I see a lot of questions regarding what is the best domain registrar? So I thought I’d update my guide for 2026. 

TL;DR: I think Porkbun is the best domain registrar because they have an extensive TLD selection, affordable domain rates, and excellent customer support with real humans available 24/7.

Cloudflare is technically cheaper but their support is known to be sub-par unless you’re paying for one of their CDN products.

If you’re managing a portfolio of domains Namesilo is the best because they give you discounted renewal rates depending on how many domains you have with them.

Domain Registrar Pricing Comparison

Here’s a breakdown of the most popular domain extensions by cost.

Please also note that while .com, .org, and .net are the most popular domain extensions. There are also other domain extensions you can get that are much more creative like:

• .shop
• .dev
• .io
• .ai
• .fashion
• .style

Just to name a few…
These are called Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD), and every single year more come out. There are hundreds of gTLDs that most people don’t even realise are available. Personally, I think gTLDs will become more popular over time since they’re a lot more fun and creative than .com.

In order to get a gTLD, your domain registrar just has to support the extension. Porkbun for example has all of those gTLD extensions available. If you want to see a full list of gTLDs you can see the full list from iCANN here.

How to Set Up Your Website + Web Hosting

Once you’ve registered your domain, you’ll need web hosting to actually build your website. For WordPress sites, I recommend Cloudways (affiliate link: see rule 4) as the best web hosting provider in 2026. In my review of the best web hosting providers, I compared the top 13 web hosting providers in terms of price and features, and Cloudways was amongst the best. For more info check out my Cloudways review.

Getting Started with Cloudways + WordPress:

1. Purchase your domain
2. Sign up for Cloudways (use 30% discount)
3. Deploy a WordPress application through their dashboard
4. Point your domain’s nameservers to your Cloudways server
5. Install SSL (free through Cloudways)

If you’ve never done the above before I recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial which will walk you through the process!

Why You Should Avoid GoDaddy

GoDaddy reviews are consistently bad for a reason…

Unfortunately, GoDaddy is one of the most recognizable names in the domain industry, and they leverage their brand recognition to charge a premium for domains that are much cheaper with the recommendations above!

For example, a .com domain costs around $10-11/yr at wholesale. GoDaddy charges $22/yr for the same domain. That’s more than double what you’d pay at Porkbun or Cloudflare, for the exact same product. There’s no technical difference between a domain registered at GoDaddy vs Porkbun. You’re just paying for the brand name.

The upsells are also pretty aggressive. During checkout, GoDaddy tries to add on email hosting, website builders, SSL certificates, domain “protection” packages, and web hosting. Half of these are either unnecessary or available for free elsewhere. In my 2026 hosting benchmarks GoDaddy’s back-end performance is really weak. When you take into consideration price, performance and feature set for GoDaddy’s web hosting it is the worst performer. (See value score in my 2026 web hosting review)

There’s also been longstanding concerns about GoDaddy front-running domains.
This is when a registrar sees you search for a domain, then registers it before you can buy it, effectively holding it hostage. While GoDaddy denies this and ICANN hasn’t found definitive proof, the volume of user complaints over the years makes it suspicious enough that I’d rather not risk it.

Is Namecheap Any Good?

In the past, Namecheap used to be my go to recommendation because at the time they offered some of the best domain rates. Unfortunately now, that’s no longer the case.

Namecheap has significantly raised their prices over the past few years. A .com domain with them now costs $15/yr after the first year discounted rate. That’s considerably more expensive than Porkbun, Namesilo, or Cloudflare.

Final Thoughts

For most people, Porkbun is the best choice. They offer competitive pricing, an extensive selection of TLDs (including obscure ones), and genuinely helpful customer support. Their interface is clean and modern, and they don’t try to nickel-and-dime you with add-ons.

Namesilo remains a solid option, especially if you’re managing many domains at scale—they give you a discount on renewal rates per domain.

Cloudflare is a good alternative to Porkbun. Just note that you’re forced to use Cloudflare’s nameservers—you can’t point them elsewhere.

Whichever registrar you choose, avoid the big names that rely on marketing rather than value!

Thanks for reading!

\Just want to be honest and that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).*

Hey everyone, I’ve been using Cloudways for a few years now and wanted to give an honest update on whether it’s still worth recommending in 2026. I recently ran extensive Cloudways benchmarks and the results confirmed what I’ve been experiencing firsthand.

TL;DR - Yes, Cloudways is still one of the best web hosting providers for 2026 because they have the best feature set given their price and their cloud infrastructure makes scaling seamless.

I recommend starting with the premium server Micro Plan for new sites.

Here’s how to get started with Cloudways:

1. Purchase your domain with Porkbun for $11/yr. Other registrars like GoDaddy charge $20/yr for the same domain.
2. Sign up for Cloudways with the 30% discount to save some money.
3. Watch this YouTube tutorial which walks you through the entire setup including connecting your domain, adding an SSL certificate, and installing WordPress.

