WordPress Hosting Benchmarks 2024

We are back again for our 2024 edition of WordPress Hosting Benchmarks.

We have been testing popular WordPress hosting companies for over three years, and we took last whole year data (January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023) to write up this 2024 Hosting benchmarks.

WordPress Hosting Benchmark Methodology:

Our WordPress Hosting benchmark is simple. We sign up as a customer to popular hosting service, buy hosting account, deploy a test site and put the site for testing.

All the test sites are installed with WordPress Twenty Twenty-Four Theme, Akismet, Contact Form 7 and Rank Math WordPress plugins. The caching is enabled by default on Managed WordPress hosting services. For shared hosting services, we added “WP Fastest Cache” plugin to enable caching.

I have included the hosting plan details, data center location, CDN usage and benchmark start date in the below table.

Hosting	Type	Plan	Price (monthly)	Test Site Datacenter Location	CDN	Benchmark Start Date
A2 Hosting	Shared	Startup	$2.99	Michigan (US East Coast)	No	September 1, 2020
Bluehost	Shared	WordPress Basic Hosting	$2.95	Provo, Utah	No	November 16, 2022
ChemiCloud	Shared	Starter	$2.95	Dallas	No	August 25, 2020
Cloudways	Managed Cloud	DigitalOcean Standard	$11	New York	No	August 25, 2020
DreamPress	Managed WordPress	DreamPress	$16.95	Ashburn Virginia	No	January, 30, 2021
FastComet	Shared	Starter	$2.95	Newark, USA	No	August 25, 2020
GreenGeeks	Shared	Lite	$2.95	Chicago, US	No	September 1, 2020
HostGator	Shared	Hatchling	$3.75	Provo, Utah	No	November 16, 2022
Hostinger	Shared	Single	$2.99	North Carolina	No	November 30, 2020
Kinsta	Managed WordPress	Starter	$35	Iowa, Google Cloud	Cloudflare	September 1, 2020
Nexcess	Managed WordPress	Spark	$21	Southfield, Michigan	Cloudflare	May 1, 2021
Rocket	Managed WordPress	Starter	$30	Ashburn	Cloudflare Enterprise	October 12, 2020
SiteGround	Shared	Startup	$2.99	Iowa	No	August 26, 2020
Templ	Managed WordPress	Micro	$15	North Virginia, Google Cloud	No	February 3, 2021
WP Engine	Managed WordPress	Startup	$35	North America	Cloudflare	September 1, 2020
WPX Hosting	Managed WordPress	Business	$24.99	Chicago	WPX XDN	March 26, 2021

Tests

TTFB and Uptime Monitoring using Pingdom:

Using Pingdom Synthetic Monitoring tool, the site is monitored from 20+ major cities in United States and Canada. Pingdom collects the TTFB score from all the locations and provides an overall average TTFB score. The uptime is also measured in the same way.

Load Test using Loader.io:

In this test, a 500 constant client load is sent to the site and the average response time is measured. The test are made from Amazon US East data center.

Hardware benchmark using WPBenchmark Plugin:

WPBenchmark is a WordPress plugin that does CPU, Memory, File system, database performance and network speed test. The plugin gives an overall score out of 10.

Core web Vitals using GTmetrix:

GTmetrix is used to measure the Core Web Vitals score of the sites. The test is done from Cheyenne, Wyoming using a simulated mobile device setup.

Global TTFB using SpeedVitals:

Speedvitals tool helps to measure the average TTFB from 40 global locations. This results are much useful for sites with global audience.

tTFB Benchmark Results:

Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the most important factor to choose any WordPress hosting service. Lowering the TTFB score is highly useful in making the site load faster, providing a better user experience and also helps to pass Core Web Vitals.

The Pingdom Sytenthic monitoring tool measures our test site TTFB for every 60 seconds once. A total of 43,800 tests are done in a month to calculate the average TTFB performance.

I took the last whole year data (January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023) and listed out the hosts with better TTFB to poor TTFB score.

Results

Hosting	Average TTFB
Rocket.net	279 ms
Templ	313 ms
WPX Hosting	329 ms
Cloudways	332 ms
GreenGeeks	332 ms
A2 Hosting	336 ms
FastComet	364 ms
DreamPress	374 ms
Hostinger	375 ms
Kinsta	378 ms
Bluehost	409 ms
SiteGround	409 ms
WP Engine	414 ms
ChemiCloud	424 ms
Nexcess	439 ms
HostGator	620 ms

Key takeaways:

Benchmark Test 2 – Uptime

This uptime test is done to ensure the fastest WordPress hosting is also reliable. There is no use in using the fastest host with poor uptime records.

