries about needing help fast from a different time zone.
Bluehost offers 3 WP Pro managed WordPress hosting plans-
Each plan offers a different level of some pretty impressive features, there are no traffic limits on these plans and they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Want to see how Bluehost stand up against its competitor SiteGround? Check out my post SiteGround vs Bluehost.
Cloudways is a cloud-based hosting platform that teams up with a selected provider to offer a good balance between functionality and affordability.
Cloudways plans offer-
…as well as a bunch of other helpful features.
They have been featured on some pretty notable websites like Forbes and PC Magazine.
Cloudways offers hosting with different infrastructure providers, for this article we have tested using Digital Ocean so I will run through those available pricing options-
And they have a ‘No Lock In’ policy meaning you don’t get tied up in contracts.
Dreamhost is an award-winning hosting platform that was originally founded in 1996.
They have been widely known as leaders in the web hosting industry so it will be interesting to test them against some of the newer kids on the block.
Dreamhost managed WordPress hosting plans include-
And the two higher-tier plans include Jetpack Professional too.
Dreamhost has a good range of pricing on its plans meaning they can appeal to all budgets.
And all the plans have unmetered bandwidth and like most of the other hosts, they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
GoDaddy is a well-known domain registrar but they are also a pretty popular web host too and has customers all across the globe.
Their WordPress hosting plans include-
The higher-tier plans also offer regular malware scans and removal as well as a free SSL certificate.
Here are the current pricing plans but ensure to double-check the renewal prices before you purchase-
Not a bad set of plans to choose from.
GreenGeeks is a hosting platform who pride themselves on providing an eco-friendly but fast and secure hosting service.
Their plans boast-
And if the name wasn’t a giveaway… GreenGeeks focuses on giving back to the environment by having a 300% green energy commitment on all plans.
GreenGeeks currently have a special price on plans so be sure to check on their website for any pricing updates-
And they offer the standard 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try them out with peace of mind.
LiquidWeb is another old-timer in the web hosting industry, they were first founded in 1997 and they pride themselves on their 99.999% uptime.
Nexcess has joined LiquidWeb and now take care of their managed WordPress hosting plans through their high-performance cloud which includes features like-
And they back all this up with 24 hour support.
LiquidWeb offers a wide range of plans, here’s a quick look-
They are so confident in their services that they offer 14 days free hosting without even asking for a credit card!
Pantheon is a web hosting company that advertises lightning-fast speeds through a combination of hosting and its WebOps platform.
Their plans include some great features like-
Can they live up to their claims in the tests I am going to put them through! We will see shortly.
Pantheon offers two fixed price plans-
And a third plan called ‘Elite’ which you can chat through with a web expert before getting a quote.
Each WP host was tested “out of the box” with the recommended setup to recreate the customer hosting experience and hosting needs as closely as possible.
| HOST | PLAN | MONTHLY RENEWAL PRICE | WEBSITE SLOTS | CDN INCLUDED? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Hosting | 1-Site Turbo | $32.59 | 1 | No |
| Bluehost | WP Pro Build | $27.95 | Unlimited*** | No |
| Cloudways*** | Digital Ocean | $22 | Unlimited*** | No |
| Dreamhost | DreamPress Plus | $29.95 | 1 | No |
| GoDaddy | Managed WordPress Basic | $14.99 | 1 | Sucuri |
| GreenGeeks | Ecosite Premium | $24.95 | Unlimited*** | No |
| Kinsta | Starter (C2) | $30 | 1 | KeyCDN |
| Liquid Web | Personal | $29 | 1 | No |
| Pantheon | Basic | $50 | 5 | Fastly |
| SiteGround** | StartUp | $11.95 | 1 | Cloudflare Free |
| WP Engine* | Startup | $35 | 1 | Stackpath |
| WP Engine C2* | New C2 Platform | $600 | 1 | Stackpath |
| WPX Hosting | Business | $24.99 | 5 | WPX Cloud |
*The WP Engine benchmarks were first taken on their startup hosting plans. Then we upgraded the hosting packages and they migrated the domain to the new C2 architecture (with a different IP) where we took a second set of benchmarks.
