We achieved very good results in all three categories of this year's Review Signal WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. We're excited to share these results with you (and, maybe brag a little)!

Last year was the first year we took part in the judging with Raidboxes and we were very pleased with the results. We received the Top Tier Award in both prize categories submitted.

This time, we managed to top that! We submitted three different award plans for Review Signals WordPress Hosting Benchmarks and received two top tier awards and one notable honor.

So, what is Review Signal and how do they rate?

Review Signal is considered by many to be the gold standard for honest, unbiased reviews of hosting services. It's a really important platform for anyone looking into hosting services, as the hosting market is often dominated by paid content and sponsored reviews. This makes it hard to figure out which hosting provider is the right one.

Founded in 2013 by Kevin Ohashi, Review Signal began by evaluating hosting providers by analyzing Twitter comments. Since then, the company has evolved and takes a number of different features into account when giving out its awards. With all the hype, it's clear that hosting is pretty important, especially for people in the web industry for whom a reliable host is essential.

Normal hosting is one thing, but we at Raidboxes specialize in WordPress hosting, which doesn't quite fit into Review Signal's format for rankings. For some time now, Review Signal has published an annual blog post ranking WordPress hosting providers. With 40% of all websites on the internet using WordPress, it was very welcome when Review Signal launched a new website: wphostingbenchmarks.com, which gives WordPress hosting providers like us a dedicated platform for reviews.

This annual roundup is such big news for the WordPress community that the respected publication WordPressTavern even published an article naming this year's various top performers.

Review Signal uses a variety of tests to evaluate hosting providers and takes all of these tests into account when making its judgment. Essentially, these tests fall into two different categories: Performance and Accessibility. It's pretty obvious why these two terms are important when you're thinking about your website. But let's take a little closer look at exactly how they are tested and why they are important when you are considering a hosting provider.

Performance

To test the loading time, a provider's websites are tested with Loadstorm, which was "developed to simulate real users visiting, logging in and using the website". It measures how many requests a website can handle and how many errors it throws. Loadstorm also measures the average response time of web pages and the login response time. This is a crucial test, as research has shown that up to 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. 

The next test is performed with K6, which is similar to the Loadstorm test, but measures the performance of the website in the cache by repeatedly requesting a website. Again, success is measured by the number of requests a website can handle and the response time the server takes. This is of similar importance to the Loadstorm test, but it tests how effectively the pages are cached.

It is also important to see how a website loads from different locations around the world, which is why the Web Page Test is used. It tests the loading time from twelve different locations around the world.

The WordPress performance is tested in the Performance category. These are benchmark tests to see how the server handles frontend requests and how long it takes to calculate backend functions in PHP.

Accessibility

Availability in the hosting world mainly refers to uptime, i.e. the time a website is online vs. offline. To monitor uptime, Review Signal uses two different tools: Hetrix Tools and Uptime Robot test a website's uptime over a three-month period. A third independent tool is also used, but only if the first two tools detect a significant discrepancy in the results. Uptime for a website is extremely important, even a few seconds offline can be costly for a large e-commerce company.

SSL certificates are also included in the evaluation. This is the modern standard for encryption and plays an important role in SEO (Google uses SSL as a low level ranking metric).

With all the parameters tested, it's hard to hide weaknesses in performance and accessibility. Like last year, we once again submitted our performance in the under $25/month and $201-$500/month category. It was the first time that we were rated in the most expensive price category from $500/month (Enterprise Hosting). 

How well did we do? (Attention, lots of data)

As previously mentioned, Raidboxes achieved wonderful results in all three categories. In two we received the Top Tier Award and in another we received a notable honor. Therefore, we would like to share a few results where our service stood out.

It's easiest to break down these results in the WP Hosting Benchmarks categories. That way you can skip a category if it doesn't suit you. (Unless, of course, you like numbers and fancy reading about how consistent and scalable our different hosting solutions are!)

Under $25/month: Top Tier Award!

LoadStorm Test (User Test)

• 448,671 requests with only 13 errors.
• Average response time of 446 milliseconds.
• Login response time of 748 milliseconds.

K6 (Cached Test)

• 394,453 requests with 0 errors.
• Average response time 142 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

• Average response time under 1.2 seconds.
• Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

• More than 400 queries/second
• Less than 10 seconds response time for PHP

$201-$500/month: Notable honor!

LoadStorm Test (user test)

• 640,766 requests with 33 errors.
• Average response time of 595 milliseconds.
• Login response time of 1012 milliseconds. (We missed a top tier by just 0.012 seconds!)

K6 (Cached Test)

• 1,576,769 requests with 0 errors.
• Average response time 143 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

• Average response time less than 1.1 seconds.
• Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

• More than 800 queries/second
• Less than 5 seconds response time for PHP

$500+/month (Enterprise): Top Tier Award!

LoadStorm Test (user test)

• 2,036,073 requests with an astonishingly low 17 errors.
• Average response time of 513 milliseconds.
• Login response time of 876 milliseconds

K6 (Cached Test)

• 1,972,189 requests with 0 errors.
• Average response time 142 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

• Average response time under 1.2 seconds.
• Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

• More than 800 queries/second
• Less than 5 seconds response time for PHP

SSL certificates

Our SSL certificates have been rated A+.

What do the results mean for our customers?

As you can see, we're pretty proud of our results, but there's a reason for that: our job is to ensure the highest possible uptime of our hosted websites, optimizing them so that our clients can focus on their business. We've already mentioned that there are a plethora of companies offering hosting services. We think: choose the provider that best suits your needs. It is equally important to offer your users the best experience. 

All the tests that Review Signal has conducted can be broken down to one goal: the quality of the user experience. Because remember, all your hard work to give your users the best possible experience is quickly undone if the performance of the host servers is poor. Long loading times, poor SSL quality and frequent downtimes play a major role in users returning to a site and their conversion rate.

That's why it's important to choose a hosting provider like Raidboxes whose performance you can rely on. But don't just take our word for it. Here you can find our company profile and last year's results.