I used Pingdom to track the uptime from 20 USA locations. Refer to the above images for uptime data.

Results

Hosting	Uptime	Total Downtime	Total Outages
Rocket.net	100%	0	0
Templ	100%	0	0
WPX Hosting	100%	0	0
Cloudways	99.99%	2 mins	1
A2 Hosting	99.99%	30 mins	14
Kinsta	99.99%	25 mins	1
SiteGround	99.99%	1 hour 3mins	43
FastComet	99.98%	2 hours 1 min	26
WP Engine	99.98%	1 hour 56 mins	6
Nexcess	99.98%	1 hour 30 mins	9
GreenGeeks	99.97%	2 hours 43 mins	16
Hostinger	99.97%	2 hours 11 mins	58
Bluehost	99.95%	4 hours 28 mins	68
HostGator	99.94%	5 hours 30 mins	66
ChemiCloud	99.85%	13 hours 25 mins	40
DreamPress	99.82%	15 hours 58 mins	42

Key takeaways:

Out of all hosts, Rocket is the only host to secure 100% uptime in the last 12 months. There are seven companies that recorded 99.99% uptime.

Hostinger, HostGator, and Bluehost recorded the lowest uptime.

Benchmark Test 3 – Load Testing

WordPress load testing is a process to measure how much traffic the test sites can handle.

In this test, 500 simultaneous visitors are sent to the site, and the average response time is calculated. (lower the response time faster the servers)

Results

Host	Avg. Response Time (lower is better)	Min. Response Time (lower is better)	Max. Response Time (lower is better)	Response Counts (Higher is better)	Data
Rocket	19 ms	9 ms	2075 ms	741879	Check Data
Kinsta	27 ms	11 ms	631 ms	532636	Check Data
WPX	32 ms	8 ms	424 ms	464964	Check Data
SiteGround	179 ms	28 ms	2132 ms	83238	Check Data
A2 Hosting	185 ms	22 ms	1433 ms	80447	Check Data
FastComet	190 ms	31 ms	2111 ms	78547	Check Data
GreenGeeks	200 ms	20 ms	1774 ms	74574	Check Data
Cloudways	266 ms	8 ms	874 ms	56069	Check Data
Templ	294 ms	30 ms	4531 ms	49348	Check Data
Nexcess	296 ms	39 ms	5115 ms	49195	Check Data
Bluehost	438 ms	60 ms	10002 ms	26966	Check Data
DreamPress	447 ms	76 ms	1217 ms	33277	Check Data
HostGator	800 ms	69 ms	10002 ms	15056	Check Data
ChemiCloud	963 ms	29 ms	11108 ms	13592	Check Data
Hostinger	2412 ms	20 ms	6024 ms	5776	Check Data
WP Engine (Incomplete)	71 ms	47 ms	489 ms	1307	Check Data

Benchmark Test 4 – Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is the new performance metric developed by Google.

The test sites are tested using GTmetrix, and the Core Web Vitals metrics like Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift are calculated in this test.

The First Input Delay is field data; hence, it can’t be measured in tools. However, Google recommends considering Total Blocking Time as a proxy measurement; therefore, I include Total Blocking Time in the report.

Results

Host	LCP	TBT	CLS
GreenGeeks	389 ms	0ms	0.07
Templ	429 ms	0 ms	0.07
A2 Hosting	458 ms	0 ms	0.07
Bluehost	461 ms	0 ms	0.07
Kinsta	462 ms	0 ms	0.07
Nexcess	478 ms	0 ms	0.07
WP Engine	500 ms	0 ms	0.07
WPX Hosting	514 ms	0 ms	0.07
Rocket.net	550 ms	7 ms	0.05
SiteGround	572 ms	0 ms	0.07
FastComet	584 ms	0 ms	0.07
NameHero	589 ms	0 ms	0.07
Cloudways	595 ms	0 ms	0.07
ChemiCloud	619 ms	0 ms	0.07
Hostinger	621 ms	0 ms	0.07
DreamPress	629 ms	0 ms	0.07
HostGator	931 ms	0 ms	0

Takeaway:

Templ, Nexcess, and ChemiCloud are the top performers in this test. However, our test is lab data, and one needs to focus on improving the field data to get a pass in “Core Web Vitals”.