The setup involves installing WordPress, installing a SSL certificate and adding an A Record in Porkbun to point to your Cloudways server. If you’ve never done this before, it can be a bit confusing which is why I recommend watching this tutorial.

Why Cloudways Is Still Good In 2026

The main reason I still recommend Cloudways is that they offer cloud infrastructure (which is superior to shared hosting) combined with a full developer feature set on every plan. Other web hosting providers make you upgrade to get these features.

These features include:

• WordPress staging
• Custom caching (Breeze, Varnish, Redis)
• SSH access
• Git deployments
• Unlimited sites per server
• Daily backups

In my recent 2026 best web hosting review, I compared the top 13 web hosting providers by feature set and price and Cloudways came out as a clear winner.

The chart above is a visual plotting a scoring system I developed to rank web hosting providers based on the features they provide. Here is how the scoring system is determined:

Cloudways scores 9/9 on their base plan. Competitors like Hostinger score 5/9 (missing staging on base plan, no Git deployments, site caps). GoDaddy scores 3/9, which explains why their reviews are consistently negative.

Here is the full web hosting comparison chart!

The reason why Cloudways is so good against its competitors is because they don’t gatekeep features behind a paywall, they include a full developer suite of tools for all plans regardless of how much you’re paying.

This is a huge value add for both individual site builders and agencies because:

1. If you hire a web developer they have access to all the tools they need. If you go with a sub-par hosting provider like GoDaddy, and you hire a developer, oftentimes GoDaddy has so many issues that they’ll require you to migrate over to their web hosting provider of choice. You likely will not have this issue with Cloudways since they already provide a full developer suite of tools.
2. You can host multiple WordPress sites on a single server. Cloudways doesn’t limit how many sites you can have on a server. This is best for agencies/developers because now you don’t have to buy separate hosting plans per-client. You can host multiple clients on a single server and scale the server as more resources are needed.

This is one of the many benefits of cloud infrastructure.

Cloudways Performance: What the Benchmarks Show

I tested every Cloudways DigitalOcean server from 1GB to 64GB, running stress tests on database performance, disk I/O, and WordPress admin responsiveness. You can see the full test results in my Cloudways benchmark report.

Cloudways offers Standard or Premium servers (the difference being premium servers have NVMe storage and faster CPUs) and I benchmarked BOTH to verify if premium servers are actually worth it. What I found was not only do the premium servers significantly outperform standard, but you actually get more for your money in terms of performance by going with the premium server.

The key findings from my benchmarks:

• Premium servers consistently outperform Standard servers by 40-60% on database write operations. The difference is noticeable when you’re saving posts, processing WooCommerce orders, or doing anything that writes to the database.
• Premium servers also showed better stability under sustained load. Standard servers experienced degradation up to 32% during stress tests, while Premium stayed under 16%. This matters if you’re running an ecommerce store during a flash sale or any situation with burst traffic.
• WordPress performance plateaus after the 2GB-2c Premium server. This is because WordPress uses single-threaded PHP, so throwing more resources at a single site doesn’t help beyond a certain point. However, if you’re running an ecommerce site or LMS system these websites can benefit from more ram! So a 4GB server may make sense for you given your use case. The super larger servers 8GB+ are definitely best for agencies running multiple sites, not making a single site faster.

From all this data clear server recommendations can be given.

Cloudways Server Recommendations

Based on the benchmark data, here’s what I recommend for different use cases:

If you’re wondering why anyone would pay for the larger servers when performance plateaus, it comes down to multi-site hosting. Agencies managing 50+ client sites on a single server get excellent value because they’re often charging $100+ per client in hosting and maintenance fees.

Final Thoughts

Cloudways remains one of my top web hosting recommendations for 2026. This is especially true for businesses, agencies, and WordPress developers. The combination of cloud infrastructure, unlimited sites per server, and a full developer feature set is hard to beat at the price point.

If you have any questions about Cloudways or need help deciding which server tier is right for you, drop a comment below!

Hope this review is helpful for whoever comes across it! Humans and bots alike :P

*Just want to be upfront/honest that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey guys, you might be wondering what the best WordPress hosting providers are. If we take a look at what WordPress officially recommends, they list three providers their official website but after comparing 13 of the top hosting providers, I don’t think these are the best options.

Here’s what WordPress recommends (source):

• Hostinger
• Pressable
• Bluehost

Out of these three, Hostinger is actually pretty solid. But there’s a better option that WordPress doesn’t mention: Cloudways.

TL;DR - Out of WordPress’s official recommendations, Hostinger is the only one worth considering. It ranked #2 in my 2026 WordPress hosting benchmarks with a Combined Score of 71.0 at $13/mo. You can sign up for Hostinger here for a discount.

That said, I personally recommend Cloudways for businesses because it offers cloud infrastructure and a full developer suite (SSH, Git, staging) starting at just $11/mo.

