Review Signal is a highly credible independent web hosting review site run by Kevin Ohashi. It has been publishing in-depth reviews of web hosting services for the past six years. The Review Signal WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks is designed to create a consistent set of benchmarks showing which web hosting companies offer the best in class performance. This year, 32 hosting companies participated in Review Signal’s performance benchmarking in 6 different price tiers.
A variety of different hosting types entered the contest. Cloud instances, containers, dedicated servers, and setups. We were (of course) the only ones to deliver Bolts.
The two main metrics to earn Top Tier Status is peak performance and consistency. The peak performance tests use load testing services like Loadstorm and Loadimpact and emulate large numbers of users visiting a website. The final reports show how well the hosting solution responds to these stressful conditions.
Consistency is measured using two different uptime monitoring services over a three-month period to make sure that the servers are always online. Uptime is a very important metric, especially for established businesses and e-commerce stores where even a few minutes of downtime can cause serious financial damage.
Web performance is all about loading times for website visitors; therefore, web page loading times are tested from 11 geographical locations internationally using WebPageTest.org.
Server speed is also a key metric impacting web performance. The WPPerformanceTester plugin for WordPress does PHP and database benchmarks. It measures how fast the underlying server runs, hence how fast the server can run WordPress.
WordPress 5.0 with the Classic Editor was used for the testing site. As the internet is now largely encrypted, all tests were run over HTTPS, and an SSL Labs metric was recorded for every test.
Table of Contents
- What Do These Scores Mean to Servebolt Customers?
- Servebolt’s Performance in Review Signal 2020 Benchmarking
- Servebolt’s Performance in Review Signal 2019 Benchmarking
- Why is Servebolt the Ideal Hosting Partner for Your Business?
- Conclusion
What Do These Scores Mean to Servebolt Customers?
The essence of Review Signal’s performance benchmarking is to show the true value a web hosting service offers to its customers. It highlights all the important performance metrics through a series of thorough tests that also reveal the change in a server’s behavior when exposed to different stress levels.
Servebolt has been participating in Review Signal’s performance benchmarking for the last two years, and last year, it outperformed its previous year’s benchmarks. How did we do that? Well, our engineering team took these stats seriously and worked really hard to further improve the performance of our servers.
These performance benchmarking scores reveal Servebolt’s true standing as a high-performing managed hosting solution. To simplify these results, we present them in more meaningful sections.
Top-notch Performance In Affordable Plans
Servebolt participated in four tiers in 2019 and five tiers in 2020. In 2019, Servebolt received Review Signal’s Top Tier Award in all four tiers i.e.
- $51-100
- $101-200
- $201-500
- $500+ Enterprise
Servebolt outperformed big names from the hosting industry. Although it was the first time Servebolt participated in this rigorous benchmarking, it still managed to secure respectable performance grades across the board.
Servebolt’s managed optimized server performed extremely well in handling a large number of requests in the Load Storm test across all the tiers where the test website is hit from 10 different locations for a period of 30 minutes, starting with 500 users and scaling to 3000 concurrent users with 10 minutes at the peak.
Read in detail Why Performance Matters?
Even our standard 4GB WordPress High-Performance plan delivered top performance and handled the high-volume requests in the fastest response time. Similarly, the WebPageTest.org test that measures how fast the page loads in 11 different locations around the world revealed that the site hosted with Servebolt had the fastest global loading time.
In 2020, Servebolt received Review Signal’s Top Tier Award in all five tiers!
- $25-50
- $51-100
- $101-200
- $201-500
- $500+ Enterprise
This was the first time when Servebolt entered into the $25-50 tier with its recently launched, more affordable Starter Plan for WordPress. In the Load Storm test, Servebolt secured the second position competing against some prominent names in the industry like WordPress.com, WPX, and Pressable.
In 2020 benchmarking, Servebolt stayed at the top in the page load time test. It was among the fastest in loading the page from 12 different locations. It also had the fastest average global load time in three tiers. Speed is a crucial metric for online businesses, and benchmarking results show that Servebolt is a blazing-fast host even in its low pricing tiers.
Due to high performance and stability, Severbolt secured astonishing scores in Load Impact tests, too, with some of the best peak average load times. Our servers performed without any hiccups across all tiers. It means, irrespective of the plan you choose, you will get the same performance from hosting your website on our Bolt.
Highly Scalable, Yet Managed Solution
You never know when you need more computing power to handle high-traffic surges. Scalability gives you peace of mind and saves your server from crashing by injecting required computing resources when needed.
