For your website, are you looking for the fastest web hosting for WordPress ?
Speed is one of the most important factors to consider when making sure that your site can develop and remain stable, regardless of whether you’re beginning a new business or already have one that has been operating for some time. Additionally, it will prevent users from abandoning your website in frustration. Because, let’s face it, nobody wants to wait for a website to load for 10 seconds.
However, because not all hosts are created equal, finding the best and fastest web hosting can be a little challenging. By the time you’ve read through all of their proposals, your brain might be spinning. Don’t worry, though; we’ll explain all the minute aspects so you can choose the fastest hosting service for you and your company with ease.
Why Does WordPress Hosting That Is Fastest Matter?
The most important considerations when selecting a WordPress hosting company are speed and performance. Despite the importance of other factors like cost, security, support, and backups, a slow website can harm user experience and, ultimately, a company’s bottom line.
You don’t want a sluggish website or lagging pages to annoy your visitors. Website speed is important for the following reasons:
The user experience is greatly impacted by website speed, which also has a big impact on visitor engagement and retention.
Due to the fact that mobile users have a tendency to be even less patient than desktop users when it comes to slow-loading sites, website speed is also a crucial factor in mobile optimization.
It has been demonstrated that faster websites increase consumer satisfaction, revenue, and corporate success.
A website’s performance can be impacted by Time To First Byte (TTFB) and loading times, which can result in lower engagement rates and greater bounce rates.
Low conversion rates and cart abandonment can result from slow page loading times, which can negatively impact the operation of a WooCommerce site.
So, overall, choosing a fast WordPress hosting provider can help optimize your website’s loading times, enhance user experience, and ultimately lead to more conversions and sales.
So regardless of your business size, compromised speed and performance means fewer conversions and more annoyed customers.
Features of a Fast WordPress Hosting Provider
When it comes to selecting a fast WordPress hosting provider, it’s important to look at the following features.
- Scalability: A fast WordPress hosting provider should offer scalability options that allow you to upgrade your resources as your website grows and traffic increases.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDN allows your website content to be cached on multiple servers worldwide, reducing the time it takes to load your website for users in different regions.
- Server Response Time: A hosting provider with a fast server response time can deliver your website content to users’ browsers quickly, resulting in faster website loading times.
- Uptime Guarantee: A high uptime guarantee ensures that your website is always accessible to users. The ideal uptime guarantee is 99.9% or higher.
- SSD Storage: A hosting provider with Solid State Drive (SSD) storage ensures faster data retrieval, which leads to quicker website loading times.
Get Started With Performance Benchmarking
- To run speed testing on the Cloudways platform, I launched WordPress on DigitalOcean (Premium) server on the Cloudways Platform.
1. Server Environment
- I launched a 4GB DigitalOcean server in Toronto, Canada. The 1-click server launch process creates a server that comes pre-configured with plenty of specifications that we’ll look at in the next heading.
2. Server Configuration
| Name | Specification |
|---|---|
| Cloudways Server | Vultr – High Frequency |
| Datacenter location | Toronto |
| RAM | 4GB |
| SSD Disk | 80GB |
| Bandwidth Transfer | 4TB |
3. Access WordPress
- Log in to Cloudways and go to the Applications from the top menu. If you’re already using Cloudways and have multiple applications on your server, you will see a list of installed applications.
How Did We Test the Performance Benchmarking?
To perform these tests, I used various tools and techniques, such as website speed testing tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools, Google PageSpeed Insights, load testing tools like Loader.io, and monitoring tools like K6.io.
1. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is a web performance testing and monitoring tool that allows website owners to analyze their website’s speed and performance, identify bottlenecks, and optimize for faster loading times. Read more: How to Use GTmetrix on WordPress.
2. Pingdom Tools
Pingdom Tools allows users to test and monitor website performance, providing insights into website speed, uptime, and performance issues, helping users identify and resolve any potential problems that may negatively impact their website’s user experience. Read more: How to Use Pingdom Tools on WordPress.
3. PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights the performance of web pages on both mobile and desktop devices, providing suggestions to improve the page speed and user experience. It offers valuable insights into how to optimize website performance and improve SERPs.
I considered 6 parameters in our test:
- FCP (First Content Paint)
- SI (Speed Index)
- LCP (Largest Content Paint)
- TTI (Time to Interactive)
- TBT (Time Blocking Time)
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
4. Loader.io
Loader.io is a cloud-based load-testing platform that allows developers and DevOps teams to test their web applications’ performance by simulating real-world user traffic and monitoring server responses.
I performed Maintain Client Load to send 100 users for 1 min (maintain client load). I counted two performance parameters for our results: Average Response Time and Success Response Counts.
5. K6.io
K6.io is an open-source load-testing tool that enables developers and QA teams to test the performance and scalability of their APIs and websites. Users can create and run load tests in the cloud or on-premises, analyze real-time results, and gain valuable insights.
I used the K6.io Browser Recorder to record the session and performed backend testing. The scenario was: the users would fill in their Admin Credentials → All Posts → Add a New Post. There would be 50 concurrent users for 3.30 mins and 2 load zones (Ashburn, US and Montreal, CA).
