WordPress Hosting Benchmarks 2024: Who Delivers the Best Performance?
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 year’s data (January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023) to write up these 2024 Hosting benchmarks.
Summary:
- Rocket.net consistently ranked at or near the top in most tests, particularly in TTFB, uptime, load testing, and global TTFB.
- Kinsta demonstrated strong performance across various tests, especially in load testing and WPBenchmarks.
- WPX recorded good results in several tests, achieving 100% uptime and strong load testing performance.
- Some shared hosting providers exceed expectations, outperforming more expensive managed WordPress hosts.
- GreenGeeks stood out with remarkable global TTFB and Core Web Vitals results. A2 Hosting and FastComet also performed well in various tests.
- While many managed WordPress hosts, such as Kinsta, delivered excellent results, others, like WP Engine and DreamPress, exhibited disappointing scores on several tests.
- WP Engine, in particular, had below-average scores on all tests.
- Rocket, Templ, and WPX got 100% uptime. DreamPress had the lowest uptime at 99.82%, with nearly 16 hours of downtime.
Deals From Benchmark Winning WordPress Hosts 2024:
Hostinger
~Total Price: $93.60 for 4 years.
A2 Hosting
~Total Price: $63 for 3 years.
GreenGeeks
~Total Price: $23.40 for 1 year.
WP Engine
~ Price drops to $20/month.
Kinsta
~Get started for $0 on first month
Cloudways
~ Price drops to $6.6/month.
Benchmark Methodology:
Our WordPress Hosting benchmark is simple. We sign up as customers with popular hosting services, purchase an account, deploy a test site, and put them for testing.
All test sites are pre-installed with Twenty Twenty-Four Theme, along with Akismet, Contact Form 7, and Rank Math plugins.
Caching is enabled by default on managed WordPress hosting services. We added the “WP Fastest Cache” plugin for shared hosting services to enable caching.
The table below includes the hosting plan details, data center location, CDN usage, and benchmark start date.
Access in HTML table mode:
| 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 Enterprise | 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 |
Benchmark Test 1 – TTFB
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the most essential score for evaluating any WordPress hosting service. A lower TTFB score leads to faster site performance, enhances the user experience, and helps meet Core Web Vitals standards.
The Pingdom Synthetic monitoring tool pings the test site once every 60 seconds. Each month, it conducts 43,800 tests to determine the average TTFB performance.
I analyzed last year’s data (from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023) and compiled a list of hosting providers ranked from best to worst based on their TTFB scores.
Results
Rocket.net has emerged as the fastest TTFB WordPress host for the second consecutive year. Their speed-optimized hosting stack with Cloudflare Enterprise full-page caching does the magic for them. Templ hosting, powered by Google Cloud and Google CDN secured second spot.
WPX is ranked third with a TTFB of 329 ms TTFB. Thing to note is WPX’s TTFB is inconsistent month over month, as seen in the graph.
Cloudways and GreenGeeks recorded 332 ms and took the next two spots. GreenGeeks is impressive given its affordable start price of just $2.99/month. A2 Hosting comes close with 336 ms.
FastComet, DreamHost, Hostinger, and Kinsta recorded an average TTFB of 364 ms, 374 ms, 375 ms, and 378 ms, respectively.
Both Bluehost and SiteGround scored 409 ms TTFB; WP Engine recorded a response time of 414 ms. ChemiCloud used to be in the top 10 positions in last year’s benchmark, but now it has dropped to the 14th spot.
Nexcess looks promising, but their TTFB is a bit of a disappointment.
HostGator is one of the slowest hosting services with a massive 620 ms TTFB.
Benchmark Test 2 – Uptime
Uptime is a crucial factor in benchmarking WordPress hosting services. The Pingdom Syntentic monitoring tool checks the site for 60 seconds once, and if it is not reachable within 30 seconds, Pingdom records it as downtime.
The uptime is calculated using data from a full year from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.
Results
Rocket.net, Templ, and WPX achieved 100% uptime with zero downtime. Kinsta’s 99.99% uptime is also impressive, with just one outage.
Cloudways, A2 Hosting, and SiteGround are the other three hosts that recorded 99.99% uptime.
FastComet, WP Engine, and Nexcess recorded 99.98% uptime.
GreenGeeks and Hostinger recorded 99.97% uptime. Bluehost and HostGator are nearly identical, with 99.95% and 99.94% uptime, respectively. ChemiCloud had unimpressive results.