Estimate how many visitors your hosting can handle
Servebolt is a highly-scalable solution. Do not take our word for it, instead, look at our performance in Review Signal benchmarking results. In both years, Servebolt hit a perfect score in the Load Storm test, where real users are simulated to perform actions like logging in and browsing the site. In the test, the number of users grows exponentially to test how well the server performs in heavy-load situations.
Similarly, Servebolt was undefeated in the WPPerformanceTester test. It is the test where the website is exposed to handle the maximum number of WP queries while keeping the PHP execution time to a minimum. In fact, the results were so great that Kevin couldn’t resist saying.
Servebolt blew away the competition on this test recording near 50% faster scores on both PHP bench and WP bench than the next fastest competitors.
Kevin Ohashi, founder at Review Signal
The results of this test are very important for businesses running WordPress sites as it reveals the computational power of the underlying infrastructure as well as the stack’s ability to handle a large number of requests and database operations.
Always Innovating To Stay Updated
For Servebolt, the biggest competition is itself. We are constantly improving to beat our previous benchmarks and set new standards for the managed hosting experience. We strongly believe that adopting the latest technology and introducing new and better ways of doing things can yield the optimum performance required to challenge the competition.
Besides bringing frequent updates to our infrastructure, our team also explores new avenues of performance, scalability, and convenience. For the same reason, we are also tightly integrated with Cloudflare and its products to deliver performance. Similarly, we also recently added M2Cache as a caching solution for Magento 2 sites.
Latest Infrastructure And Growing Datacenters
Infrastructure is the backbone of any hosting solution. At Servebolt, we do not compromise on the performance, therefore, we only choose the best-in-class infrastructure for our servers because only the best can deliver the best results.
It was the infrastructure that made us look great on the Uptime Monitoring test across all the tiers in Review Signal’s benchmarking. Throughout the benchmarking, Servebolt’s server delivered 99.9% uptime which shows the reliability our infrastructure offers to its customers. Uptime is extremely crucial for serious businesses where even a downtime of a few minutes can cause serious financial damage.
Servebolt also performed extremely well in the WebPageTest.org test, which measures the speed at which the page is loaded. It is measured from 12 different locations. Servebolt secured the fastest page load times in the majority of the tests and in the majority of the locations.
Checkout Locations of Servebolt’s Cloud Datacenters
Servebolt’s Performance In ReviewSignal 2020 Benchmarking
$25-50
TL;DR
- In the Load Storm test, Servebolt secured second position competing against WordPress.com Business, Pressable, WPX Hosting, and Pantheon. Our server handled astonishing 554,186 requests with an average request time of just 128ms.
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt came neck and neck with WordPress.com Business, Pantheon, and WPX Hosting with the third-best peak average load time.
- The SLA stayed at 99.9% in the Uptime Monitoring test.
- Servebolt was the fastest in the page load speed test, with an average global loading time of 0.96 seconds.
- In WPPerformanceTester Result, Servebolt handled the maximum number of WP queries (2403.846154) and had the lowest PHP execution time (2.4 seconds).
Results in a glance
| Load Storm | 🥈2nd most requests with response time 128ms. |
| Load Impact | 4th fastest response time |
| Uptime | 🥈2nd 99% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
“The second year for Servebolt has treated them well. They haven’t missed a beat with near-perfect load tests. They stood out the most on the WPPerformanceTester benchmark where they blew away the numbers from last year. Top Tier performance again.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$51-100
TL;DR
- In this tier, Servebolt outshined its competition by handling the largest number of requests (798,420) in the fastest average response time (95ms). Servebolt entered this tier with its Pro Plan, which is ideal for SMBs and medium-sized e-commerce stores.
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt performed without any hiccups and secured a respectable place with the second-best peak average load time.
- In the Uptime Monitoring test, Servebolt maintained its promised SLA, i.e., 99.9%.
- Servebolt had the fastest page loading time in two locations and the second-best in 6 locations. It had the second-best average global loading time.