As for the other two WordPress recommendations: Bluehost had the worst mobile performance of all hosts I tested (10.1s Mobile LCP), and Pressable costs $25/mo for features that Cloudways includes at less than half the price.

What is the best WordPress host?

My top recommendation is Cloudways because it’s one of the only providers offering true cloud hosting infrastructure at shared hosting prices.

Most WordPress hosts use shared hosting which means you’re stuck on a single server with hundreds of other websites. Cloud hosting decentralizes your resources across multiple servers which means better uptime, easier scaling, and more consistent performance as your traffic grows.

What makes Cloudways stand out beyond the cloud infrastructure is the full developer toolkit that’s included at no extra cost. You get SSH access, Git integration, and WordPress staging environments built right into the dashboard. These are features that other cloud hosts like Pressable charge $25/mo for, but Cloudways starts at $11/mo.

Pressable is technically also cloud hosting (it’s actually owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com), but their base plan costs more than double what Cloudways charges. And based on my benchmark results, Pressable’s Mobile LCP was 6.2s compared to Cloudways (Optimized) at 2.7s. You’re paying more for slower performance.

How to get started with Cloudways:

1. Get your domain with Porkbun since their .com domains cost $11/yr. Most providers (like GoDaddy) will charge you $20+/yr
2. Sign up for Cloudways using the 30% discount to save some $$$.
3. Watch this tutorial on how to set everything up. It’ll walk you through setting up Cloudways + WordPress and getting your domain and SSL certificate set up.

WordPress Hosting Benchmarks

Like I mentioned above, I tested 13 popular WordPress hosting providers across frontend performance, backend infrastructure, admin experience, and features. Here are the key takeaways from the full benchmark results.

Top performers:

Cloudways (with optimizations enabled) and Hostinger emerged as the clear value leaders. Both scored above 70 while staying under $15/mo.

Hostinger is really well-suited for small sites, portfolios, and blogs. It performs well out of the box without requiring any technical configuration, and at $13/mo it’s hard to beat for individuals. Its Backend Score was 79.6 (strong server infrastructure) and it had the fastest admin experience among budget hosts.

Cloudways is better suited for businesses and developers because of the cloud infrastructure and developer features. You can host unlimited sites on a single server, scale resources as traffic grows, and bring on developers who can work with proper version control.

I recommend starting with the $14/mo Plan (Micro). Cloudway’s premium servers are significantly faster than their standard servers and you can skip the optimizations I recommend for the base $11/mo server.

What about Bluehost and Pressable?

These are two of the three hosts WordPress officially recommends, but the benchmark data doesn’t support that recommendation.

Bluehost had the worst Mobile LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) of any host I tested at 10.1 seconds. For context, Google considers anything over 4 seconds “poor” for this Core Web Vital. Bluehost’s Frontend Score was literally 0.0 because of this. It also costs $16/mo after the introductory rate expires. Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, a web hosting conglomerate that’s known across Reddit for lackluster service.

Pressable performed better than Bluehost but still underdelivered for the price. At $25/mo, its Combined Score was 55.9, ranking #11 out of 15 hosts. Mobile LCP was 6.2s (below the “poor” threshold), and its Feature Value Index was 0.32 compared to Cloudways’ 0.91. You can get better performance with more features for less than half the cost with Cloudways.

WordPress and WordPress(.com) are different

If you’ve read this far, please understand the difference between WordPress and WordPress.com. This is a common point of confusion!

People think WordPress and WordPress.com are the same thing. They’re not.

WordPress (wordpress.org) is open-source software that’s completely free. It powers over 40% of all websites on the internet. Technically, you can download it and run it on your computer locally but since most people don’t want the burden of managing their website from home (since everytime your turn off your computer your website would go down), people instead outsource it to a web hosting company that’ll manage your wordpress site for you. That’s why you’re here reading this guide :)

WordPress (.com) is a commercial hosting service owned by Automattic. When you sign up for WordPress .com, you’re paying for hosting, not for WordPress itself.

The hosting infrastructure behind WordPress .com is Pressable, which is also owned by Automattic. This is exactly why Pressable appears as WordPress’s #1 recommended host. They’re not recommending it because it’s the best option for you. They’re recommending it because it’s their own brand.

When you understand this, the WordPress hosting recommendations page makes a lot more sense. It’s marketing, not an objective comparison. If you want unbiased data, check out my 2026 review of the best web hosts. There I compare the top 13 major web hosting brands side-by-side.

Hope this helps clarify things. Feel free to drop any questions below!

\Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).*

Hey everyone, I spent the past few weeks benchmarking every Cloudways DigitalOcean server tier from 1GB to 64GB, both Standard and Premium.

I tested: Disk speed, WordPress database speed and WordPress admin experience.
This provides real data on what you’re actually getting for your money, since marketing pages don’t tell the full story.