** SiteGround is only being tested here with the recommended free Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) enabled.
*** Cloudways is more self-managed with System Admin Panel knowledge required.
**** Unlimited managed WordPress hosting is rarely unlimited and managed WordPress hosting companies TOS make sure it very clear that any account exceeding normal usage will be billed, restricted or disabled.
I built a test blog to the following specifications-
And then cloned that across each of the 12 Wordpress hosts so that every web host had an identical install of Wordpress.
Then I ran 5 distinct tests across these sites-
So without further ado…
I ran each of the test blogs through GTMetrix from each of the 7 global locations.
To make sure all caches were primed, I ran 3 passes of GTMetrix for each test site, for each server location (there’s data center locations for all your target audience) and averaged out the results-
Unlike last year, the results of this were incredibly close this time around.
Both WPX Hosting (0.8 seconds) and Pantheon (0.81 seconds) are literally neck and neck in 1st and 2nd place.
Interestingly Kinsta in 3rd place need double the time (1.60 seconds) than 1st and 2nd place did to load the site.
But shockingly the new WP Engine C2 environment delivered similar results to the basic hosting plan despite costing hundreds of dollars more per month.
The GTMetrix Test Winner:
It’s hard to declare either WordPress hosting company a winner here but I think WPX Hosting wins purely because they cost $24.99 per month whereas Pantheon costs $50 per month.
Next, I wanted to run a similar site speed experment but this time using Pingdom tools.
I followed the same order process by running 3 passes for each test site, for each server location (there’s a ton of data centers) and then took an average of the results that look like this-
Interestingly the top 4 hosts are unchanged in this test and came out in exactly the same order as test #1 above.
Both WPXHosting (357ms) and Pantheon (359ms) were neck and neck yet again with 3rd place Kinsta (835ms) trailing behind.
The Pingdom Test Winner:
So just like in test #1 we can easily declare that both WPX Hosting and Pantheon are more than twice as fast as the rest of the managed WordPress hosting providers.
Isolated site speed testing is one thing, but it doesn’t tell you how hosts perform under stress.
So I wanted to know how each web host would handle 500 simultaneous visitors using Load Impact.
The problem with this test is WordPress web hosting providers often block it because they think it’s a DDOS attack and because all of my testing was done anonymously across each hosting account, I didn’t want to submit a live chat support ticket to the system administrator and disable the protection.
So I created a new page on each of the sites with 1,000 words per piece-
Then I setup Load Impact to test each page with 500 simultaneous visitors.
These are the results for those hosts that didn’t automatically block the test-
Pantheon (4ms), WP Engine (17ms), WP Engine C2 (23ms), Kinsta (24ms) and WPX hosting (26ms) were the managed hosting providers that performed exceptionally well.
With that said, each of the hosts performed well under load and each of them demonstrated that they can comfortably handle larger simultaneous high traffic sites.
But Pantheon really stole the show here!
And while I would have loved to be able to get the data on the hosts where the tests failed, I couldn’t have done that without tipping off the support team members that they were being tested.
The Load Impact Test Winner:
Hats off to the Pantheon team for achieving the kind of stability under load, that is a serious achievement. However WP Engine, Kinsta and WPX Hosting all held their own.
All of the tests so far have been served up from cached results but this test is designed to test the website performance of the actual server itself for each WordPress site.
To do that I am going to use the Wordpress Performance Tester plugin from Kevin Ohashi who invites WordPress hosting companies to pay to take part in his annual testing.
This stress tests server resources by doing a number of things-
Once it has finished crunching all of the data, it outputs 2 distinct metrics to measure performance-
I let the server monitoring plugin loose on each of the test blogs, this is how it went down-
What I love about this test is that a lot of hosts hide behind heavy web design caching because there’s a big difference between a server rendering a cached page and actually having to think about things.
As you can see Pantheon (3.82 seconds) really fell behind the pack here despite being top competitors in all of the previous tests.
