Review Signal has released its annual 2019 WordPress hosting performance benchmarks, and we’re ecstatic that five years in a row, Kinsta has been one of only two companies that earned Top Tier status on every plan, from Single 35k all the way up to Enterprise WP and more.
Year after year we’ve proven that our hosting platform (built from the ground up on top of Google Cloud Platform) is consistent, reliable, and one of the fastest in the industry. 🚀
When it comes to managed WordPress hosting, one of our goals has always been to build an all-in-one solution for our clients which can help make site management easier. Things like 24/7 customer support, reliability, and uptime are also very much a part of that.
But one of the most important factors to us is performance and ensuring that when you get that surge of traffic that your site stays online. If a host can’t scale, this can present all sorts of growing pains for your business. Many of our clients, unfortunately, have what we call “host hopped” for many years before finally arriving at Kinsta. Better late than never right?
I’ve been building websites for close to 20 years now. I’ve used my fair share of hosts (~60+). Kinsta is, without a doubt, the best host I have used.
TL;DR
For those of you short on time, here’s a quick summary:
- Kinsta is one of the fastest and most reliable WordPress hosts on the market! We’ve proven this five years in a row and will continue to do so. We are a bootstrapped company and don’t answer to VCs. Our entire platform is built on customer feedback.
- You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars. Kinsta is affordable for all kinds of businesses and cheaper than its competitors. We give you the best value, price, and performance. Read the truth about the real cost of cheap web hosting.
- We have all the features you and your developers need. Did you know that Kinsta checks each of your WordPress sites 480 times per day for uptime? If something goes wrong, our team knows about it.
- Having trouble tracking down a slow query or trying to pinpoint a slow plugin? Add your own New Relic license key within the “Tools” section of your MyKinsta dashboard.
- Google reveals the top three SEO ranking factors, and guess what? Performance is one of them. Having a slow site in 2019 is going to seriously impact your bottom line.
Review Signal
For those of you who may not be familiar with Review Signal, it’s an independent web hosting review site run by Kevin Ohashi. Thanks to Kevin’s attention to detail and in-depth analysis, Review Signal has become one of the leading authorities when it comes to benchmarking WordPress hosting providers. In fact, this is their 5th consecutive year publishing these in-depth performance benchmarks.
We had the pleasure of doing an interview with Kevin Ohashi back in 2015, in which one of the questions we asked was, “Is there anything you find surprising about the hosting industry?”
How generally terrible it is. I started my business because, after a decade in the web hosting industry, there still wasn’t an honest web hosting review site that I would be comfortable recommending to people. And after operating my site for 4 years now, it’s very easy to understand why. I get web hosting companies emailing me regularly trying to bribe their way into being rated the best. The worst part is, most of them aren’t even hiding it. This behavior is business as usual to them. So the most surprising thing to me is how regularly I am disgusted by the behavior of a lot of the companies in the space. That isn’t to say there aren’t some awesome companies out there, but it seems like they are the minority. The worst part about that is that these scammy/disgusting tactics are seemingly very effective and the real good guys are fighting an even worse uphill battle because of it.
Benchmark Setup and Tests
Over the past five years, we’ve seen new names entering the market, as well as old familiar faces. Some popular hosting providers also weren’t tested this year, and this is most likely due to the fact that they didn’t want to be.
Kevin tests two distinct performance attributes: peak performance and consistency over the course of two months using the following six tools:
- LoadStorm: Used to help simulate real user load.
- LoadImpact: Used to test the static caching of the homepage with users. (Blitz, now discontinued, was used in tests 2016 and prior)
- Uptime + StatusCake: Two uptime monitoring services were used to measure consistency.
- WebPageTest.org: Used to test overall speed from different locations (first view only).
- WPPerformanceTester: Used to benchmark CPU, MySQL, and WP database performance.
- Qualysis SSL Report Grade: Checks your SSL server rating. See their SSL check tool. This test was added in 2019 benchmarks.
The tests were run on an identical WordPress dummy site with the exact same plugins, unless one was needed for that particular provider’s caching mechanisms, etc. The benchmark reports were split up into six different tiers based on price range and plans from different hosting providers:
- <25/month tier (Kinsta doesn’t have a plan in this tier)
- $25-50/month tier (Kinsta introduced hosting plans under $100 in 2017)
- $51-100/month tier
- $101-200/month tier
- $201-500/month tier
- $500+/month (enterprise) tier
Below we’ll include a summary of how Kinsta performed each year (2019, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2014) and a few places we shined. If you want to dive into all the nitty-gritty details, we’ll include a link to each benchmark test.
WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2019 🏆
In 2019, 27 different hosting companies were tested, this is the most of any year to date. Kinsta earned top tier status across the board. We were one of only two companies that have earned Top Tier status on every plan, every year for the past 5 years.
What does top tier mean? Kevin awards this title to hosting companies who maintain 99.9% uptime throughout the entire testing period and show little to no performance degradation during load testing, primarily focused on errors.
