Rocket.net Review 2024 – our #1 Recommended WordPress Hosting
Rocket.net Review Summary
Overall: Our final verdict is that Rocket.net is an outstanding Managed WordPress hosting service. They have identified the most significant pain points in the industry and delivered a faster hosting solution with zero upsells.
Moreover, they have done extensive speed optimization on top of Cloudflare Enterprise for even quicker performance, making Rocket.net an excellent choice based on its performance-to-pricing ratio.
Performance: Rocket.net has remarkable performance across various metrics such as TTFB, uptime, load testing, and Core Web Vitals. With Cloudflare Enterprise’s Full Page caching, Rocket.net outperforms other services with a similar setup (CDN with full page caching).
The service comes with all the premium features of Agro intelligent routing, Polish image optimization, and tiered caching.
Features: In terms of features, Rocket.net has done a commendable job with its control panel, which is simple yet feature-rich.
Rocket.net provides access to advanced features like staging, analytics, and error logs, with only eight menus required to access all features.
A WordPress site can be created with less than three clicks, and themes and plugins can be updated from the dashboard. The WordPress activity log is a favorite feature on the dashboard.
Support: Rocket.net provides industry-leading 24/7 email, chat, or phone support. Their CEO, Ben Gabler, who has been in the industry for 20 years, jumps in to fix support issues, which is great to note.
In summary, Rocket.net is an exceptional managed WordPress hosting service that we highly recommend.
Rocket.net Pros
Rocket.net Cons
Starts at $30/month
Rocket.net is a new player in the Managed WordPress Hosting market.
In this Rocket.net Review, I share my personal experience using this hosting service for nearly two years. This review covers its performance, features, support, and pricing.
To make this Rocket.net Hosting review the best one, I did:
- Installed a test site on the Rocket.net server and monitored it for 24/7/365 days.
- Collected 24 months of performance data of Rocket.net
- Sharing my thoughts on Rocket.net’s Best and Worst Features
- Compared Rocket.net to its Competitors (WP Engine and Kinsta)
- My Personal recommendation is whether Rocket is Worth it or Not.
Let’s get started.
Rocket.net Pricing
Rocket.net offers an impressive array of features included in all plans, such as Enterprise CDN features, Uptime Guarantee, Free SSL Certificates, 24/7 Support, automated daily backups, and multi-site support.
The company has recently launched a new set of Agency and Enterprise plans that provide even more benefits. The Agency plan starts at $100/month and includes unmetered visits, which is a significant upgrade from regular Managed hosting plans with traffic limits. Additionally, the Agency plan includes access to the Agency Kit, which features a White-label control panel, WooCommerce Integration, and expert customer support.
On the other hand, the Enterprise plan starts at $649/month and is designed for high-traffic sites. This plan offers enormous tech specs, such as a minimum of 8 CPU Cores, 64GB RAM, and 1TB NVMe storage. The plan also includes unlimited PHP workers, Object Cache Pro, and unlimited requests. Overall, Rocket.net’s pricing structure is competitive and offers excellent value for its features and benefits.
Rocket.net vs. competitors
Rocket.net is an exceptionally Managed WordPress hosting service that outperforms its competitors in various aspects.
Kinsta and WP Engine are well-known hosting services that offer similar setups with CDN full-page caching. However, Rocket.net has an advantage over Kinsta as it is powered by Cloudflare Enterprise, providing features like Agro smart routing, tiered caching, Polish, and more. Rocket.net also offers double the traffic limits, bandwidth, and unlimited PHP workers compared to Kinsta. In terms of WP Engine, while they use Cloudflare for advanced network features, they don’t offer full-page caching, making Rocket.net significantly faster.
Cloudways and Flywheel are other competitors in the managed WordPress hosting market. While Cloudways pricing is lower than Rocket.net, features like backups and CDN come at an additional cost. Flywheel has traffic limitations, while Rocket.net offers more flexibility with 2x more traffic limits.
Rocket.net stands out as a top-performing Managed WordPress hosting service with competitive pricing and inclusive features that offer exceptional value compared to its competitors.
Rocket.net Performance Results
Rocket.net significantly emphasizes speed on its official website, citing impressive metrics such as Cache Hit Ratio, Time to First Byte, and built-in website security.
To verify these claims, we conducted a comprehensive speed test of Rocket.net, and the results are impressive. Among the various metrics tested, server response time is an essential factor to consider when evaluating speed, and Rocket.net has performed exceptionally well in this regard.
Server Response Time
Our testing revealed that Rocket.net achieved an average response time of 279 ms, which is the best score among all the hosts tested at Hostingstep.com.
A lower response time equates to faster server performance and Rocket.net’s response time score is indeed impressive.
Last 12 months average speed of Rocket.net:
- September 2024 average TTFB: 348 ms
- August 2024 average TTFB: 332 ms
- July 2024 average TTFB: 306 ms
- June 2024 average TTFB: 312 ms
- May 2024 average TTFB: 310 ms
- April 2024 average TTFB: 321 ms
- March 2024 average TTFB: 342 ms
- February 2024 average TTFB: 342 ms
- January 2024 average TTFB: 341 ms
- December 2023 average TTFB: 338 ms
- November 2023 average TTFB: 310 ms
Uptime
Rocket.net recorded 100% uptime in the last 12 months. Two tools once monitored the site for 60 seconds, and both confirmed the 100% score.
