Kevin Ohashi is the founder of a review site called ReviewSignal.com
Each year, Kevin conducts independent tests to determine which WordPress hosting companies offer the best performance in terms of page loading speed around the world, server quality and load handling, using 2 well known tools, Load Storm and Load Impact.
The testing is performed across 6 categories based on the monthly price of the WP hosting offered:
In 2019, WPX Hosting competed in 3 categories: under $25 (our entry level ‘Business’ plan for 5 websites is $24.99), $25-$50 (our ‘Professional’ plan hosts up to 15 sites for $49.99) and $51-$100 where our ‘Elite’ plan is for hosting up to 35 websites.
When Kevin conducts these tests, he does not declare a single outright winner in each category or overall but instead awards ‘Top Tier’ status to the highest performers and may also award an ‘Honorable Mention’.
A ‘Top Tier’ award is given to: “companies who maintain 99.9% uptime throughout the entire testing and show little to no performance degradation during load testing, primarily focused on error rate and response times.”
Participating hosts in 2019 were:
- 1&1 Ionos
- 34SP.com
- A2 Hosting
- Cloudways
- DreamHost
- FastComet
- Flywheel
- GoDaddy
- GreenGeeks
- Incendia Web Works
- Kickassd
- Kinsta
- KnownHost
- Krystal Hosting
- LightningBase
- LiquidWeb
- Pantheon
- Pressable
- Presslabs
- Savvii
- Servebolt
- SiteGround
- TVC.Net
- VersionPress
- WordPress.com Business
- WordPress.com VIP
- WPX Hosting
As Kevin Ohashi explains here, this was his testing methodology for 2019:
The goal of this research is testing the performance of specialized WordPress hosting. The two measures to determine performance are peak performance and consistency. Peak performance is measured using load testing services which emulate large numbers of users visiting a website and watching how well the hosting responds under these stressful conditions. Consistency is measured using uptime monitoring to make sure that the servers remain available for a longer duration of time.
There are some non-impacting measurements taken as well that are recorded to help inform more advanced users and potentially be used to create a benchmark at a later time. Geographic response times from multiple (11) locations using WebPageTest. The WPPerformanceTester performs PHP Benchmarks and WP benchmarks to see how fast the underlying server performs for different kinds of operations. SSL test was added to all price tiers this year. These measures don’t impact the Top-Tier WordPress Hosting status we give, nor the Honorable Mention status. Read more here.
And The Winner Was?
Given the complexity of hosting and that he did not test support quality among other factors, Kevin chose to award “Top Tier” status to those companies whose performance was at the highest level and in some cases, an Honorable Mention, for those who almost made it into the Top Tier but fell a little short.
In the Under $25 (monthly category), the Top Tier winners were: WPX Hosting, GreenGeeks and Lightning Base, with SiteGround getting an Honorable Mention:
and Kevin wrote this about WPX’s performance in this category:
WPX Hosting has returned to participating (formerly Traffic Planet Hosting) and earned themselves a Top Tier award. Not much to say beyond near perfect (99.99%/100%) and a miniscule 16 errors across both load tests. Nice to have them back and nice to see them put on a spectacular performance after being away for a while.
In the $25-$50 (monthly) category, the “Top Tier” winners were: WPX Hosting, Cloudways, Kinsta, Pantheon and Pressable. Honorable mentions went to Automattic (WordPress) and SiteGround.
Kevin’s summary of WPX’s performance in the $25-$50 category is:
The return of WPX to these tests has been a welcome one. They earned Top Tier status again with 100%/100% uptime and almost no errors on Load Tests. They were even the fastest in three of eleven WPT tests.
In the final category that WPX entered in the 2019 Review Signal tests, the $51-$100 bracket, the “Top Tier” winners were: WPX Hosting, Kinsta, Lightning Base, Pressable and Servebolt. In most cases, these are much more expensive hosts than WPX e.g. Servebolt’s entry WP plan is $99 monthly for 3 websites, you can host 35 websites on WPX for that!
In fact, speaking of Servebolt, the Servebolt CEO even commended WPX when celebrating his own company’s achievements in this test in 2019:
Kevin’s assessment of WPX in this 3rd entered category is that:
WPX Hosting’s most expensive plan entered this year also earned them a hat trick. Three for three on earning Top Tier recognition. Perfect uptime. The fastest Load Impact response times and second fastest Load Storm response times. Overall, an fantastic job from WPX Hosting.
So What About VALUE For Money?
Assuming that general technical performance, page speed and load handling is roughly equivalent among these Top Tier winners, what about how many WP websites you can host on each for the plan in this category?
[table id=1 /]
And Support Quality?
Of these 5 ‘Top Tier’ Winners in the $51-$100 test category, only WPX Hosting and Kinsta currently have a presence on arguably the world’s largest review platform, Trustpilot.com where WPX is currently #1 out of 197 hosting companies listed there:
while Kinsta is presently 12th out of 197 hosting companies on Trustpilot:
Over on another big reviews platform, G2 Crowd, WPX is currently #1 out of 170 companies there. Kinsta are presently 4th, Lightning Base, Pressable and Servebolt are not in the top 20 Managed Hosting Providers on G2 Crowd:
Any Other Independent Speed Test Results?
Influential blogger, Matthew Woodward, also recently ran an independent shootout between 7 WordPress hosts and – spoiler alert! – found that WPX also crushed the competition on speed, support and value there too:
Let’s Recap How Much VALUE You Get With WPX:
- ‘Top Tier’ winning speed and load handling performance, as proven by Kevin Ohashi’s independent 2019 testing above, in addition to Matthew Woodward’s testing
- Unlimited free site migrations/transfers to WPX from any other hosting company
- 32-second average response time on Live Chat
- ‘Fixed For You Free & Fast’ Guarantee if your site goes offline
- Free malware scanning & removal (some hosts charge crazy fees for malware removal), note there can be a queue for removal work
- Unlimited free SSL certificates
- Free email (many newer WP hosts don’t offer that)
- A high-quality host committed to helping homeless/shelter dogs & cats
- Clearly-defined Managed WordPress Hosting responsibilities
Say Goodbye To Terrible Hosting & Hello To Hassle-Free Relief With WPX Hosting