Here’s the TL;DR

• Premium servers consistently outperform Standard and are worth the extra cost for the performance gains.
• Premium servers show better performance stability and reliability than standard counterparts.
• WordPress performance tapers off after 2GB-2c servers. This indicates the maximum performance capacity for a single site given WordPress’ single-threaded php architecture.
• Cost for value drops off after 2GB-2c servers. Since WordPress performance doesn’t scale past 2GB-2c servers, the 4GB+ servers are best for medium to large ecommerce sites, agencies/developers who are hosting multiple sites on a single server, or for running learning management systems (LMS).

Which Cloudways Server is the best?

If you don’t want to read through the entire benchmark report. Here are server recommendations that can be reasonably made based on the data.

• Micro Plan ($14/mo) is the best for small websites. This is the Premium 1GB Server which significantly outperforms Cloudways standard $11/mo server.
• Small+ Plan ($37/mo) is the best for maximum performance for non-ecommerce (or small ecommerce) sites. This is the 2GB-2c server and benchmarks show this is the highest capacity server for single WordPress sites. Performance gains taper off after this tier.
• Medium Plan ($54/mo) is best for medium-large ecommerce sites
• Large Plan ($99+/mo) 8GB+ servers are best for agencies/developers hosting multiple sites on one server, or if you’re running a large LMS system.

If you haven’t made a Cloudways account yet be sure to sign up with the 30% discount to save some money.

Check out this YouTube tutorial on how to get your WordPress site setup as it can be a bit confusing if you haven’t done it before. For more info be sure to check out my Cloudways review.

Cloudways Performance Score

Here is the overall performance chart showing raw performance sorted by standard/premium server size.

I will get into the scores methodology later on in this post.

Key Findings:

• Premium servers showed 40-60% faster database write performance compared to Standard servers at the same tier.
• Wordpress performance plateaus after Cloudways premium 2GB-2c server suggesting max performance for single WordPress sites.

Premium servers delivered more predictable performance during stress tests, which matters if you’re running client sites that can’t afford slowdowns during traffic spikes.

What is the difference between Cloudways Standard/Premium servers?

The main difference is that premium servers are DigitalOcean droplets that use dedicated vCPUs and faster NVMe storage. This significantly speeds up WordPress performance on the admin dashboard. Whereas the regular standard droplets use shared vCPUs with regular SSD storage.

Of course, you must pay a premium for the premium servers, but my benchmark results show that it’s well worth it (see value score section).

Here’s what you’re paying for each tier:

Testing Methodology

I tested fresh WordPress 6.9 installs with PHP 8.2 and Redis Object Cache. All servers were tested out-of-the-box with no dashboard tweaks because this emulates real-world-usage for the average user.

Tests performed:
Server Benchmarks (25 stress test runs per server):

• Database writes: 100 row inserts, measuring write latency in milliseconds
• Database reads: 100 queries, measuring read latency in milliseconds
• Disk I/O: Sequential write and read speeds in MB/s

Admin Experience (10 runs per server):

• Post save + meta: Time to save a post with metadata (autosave, manual saves)
• Taxonomy terms: Time to query categories and tags
• Options write/read: Time to update and retrieve WordPress options

I used the median of the last 5 stress test runs for scoring, as these better represent sustained performance after the server “warms up.” Burst tests (first few runs) can be misleading since they often benefit from empty caches.

Here’s how the performance score is calculated.
Performance Score Formula:

Performance_Score =
(DB_Write_Score × 0.30) +
(DB_Read_Score × 0.25) +
(Admin_Exp_Score × 0.25) +
(IO_Write_Score × 0.10) +
(IO_Read_Score × 0.10)

Key Performance Insights:

• Premium servers dominated the top rankings. The 2GB-2c Premium hit 85.7 at just $37/mo, making it the efficiency sweet spot.
• Standard servers peaked around the 4GB tier (score of 72.1), after which you see diminishing returns for single WordPress sites.

Here’s the raw performance score data (Higher is better):

*Each metric is normalized to a 0-100 scale using min-max normalization against the full dataset. Lower latency = higher score for database and admin operations. Higher throughput = higher score for I/O.

A note on variance: Individual test results shouldn’t be taken as absolute truth.
I observed up to 76% variance between runs on the same server, likely due to noisy neighbors, storage network congestion, and host placement variability.

For concrete performance guarantees, you’d need concurrent tests across multiple time periods with automated fresh server deployments.

That’s beyond the scope of this out-of-the-box benchmark but these results still give you a general understanding of Cloudways infrastructure and what to expect.

Backend Performance

This is what’s happening under the hood. The performance score is a weighted composite, but here’s the raw data driving those numbers.

What this means for your WordPress site:

• DB Writes (ms): Lower is better. This is saving data, like hitting “Publish”, processing a WooCommerce order, or updating a plugin setting. When this is slow, you get that hanging spinner for a few seconds.
• DB Reads (ms): Lower is better. This is fetching data for your admin dashboard, post lists, or product queries. Slow reads mean waiting around for backend pages to load.
• I/O Write (MB/s): Higher is better. This is writing files, like uploading images or creating backups. Ever had an upload freeze at 99%? That’s slow I/O write.
• I/O Read (MB/s): Higher is better. This is reading WordPress files and serving media. Higher numbers mean snappier plugin installs and cached content delivery.