Last 12 months average uptime of Rocket.net:
- September 2024 average uptime: 100%
- August 2024 average uptime: 100%
- July 2024 average uptime: 100%
- June 2024 average uptime: 100%
- May 2024 average uptime: 100%
- April 2024 average uptime: 100%
- March 2024 average uptime: 100%
- February 2024 average uptime: 100%
- January 2024 average uptime: 100%
- December 2023 average uptime: 100%
- November 2023 average uptime: 100%
Uptime is also an important factor in this premium price range. Rocket.net servers are reliable, and I hope the scores will continue in the coming days.
We hope to see Rocket.net maintain this uptime performance, providing customers with uninterrupted website access.
Load Testing
Load testing is crucial for evaluating hosting services, as it measures a server’s ability to handle high traffic volumes without slowing down.
To test Rocket.net’s performance under load, we sent 500 concurrent visitors to the site and measured the average response time.
The results were impressive, with Rocket.net achieving an outstanding 19ms average response time during the load test.
This score is the best we’ve ever recorded among all hosting companies, indicating that Rocket.net’s servers can easily handle high-traffic volumes.
A lower response time during load testing indicates a server’s ability to handle traffic efficiently.
Overall, Rocket.net’s exceptional performance under load testing makes it a reliable choice for anyone seeking hosting solutions that can handle high traffic volumes and deliver consistently fast performance.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a set of performance metrics critical to user experience and search engine rankings. One of these metrics is the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how long it takes for the largest content element on a webpage to load.
Rocket.net’s LCP score is 550 ms, which is within the recommended range of fewer than 2.5 seconds to receive a passing score in the search console.
This score indicates that Rocket.net delivers fast loading times for the most critical content on a webpage.
core web vitals | Largest contentful paint | cumulative layout shift |
---|---|---|
Rocket.net | 550 ms | 0.05 |
Global TTFB
Rocket.net recorded an outstanding global TTFB score of 191 ms, which is the quickest score among all hosting companies.
This result indicates that Rocket.net’s servers are performing exceptionally well, and users can expect fast webpage loading times from anywhere in the world.
Rocket.Net Features
Rocket.net is Powered by Cloudflare Enterprise
One of Rocket.net’s unique features is that it is powered by Cloudflare Enterprise, a high-performance global content delivery network (CDN) offering a range of advanced features and capabilities.
Unlike Cloudflare’s free Pro and Business plans, Cloudflare Enterprise provides access to all their global CDN locations. This means that Rocket.net can deliver content to visitors from the nearest data centers, resulting in maximum performance and faster webpage loading times.
Furthermore, Rocket.net integrates advanced Cloudflare Enterprise features like Polish and Mirage Image optimization and Cookie Cache Bypass to further improve webpage load times and user experience.
High Traffic Limitations
One advantage of choosing Rocket.net as your managed WordPress hosting provider is the significantly higher traffic limitations they offer compared to competitors like WP Engine and Kinsta.
For example, the Rocket.net Starter plan offers 250,000 visits per month for $30 per month, while competitors only offer 25,000 visits per month at the same price point. This represents almost double the bandwidth compared to WP Engine and Kinsta, making Rocket.net a compelling alternative for those looking for a high-performance hosting solution.
To help illustrate this advantage, here is a table comparing the traffic limits of Rocket.net with Kinsta and WP Engine:
HOST | SPECS |
---|---|
Rocket | $30/month, 250,000 visits, 10GB Storage |
Kinsta | $35/month, 25,000 visits, 10GB space |
WP Engine | $30/month, 25,000 visits, 10GB space |
Simple yet effective Dashboard
Rocket.net’s dashboard is designed to be simple and user-friendly, without any unnecessary clutter or distracting elements. The My Dashboard page provides an overview of your hosting account’s key metrics, including the number of sites hosted, visits, disk usage, and bandwidth limits.
The number of sites you have hosted is listed with their respective Rocket.net server location, WordPress version, and quick login access to WP Admin. The “Manage” option allows you to perform advanced functions. The dashboard also includes a ticket creation option and provides updates on the latest Rocket.net news.
Overall, Rocket.net’s dashboard is clean and straightforward, providing users with only the necessary information and functions required for a seamless hosting experience.
Rocket.net creates a staging environment in seconds with a single click. The staging mode has the exact setup of the main Dashboard with a different sub-URL. All development work can be carried out here, and with a single click of the Publish button, the staging site contents will be pushed into the production site.
Rocket.net Data Center Locations
Rocket.net provides service from seven global data center locations and is also powered by 275+ Cloudflare Edge locations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is Rocket.net?
Rocket.net is a managed WordPress hosting platform that is highly optimized and delivered by Cloudflare Enterprise. Hosting your site on Rocket.net comes with built-in CDN and WAF security features by default, ensuring high performance and robust security.
Is Rocket.net a good hosting platform?
Based on our testing, Rocket.net offers exceptional performance, including very high uptime and low response time and has demonstrated the ability to handle thousands of concurrent users without any issues. Rocket.net offers excellent value for money, making it a highly recommended hosting platform.
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