How Did These Independent 2021 Tests Work?
Every year, Kevin Ohashi from ReviewSignal.com runs a batch of tests on different WordPress hosting companies to determine which are the best performers and which are not, regardless of the size of the company, how big the brand is or any other irrelevant factors (Bluehost, GoDaddy and SiteGround competed here, for example).
All Kevin cares about is results.
As should you.
Hosting companies have to opt in to Kevin’s tests and he uses well-known independent tools to run his range of experiments, covering everything from average page loading speed and load handling to uptime and server performance.
Kevin categorizes companies by service prices, namely:
[1] Under $25 a month (we entered our ‘Business’ plan here)
[2] $25-$50 a month (we entered our ‘Professional’ plan here)
[3] $51-$100 a month (we entered our Elite plan here)
[4] $101-$200 a month
[5] $201-$500 a month
[6] $500+ a month
WPX only entered the first 3 categories above as we are focused on solopreneurs, bloggers and smaller-scale digital folks, not the enterprise market.
What Happened In The Under $25 A Month Category?
Using webpagetest.org, Kevin achieved these results in 2021, averaged across the 12 global test sites that webpagetest.org uses, arranged from highest to lowest performers.
These are the test locations for webpagetest.org: Virginia, California, Salt Lake City, London, Frankfurt, Cape Town, Singapore, Mumbai, Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, Dubai.
The 22 WordPress hosting companies competing in this category were: 20i, 34SP.com, AleForge, ChemiCloud, CynderHost, EasyWP by Namecheap, Eco Web Hosting, GoDaddy, GreenGeeks, ICDSoft, InMotion Hosting, IONOS, Krystal Hosting, Lightning Base, ManagedWPHosting, MDDHosting, Nexcess, RAIDBOXES, RSHosting.com, SiteGround, TVC.Net and WPX.net
| FASTEST TO SLOWEST SPEED | GLOBAL AVERAGE TIME (seconds) |
|---|---|
| WPX.net | 0.717 |
| CynderHost | 0.726 |
| AleForge | 1.051 |
| RAIDBOXES | 1.088 |
| ChemiCloud | 1.098 |
| Lightning Base | 1.101 |
| InMotion Hosting | 1.115 |
| ICDSoft | 1.128 |
| TVC.Net | 1.189 |
| GreenGeeks | 1.211 |
| Krystal Hosting | 1.224 |
| 34SP.com | 1.228 |
| ManagedWPHosting | 1.266 |
| EasyWP by Namecheap | 1.306 |
| MDDHosting | 1.382 |
| SiteGround | 1.410 |
| RSHosting.com | 1.612 |
| IONOS | 1.662 |
| Nexcess | 1.959 |
| Eco Web Hosting | 2.128 |
| 20i | 2.964 |
| GoDaddy | 3.119 |
On this result, Kevin wrote:
“WPX is back again with another Top Tier performance. 99.99% uptime. Error free load tests. The fastest average response time and third fastest wp-login response time on Load Storm. Also the fastest WPT average response time. WPX easily earned Top Tier status again this year.
WPX and CynderHost stand out on this test serving pages the fastest globally (0.717 and 0.726 respectively, a miniscule 9ms difference between the two). The third fastest average was AleForge with 1.052 which is ~330ms slower than first and second place.”
Read the entire test in this category here.
What About The $25-$50 A Month Category?
There were 12 competitors in this category in 2021, including WPX.net: A2Hosting, Bluehost, CloudJiffy, Infomaniak, IONOS, Krystal Hosting, Pressable, Rocket.net, Seravo, SiteGround, WordPress.com, WPX.