DreamPress is a big disappointment because of its managed WordPress hosting tag, priced at $23.99/month yet merely delivers 99.82% uptime with nearly 16 hours downtime.
Benchmark Test 3 – Load Testing
Load testing evaluates how effectively a website can manage high traffic volumes. In this test, a constant load of 500 visitors is simulated on the site, and the average response time is measured.
A lower response time indicates that the servers are performing better.
Results
Rocket.net continues to lead with an average response time of 19 ms. The response time graph is pleasing to watch as it remains consistent despite increasing load.
Kinsta secured the second spot with 27 ms. We can consider Kinsta to be better than Rocket.net considering its maximum response time is just 631 ms, while Rocket’s maximum response time is 2075 ms.
WPX is impressive with a 32 ms response time. The graph looks good, and it had the lowest maximum response time 424 ms among all the hosts we tested.
SiteGround comes fourth with a response time of 179 ms. A2 Hosting, FastComet, and GreenGeeks recorded 185 ms, 190 ms, and 200 ms, respectively. It’s impressive that these shared hosting services outperformed many managed WordPress hosting services on the list.
Cloudways, Templ, and Nexcess, followed with 266 ms, 294 ms, and 296 ms, respectively. These hosts handled all the load with no timeout or network errors.
Bluehost recorded a 438 ms response time, which looks great, but they have a bunch of Timeout and 400/500 errors. DreamPress again recorded an average score of 447 ms. SiteGround again recorded an average performance in load testing with 522 ms response time.
Like Bluehost, HostGator struggled to handle the load with timeout and 500 errors. ChemiCloud, too, sailed in the same boat and scored an average time of 963 ms.
Hostinger, though it passed all the load requests, came last with a 2412 ms response time.
WP Engine’s security firewalls are enabled, so the test fails within 10 seconds.
Benchmark Test 4 – WPBenchmark
WPBenchmark is our latest test addition in 2024. It performs CPU, Memory, File system, database performance, and network speed tests. The plugin gives an overall score out of 10.
Results:
A2 Hosting, FastComet, and GreenGeeks ranked as the top three fastest shared hosting service in load testing results. However, these hosts have the lowest server scores of 5, 5, and 5.7, respectively.
In contrast, HostGator scored poorly in all the benchmark tests but achieved a decent score of 6.9. Hostinger‘s load test results are average but got a good WPBenchmark score of 7.9.
Kinsta, Rocket.net, and WPX are the few hosts that excelled in above benchmark tests including this WPBenchmark test.
Nexcess, Templ, and Cloudways had decent server scores of 7.8, 6.9, and 6.9, respectively. However, DreamPress, WP Engine, and ChemiCloud’s results are disappointing.
Benchmark Test 5 – Global TTFB Test
In this benchmark, the test sites are pinged from 40 international locations to measure their global TTFB performance.
If your site audience is globally distributed, watch out for these results.
Results
Rocket.net stands out with an impressive global TTFB of 191 ms, thanks to Cloudflare Enterprise full-page caching.
The Templ hosting tested with Google CDN Edge caching secured second spot with 243 ms.
Cloudways ranked third with 445 ms. GreenGeeks was the fastest shared hosting company with a global TTFB of 528 ms, followed by A2 Hosting and FastComet.
ChemiCloud and Hostinger performed decently, with 571 ms and 572 ms, respectively. WPX, which had a good run in all the tests, made a dent here with 621 ms, indicating potential inconsistencies as seen on the Pingdom graph.
SiteGround had the slowest TTFB among all hosts, even lagging behind HostGator. For the first time, WP Engine and Kinsta secured similar scores in a single test of 650 ms and 654 ms, respectively.
Benchmark Test 6 – Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is Google’s new standard for Web Performance. The sites are tested using GTmetrix, and metrics like Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, and Cumulative Layout Shift are calculated.
Results
According to Google, the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) time should be less than 2.5 seconds to be considered good. Based on this, all the hosts have achieved LCP scores below 2.5 seconds. However, it’s important to note that this lab data may not accurately reflect the real-world experience of users in the field.
Summary:
- Rocket.net consistently ranked at or near the top in most tests, particularly in TTFB, uptime, load testing, and global TTFB.
- Kinsta demonstrated strong performance across various tests, especially in load testing and WPBenchmarks.
- WPX recorded good results in several tests, achieving 100% uptime and strong load testing performance.
