Choosing the best WordPress hosting for your site is critical. And the most important thing you need to consider is… How fast it is! Why? Because if your website loads slowly, you will suffer from- Lower search engine rankings Higher bounce rates Lower page view numbers Lower conversion rates And last but not least…  A SLOW WEBSITE = LOWER PROFITS! Your websites speed is critical to the bottom line of your business. And all of that starts by making sure you choose the best WordPress hosting for you. PRO TIP: With WordPress hosting- “best” does not mean “most expensive” Keep reading and you’ll understand exactly what I mean… Because the tests below will help you save $,080 this year. Which Is The Best WordPress Hosting? Choosing the best WordPress hosting is easy. You want to make sure that the host you choose- Is super fast on the front and back end Loads your website quickly globally Takes security seriously (automatic backups & SSL) Offers great support Provides value for money The problem is, that is much easier said than done. So to find out who really offers the best WordPress hosting… I setup 8 test blogs across 7 popular managed WordPress hosting providers. And then I ran tests across each of those 8 blogs- Speed of loading from different locations around the world Ability to cope with a plugin-heavy WP blog Ability to handle a heavy simultaneous traffic load How each hosts hardware benchmarks Support speed & quality Value for money (very surprising result!) Note: I chose the cheapest plan with multiple sites. Cheaper plans are available. Kinsta – Who are the current host of this blog Cost: websites, $0 monthly, $00 annually CDN: Yes – KeyCDN included WPX Hosting – The previous host of this blog before Kinsta Cost: websites, $.99 monthly, $9.99 annually CDN: Yes – WPX Cloud included WP Engine – My host before WPX Hosting (it wasn’t great) Cost: websites, $ monthly, $0 annually CDN: Yes – MaxCDN>Stackpath included SiteGround – Specifically their managed WordPress hosting option Cost: unlimited website, normally $9.9 monthly, $9.0 annually CDN: No – Free CloudFlare recommended Hostgator – The managed WordPress Hosting package Cost: websites, $7.9 monthly, $.0 annually CDN: No – Free CloudFlare recommended Liquid Web – Again, their managed WordPress hosting offering Cost: 0 websites, $99 monthly, $,88 annually CDN: No – Free CloudFlare recommended Amazon EC – Not a managed WordPress host, but a DIY wildcard alternative Cost: Unlimited websites, $.99 monthly, $79.88 annually CDN: No – Free CloudFlare recommended So with WPEngine & LiquidWeb being the most expensive  of all of them by a long way. You would expect them to be the clear winners… Right?  WRONG! Not even close. How I Tested WordPress Hosting Speed I setup a total of 8 test sites across each of the 7 hosts. Hosts that included a CDN as part of their package had sites installed on them (WPXHosting, Kinsta & WP Engine). Hosts that ask you to use a free CDN like CloudFlare had sites installed on them (Siteground, Hostgator, Amazon EC & LiquidWeb). All of the sites are hosted in the USA. Then I created different types of blog on host and cloned that across each host using this plugin– Blog Type Heavy Cronus Theme photos ,000 words Blog Type Heavy Cronus Theme 0 plugins No text/images Blog Type Blog Type Plus Free CloudFlare CDN And to help make things a little easier for you… You can see the live versions of all of test blogs below- Siteground Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy) Blog Type (type + Cloudflare) HostGator Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy) Blog Type (type + Cloudflare) LiquidWeb Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy) Blog Type (type + Cloudflare) Amazon EC Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy) Blog Type (type + Cloudflare) WPX Hosting Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy)  Kinsta Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy)  WP Engine Blog Type (image heavy) Blog Type (plugin heavy) Feel free to click through to any of them and run your own tests! But if you’re too lazy to do that… Here are the results of my tests- Test – Image Heavy Site Loading Speed In this test: I took the Blog Type (image heavy) install for each host and ran it through GTMetrix twice. Often a sites content is cached on the hosting server and CDN. So I ran passes of GTMetrix to make sure all caches were primed. Then I tested each site from 7 global locations and averaged out the results. This is what it looks like- USACanadaUKAustraliaChinaBrazilIndia Tested From Dallas, USA. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds ms View Result Kinsta . seconds 00 ms View Result SiteGround . seconds ms View Result WP Engine . seconds ms View Result Liquid Web .8 seconds ms View Result HostGator . seconds 9 ms View Result Amazon EC . seconds 900 ms View Result Tested From Vancouver, Canada. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result Kinsta . seconds 8 ms View Result WPX Hosting . seconds 89 ms View Result HostGator .7 seconds ms View Result SiteGround .8 seconds ms View Result WP Engine . seconds 9 ms View Result LiquidWeb . seconds ms View Result Amazon EC .8 seconds 900 ms View Result Tested From London, United Kingdom. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting 0. seconds 7 ms View Result SiteGround . seconds 9 ms View Result WP Engine .7 seconds 8 ms View Result Kinsta .0 seconds ms View Result Liquid Web . seconds ms View Result Amazon EC . seconds 800 ms View Result HostGator .0 seconds 7 ms View Result Tested From Sydney, Australia. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting 0.8 seconds ms View Result Kinsta . seconds 00 ms View Result SiteGround .7 seconds 800 ms View Result WP Engine . seconds 800 ms View Result Liquid Web . seconds 900 ms View Result HostGator .0 seconds 00 ms View Result Amazon EC .0 seconds 00 ms View Result Tested From Hong Kong, China. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds 700 ms View Result Kinsta . seconds 00 ms View Result SiteGround . seconds 900 ms View Result WP Engine . seconds 900 ms View Result HostGator .8 seconds 8 ms View Result Liquid Web .0 seconds 000 ms View Result Amazon EC 9.0 seconds 800 ms View Result Tested From Sao Paulo, Brazil. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting .7 seconds 0 ms View Result WP Engine . seconds 700 ms View Result Kinsta . seconds 00 ms View Result SiteGround . seconds 000 ms View Result Liquid Web .7 seconds 00 ms View Result HostGator . seconds 00 ms View Result Amazon EC .7 seconds 800 ms View Result Tested From Mumbai, India. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) TTFB(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting 0.9 seconds 0 ms View Result SiteGround . seconds 00 ms View Result Kinsta .7 seconds 00 ms View Result WP Engine .8 seconds 000 ms View Result Liquid Web . seconds 00 ms View Result Amazon EC . seconds 00 ms View Result HostGator . seconds 00 ms View Result Click Here To See The Test Data Hide The Test Data Test Conclusions  The clear winner here is WPX Hosting. But it’s fair to say that all of the hosts performed within acceptable levels in Canada and North America (except for Amazon EC). It’s only when you start taking a global look at things do you see dramatic differences in the load times. But having globally fast loading times is critical in the modern economy. Test – Plugin Heavy Site Loading Speed A plugin heavy site can cause huge problems when it comes to load times. And it’s easy to get carried away! This blog has active plugins at the time of writing- And plugins can have such a big impact on load time… WP Engine maintains a list of plugins that are banned on their platform. So for the Blog Type (plugin heavy) installs, I installed 0 popular plugins with no other content whatsoever. Thrive Architect Yoast SEO Smushit Contact Form 7 All In One Schema WooCommerce TinyMCE Advanced Really Simple SSL MailChimp for WordPress Insert Headers and Footers Redirection WP Statistics AMP for WordPress Google Analyticator WP Sitemap Page Login LockDown WP-Polls WP Google Fonts Cookie Notice for GDPR Social Media Share Buttons & Icons Quiz & Survey Master PDF Embedder WP Project Manager ManageWP Worker Code Snippets Tablepress PrettyLinks bbPress WordPress Download Manager Business Directory Plugin Click Here To See All 0 Plugins Hide The Plugin List This test is different because we are testing the computing power of the host, rather than the speed of delivering static image files. Then I tested each plugin heavy install from 7 global locations & averaged out the results- USACanadaUKAustraliaChinaBrazilIndia Tested From Dallas, USA. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WP Engine . seconds View Result Amazon EC . seconds View Result WPX Hosting .0 seconds View Result Kinsta . seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result SiteGround . seconds View Result Liquid Web . seconds View Result Tested From Vancouver, Canada. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds View Result WP Engine .7 seconds View Result SiteGround .7 seconds View Result LiquidWeb .7 seconds View Result Kinsta .8 seconds View Result HostGator .8 seconds View Result Amazon EC .8 seconds View Result Tested From London, United Kingdom. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds View Result WP Engine . seconds View Result Kinsta . seconds View Result Liquid Web . seconds View Result Amazon EC .8 seconds View Result SiteGround .0 seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result Tested From Sydney, Australia. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds View Result WP Engine . seconds View Result SiteGround .7 seconds View Result Liquid Web . seconds View Result Kinsta .7 seconds View Result Amazon EC .7 seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result Tested From Hong Kong, China. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting .0 seconds View Result Kinsta .8 seconds View Result SiteGround .9 seconds View Result WP Engine . seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result Liquid Web .9 seconds View Result Amazon EC .8 seconds View Result Tested From Sao Paulo, Brazil. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WP Engine . seconds View Result SiteGround .0 seconds View Result Kinsta .9 seconds View Result WPX Hosting .0 seconds View Result Amazon EC . seconds View Result Liquid Web .8 seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result Tested From Mumbai, India. Host Page Load Time(lower is better) Test Result WPX Hosting . seconds View Result SiteGround .9 seconds View Result WP Engine .0 seconds View Result Kinsta .0 seconds View Result Amazon EC . seconds View Result Liquid Web . seconds View Result HostGator . seconds View Result Click Here To See The Test Data Hide The Test Data Test Conclusions Like the first test, WPX Hosting is the winner here. Although it is a marginal win over WP Engine. It’s worth bearing in mind that the tested page had absolutely zero content. And the slower hosts seem to have started choking with the higher number of requests. Test – WordPress Performance Tester Benchmarks The WordPress Performance Tester plugin is specifically designed to stress test WordPress hosting servers. It does that by running a number of tests- Math – 00,000 math function tests String Manipulation – 00,000 string manipulation tests Loops – ,000,000 loop iterations Conditionals – ,000,000 conditional logic checks MySql – basic mysql functions and ,000,000 ENCODE() iterations $wpdb – 0 insert, select, update and delete operations And then outputs performance metrics-  Execution Time  – how long it took to do all of those tests (lower is better)  Queries Per Second  – how many queries per second processed (higher is better) I ran each of the Blog Type (image heavy) installs for each host through the plugin. And these were the results… Host Execution Time(lower is better) Queries Per Second(higher is better) Test Result WPX Hosting 0.70 ,8 View Result SiteGround 0.7 ,0 View Result Kinsta 0.89 , View Result Liquid Web 0.98 ,0 View Result Amazon EC .00 View Result WP Engine . 9 View Result HostGator 9. 08 View Result Click Here To See The Test Data Hide The Test Data Test Conclusion As you can see x of the more budget friendly hosts WPX Hosting & Siteground performed incredibly well here. But interestingly:  The more expensive hosts like Kinsta, LiquidWeb and WP Engine failed to perform. That is the exact opposite of what I would expect to happen… You would think those extra $$$ translate into better hosting hardware and setups! But the data is telling a different story. Test – Load Impact Next I wanted to know: How would each host perform under stress from 00 simultaneous visitors? However I had a huge problem: Most hosts automatically block tests like this because it reseambles a DDOS attack. But it was critical  that I conducted anonymous testing because I didn’t want the hosts to know I was testing them. So I created a new page on each Blog Type (image heavy) install with ,000 words- WPX Hosting – https://hostingtest.space/load-impact/ WP Engine – https://hostingtest.space/load-impact/ Kinsta – https://hostingtest.space/load-impact/ SiteGround – https://hostingtest7.space/load-impact/ Hostgator – https://hostingtest0.space/load-impact/ Amazon – https://hostingtest.space/load-impact/ Liquid Web – https://hostingtest.space/load-impact/ Then I set Load Impact to work by sending 00 simulated visitors to load each page on each host. This is how it played out- Host Maximum Page Load Time(lower is better) Maximum Requests Handled(higher is better) Test Result WPX Hosting 0.7 seconds ,70 View Result Liquid Web . seconds 99 View Result WP Engine .7 seconds ,0 View Result Amazon EC 0. seconds 0 View Result Click Here To See The Test Data Hide The Test Data Test Conclusion From the tests I was able to complete-  WPX Hosting was the hands down winner here  – it wasn’t even close. And although WPEngine, Amazon and LiquidWeb were slower… They did not collapse under the testing and remained online. As for the other hosts I had problems testing with- Kinsta – LoadImpact was reporting a problem with overloaded Amazon VPS’s SiteGround – Either the hosting failed or they automatically blocked LoadImpact HostGator – Fell down during testing , the site went offline with a 0 error And while I would have loved to get a result for them… It would have brought attention to my testing & I wanted to test anonymously. Perhaps in the future I will be able to run this test again for the missing hosts. Test – Hosting Support Speed of your website is one thing.  