And for the first time, we can see a clear difference in performance between WP Engines offerings with the new C2 platform showing a significant increase in performance.
WPX Hosting (0.696 seconds), Green Geeks (0.81 seconds) and Siteground (0.965) all put in sub 1-second high performance respectfully.
The WordPress Performance Tester Winner:
It looks like Kinsta (0.538 seconds) have made significant improvements this year with their new C2 platform offering a high performance of 23% faster execution time and a 31% more queries per second over last years testing.
Finding the fast Wordpress hosting provider is one thing, but unless that is backed by an incredible customer support team you’re going to face problems.
Each of the tested hosts are managed Wordpress hosts and self-proclaimed Wordpress site experts (except CloudWays & Pantheon).
So I wanted to put the speed and quality of support of each WP hosting account to the test by asking them to solve 3 common problems that most people have faced-
I sent the same questions on a support ticket to the customer support of each host to see how they would react and this is what happened-
Although WP Engine wouldn’t offer free site migration, they do offer a free plugin that should help with the process.
But in general, as you can see from the results, the quality of live chat customer service that each managed hosting provider offers really separates the cream from the crop.
The Support Team Winner:
The only host that offer free migrations, free malware cleanup AND took control of the hotlinking problems was WPX Hosting. However they don’t offer phone support and everything is done via 24 7 live chat email & email accounts.
So after the 5 tests, I can compare the most important features you should be looking for when choosing a WordPress host.
We’ll take a look at these key features:
Take a look at this comparison table and scroll across to see all the hosts.
| WP Engine / C2 | WPX Hosting | Kinsta | A2 Hosting | Dreamhost | Cloudways | Siteground | Pantheon | Bluehost | Go Daddy | Liquid Web | Green Geeks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Price | $35 / $600 | $24.99 | $30 | $32.59 | $29.95 | $22 | $11.95 | $50 | $27.95 | $14.99 | $29 | $24.95 |
| Sites Allowed | 1 / 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | unlimited | 1 | 5 | unlimited | 1 | 1 | unlimited |
| Speed | Slow | Fast | Fast | Slow | Slow | Normal | Slow | Fast | Normal | Fast | Normal | Slow |
| Support | Poor | Excellent | Excellent | Average | Average | Poor | Average | Poor | Average | Poor | Poor | Average |
| **Migrations | Plugin | Free | Free | Free/Paid | Paid | Free/Paid | Paid | Unclear | Paid | Paid | Free | Free/Paid |
| Backups | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily | Free Daily |
| SSL Certificate | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Free SSL | Yes | Free SSL | Yes |
| Staging Area | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Email Hosting | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Paid | No | Yes |
| Trust Pilot Rating | 3 Stars | 5 Stars | 5 Stars | 4 Stars | 4.5 Stars | 4.5 Stars | 5 Stars | No reviews | 1.5 Stars | 4.5 Stars | 4 Stars | 4.5 Stars |
**Migrations: Free/Paid = First site free and any after paid.
Despite the results of the managed WordPress hosting tests, no host is perfect and each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages.
And what is the right choice of web hosting services for me, might not be the right choice of WordPress hosting services for you.
So here is what I don’t like about each of the featured WordPress hosting providers-
There is no such thing as perfect right?
WPX Hosting (Cost: $24.99 per month) offers the fastest Wordpress hosting based on my testing. They came out on top with a high performance for both of my loading speed tests as well as a solid performance in the Wordpress performance benchmarker testing. Read my full WPX Hosting review to learn more about them.
Pantheon (Cost: $50 per month) was hot on their heels during both of the WordPress speed tests, dominated the load impact testing but seriously fell short in the Wordpress site performance benchmark and support tests.
Kinsta (Cost: $30 per month) also put in a solid performance top to bottom including speed, performance, load and customer support. Take a look at my detailed Kinsta review to learn about my favourite feature.
(If you’re looking to switch hosting to improve not only your speed but also your core web vitals, I highly recommend this one).