- Some shared hosting providers exceed expectations, outperforming more expensive managed WordPress hosts.
- GreenGeeks stood out with remarkable global TTFB and Core Web Vitals results. A2 Hosting and FastComet also performed well in various tests.
- While many managed WordPress hosts, such as Kinsta, delivered excellent results, others, like WP Engine and DreamPress, exhibited disappointing scores on several tests.
- WP Engine, in particular, had below-average scores on all tests.
- Rocket, Templ, and WPX got 100% uptime. DreamPress had the lowest uptime at 99.82%, with nearly 16 hours of downtime.
Rocket.Net
This hosting comes with the best integration of Cloudflare Enterprise for speed.
GreenGeeks and A2 Hosting
These companies outperform many managed WordPress hosting providers, ideal for beginners.
Kinsta
Kinsta offers exceptional backend performance and excellent for handling heavy loads, thanks to powerful Google VMs.
Cloudways
It bridges the gap between shared and the managed WordPress segment. Excellent option to upgrade from shared hosting.
Templ
Templ is also the only hosting provider powered by Google Cloud with Google CDN edge caching. Plans start at $15/month.
Benchmark Review Of All Tested Hosting Companies:
A2 Hosting is easily one of the best shared hosting options for beginners. The TTFB, uptime, or load test beats most other shared and managed WordPress hosting services. The WPBenchmark hardware scores are average, but that isn’t going to make a big impact on its performance.
Bluehost’s speed and uptime scores have improved greatly compared to last year’s benchmark scores. Their load test score is not bad, either. Their WPBenchmark score improved compared to last year, so I think they improved the server architecture. However, Bluehost can’t top any tests.
Cloudways powered by DigitalOcean is a great managed Cloud hosting option for getting started. Their TTFB, Uptime, Load testing, WPBenchmark, etc., are perfect and worth the price.
ChemiCloud benchmark scores have slipped compared to last year. Their uptime is below average, and the load handling also got worse.
Data shows that DreamPress can be avoided at all costs. Although their prices increase yearly, their Speed, Uptime, load handling, etc., worsen.
FastComet improved their speed, uptime, and load handling by 2x compared to last year. The load testing score is the most impressive, as the scores were below par last year. It’s a worthy contender for the best shared hosting service.
GreenGeeks is another excellent shared hosting service, consistently performing in our last two years of testing. They handle the load better, and uptime and TTFB are excellent. Their Global TTFB is super impressive, making them suitable for sites with global visitors.
Hostinger’s uptime has improved compared to last year. However, their load testing still needs improvement. They recently upgraded their plans with upgraded server specs, such as more PHP workers, SQL connections, etc., which might explain their improved WPBenchmark hardware score.
HostGator is the only shared hosting service that should be avoided at all costs. Its performance is below par on all the tests, and nothing is good to discuss.
Kinsta’s load handling is one of the best among all the hosts tested, and even with increasing load, their response time remained the same. Their TTFB, uptime, and WPBenchmark hardware scores are excellent, making them one of the greatest Managed WordPress hosting services.
Nexcess scores are above average in all the tests, but it can’t perform better than its competitors. Considering the overall performance in all the tests, I give Nexcess a buy call.
Rocket.net looked better at all the tests. Their Global TTFB is top-notch and has a good WPBenchmark score. It also has the best load testing score, so it’s good to trust them for high-traffic sites. They are easily my recommended Managed WordPress host in 2024.
SiteGround’s uptime and load testing scores have improved compared to last year.
Templ’s load testing scores used to be the best but slightly slipped this year. Yet, the scores are still impressive. Whether you take TTFB, Uptime, or global TTFB, Templ’s performance is good. It’s worth considering for affordable Google Cloud WordPress hosting.
WP Engine performance is below par, just like last year. Though they introduced a new Advanced Network for better performance, it does nothing groundbreaking. I can’t test them for load test as the test gets blocked due to security.
WPX:
WPX’s performance has improved dramatically. They had frequent downtimes in 2021, and now, in 2024, it’s 100%. Their load handling is excellent. The TTFB is great, but the global TTFB is below par.
What are your thoughts on NameCheap hosting?
Kiran, we are testing Namecheap and will add them in next year’s benchmark as we don’t want to benchmark a company based on few months of data. But as you asked my thoughts, I can say NameCheap performance is below average. They might be competitive in terms of pricing, but their performance doesn’t quite match up.