In this post, Rocket.net Vs SiteGround is compared in terms of performance, support, pricing, and use case. In the end, you will find the best of Rocket and SiteGround.
Quick Summary:
- Rocket.net hosting comfortably beats SiteGround in all five performance tests (TTFB, Uptime, Load testing, Core Web Vitals, and global TTFB)
- At Rocket, it takes 2 clicks to chat with a support agent; at SiteGround, it takes 10 clicks.
- All the Rocket.net plans come with all features and not even a single upsell. At SiteGround, the features are limited by plan with many upsells.
- SiteGround allows unlimited site hosting but Rocket offers doesn't offer it.
Contents
Rocket.net Vs SiteGround
Rocket.net is a Cloudflare-powered WordPress hosting service that offers agencies and customers optimized and reliable WordPress hosting solutions. The service is straightforward to use, with no configurations required by the users.
SiteGround is one of the most popular hosting services, and the service has been around since 2004. SiteGround hosting runs on Google Cloud and comes with easy website management.
I have spent some time testing the two services and closely studying their features. I will share my findings in this post, and after you read this post till the end, you will have a clear picture of both services.
Rocket Vs. SiteGround: Performance
1. Rocket hosting has better TTFB than SiteGround
The server Response Time test is an excellent way to test the performance of a hosting service. I tested the server response time of my Rocket site and my SiteGround site. While my Rocket site had an average server response time of 252ms, my SiteGround site had an average server response time of 442ms.
With of 1-year of data, it's clear Rocket is nearly 2x faster than SiteGround.
2. Rocket hosting offers 100% uptime
Uptime is another crucial factor in determining the performance of a hosting service. Without a reliable uptime, a site can never taste successful for sure.
While my Rocket site recorded a 100% uptime, the SiteGround site tanked down with 53 outages and recorded an average uptime of 99.99%.
Again, Rocket hosting makes the winner here.
3. Rocket hosting is a clear winner in load testing
My next performance check was Load Testing, and my Rocket site reflected
- 16ms in Clients Per Test (1000 Clients in 1 Minute),
- 60ms in Maintain Client Load (500 Clients in 1 Minute), and
- 14ms in Maintain Client Load (1000 Clients in 1 Minute).
My SiteGround site recorded
- 45ms in the Clients Per Test (1000 Clients in 1 minute),
- 201ms in the Maintain Client Load (500 Clients in 1 Minute), and
- 2929ms in the Maintain Client Load (1000 Clients in 1 Minute).
Rocket hosting beats SiteGround comfortably in all three tests. This test is made to measure which host handles the server load in a better way.
4. Rocket has better Global TTFB
Global TTFB is pinging the sites from as many as ten global locations and checking the TTFB. The test is helpful for sites counting on multiple global locations for traffic.
As I tested the global TTFB of the two services, Rocket had an incredibly fascinating TTFB across all the global locations, and it wasn't more than 358.91ms for Bangalore. The host had an average global TTFB of 158.28ms.
Honestly, I wasn't much impressed by SiteGround's performance since the host recorded a TTFB of more than 1second for 4 locations. SiteGround had an average TTFB of 861.03 ms.
5. Rocket offers a better Core Web Vitals Score
Sites need better Core Web Vitals to deliver a better user experience. This is why search engines like Google have been putting a lot of emphasis on Core Web Vitals metrics like Largest Contentful Paint for quite some time now.
As I tested the Core Web Vitals of my Rocket site and my SiteGround site, my Rocket site had
- a ‘Largest Contentful Paint' of 0.775 s,
- a ‘Total Blocking Time' of 0 s, and
- a ‘Cumulative Layout Shift' of 0.
My SiteGround website reflected
- a ‘Largest Content Paint' of 0.876 s,
- a ‘Total Blocking Time' of 0 ms, and
- a ‘Cumulative Layout Shift' of 0.
If we compare, Rocket seems to have better Core Web Vitals than SiteGround.
Rocket Vs. SiteGround: Features
1. Data Center Locations
Knowing the Datacenter locations of a hosting service is crucial since hosting a site from the closest data center locations to your target audience can drastically improve your site's performance.