So if I had to rank them-
Why?
Because despite Pantheon delivering lighting fast load times, they really fell short in the support area and that is really what separates the cream from the crop and their hosting plans price per month is one of the highest.
Both WPX Hosting and Kinsta over-deliver in this area and have a great reputation for taking control of problems (whilst maintaining a 99.9% uptime guarantee) and solving them…
…while both being best value with lots of disk space and nearly 50% cheaper in price than Pantheon with a 30 day money back guarantee.
And as for WP Engine’s claim that they are 40% faster than everyone else in Wordpress, well they are barely 20% faster than themselves and both their $30 monthly hosting plan and new C2 $600 monthly hosting plan failed to perform against cheaper hosts.
And don’t forget, a faster WordPress website will result in-
And last, but most importantly-
I came across an interesting thread the other day in a Facebook group-
So that double confirms it!
WPXHosting is the best Wordpress hosting!
Which leads me to an important question…
…have you had any good or bad experiences with any of the featured hosts?
Answers in the comments please along with your name and email address! In the meantime, take a look at the website hosting resource site FAQs below.
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Yup,Required fasting hosting for Wordpress website. when your web hosting will be fast then your website traffic will grow and improve…
It certainly does help Anushka
thought WPX Hosting might need to change their home page (which they mention your test results), I’m happy they do not need :)Excellent review, when someone like you does these all tests and suggest the best hosting, it helps a lot for others like me.
Glad to hear it 🙂
Very interesting to see these findings. I have been using siteground and it has been great.
Glad to hear it Rey
informative article, helped me alot.plz make another article on float hosting..thank you for sharing…
Thanks for the suggestion Dan
Thanks for sharing such good information with us. I hope you will share more information about wordpress hosting. Please keep sharing!
Keep an eye out for the next round of testing.
Great content as usual!
Cheers Muhammad!
Thanks for the tip Vincent!
I also agree with this 100%, big difference and have big sites on that plan and my VPS.Also, you must not only set up Cloudflare in SiteGround cPanel and Cloudflare account settings, but also install the WordPress plugin and apply the optimizations from it.
Great information thank you for share…
No worries 🙂
I am currently a Siteground user.I did notice that the GoGeek plan claims to use faster servers, and the price on that plan is more comparable to WPX Hosting.I would have been very interested to see that version of Siteground compared.Still would be. 🙂
Thanks Jon – I’m keeping a note of suggestions to consider for my next round of testing 🙂
You have done a fantastic job. You gave us lots of information, along with examples that are very helpful for me. Thank you so much for sharing.
No problem Charles – hope you can use this testing to choose the best hosting for your site.
I’d like FloatHosting included in your next test. Thanks.
Will take it into consideration, thanks Joseph.
Hi Matthew next time try to include this two: namehero (great support) and hostek (fastest servers in my opininion i terms of first byte – also great support).
Thanks for the suggestions – I will add them to the list of hosts to consider in the next round of testing.
wow sir this is amazing for me.
Great news 🙂
Very nice information. WPX Hosting seems to be good and reliable also. It is also worth to take control of the problems associated.
Their support team are fantastic at dealing with all kinds of issues which is invaluable and surprisingly harder to find than you think.
Awesome blog. It’s very helpful blog. Thanks for sharing.Have a wonderful day.
Glad I could help, thanks John.
Great blog.Thanks for sharing.
Hope it helped you decide on which WordPress host is right for you 🙂
Thanks… Finally my doubt cleared…
Great news – glad I could help Shekhar
Hi Terry,As an EU citizen I would really love to see a real EU-location. With the BRexit UK will not be an option anymore for me. I’ve contacted support but they stated the same that their are no plans to add an EU-server.Personally I think you will need to keep the EU market.
nice posting
Thanks very much 🙂
Im on easyname and Im not sure if it is fast enough. My powder brows blog is loading very slow sometimes. you think its a good idea to change? xoxo franziska
Try these steps first – https://searchlogistics.com/seo/on-page/increase-website-speed/
I got to know lot about WP. Thank you for sharing.