- While testing against PHP Bench and WP Bench, Servebolt’s server once again handled the maximum number of WP queries (2155.172414) and had the lowest PHP execution time of (3.298 seconds).
| Load Storm | 🏆1st most requests in the fastest response time. |
| Load Impact | 🥈2nd fastest response time |
| Uptime | 🥈2nd with a 99.9% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
“Servebolt’s second year was kind to them. Their new servers blew away the competition on WPPerformanceTester and it wasn’t even close. Servebolt also managed the fastest average response time on Load Storm and the second-fastest average response time on WebPageTest. Servebolt is really pushing hard on the speed button and it earned them another Top Tier performance.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$101-200
TL;DR
- Servebolt hit a perfect score in the Load Storm test and secured the first position. Our servers handled (926,739) requests with an average response time of just (108ms). These stats reveal the power of underlying infrastructure and our hosting stack that is built carefully to deliver performance.
- No issues were reported in the Load Impact test.
- Servebolt’s server was up 99.9% of the time in the Uptime Monitoring test.
- In the WebPageTest.org test, Servebolt again came out as the fastest host when it came to page loading time. It had the fastest average global loading time (0.91 seconds).
- Servebolt secured the first position in WPPerformanceTester. It handled (2049.180328) WP queries with the lowest PHP execution time (3.275 seconds).
| Load Storm | 🏆1st most requests in the fastest response time. |
| Load Impact | 4th fastest response time. |
| Uptime | 🥈2nd with a 99.9% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
“Servebolt prides itself on speed. They were blazingly fast on WPPerformanceTester. They had the fastest average response time on WebPageTest. They had the fastest Load Storm average response time. Top Tier honors were easily awarded to Servebolt.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$201-500
TL;DR
- Servebolt outperformed its competition in the Load Storm test by miles. The serve handled (1,381,129) requests with the lowest average response time on the board (47ms).
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt came out as the third-best with the second-best average peak load time.
- 99.9% uptime was maintained in the Uptime Monitoring test.
- Servebolt is still the undefeated winner in the WebPageTest.org test. Our page load time was the fastest in 7/12 locations, with the fastest average loading time (0.89 seconds).
- In the WPPerformanceTester test, Servebolt secured the first position in this tier as well. It handled the maximum number of WP queries (1992.031873) and had the lowest PHP execution time (3.28 seconds).
| Load Storm | 🏆1st most requests in the fastest response time. |
| Load Impact | 🥈2nd fastest response time. |
| Uptime | 🥈2nd with a 99.9% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
“Speed, speed, speed. Servebolt had the fastest response times on Load Storm and WebPageTest. They also were in a class of their own on WPPerformanceTester. The Top Tier status was well deserved for Servebolt.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$500+ Enterprise
TL;DR
- Servebolt handled the Load Storm test at the enterprise level extremely well. Our server secured the first position while handling (2,707,825) requests with the fastest average response time of (64ms).
- Another smooth round of Load Impact test for Servebolt’s server.
- 100% uptime. Very crucial for the enterprise tier.
- Still blazing fast, with an average global loading time of (0.89 seconds) in the WebPageTest.org test.
- In the enterprise tier, Servebolt defeated all the competitors with the best scores in WP Bench (2037 queries) and PHP Bench (3.29 seconds).
| Load Storm | 🏆1st most requests in the fastest response time. |
| Load Impact | Performed without any issues |
| Uptime | 🏆1st with a 100% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | Blazing fast average global response time |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
Servebolt continued its dominance in the WPPerformanceTester results into the Enterprise Tier being the fastest by a solid margin again on both PHP and WP Bench. They also managed the fastest average response time on Load Storm and kept a global average response time under 1000ms on WebPageTest which put them in 4th place. Another Top Tier performance by Servebolt.
Kevin Ohashi, founder at Review Signal
Comments from Erlend Eide — CEO Servebolt.com
“We’re putting our pride in providing the fastest performing underlying platform, which we yet again prove by acing all the Load Storm tests. If the underlying platform and dynamic performance is at a maximum, the results in the rest of the down stream web performance tests will be excellent too. For 2020 we made the move from the old Intel platform to the future and web performance oriented EPYC platform (which is Epic!) and with that – increased our distance to everyone in the WPPerformanceTester results.”
To view the complete results and charts, visit Review Signal 2020 benchmarks.
Servebolt’s Performance In ReviewSignal 2019 Benchmarking
$51-100
TL;DR
- Servebolt handled the highest number of requests (838,083) in the lowest response time (97ms) in the Load Storm test. It out-performed players like Liquid Web, Kinsta, and Cloudways by a huge margin.
- In uptime monitoring results, Servebolt’s server had 100% uptime and a very low avg response time of just 0.318s.
- In the WebPageTest.org test, Servebolt was one of the fastest in the majority of the locations, with the fastest loading time in London, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Mumbai.