But speed (and quality) of support is another. And given that the tested hosts are self proclaimed “WordPress Experts”… I wanted to put that to the test. So I opened an identical support ticket with each host to see- How long it took to respond If they would fix the problem for me Here is the support ticket I sent to each host- Hi Support, I am not a very technical person and need help with the setup of this redirect on my site hosted with you thanks: hostingtest.space – all pages except hostingtest.space/wp-admin to redirect to hostingtest.space Thanks in advance. Matt It’s not a super easy problem to fix… But it’s not super difficult either. Any WordPress expert should be able to tackle it. In my opinion the easiest way to solve this problem is with a .htaccess edit like this- RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(/wp-admin|.wp-login.php.) [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http:/hostingtest.space//$ [R=0,L] But: There is always more than one way to skin a cat! Test Conclusion As expected –  the test results varied wildly here. Some hosts took full control and deployed a solution on my behalf… Where as others… didn’t. Here is how they performed- WPEngineSitegroundLiquidwebHostgatorWPXHostingKinstaAmazon WP Engine There was minute delay on live chat support initially- And ultimately… They said it wasn’t possible to do- Eric Roiz: This unfortunately wouldn’t be something that can work with a WordPress setup. With the way that WordPress loads out it’s content that wouldn’t be able to work Matthew Woodward: Can it be done in the htaccess file? Eric Roiz: No, it’s not a matter or being able to redirect or not, but rather that the way the sites individually load their content, that wouldn’t be able to work Matthew Woodward: OK Eric, I appreciate you trying. Thanks and have a good day there. It wasn’t that the WP Engine Support Agent didn’t necessarily want to do it for me. But he certainly didn’t know how to do it. Siteground Live chat response was pretty fast! But the support team wasn’t willing to apply the change for me and wanted me to read an article and use their tool myself: Martin T.: Sure, we do have a tool just for that and an article dedicated to it as well: https://www.siteground.com/kb/how_do_i_redirect_one_domain_to_another_domain_name/ Matthew Woodward: I always screw up things like this and would greatly appreciate you doing it for me thanks. Martin T.: I would be able to assist you if you’re facing any difficulties, but don’t worry it’s really easy and you can’t really mess anything up :) Matthew Woodward: I always find a way! Matthew Woodward: And it will take me along time to go through the article and understand the exact steps. Martin T.: It’s ok Martin T.: Believe me it’s really easy and you can’t mess anything up as the redirects can always be removed :) Matthew Woodward: I guess it’s not your policy to do stuff like that. It’s OK I understand. Martin T.: As customer support representative we’re here to help whenever you’re facing any difficulties, of course, I would love to assist you with any difficulties that might come up when trying to manage your account with us :) Matthew Woodward: Sure Martin, I appreciate that and have a good day there. Bye for now. I did take comfort in the fact that if I applied the changes myself and messed them up, that the SiteGround support team would help me out if I did mess it up. Liquid Web Accessing live chat was very fast and the support agency was willing to help. Although he stated that it wasn’t their normal policy- “that is out of the scope of our support. normally that would fall under your responsibility. but as a courtesy i can attempt that. just keep in mind that we don’t normally do this.” And as Liquid Web are one of the more expensive hosts, I was pleased to see them take control of requests like this. Hostgator Hostgators live chat response was very fast. However: Their solution failed when tested and the subsequent workaround seemed much more complex- While it was overly complex, they did demonstrate that why were willing to take control of requests rather than palming them off on support documents. WPX Hosting WPX