Glad I could help 🙂
Please try closte.com also.I’d be curious to see your results as they are the provider I use!
Thanks Stuart, maybe in the next round of testing.
Nice Information
Thanks for the support Akash
Thanku share This Post
No worries 🙂
I’d love to see how Convesio compares to them
Maybe in the next round of tests 🙂
WPX is one of the best fastest wordpress hosting.
True that
Wow! I’m from south America ( Uruguay), and I’m very satisfied of your service. And although the server is a bit far from my location, the performance it’s pretty good.But if you open a data center in the region you will definitely rocks here. And I will be the number 1 evangelizer of your service.
Great review, thanks, Matthew!We have moved from hosting sites on managed VPS running (LiteSpeed) to Kinsta. Kinsta support and performance blew are mind. We are not trying to move all of our clients to Kinsta!
Yes I have a bunch of sites on Kinsta, including this one! Awesome support!
GoDaddy on number 4th? I heard and read a lot that GoDayy hosting is worse .
I guess they’ve been making some improvements
I’ve been with one hosting company (Interserver) VOLUNTARILY for years.The past few days have been a sign that its time to move on and this test is a superb eye-opener. I’ve been going back and forth with the live-chat attendant at WPXhosting voicing my concerns as I really really hope nothing goes wrong with the migration.I just wanted to leave this comment before finally paying for a plan.This must’ve taken a lot of time and resources on your end, thanks for going through all the troubles.
Hey Babs, well I think you are making the right choice with WPX hosting as your hosting company. As you can see from my fast WordPress hosting tests, they come highly recommended.
Hi There, I am curious why you did not test HostGator?
They sucked in my last test https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/fastest-wordpress-hosting/
I am using Cloudways but I am not using the Digital Ocean but rather Google Cloud.Even though this plan is more eexpensive I assume it would make a huge difference.Can you add the Google (and maybe the Amazon) servers to the test as well?
Yes I’ll consider those options for next year but I suspect you are making a good choice!
Hi Hameed,In this test, WPEngine and Kinsta were both running on the Google Cloud (new C2) and Matt included Amazon in last year’s test.Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
After reading your previous reviews, I decided to go with WPX. I have 25 + sites on Flywheel. They are really good but somewhat expensive. So gave WPX a go. The problems I had was firstly with the UI. It is so gen 1 compared to Flywheel. Maybe it is because I am used to a better UI. The more important issue was that WPX dis not have a temporary site url. This was a big deal for me as there were few sites which is still in dev mode. If I wanted to host it with WPX, I had to either point the domain to the server or do some complex host configuration on my laptop, which didn’t make sense, especially when Flywheel had it so easy. So I bought a package and then had to ask for a refund. I would definitely give it another try once they sort out this issue.
Yes the UI could do with the help of a designer that is for sure! WPX do have a staging area now which I agree should be one of the key features for any WordPress hosting providers.
Matthew:The quality of the content you continue to pump out amazes me. This was a very timely topic for me because while I’ve been with SiteGround for the past year, I haven’t been impressed. Your test results confirm what my gut was telling me – that SiteGround isn’t that great. I haven’t even heard of WPX Hosting so I’ll definitely check it out. One thing that would be nice to add to your report is the background of each company – i.e. how big are they, where are there servers located, and are they independent or are they part of some conglomerate that owns numerous hosting companies. It seems all these hosting companies are great at one point and then they grow so big so fast they start to suck or they get gobbled up by a bigger company and then they suck. Travis
Thanks Travis!SiteGround are actually a really good budget performer but it seems like you’ve outgrown them and the problems with them really come in at the increased renewal price at which point there are better options for the money.You are right about the performance of hosts changing which is why this fast WordPress hosting is an annual test 🙂
Hi Travis,WPX is privately owned by myself and 1 partner, completely bootstrapped 6 years ago and not part of any conglomerate.Server location (apart from our own 25-location custom CDN, free to all WPX users) are Chicago, London and Sydney and we will probably add India, South Africa and Argentina in 2020, though that is still to be confirmed.Let me know if you have additional questions.Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
Would love to see if there’s any real benefit to using “wordpress” hosting vs regular hosting and a comparison of those providers.