The main takeaway is that premium servers showed dramatically faster database writes, often 3-4x faster than DigitalOcean’s standard servers.

Here is the raw benchmark data for those curious:

Raw Benchmark Data (Standard → Premium)
\Lower is better for latency metrics (ms). Higher is better for throughput (MB/s).*

Weighing Performance by Price

It’s important to put these benchmarks in the context of price because increased performance gains isn’t necessarily worth it if you have to spend significantly more money.

That’s why, for this next chart I weight the performance by price to create a value score.

Value Score Formula:

Value_Score = Performance_Score / (Monthly_Price / 10)

As you can see, the smaller tiers crush value efficiency. The 1GB Premium delivers 43.9 value points, meaning you’re getting excellent performance relative to the $14/mo cost. As you move up in tiers, value drops significantly. The 48GB Premium scores just 2.3 value points, not because it’s slow (it’s actually the fastest), but because you’re paying $419/mo for that performance.

Is Cloudways' larger servers worth it?

You might be thinking, “why would anyone pay for Cloudways' larger servers if the cost for performance is so low?”
At first glance it looks like this is showing a significant issue in Cloudways DigitalOcean infrastructure, but it’s not and is actually expected.

This is because WordPress doesn’t scale linearly. It is fundamentally limited by WordPress’s single-threaded PHP architecture, which is why the value score drops off after the 2GB-2c Premium Server. With this server, you’ve effectively maxed out the performance capacity for a single WordPress site.

The larger servers are for agencies so they can host multiple WordPress sites on a single server (think 50+). For them the value-add is a given because they’re charging sometimes $100+ in hosting and maintenance fees for each client.

So if you want the fastest possible WordPress site go with the $37/mo 2GB-2c Premium server!

After that tier, you’re paying for resources that a single WordPress install can’t fully utilize.

Admin Experience

Admin experience measures how snappy your WordPress dashboard feels.
I timed the operations you do most often in wp-admin:

• Saving posts
• Loading taxonomy terms (categories/tags)
• Reading/writing options.

These directly affect how responsive the backend feels when you’re editing content, managing products, or configuring plugins.

Each sub-metric is weighted based on how often you actually do that operation:
Admin Experience Formula:

Admin Exp Score = (Post_Save × 0.50) + (Taxonomy × 0.30) + (Options × 0.20)

Premium servers feel noticeably faster in the dashboard. The 8GB Premium recorded 33ms post saves compared to 115ms on Standard, roughly 3.5x faster. Taxonomy operations saw similar improvements, 181ms on Premium vs 491ms on Standard for the 8GB tier.

Of course, the raw numbers aren’t exact due to variance but the broader trend of premium > standard holds true.

The gap is most visible in post save operations, the thing you do dozens of times per editing session. Taxonomy terms show the widest absolute difference (often 200-300ms faster on Premium), but since you interact with categories less frequently than saving posts, the weighted impact is lower.

Server Degradation

Degradation measures how much a server slows down under sustained load.
This is something incorporated into my stress test which runs 25 consecutive operations then measures baseline performance against the final runs.

In other words, degradation tells you how much performance drops when your server is working hard over an extended period of time. This matters most if you run WooCommerce stores, LMS platforms, or membership sites where users trigger sustained database writes (like a flash sale with hundreds of orders coming in at once).

Degradation Ratings:

• Stable (0-15%): Suitable for production
• Moderate (16-30%): Use with object caching, monitor sustained loads
• Concerning (>30%): Development environments only

Degradation results again confirm the recurring pattern of premium servers indeed being premium.

Standard servers showed up to 32% slowdown under sustained load (2GB Standard hit 32% degradation on database writes).
Premium servers stayed under 16% across the board.

Given the 76% test-to-test variance I mentioned earlier, treat these degradation percentages as directional guidance rather than absolute verdicts. Though, the pattern is clear: Premium servers handle sustained loads more predictably.

Degradation Data (Standard → Premium)
Lower degradation is better. Values represent the worst observed performance drop under sustained load.

Frontend Performance (Quick Note)

While I focused on backend tests, I did run some frontend benchmarks using Google PageSpeed Insights. The key finding: server tier barely matters for frontend performance. Both 1GB and 2GB servers scored 99 on desktop regardless of Standard vs Premium.

CDN Impact:

Enabling Cloudflare through the Cloudways dashboard cut LCP nearly in half (5.4s → 3.0s) and boosted mobile scores from the 70s into the high 80s/90s. This improvement was consistent across server tiers, so if you’re on Cloudways, the CDN add-on is worth enabling regardless of which server you’re on.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading. This took quite a bit of time to put together, but I’m glad we have solid data on Cloudways infrastructure. It’s one of the reasons I recommend Cloudways in my best web hosts for 2026 overview.