Rocket has as many as 15 data center locations worldwide, which offers customers an excellent choice.
SiteGround has 6 data center locations across Europe, the USA, and Asia, which should not be a problem if you find your desired data center among these 6 locations. However, going by the number of data center locations, Rocket has a leading edge over SiteGround.
2. Control Panel
Rocket comes with a custom WordPress control panel that offers the convenience of managing everything from a single place. This may include development, launching, staging, and optimization. The control panel allows you to access data center locations, SSO to WP-Admin, robust reporting, and collaboration tools.
SiteGround also has a custom control panel created out of modifying the cPanel. The control panel comes with a much cleaner interface than the traditional cPanel and has all the features you would find in a cPanel. However, the tools and options are presented in a much more organized manner.
3. CDN
CDNs are extensively used these days and can drastically improve content delivery speed. Rocket provides customers with Enterprise Cloudflare CDN for free on all plans. With that, sites benefit from a blazing-fast speed backed by advanced features such as Brotli file compression, Image Optimization, Tiered Caching, Agro Smart Routing, and the closest server.
SiteGround started offering its own CDN solution and ditched its decade-long partnership with Cloudflare. Since their CDN pricing is higher ($14.99/month/site), I haven't tested the performance. You can get more details about their CDN here.
4. Backups
Rocket has an automated daily backup feature wherein backup sites are taken every night and saved in the Rocket server. This is done as a part of disaster recovery. However, users can also restore a backup as per their requirements. The company offers a 14 days backup retention on their plans, although one can take on-demand backups anytime.
Another cool thing about Rocket's backup system is that the host allows on-demand backup on all plans. SiteGround offers free automated daily backups on all plans, and the host saves 30 recent backups. Users can restore any of the 30 backups at any point without any hassle.
5. Staging
Rocket has the Staging free on all plans, and creating a staging site in Rocket is a pretty simple process. After you finish experimenting with the changes, you can quickly deploy the final changes to your live site.
In SiteGound, the Staging feature is not free on the StartUp plan and is only available on the following higher plans. However, SiteGroud keeps the process pretty convenient for the users. Apart from that, the host also offers Git integration with staging.
6. Security
Rocket has excellent security features, including WordPress Website Firewall, Hack & Malware Removal, Automated WP Core, Plugin, and Theme Updates.
SiteGround security system is characterized by a custom web application firewall, AI Anti-Bot System, Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate, and Linux containers.
Hence, it wouldn't be wrong to say that Rocket and SiteGround have highly reliable security systems.
7. Support
Rocket has a decent support team of highly proficient WordPress experts from the USA. The support team remarkably assists the customers through 24×7 live chat, phone, and email.
SiteGround is used to offer great support, but they made it difficult to contact their customer support. Sounds crazy, right? Yes, to reduce the chat & ticket volumes made it difficult for users to chat with a customer support agent. Finding the chat support button will take a minimum of 6 clicks. Many users are complaining, but the company didn't make any changes to the portal until now.
Pricing
Rocket.net plans start at $30/month. Rocket offers all its free features on all its plans, including Cloudflare Enterprise CDN.
SiteGround does deep discounting on your first invoice. However, their renewal charges are among the highest in the industry. You'll be surprised to see their startup plan costs $3.99/mo. But it renews at $14.99/mo. Likewise, all the plans have high renewal charges.
Unlike Rocket, SiteGround limits its features based on the plan. You need to choose their $10.69/mo. GoGeek plan (renews at $39.90/mo.) uses all their features. You need to pay $14.99/month/site for CDN. Overall, I'm not happy with the pricing model of SiteGround.
Conclusion
I am sure you have thoroughly enjoyed reading this post, and I have put my best efforts into presenting you with the most transparent picture of the two services. Now, you should have no difficulty understanding how the two services work. As per my testing and review, Rocket has a leading edge over SiteGround in many places.
However, SiteGround is also a reliable hosting service and has largely proved it over the years.