- Outcompeting everyone in the PHP Bench feels good – 3.8 seconds is 74% faster than the second-best.
- SSL Report Grade was A+
Results in a glance
| Load Storm | 🏆1st Fastest response time, most requests |
| Load Impact | 🥈2nd Second fastest response time and requests |
| Uptime | 🏆1st 100% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🥈2nd fastest |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🥈2nd fastest Database performance |
| SSL Labs | 🏆1st, A+! |
“New entrant Servebolt.com stormed into the tests this year and earned itself a Top Tier award. They had a perfect 100% uptime on both monitors. They also had the fastest Load Storm results of any company in this price tier. It was an excellent performance from a new entrant.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal
$101-200
TL;DR
- The highest number of requests (1,108,623) in the lowest response time (65ms) in Load Storm.
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt’s server catered to the maximum number of requests (1092189) and the fastest peak average load time (561ms).
- In the Uptime Monitoring test, Servebolt got an uptime of 100%.
- In the WebPageTest.org test, Servebolt had the fastest global loading times.
- Servebolt ran WordPress faster than anyone else, and the PHP Benchmark clocks in at 3.81 seconds. That is 2.6 times faster than the second-best Cloudways and even more for the rest. WordPress on a Bolt also runs 34% more database queries per second than the second-best.
- The SSL Report Grade was A+
Results in a glance
| Load Storm | 🏆1st Fastest response time, most requests |
| Load Impact | 🏆1st Fastest response time, most requests |
| Uptime | 🏆1st 100% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
| SSL Labs | 🏆1st, A+! |
“Perfect uptime, 57 cumulative errors on the load tests, and the fastest average response times for both load tests made Servebolt.com an easy candidate for earning Top Tier status.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$201-500
TL;DR
- In this tier as well, Servebolt outshined all the names present in the Load Storm results table. Servebolt’s highly-optimized server effortlessly handled 1,374,106 requests with an average response time of only 131ms!
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt handled 1576499 requests with a peak average load time of only 148ms, which is the second-best test score.
- As usual, Servebolt received 100% uptime in the Uptime Monitoring test.
- Finally, Servebolt scored extremely high in the WebPageTest.org page load time test. It was the fastest in 7/11 locales and the second-fastest in 2/11 locales.
- Our PHP Bench clocks in at 3.814 seconds, with the second-best being Cloudways at 9.388. That is 2.46 times faster. Our servers can also handle astonishingly more database queries than the rest, 2.68 times more queries per second than the average of the others.
- The SSL Report Grade was A+
Results in a glance
| Load Storm | 🏆1st Fastest response time, most requests |
| Load Impact | 🥈2nd fastest response time, second highest requests |
| Uptime | 🏆1st 100% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
| SSL Labs | 🏆1st, A+! |
“Servebolt had the fastest Load Storm response times along with perfect uptime. They also were the fastest in 7/11 locations on the WebPageTest. Easily earned itself Top Tier status.”
Kevin Ohashi — Founder, Review Signal LLC
$500+ Enterprise
TL;DR
- In the enterprise tier, Servebolt handled the maximum number of requests (2,851,014) in the Load Storm test with an average response time of just (121ms).
- In the Load Impact test, Servebolt hit the third-best response time and handled (1906013) requests.
- In the Uptime Monitoring test, Servebolt scored 100% uptime in the enterprise tier as well.
- When it comes to speed, the website hosted on Servebolt’s high-performing managed server scored the fastest loading times in 9/11 locations.
- It seems we have almost defined a category of our own in these results. We run PHP Bench in 3.8 seconds. That is almost twice as fast as the second-best. Our database performance is also completely off the charts, with 69% more queries per second than Kinsta and 86% faster database performance than WordPress VIP.
- The SSL Report Grade was A+
Results in a glance
| Load Storm | 🥉3rd fastest response time, the highest number of requests |
| Load Impact | 🥉3rd fastest response time |
| Uptime | 🏆1st 100% Uptime |
| WebPageTest | 🏆1st fastest average global response time. |
| WPPerformanceTester PHP Bench | 🏆1st Fastest PHP |
| WPPerformanceTester WP Bench | 🏆1st fastest Database performance |
| SSL Labs | 🏆1st, A+! |
Perfect uptime. Nearly perfect load tests. Third fastest average response times in both load tests too. Fastest WPT test results in 9/11 locales and second fastest once. Servebolt also had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores. Easily a Top Tier performance from Servebolt.