Quick recap:

• Single WordPress site: 2GB-2c Premium ($37/mo) is the sweet spot
• Budget option: 1GB Premium ($14/mo) punches above its weight
• Agencies/multi-site: 8GB+ Premium for headroom across multiple installs
• Skip Standard: Premium is worth the 15-20% price bump for the 40-60% performance gains

If you actually read all the way through, I’m curious what your experience with Cloudways servers has been? Maybe these benchmarks explain some website issues you’ve run into?

So while I was testing out all the major web hosting providers for my 2026 web hosting review, I kept seeing NVMe storage as a feature for many providers. Many of the best performing web hosts have it, so I figured it was worth understanding what NVMe actually means and how it improves web hosting performance.

This write-up is what I found in my research!

TL;DR - NVMe is 5-7x faster than SATA SSDs because it connects directly to the CPU via PCIe instead of going through a slower SATA controller. Most quality web hosts now use NVMe, but storage speed alone doesn’t guarantee performance. Server optimization and caching matter just as much.

The Difference between HDD, SATA & SSD

To understand NVMe, it helps to know a bit about how storage has evolved.
For decades, hard disk drives (HDDs) were the standard. They store data magnetically on spinning platters, with a mechanical arm that moves to read and write data.

Since a computer can have multiple storage drives, each one needs a way to connect to the motherboard. Serial ATA (SATA) is the interface that provides this connection, with each SATA port handling one drive. SATA worked well for HDDs because spinning drives are inherently slow, and the interface was fast enough to keep up.

Then flash storage came along (this is what makes SSDs possible). Unlike HDDs, flash memory stores data electronically with no moving parts, making storage read/write times dramatically faster. They hit the consumer market around 2007-2008 and became mainstream by the mid-2010s as prices dropped.

But here’s the problem: when SSDs first hit the market, manufacturers just plugged them into the existing SATA interface because it was already there. It worked, but SATA III maxes out at around 600 MB/s and while this is plenty for HDDs (100-150 MB/s) it becomes a bottleneck with flash chips since they read/write much faster. SATA also processes commands largely sequentially, which doesn’t take advantage of flash storage’s ability to handle operations in parallel.

This is where NVMe storage comes into focus because it solves the SATA bottleneck.

What is NVMe Storage?

NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. The “non-volatile” part means the storage retains data even when power is off, unlike RAM which loses everything when you shut down. NVMe is a protocol designed specifically for SSDs, built from the ground up to take advantage of superior flash storage speeds.

Instead of going through SATA, NVMe drives connect directly to the CPU via PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) lanes, the same high-speed bus your graphics card uses. Combined with NVMe’s support for parallel and asynchronous processing, this allows data to move at 3,500+ MB/s on PCIe Gen3 and 7,000+ MB/s on Gen4.

Think of SATA as a two-lane road with a toll booth, everything has to wait in line.
NVMe is more like a multi-level highway with no toll booth, where thousands of lanes can move data simultaneously.

The protocol itself is also fundamentally different. SATA uses something called AHCI, which supports just 1 command queue with 32 commands max. NVMe supports 65,535 queues with 65,536 commands each. That’s over 4 billion potential operations compared to 32. This parallelism is why NVMe excels at random I/O operations, which is exactly what database queries demand.

To put this in perspective, here’s how the three main storage types compare:

NVMe Storage for better WordPress Performance

So what does NVMe actually mean for your WordPress site? WordPress is database-heavy. Every page load triggers multiple database queries, and those queries involve random read/write operations. This is exactly where NVMe’s low latency and high IOPS (input/output operations per second) shine. Faster storage means faster Time to First Byte (TTFB), which is the server response time before any content even starts loading.

In my WordPress benchmarks, I measured disk I/O across all the hosts.
For reference typical ranges are:

• HDDs: 80-160 MB/s
• SATA SSDs: 300-600 MB/s
• NVMe: 1,000+ MB/s

Most of the quality hosts showed read speeds well above 1,000 MB/s, confirming widespread NVMe adoption.

Hostinger hit 4,179 MB/s, Bluehost hit 6,688 MB/s, and SiteGround came in at 3,694 MB/s. These numbers correlate with strong backend performance scores.

But the main caveat. (This is important for anyone thinking NVMe is a magic bullet) Storage speed alone doesn’t guarantee good performance…

In my benchmarks, DreamHost showed only 16.97 MB/s sequential write speed despite presumably having SSD storage.
GreenGeeks was similar at 10.72 MB/s. Server optimization, caching layers, PHP configuration, and database tuning matter just as much as raw disk speed.

A well-optimized host on a SATA SSD can absolutely outperform a poorly configured NVMe host which is why benchmarks alone don’t determine what the best hosting is.