I suspect the main difference we would see is in the service and experience the support team provide and you would hope the server is specifically optimised to run the WP application.
Good stuff again. Would like to see servebolt and gridpane in your tests as hosting, and cache busting urls for load time tests.
Thanks, added to the list and the WP Performance Tester results give us a peek behind the cache
Hi Andrew,Servebolt also competed with WPX in Kevin Ohashi’s most recent tests on Review Signal and both companies achieved ‘Top Tier’ status (the highest level): https://reviewsignal.com/blog/51-100-month-wordpress-hosting-performance-benchmarks-2019/Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
Great write up. I use Cloudways and I think, after read this, I’ll move my sites to WPX and give them a whirl. 1 think you missed though, Cloudways don’t have free (offsite) daily backups, they charge $0.033 per GB.
I suggest you take some measurements, move one site, take some more measurements and then decide if you are going to migrate everything.
You should add Lightning Base to this. They’re excellent. I use them and WPX hosting for all of my personal projects, and recommend them to my clients.
Added to the list thanks!
Hi Kao,Lightning Base competed with WPX in Kevin Ohashi’s most recent tests on Review Signal and both companies achieved ‘Top Tier’ status (the highest level): https://reviewsignal.com/blog/51-100-month-wordpress-hosting-performance-benchmarks-2019/Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
Excellent article, as always. Thanks.
No problem Richard! Hope you got an insight into the top fast WordPress hosting providers and see who really offers fast hosting and value for money.
Excellent article! I was wondering if you could also write one explaining the difference between the speed test tools. Pingdom, GTMetrix and Lightspeed all give different ratings and this is really confusing. Also what about mobile performance? I recently realized mobile loading is a lot slower than desktop. Is it worth using an AMP plugin? Thanks.
You should learn about mobile first indexing, basically the performance of your desktop site in Google’s search results is directly influenced by it’s mobile performance.So if it sucks on mobile, you are paying the price with your desktop rankings.AMP takes away a lot of functionality, instead take a look at https://searchlogistics.com/seo/on-page/increase-website-speed/
I would like to see the same test and benchmark with mid-range packages and configurations.Such as Cloudways on AWS. Was Redis setup on all platforms who provide it without extra cost? Such as Cloudways?
Yes we can add some of those into next years fast hosting play!
Cloudways was tested by Matt here using Digital Ocean.In last year’s test, Matt included AWS.Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
While I know its impossible to include all hosting companies, I would have loved to see Flywheel in this test. If you have had any experience with them, I would appreciate your feedback.
I have no personal experience with them but would love to include them!
Hi Jared,If it helps, I ran my own Divi comparison earlier in 2019 and Flywheel were included in that: https://blog.wpxhosting.com/fastest-divi-hosting/Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
I’m with a2hosting still happy with them so far, their support is Excellence but then again my site is still small and there’s not much to complain about so far. I used to host with WP ENGINE years back when they started (with my other site) and thought they had too many restrictions, it actually felt like I was using WordPress.com version. Most bloggers swear by Siteground and Bluehost but they are not my favorite, I tried CLOUDWAYS at the beginning of the year using their trial for less than a month simply because their interface is not user-friendly.
If your URL is the one you left in the comment, you haven’t done any speed testing for a long time.
This test was so good that I had to sign up using your aff link. The timing was also perfect. Next time please add more premium hosts to the comparison like: digitalocean and eukhost.
Thanks Robert will do!
Hi Matthew,Thank you for your research!When you will update your research next time, could you please add more metrics, like:- PHP version (5, 7)- Server (Nginx, Apache, Litespeed)- HTTP protocol version (HTTP 1.1/2) (https://www.wpserver03.xyz/ – HTTP/2; http://wpserver12.xyz/ HTTP 1.1 + HTTP 2)- Caching plugins (now https://wpserver05.xyz/ using W3 Total Cache)I think this will be handy.Regards
So you would like me to delve into the more technical specs of each host? I chose not to get too technical because most people don’t care as long as it’s the fastest.