Kevin Ohashi, founder at Review Signal
Comments from Erlend Eide — CEO Servebolt.com
“Servebolt entered 4 of 6 price tier tests. We are proud to have earned a top tier in all tests we participated in. Besides the great competition by Incendia in the WPPerformanceTester WP Bench test in the $50-100 tier, all our WP Performance Tester scores were in another league than the competition. This means we have the fastest hosting platform.
Throughout the tiers and the various tests, we see that our infrastructure performs in another league from the competition. This makes us confident that the hard choices we make are for the better of our customers and the internet as a whole.
We believe in thinking differently and always attacking the root of any performance problem instead of going for a simple and quick solution. That has paid off, as the ReviewSignal.com 2019 benchmark clearly demonstrates.”
To view the complete results and charts, visit Review Signal 2019 benchmarks.
Why Servebolt is The Ideal Hosting Partner For Your Business?
Switching a hosting partner is a daunting task for businesses; therefore, it is essential to choose the hosting solution that can support all your business needs in the long run. Servebolt’s customized services and agile methodology towards adopting new technology allow businesses to stay for a longer period of time without worrying about scalability and performance.
Let’s briefly look at some of the factors that make Servebolt an ideal hosting partner for your business.
Performance
If you have come this far in this article, you would probably have noticed that performance is Servebolt’s forte which is also recognized by independent reviewing sources like Review Signal. Why do we strive for performance? The answer is the internet is getting faster every passing day, and people browsing the internet expect faster sites irrespective of their location and devices.
Learn How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site in 11 Simple Steps
Performance delivers an enhanced user experience that can do wonders when it comes to retention, conversion, and traffic. Google also made performance a ranking factor to encourage webmasters to work on the performance of their websites. True performance is conceived with the combination of both the underlying hosting stack and the way you structure your website.
At Servebolt, we take care of the hosting part extremely well and also help our customers through expert guides in following the best practices to structure their website.
Scalability
If you, as a business, wants to stick with your hosting partner for a longer period of time, look at the support and features it offers for scalability. Scalability is often overlooked by business owners, and unfortunately, they have to pay a hefty price for that.
At Servebolt we resolve scalability issues with both our state-of-the-art hosting stack and powerful infrastructure. Our hosting stack comprises of the customized OS, Nginx-powered Server-level caching and optimized PHP version. On top of that, we are tightly integrated with Cloudflare, which further optimizes resources to handle the large traffic volume.
We also provide unlimited RAM and an “Enough CPU Policy” to handle the computational requirement of growing businesses. All of this contributes to maximum uptime, reliability, and faster loading of pages.
Enterprise
Servebolt was built and run by experts who have years of experience managing large enterprise applications. This enables Servebolt to formulate the solution best suited to run enterprise-level web applications without any hiccups. Servebolt Cloud is a perfect solution for enterprises that seek simplicity and best-in-class performance, and security.
Servebolt-managed enterprise WordPress hosting secured top positions in Review Signal’s performance benchmarking in 2019 and 2020. It was the top performer in the Load Storm test, page loading time test, and WordPress and PHP performance benchmarks.
Unique Approach Lead By Experts
As stated above, Servebolt is led by experts who understand modern web hosting from top to bottom. We are a performance-first company, therefore, we adopted this unique approach of building the complete hosting architecture from the ground up. It was not an easy task, but it produced great results for our customers who came to us with serious performance and scalability issues.
We are keen to apply a similar approach on every front to deliver a unique user experience and peace of mind to our customers. It is only possible by paying attention to details, listening to our customers, and creating a tailor-made solution to satisfy their hosting requirements.
Accelerated Domains is a great example of such a solution that we recently launched to solve complex performance, security, and scalability issues. Accelerated Domains enables businesses to serve both local and global clients with the same consistent high-performant webpages and scale effortlessly without adding any complexities. Its Security Engine smartly mitigates crucial cyberattacks before they even hit your server and optimizes resource consumption by keeping unwanted traffic away.
Conclusion
Review Signal is a great source for running independent performance benchmarking. Kevin’s extensive experience in the web hosting industry and in-depth analysis reveals the good and the bad side to both the users and the hosting providers. But what really matters is how the product solves real-world problems, and at Servebolt, we try to solve these problems every single day for our existing and future customers.
We are already looking forward to next year and have already started dripping some technology previews to our selected Partners.
Update: Review Signal’s 2021 results are in (under a new name), and once again, Servebolt ranked top tier in the WP Hosting Benchmark tests.