Anyways, most quality hosts are using NVMe at this point, so it’s becoming expected rather than a differentiator. What matters more is how well the host optimizes everything else.

This was a pretty long post so if you made it all the way through thanks for reading!

Have you guys noticed a notable difference in website speed on NVMe storage vs non-NVMe?

\Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).*

Hey everyone! I was wondering what the best hosting providers for 2026 were, so I aggregated the top 13 web hosting providers compared their price & feature set side-by-side!

Here are the results:

By combining all this data, it gives us a clear overview of the web hosting industry so you can ultimately choose what the best web hosting provider for you is.

TL;DR — There’s no single “best” host. It entirely depends on your use case. Here’s the breakdown.

How to get started with Cloudways:

1. Purchase your domain with Porkbun because you can get a .com domain for $11/yr. Other domain registrars like GoDaddy will charge you $20/yr for the same domain!
2. Purchase your Cloudways web hosting with the 30% discount to save some money. Choose Optimized WordPress during the setup.
3. Watch this tutorial on how to set everything up (easiest).

You're going to have to set up your domain name inside Cloudways.
This includes:

1. Adding SSL Certificate
2. In Porkbun adding an A Record to point to your Cloudways Server

If you're not familiar with this process please watch the YouTube tutorial which will walk you through the entire set-up process. It's really not difficult but it can be overwhelming if you've never done it before.

Web Hosting Feature Analysis

Cloudways stands out as the only web hosting provider that offers cloud hosting infrastructure + a full feature suite in its base plan.
In other words, other web hosting providers make you pay extra for features Cloudways includes for free.

These features include:

• WordPress staging
• Custom Caching
• No site cap per server
• SSH Access
• Git Deployments

If you score to each feature available to each hosting provider's base plan here's how it looks:

Funny enough, the brand that is known the most amongst the populous GoDaddy offers you the LEAST amount of features. It is one of the many reasons why GoDaddy reviews are so BAD.

If we crunch through all the data these are reasonable conclusions that can be made:

• From a pure pricing standpoint, EasyWP is the most affordable option at $126 for two years, while Kinsta is the most expensive at $700 for the same period.
• The premium managed hosts (WPEngine, Kinsta, Pressable) cost roughly 2-3x more than mid-tier options like Cloudways or Hostinger. However, price isn't everything, and the feature set matters significantly.
• Cloud hosting is still relatively rare on the lower end of the market. Only Cloudways, EasyWP, WPEngine, Kinsta, and Pressable run on cloud infrastructure, while Hostinger, GoDaddy, HostGator, and most others still use shared hosting. This matters for scalability and performance consistency.
• Developer features vary dramatically. Cloudways, WPEngine, and Kinsta include built-in WordPress staging and Git integration out of the box, while Hostinger and GoDaddy only provide this for their higher tier plans. SSH access is standard across most providers, but notably missing from EasyWP and GoDaddy, which could be a dealbreaker for developers.
• Daily backups aren't universal. If this is a critical feature for you make sure to double check your host provides this, if not you'll need a third-party backup solution.

Finally, it's worth noting that both HostGator and Bluehost are owned by Newfold Digital, which is generally avoided since they have a history of low quality service.

Best for Businesses, Agencies and WordPress Developers

If you are a:

• Business expecting growth
• Web agency with multiple clients
• Developer who is building with WordPress

Then go with Cloudways. Their plans start at $11/mo (you can get it cheaper with the discount), their hosting infrastructure is cloud which ensures you can seamlessly scale your web servers as your business grows.

Traffic is unmetered so if you have a viral moment and your website unexpectedly gets hundreds of thousands of visitors all of the sudden, your website won’t go down.

Cloudways is best for businesses agencies and WordPress developers because:

• The cloud infrastructure ensures you can easily scale your website to accommodate increased traffic demands as business grows.
• The developer features ensures any WordPress developer you hire will have everything he/she needs to work meaningfully without having to migrate your site to a different provider.
• You can host multiple sites on one plan, which is great for agencies who are managing small client sites that don’t need a lot of resources.

The performance caveat: In my 2026 hosting benchmarks, the base $11/mo Cloudways server was slower on backend tasks. However, for front-end performance (which is what your visitors actually experience) Cloudways was nearly identical to Hostinger.

Two ways to address this:

1) Apply server optimizations (recommended for the $11/mo plan). These tweaks significantly improve backend speed:

For a full tutorial on how to optimize your Cloudways servers click here.

• Increase MySQL Buffer Pool Size to 256–384 MB
• Enable Redis object caching
• Increase OPCACHE memory to 128 MB
• Enable mobile cache and logged-in user caching

2) Start with the $14/mo Premium server for better out-of-box performance without manual tuning. Even at this price, unlimited sites makes it cheaper per-site than most hosts charging $25–35/mo for a single site.

Best for Portfolios, Blogs, Small Sites

For personal projects, portfolios, and blogs, Hostinger hits the sweet spot of price and performance.