Hosting were the most impressive of the bunch. Not only did they answer almost immediately but they also completed the request for me in about 0 minutes- Luchezar: I have set the redirection as requested, can you please test on your end and see if it’s working? Please clear your browser’s cache. Just press CTRL + F or use Incognito Mode (CTRL + SHIFT + N) for Chrome and (CTRL + SHIFT + P) for Firefox. For reference, please check this article: https://wpxhosting.c…er-cache-chrome-firefox-edge-/ Matthew: Sure, one moment. Yes that works. Thank you and have a good day there. Bye for now. You can’t ask for a better customer experience than that! Kinsta Kinsta (my current host) have always offered great, responsive support that takes control of issues. They responded quickly to the live chat, but it seemed this issue stumped them – even though I have challenged them with much more complex issues in the past. The Kinsta agent spent a very long time ( hours+) trying to fix it but couldn’t get it working fully- But they were committed to the resolution and prepared to invest significant time to help. Amazon Amazon is not a managed service like the other hosts here and is strictly do it yourself I know from past experience that you have to submit a ticket/email and they reply within hours typically. However, if their hardware is working- they expect the user to do everything in terms of configuration and software so their service wasn’t relevant for this test. Click Here To See The Support Requests Hide The Support Requests  Kinsta, LiquidWeb & WPXHosting solved the problem successfully. And out of those - It was WPXhosting that solved the problem the quickest and with minimum fuss. However:  WPEngine & SiteGround seriously fell short here Their “WordPress experts” were not able to solve the problem. Test – The Free CloudFlare CDN x of the hosts I tested  did not include any kind of CDN- SiteGround LiquidWeb HostGator Amazon EC And it is common advice for hosting companies to recommend you setup the free version of the CloudFlare CDN. Supposedly this will help increase site speed. But is that really true? To find out I cloned the Blog Type (image heavy) install to a new domain on each host and then activated the free CloudFlare CDN- Siteground No CDN Free CloudFlare CDN HostGator No CDN Free CloudFlare CDN Amazon EC No CDN Free CloudFlare CDN LiquidWeb No CDN Free CloudFlare CDN Then I tested each of these installs with GTMetrix from 7 different global locations. And the results were very interesting… WordPress Hosting Features Compared So far we have focused purely on speed, reliabiliy and support. But what about other hosting features… As you can see: There really isn’t that much difference between them on the face of it… Except for price! It’s only with the nitty gritty testing that you see huge differences in quality of service. The Worst Things About Each Host Regardless of which host you look at, each of them have their own cons. The best wordpress hosting for me, isn’t necessarily the best WordPress hosting for you. For example: WPX Hosting is clearly the fastest, but if you need phone support… They aren’t right for you. So here is what I didn’t like about each of the managed WordPress hosting options- WP Engine They are the most expensive +$0/month for UK hosting No email support – additional costs with Google Apps etc Long banned plugins list Majority owned by GoDaddy’s owner Poor ratings & very bad experience WPX Hosting No phone support No Git support Servers are only available in USA and UK Back end control panel could be easier to use Hostgator Terrible trust score No CDN on base plan No free SSLs, only paid No staging area Long list of banned plugins Automatic backups are a paid upgrade Terrible loading speed from non-US locations (see above tests) Liquid Web Very expensive Not exactly the quickest based on my testing No CDN on base plan (but free Cloudflare CDN worked best of tested hosts here) No free email, costs $0 monthly extra + $-$ per email address No discounts for annual subscription Kinsta No phone support Expensive for multiple websites No email support – additional costs with Google Apps etc List of banned plugins No live chat for pre-sales questions No free migration on the base plan SiteGround Pricing virtually triples in year No staging area on base plan After first month, no monthly payment option No real CDN on base plan (free Cloudflare doesn’t count) Amazon Not really a WordPress host You need to configure everything Very technical, requires command line No CDN No automatic backups Support is for their hardware only No cost saving reason to choose Amazon over dedicated WP hosts Wrapping It Up While it is usually true that