Hi SEONoob,To clarify, these are WPX tech specs requested above:PHP 7.3 is the current highest available version but 7.4 is about to hit and as soon as it is proven stable, it will be rolled out to all servers. Usually it’s very quick from new release to implementation at WPX.We are currently using Apache but have been testing Litespeed as an alternative for some time and are likely to switch to that in 2020.We do use http2We recommend W3 Total cache as that one is best suited to our platform.Let me know if you have additional questions.Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
Interesting to see this review. I’m a Kinsta user and I do have better experience there compared to WPX Hosting. WPX is good and the email hosted is a bonus. But, it may not be for everyone. Example, my site is messed up (structurely) and it’s just too much work to fix it. Maybe in the future.But when this happens, you may not be able to use the full services offered by WPX. But, it is still a good web hosting company.Other than that, Kinsta is top notch but can be pricey when you have over 150k visitors per month.Cheers.
I am not sure what problem you have that doesn’t let you use the full services by WPX?(I have my sites split between Kinsta and WPX)
Excellent review and I agree with your conclusion. I have been using a combination of hosting services, but knowing that I can get free migration to WPX hosting plus free malware protection/removal is the kicker for me. Will WPX migrate all 5 sites you can host with them for free? When I migrate to SiteGround a couple of years ago, they would only move one site. I paid someone to do the rest…Another issue is the SSL certificate …Is it available for free with all these host providers? I know that SiteGround has a free version and a more secure version of SSL certificate that costs anywhere from $99 a year (with a wildcard so you can have it installed on all your sites) or more…My last question is how much storage do you get and bandwidth for each of the services? In my case, the sites I will move are bulky and require a lot of bandwidth as they are e-commerce stores…Thanks for the work putting this together (and the investment of the $600 for the WP Engine C2 hosting test!)…
I am not sure how many sites they migrate but ask their support they will be able to tell you but for sure they have free SSL certificate for all your domains.I suggest you take a look at each plan of the hosts you like the look of because storage etc varys wildly.
I’m with WPX and they will migrate ALL sites into your account for free.
Hi Dave,At WPX, all site migrations are free (if they don’t involve a domain change e.g. migrating a site from davesblog.com to davesamazingblog.com) and are usually completed within 24 hours, could be a little longer during the Black Friday period.The unlimited free SSLs are by Let’s Encrypt (co-sponsored by Google) – more info here: https://letsencrypt.org/Storage and bandwidth varies by plan, just click on the Pricing top menu link on the WPX site.Hope that clarifies!Terry KyleCEO, WPX Hosting
I thought WPX Hosting might need to change their home page (which they mention your test results), I’m happy they do not need 🙂 Excellent review, when someone like you does these all tests and suggest the best hosting, it helps a lot for others like me.I used Kinsta earlier, but it looked expensive when my site earnings dropped. After your first review, I have migrated to WPX Hosting. It is one of the best and excellent support hosting provider with enough features (like 5 websites and 100GB data transfer with their free CDN)
No problem glad to help! Other than the support team, how has your experience been with WPX Hosting?
I have spent a year with WPX with several sites and Siteground with several more – sadly tied in to a three year deal.I had one site infected with Siteground who just shut it diwn and were extremely unimpressive in support. I was totally unimpressed. Whatever the infection it reappeared several times over several months despite cleaning my installs at work as well as installing expensive security plugins per their advice.Moved the site to WPX and the infection reappeared and was cleaned within 24 hours. Their support is second to none and the only complaint I have with them us that they don’t like recommending plugins.I want a divorce from Siteground – poor support and high maintenance. WPX us everything a good partner should be.
Yes and that is really what separates the cream from the crop – both WPX Hosting and Kinsta hosting have an “active” support team that are the fastest to take control of problems and fix them. The time and money that saves every month far exceeds the cost of the hosting.