Benchmark Test 5 – Global TTFB Test

The site is tested from 35 global locations to measure the server response time (TTFB). If your site has global visitors, watch these results.

Results

Based on the data, Rocket (227ms), Templ (405ms), Cloudways (437ms), Kinsta (449ms), and WPX (462ms) are the top WordPress hosts with the fastest global TTFB.

Hosting	Global TTFB
Rocket.net	191 ms
Templ.io	243 ms
Cloudways	445 ms
GreenGeeks	528 ms
A2 Hosting	552 ms
FastComet	571 ms
ChemiCloud	571 ms
Hostinger	572 ms
Bluehost	597 ms
WPX	621 ms
WP Engine	650 ms
Kinsta	654 ms
DreamPress	664 ms
Nexcess	793 ms
HostGator	809 ms
SiteGround	870 ms

Comparison of WordPress Hosting Industry Benchmarks and Standards:

Rocket.net

Rocket.net secured the top positions in most benchmark tests. It’s the only company that utilized the Cloudflare Enterprise in a better way.

Templ

Templ harnesses the complete power of Google Cloud (Server + CDN + DNS). Their benchmark results are better than other Google Cloud based WordPress hosting providers.

Cloudways

Cloudways continually provides better benchmarking results in most tests but performs slower at load tests. Since I tested them only with the basic plan, their higher plan can provide better load handling.

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is the surprising performer because their shared hosting outperforms many premium-priced Managed WP hosting services. The best option to get started for an affordable price.

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting got decent benchmark scores on most tests. However, their starter plan (which I tested) is limited by many factors. But still, they’re better than many shared hosting providers.

WPX

WPX benchmarks have improved a lot compared to last year. In 2021 data, they have got frequent downtimes (apart from the 5 hours outage that happened in Aug. 2021). Since moving their tech stacks to LiteSpeed, there have been better improvements in the performance.

Kinsta

Kinsta Edge caching made big improvements in their load testing benchmarks which I ran in January 2023. Kinsta had the slowest TTFB for 12 months (Dec 21 – Dec 22), but after the introduction of Edge caching, their TTFB has improved a lot by 100-150ms this month. I expect Kinsta’s performance will be better in our Q2 2023 benchmarks.

WP Engine

WP Engine secured a decent score in TTFB and uptime test. I can’t able to run load testing as their security system blocks our test, considering it a DDOS attack. Apart from that, WP Engine is a solid contender, considering the number speed based features like Advanced Network, which got introduced last year.

ChemiCloud

ChemiCloud Load test benchmarks are impressive followed by a great show in the TTFB test. However, their uptime is poor with the starter plan. I bet their Mid and top-tier plans can have better uptime.

DreamPress

DreamPress recorded decent performance in all tests but didn’t come in the top 5 on any tests. Good in most terms but not the best at any.

FastComet

FastComet surprisingly scored better in most benchmarks except Load testing. It happens probably due to the Apache Web Servers. Their mid and top-tier plans have LiteSpeed servers that can handle a better load.

SiteGround

SiteGround scored average on all the tests. Their Global TTFB is one the slowest of all hosts benchmarked. GreeGeeks, which costs 2x lesser than SiteGround, provides 2x faster TTFB and load handling.

Nexcess

Nexcess scored average on all the tests. However, they’re feature packed with many speed features, which I don’t find in other managed WordPress hosts.

Hostinger

Hostinger scored below average on most tests. Their load handling and uptime are poor in their starter plan, which is reasonably priced.

Bluehost

Bluehost has the worst uptime on the list. All other benchmarks prove their performance is below average.

HostGator

HostGator services can be avoided at any cost. All their benchmarks performance is 2x slower compared to all other hosts combined.

Wrapping up

Based on our WordPress hosting benchmark results, I’ve identified the top performing hosting providers in terms of TTFB, Uptime, load testing, Core Web Vitals, and Global TTFB.

However, no benchmarks are perfect, and our review might not show the real face of hosting companies. For example, we tested the companies using the starter plan, but companies put the maximum speed benefits on the top-tier popular plans only.

A host mentioned as Average might be a Good top-tier plan. I suggest users sign up with companies that they think are a good fit and perform their own benchmarks. All the hosting services are covered by money-back guarantee, so you’ve nothing to lose.