Signup for WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks

Why Participate in Our Benchmarks?

The WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks are the most comprehensive and trusted performance tests in the WordPress hosting industry. Here's what participation means for your business:

🎯 Targeted Exposure

Reach thousands of qualified prospects actively researching WordPress hosting solutions. Our annual report influences hosting decisions across agencies, developers, and businesses.

🏆 Top Tier Status

Earning Top Tier recognition is a mark of excellence in the WordPress hosting industry. Many brands actively promote their Top Tier status across their websites.

📊 Unbiased Testing

Our testing methodology is designed to capture accurate and reliable performance metrics equally across all providers.

🔍 Industry Recognition

Join established hosting leaders who participate annually. Our benchmarks have been referenced across the WordPress community and hosting industry publications.

💡 Performance Insights

Gain valuable insights into your hosting performance compared to competitors. Identify areas for improvement and optimization opportunities.

📈 Long-term Value

Build year-over-year performance history. Demonstrate consistency and improvement over time, creating lasting trust with potential customers.

Ready to Showcase Your Performance?

Join hosting companies who trust our benchmarks to demonstrate their quality

How Does It Work?

Our benchmark process is designed to be transparent, fair, and comprehensive. Here's how the entire process unfolds:

Request for Hosts

If you want to be notified when signups open, join our mailing list below.

Agree to Terms & Choose Tiers

Hosts agree to the terms of the testing, then sign up for the plans/tiers they want to participate with and pay the associated fee.

All accounts will be provided for free to Review Signal for the duration of testing (approx. 4 months).
It is the responsibility of the hosting company to turn off and disable accounts after testing is finished. If there is any doubt, once results are published, testing can be considered over under all circumstances.
Company will assign representative(s) who are responsible and available to answer questions and deal with issues that arise during testing within 2 business days.
Tests are run on DEFAULT configurations (except Enterprise tier which allows unlimited customization). This means changes and improvements that aren’t on by default or a simple click away in an obvious place aren’t allowed. If a user needs to click ‘enable caching’ and you tell them this, this is acceptable. If they have to go download a caching plugin and install it themselves, this is not acceptable. If you have a specific question about your service please ask beforehand.
Additional Load Tests after the first two (2) will cost extra at the rate of $100/test.
Once tests are run, results will be published. There is no opting out because of poor results.
I have read the testing process (Methodology) and understand the scale and scope of WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks.
I have read the full details and understand how the testing works.

Hosting Plan Monthly Price ($)	Participation Fee
<25	$500
25-50	$500
51-100	$550
101-200	$600
201-500	$650
Enterprise	$1000
WooCommerce	$750
WooCommerce Enterprise*	$1250

Account Setup & Monitoring

We set up test websites on every plan and begin 4 months of continuous monitoring. During setup, we work with companies to resolve any issues and may suggest improvements to enhance the customer experience.

Testing Period

Over 4 months, we run comprehensive tests on all plans. Load tests are coordinated with each company to ensure security measures don't interfere. Companies can review results and address any issues that remain in scope of our default settings rules. Default settings are used for non-Enterprise plans to reflect the typical customer experience.

Testing Period Ends

After approximately 4 months, all tests are completed and data recording stops. Test sites can be taken offline.

Analysis & Publishing

We generally spend 2-3 months analyzing all results, writing comprehensive reports, and publishing the final WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks.

The Tests

We focus on real-world, unbiased, and transparent testing to help hosting companies and customers understand true performance. For full details, see our Methodology. Load test scripts can be found on GitHub.

Impacting Impacting tests determine Top Tier status. Non-impacting Non-impacting tests are for information only and do not affect Top Tier status.

Load Test: Load Storm

The Load Storm test simulates real users visiting a website, logging in and browsing around. It is designed to test and bypass some caching like a normal browser/user would.

Load Test: Static Cache Test

The Static Cache test is designed to aggressively request the homepage and make sure the site has proper caching that can handle significant load.

Load Test: WooCommerce

The WooCommerce test replaces Load Storm for WooCommerce sites which uses various profiles to simulate ecommerce traffic and behaviors.

