Rocket.net Vs Cloudways (2024): Bought & Tested

Rocket.net Vs. Cloudways: Performance

1. TTFB

The server Response Time (TTFB) is a crucial test to check the performance of any hosting service.

The Rocket and Cloudways TTFB is measured by pinging the test site every 60 seconds from 22 North American regions to measure the overall average TTFB.

Based on the last 12 months of data, the Rocket site recorded an average server response time of 279 ms, while my Cloudways site reflected an average server response time of 332 ms. Rocket hosting comes with CF Enterprise CDN edge caching, giving the fastest TTFB to the sites hosted.

However, at Cloudways, it was tested without a CDN because their CF Enterprise CDN should be bought separately. Hence, Rocket has a better server response time (TTFB) than Cloudways.

2. Uptime

Uptime is another crucial factor. Any site with a sales motive can’t afford to have poor uptime. I tested the uptime of my Rocket and Cloudways site over 12 months.

While my Rocket site maintained an uptime of 100%, my Cloudways site recorded an uptime of 99.99%. With Cloudways recording a single outage lasting only 2 minutes, we consider both Rocket and Cloudways equally reliable.

3. Load Testing

Performance checks would be incomplete without load testing, and I performed load testing by sending 500 concurrent visitors to the site.

The result shows that Rocket handled the load with an average response time of 19 ms, and Cloudways took 266 ms. Rocket took the lowest time to handle the load, making themselves the fastest host to handle the load.

4. Global TTFB

Global TTFB is an important test to check how well a hosting service performs in different international locations. The test is especially essential for those sites that get traffic from multiple global locations.

I tested the global TTFB by pinging the site from 40 international locations. As expected, Rocket hosting scored better than Cloudways due to the Edge Caching on the Cloudflare network.

Rocket’s had an average global TTFB of 191 ms and Cloudways site had an average global TTFB of 445 ms.

5. Core Web Vitals

Better Core Web Vitals mean better user experience. I tested the Core Web Vitals of the two services using GTmetrix. My Rocket site reflected a

• Largest Contentful Paint of 507ms,
• Total Blocking Time of 0ms and
• Cumulative Layout Shift of 0. 

My Cloudways site had a

• Largest Contentful Paint of 560ms,
• Total Blocking Time of 0 ms, and
• Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.

Rocket Vs. Cloudways: Features

Data Center Locations

Rocket hosting offers eight data center locations in the USA, UK, Europe, Singapore, and Australia. Cloudways, partnered with five major cloud providers, provides access to host your sites from 60+ global data center locations.

Control Panel

Rocket hosting comes with an excellent, neat, and no-nonsense control that provides access to most features like managing site updates, overview area, backups, logs, etc. The dashboard is much simpler; exploring all the settings won’t take more than two minutes.

Cloudways comes with its advanced control panel that helps you manage even the tiniest settings of your server. However, for most site owners, you will access four or five tabs to manage your site’s regular settings.

CDN

Rocket has an Enterprise Cloudflare CDN solution available for free on all plans. The CDN gives sites the advantage of Brotli file compression, image optimization, tiered caching, and Agro smart routing while serving your content from the closest server. The best part is users don’t have to configure it at all. Rocket would take care of everything about the CDN.

Cloudways comes with a built-in CDN powered by Cloudflare Enterprise with features such as built-in Asset Optimization, Low TTFB, and exceptional caching. Cloudways offers a CDN add-on on all plans for easy CDN integration. However, it charges $4.99/month for 100GB bandwidth.

Backups

Rocket has a reliable backup system and free automated daily backups on all plans. The backups are usually taken at night and saved on the Rocket server for disaster recovery. The host also allows customers to restore any backups at any time.

Further, Rocket also offers on-demand backups on all plans, which means you can get a complete backup of your site before performing any site maintenance. All the plan comes with 14 days of backup retention.

Cloudways doesn’t offer free backup and charges $0.33 per GB. The backup system is reliable, and the host takes automated daily backups of sites and saves them to an external storage network.

Staging

Rocket offers straightforward staging site creation, and it’s free on all plans. It helps you create staging sites, test your changes, and deploy significant changes from staging to a live site.

Staging is free in Cloudways, and the process is pretty simple, from creating a staging site to pushing the changes to the live site.

Discounts

The Cloudways Promo code gives you 25% OFF for first-month billing, which is more than enough to test their hosting services.

Support

Rocket offers customers brilliant support through 24×7 live chat, phone, and email and a comprehensive knowledge base. Most importantly, the support team has the most experienced WordPress executives to assist the customers.

Cloudways also has one of the best support teams in the industry, and the team does a great job of assisting customers through 24×7 live chat and ticketing. One can access customer support inside their dashboard. Further, the host also has advanced and premium support add-ons for customers who need quicker assistance.

Rocket.net or Cloudways – Which is best?

I have nothing to complain about Rocket and Cloudways. They both are good in their price segment. I suggest you start with Cloudways, which is affordably priced at $11/month. After discounts, it can go around $7.7/month.