How Kinsta Performed
- $25-50/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Load Impact tests without any issues with 100% uptime.
- $51-100/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Load Impact tests without any issues with 100% uptime.
- $101-200/month tier: Flawless Load Storm and Load Impact tests and 100% uptime.
- $201-500/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Load Impact tests without any issues with 100% uptime.
- $500+/month (enterprise) tier: Flawless Load Storm and Load Impact tests and 100% uptime.
Check out all the tests in Review Signal’s 2019 benchmarks.
WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2018 🏆
In 2018, 26 different hosting companies were tested. These benchmarks were supposed to be in 2017, but were delayed until early 2018.
It’s not a surprise that most large shared hosts have problems with traffic waves – after all, that’s why WordPress specialized hosting companies were born in the first place – but in the 2018 tests you can clearly see that many premium hosts had troubles too. Hosts such as Pantheon, Cloudways, and Dreamhost all struggled on certain tests.
How Kinsta Performed
- $51-100/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Load Impact tests without any issues with 100% uptime.
- $101-200/month tier: Flawless Load Storm and Load Impact tests and 100% uptime.
- $201-500/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Load Impact tests without any issues with 100% uptime.
- $500+/month (enterprise) tier: Flawless Load Storm and Load Impact tests and 100% uptime.
Check out all the tests in Review Signal’s 2018 benchmarks.
Kinsta had a perfect run at the Enterprise tier. This is why people shell out top dollar for Enterprise level hosting. Kinsta had a perfect 100% uptime on both monitors. They also had 0 errors on both load tests and the lowest peak response time on the Load Storm test. A Top Tier Performance was rightly earned.
WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2016 🏆
In 2016, 26 different hosting companies were tested. Kinsta introduced hosting plans under $100/month in 2017, so for these tests, we were only included in four tiers.
How Kinsta Performed
- $51-100/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Blitz tests without any issues with 99% uptime.
- $101-200/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Blitz tests without any issues with 99.98% uptime.
- $201-500/month tier: Handled Load Storm and Blitz tests without any issues with 99.98% uptime.
- $500+/month (enterprise) tier: Handled Load Storm and Blitz tests without any issues with 99.98% uptime.
Check out all the tests in Review Signal’s 2016 benchmarks.
Kinsta had essentially perfect LoadStorm and Blitz tests. They also had no flaws in any other tests. I’m at a loss for words to praise their performance.
WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2015 🏆
In 2015, 19 different hosting companies were tested. These were not split up into different tiers. Tests were simply run against the servers the hosting providers made available to Review Signal for testing. Note: Kinsta wasn’t running on Google Cloud Platform in 2015.
How Kinsta Performed
- Handled Load Storm and Blitz tests with minimal issues.
- Had 100% uptime throughout all tests.
Check out all the tests in Review Signal’s 2015 benchmarks.
Kinsta had another top tier performance. There was a slight decline in performance but that could be explained by the fact we tested different products. Kinsta’s test last year was a Shared plan they no longer offer. This year it was a 2GB VPS that we tested. Dedicated resources are great but sometimes shared gives you a little bit extra with good neighbors which could explain the difference. Either way, Kinsta handled all of the tests exceptionally well and earned itself top tier status.
WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2014 🏆
In 2014, 19 different hosting companies were tested. These were not split up into different tiers. Tests were simply run against the servers the hosting providers made available to Review Signal for testing. Note: Kinsta wasn’t running on Google Cloud Platform in 2014.
How Kinsta Performed
- Had flawless Load Storm tests.
- Performed near perfect on Blitz tests.
- Had 100% uptime throughout all tests
Check out all the tests in Review Signal’s 2014 benchmarks.
A new-comer that jumped straight to the top of the performance tiers. Kinsta’s performance was amazing in the Load Storm 2000 logged in user test. They had the lowest peak response time and zero errors over a 30-minute test. They didn’t struggle with any tests whatsoever and showed zero downtime. Kinsta’s performance was top tier.
Summary
Kinsta is proud that year after year, we’ve been able to show that our hosting platform is consistent, reliable, and fast!
We’re confident in the decisions we’ve made regarding our infrastructure over the past couple of years and are excited to see the results pay off. We were the first managed WordPress host to exclusively use Google Cloud Platform and we feel that our tests reveal just how important that decision was.
In 2019, some of our competitors have followed suit. But you can be confident that our team knows Google Cloud Platform better than anyone in the industry. We’re committed to providing you with the best possible environment to grow your business and stay ahead of your competition. Check out our Why Us page to see exactly how we’re different from other hosts.
If you have any questions regarding our service or platform, contact our technical sales team which would be more than happy to assist you. Or if you’re ready to dive right in and let us show you the Kinsta difference, migrate your site today. All of our plans include one or more free migrations. We even have a deal running right now that depending on who you’re migrating from, we’ll include an unlimited number of free migrations.
Brian has a huge passion for WordPress, has been using it for over a decade, and even develops a couple of premium plugins. Brian enjoys blogging, movies, and hiking. Connect with Brian on Twitter.
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