Uptime Monitoring

All sites must maintain above 99.9% uptime to be considered Top Tier.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest is used to give a geographical performance insights from around the globe.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester measures PHP/WordPress performance mainly around the CPU performance

Qualsys SSLTest

SSLTest gives an SSL score based on how the certificate is setup.

More*

Additional non-impacting tests may be added to help give a broader performance picture.

Awards

★Top Tier WordPress Hosting

This is awarded 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 consistent response times. Error rates above 0.1% and response times above 1000ms* will keep a company away from achieving Top Tier marks.

Honorable Mention

Honorable mentions are given to companies that came close to Top Tier status but for one reason or another fell just slightly short. This is for companies struggling slightly on a load test – a low but not insignificant number of errors, slightly increased response times or spikes during the test but an otherwise solid performance.

* There is some slight wiggle room on 1000ms on p95 metric on the Load Storm test because I noticed there may be some slight favoritism towards US based hosting companies with this hard limit. If a company experiences no performance degradation but has a slightly higher p95 above 1000ms, it may still earn top tier status if it’s based in a non-US location.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does participation cost?▶

Price depends on the hosting plan and tier it fits into. Refer to the Price Tiers section for more details.

Which hosting plans should we submit?▶

We generally allow one plan per tier unless the plans are meaningfully different. Meaningfully different generally means something beyond merely the resources allocated to the plan (eg. different stack powering each plan in the same price range). You're welcome to compete in as many tiers as you would like. It is generally recommended that you submit the most well resourced plan in each tier for best results unless you're confident the lower price one will still handle the tests equally well.

How do you ensure testing fairness?▶

We use identical WordPress installations, the same testing methodology for all providers, and manually check to make sure the plans we are testing are given the same resources as publicly offered. If any company caught cheating they will be disqualified.

What happens if our performance is poor?▶

Poor performance is an opportunity to identify and address issues. If the hosting plan can be improved for all customers within the testing period, re-testing is possible. Otherwise, the results will be published as is. We do not grade companies on beyond those who handled the test near perfectly. We want to see every company improve and don't believe there is value is making companies look bad. Sometimes, even the best companies struggle, but they return to the top tier the next year.

Can we review results before publication?▶

Load tests are coordinated with each company, and results from them will be shared to help with any issues that may arise. Non-impacting metrics are generally not shared as they do not impact the grade. Uptime is generally not communicated as companies should be able to maintain 99.9% uptime and track their own services. In rare cases, we may reach out to discuss issues related to uptime.

What if I want to withdraw?▶

Withdrawl has happened in very limited circumstances. Major ownership change or dissolution of a company could be grounds for withdrawl. Companies who stop communicating during testing may be withdrawn and/or published with limited results. If a company wishes to withdraw before testing begins, but after setup and payment, it could be considered. Withdrawl for performance reasons won't be considered. Any withdrawl request must be an exceptional circumstance and reviewed on a case by case basis. There is no refund for withdrawl. Our goal is to publish unbiased benchmarks and letting companies withdraw based on their results reduces the value of the benchmarks for everyone.

What happens if a load test goes poorly?▶

Load testing can be tricky and our tests can trigger security measures designed to protect a site/server. It is not uncommon for this to happen during our testing. Every participant has 2 load tests (per test type) included in the participation fee. If after two tests, the company still needs additional tests, they can be executed at the rate of $100/test.

What security measures can interfere with a load test?▶

Load testing is essentially a permissioned distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) with metrics. The most common security measures we run into are rate limiting at a CDN or server level, IP blocking, captchas. Sometimes sitewide, sometimes more focused around wp-login.php. Litespeed server for example has special protections for wp-login.php that need to be disabled to successfully run some of our load tests.

What can we do to prepare for load testing?▶

Our entire methodology and the scripts we execute are open source on GitHub. You an encouraged to try them on your own services. Orderly Ape is the tool we use to run the load tests and is also open source. You should be able to replicate our tests and debug any issues beforehand around performance and security measures.

What is WooCommerce Enterprise Tier?▶

WooCommerce Enterprise tier would be the first time we run tests on WooCommerce sites beyond the site WooCommerce site. It would follow similar methodology to the existing WooCommerce tier except would be a different test site with more products and more traffic. It likely would have different profiles for users as well. Signing up will help gauge interest in larger scale Woo testing and give partipants some input on shaping the test itself.

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