Page loading speed average results (again using webpagetest.org) were:
| FASTEST TO SLOWEST SPEED | GLOBAL AVERAGE TIME (seconds) |
|---|---|
| WPX.net | 0.574 |
| Rocket.net | 0.653 |
| WordPress.com | 0.897 |
| Seravo | 1.097 |
| Bluehost | 1.162 |
| A2Hosting | 1.177 |
| CloudJiffy | 1.181 |
| Infomaniak | 1.189 |
| Krystal Hosting | 1.203 |
| IONOS | 1.241 |
| SiteGround | 1.357 |
| Pressable | 1.510 |
On this result, Kevin wrote:
“WPX earned Top Tier status again. They have been quite consistent earning Top Tier marks over the years. Beyond me screwing up a DNS record and a tiny spike in Load Storm it was a near flawless run. WPX even impressed on the WPT benchmark where their home rolled CDN seems to be paying off.””
Read the entire test in this category here.
And In The $51-$100 Month Category?
Like the previous categories, again Kevin was using webpagetest.org to measure global performance across an average of 12 testing locations.
13 companies including WPX.net participated in this category, namely, CloudJiffy, ICDSoft, Infomaniak, IONOS, Lightning Base, MDDHosting, Nexcess, Pressable, Presslabs, SaveInCloud, Scaleforce, Servebolt and WPX.
The 2021 results were:
| FASTEST TO SLOWEST SPEED | GLOBAL AVERAGE TIME (seconds) |
|---|---|
| WPX | 0.737 |
| Servebolt | 0.881 |
| Presslabs | 0.950 |
| Scaleforce | 1.065 |
| Lightning Base | 1.161 |
| ICDSoft | 1.163 |
| Infomaniak | 1.171 |
| IONOS | 1.221 |
| CloudJiffy | 1.254 |
| MDDHosting | 1.438 |
| SaveInCloud | 1.449 |
| Pressable | 1.500 |
| Nexcess | 2.107 |
On this result, Kevin wrote:
“WPX stands out being the fastest in 7/12 locations and having the lowest average response time at 0.738 seconds. They were followed by Servebolt (0.822 seconds) and Presslabs (0.95 seconds).
WPX earned Top Tier recognition. Near perfect load tests. Near perfect uptime. Fastest WPT average. An excellent performance, again.”
Read the entire test in this category here.
How Did WPX Beat These Competitors On Speed?
Apart from deliberately UNDERloading new, high-spec servers that we own (we don’t rent them), we are also the only hosting company that I know of with our own custom-built CDN (Content Delivery Network) – we call it our XDN for eXceptional Delivery Network – with 26 end points (and growing) across the world.
That was our unfair advantage and ‘secret weapon’ in these latest tests, just as it was with Matthew Woodward’s independent speed testing.
Having our own CDN means that we can fully optimize it to work with our own customized technology stack in order to achieve exceptional, class-leading page loading speed.
If we were using a 3rd party CDN, that level of speed optimization would be impossible.
That’s why Kevin Ohashi wrote:
“WPX even impressed on the WPT benchmark where their home rolled CDN seems to be paying off.”
Our XDN CDN is also completely free for all WPX customers on all hosting plans, there is no extra charge for it.
Is WPX Only Focused On Page Loading Speed?
No.
We also pride ourselves on the speed of our support response where we average an industry best of around 22 seconds, according to the independent 3rd party chat software we use:
In most cases, that first responder can handle the majority of issues without escalation and waiting for another department.
But speed without quality isn’t helpful and you can judge for yourself on the quality of WPX’s support on Trustpilot.com, the world’s largest customer review platform, how we are doing from the 1,100+ real customer reviews there:
DID YOU KNOW?
WPX also removes malware for free from all its customers’ websites, unlike virtually every other host out there AND we migrate all sites to WPX for free within 24 hours (the only exception is when a domain change is involved as that requires a lot of additional database editing and manual checking).
Conclusions
At WPX, we don’t take our Top Tier awards for the last 3 years running for granted and we have many more speed-related innovations coming up in the months and years ahead – pretty important now with Google’s focus on Core Web Vitals.
We also never take our customers’ trust in their websites for granted and will continue to work hard to deliver a great hosting experience for the change seekers, solopreneurs, and Webmasters who choose WPX.
You can see WPX’s Top Tier (highest award category) results for 2020 here and 2019 here.