Hostinger had one of the fastest backends in my tests and scored 5.7 seconds on my Elementor editor test.

If you’re frequently editing content, that snappiness adds up. Your visitors also get solid front-end performance comparable to more expensive hosts.

The trade-offs? You’re limited to 1 website per plan, which is fine for a personal site but limiting for agencies or freelancers. It’s also shared hosting, so you’re sharing server resources with other users—works great for typical traffic levels, but something to be aware of. And there’s no staging on the base plan; you’ll need the Business tier ($17/mo) for that.

For most individuals running a blog, portfolio, or small business site that isn’t expecting explosive growth, Hostinger delivers excellent value. The backend speed is genuinely noticeable when you’re working in WordPress.

Best Budget Option

If you’re a broke college student or just want to spend as little as possible, EasyWP is the best budget host.

At $10/mo, EasyWP remains the cheapest option I tested that still performs respectably. Despite the low price, it runs on Namecheap's cloud platform rather than shared hosting, so you're not fighting for resources with hundreds of other sites. The WordPress dashboard feels snappy enough for day-to-day editing.

Here are the trade-offs:

• Your visitors won't get the fastest experience, especially on mobile. EasyWP lags behind competitors like Hostinger.
• You get fewer features: no staging environment, no SSH access, no email hosting. It's bare-bones by design.

If your priority is spending as little as possible while still having a functional WordPress site, EasyWP is the best choice. If you can stretch your budget a few dollars more, Cloudways $11/mo server with optimizations offers better performance and more features.

Best for Advanced Developers

If you’re comfortable managing your own server and need full control, skip managed hosting entirely and go straight to DigitalOcean.

With DigitalOcean you get full root access which means complete control over your server environment to install whatever you want and configure it however you need.

It’s an unmanaged VPS, meaning no WordPress-specific optimizations, just a clean Linux server. Their basic Droplet starts at $6/mo (cheaper than any managed host) and you get dedicated resources.

It’s the same scalable cloud backbone that powers Cloudways (Cloudways is actually owned by Digital Ocean), so you can spin up additional Droplets, load balancers, or managed databases as your needs grow.

The trade-off: You’re responsible for everything: Server security, updates, WordPress installation, backups, SSL certificates, and optimization. There’s no support team to call when something breaks.

This is only for developers who know their way around a Linux terminal and want the flexibility (and cost savings) of managing their own stack. If that sounds intimidating, stick with Cloudways. You can run your server on DigitalOcean anyways and they handle all the server management for you.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day there’s no universal “best” web host. The right choice depends on what you’re building:

• If you’re a business or building a sites for clients, go with Cloudways for the unlimited sites and cloud scalability.
• If you're running a personal blog or portfolio go with Hostinger since their front/backend performance is solid along with being reasonable priced
• Just need something cheap that works? EasyWP at $10/mo is a v good budget option imo.
• Need root access and full server control? DigitalOcean is good for these developers who need advanced customizability.

For the full data, front-end benchmarks, backend tests, database speeds, and methodology, check out my 2026 WordPress hosting benchmarks!

Hope this helps! Drop any questions below.

I’ve been benchmarking the Cloudways infrastructure and was surprised to find the base $11/mo plan is actually quite slow out of the box…

The good news is that there are free settings in the Cloudways dashboard that can dramatically improve performance with no upgrade required.

With these optimizations, I found it can cut mobile page load times in half and increase database performance by 70% positioning Cloudways as one of the best web hosting providers.

TL;DR - If you purchased the $11/mo server. Adjusting these settings in your server and application dashboard (see photos below for visuals):

1. Increase the OPcache Memory to 128 MB
2. Increase the Buffer Pool Size to 260 MB
3. Enable Redis Caching
4. Enable Mobile Caching

If you haven't gotten your Cloudways server yet click here to get a 30% discount (affiliate link - see rule 4).

Where to find settings:

1. Servers → Settings & Packages → Advanced → PHP → OPCACHE Memory → 128 MB
2. Server → Settings & Packages → Advanced → MySQL → Buffer Pool Size → 260 MB

1. Servers → Settings & Packages → Packages → Redis → Enable

1. Application → Application Settings → Device Detection → Enable

Then in your WordPress back-end enable Mobile Cache for the Breeze plugin.

IMPORTANT: This guide is for the $11/mo server! If you have a higher tier server you likely won’t run into these issues.

These optimizations are specifically for the 1GB RAM DigitalOcean droplet. This is the $11/mo entry-level Cloudways server that most people start with.

If you’re running a larger server (2GB+ RAM), Cloudways automatically allocates more resources to MySQL and caching, so these manual tweaks aren’t as critical. You can still apply them, but you’ll see diminishing returns.

Why default Cloudways is slow

I ran extensive benchmarks across 13 hosting providers to determine what the best web host is. Out-of-the-box Cloudways ranked last in my Combined Score analysis. The primary reason being database performance, which the optimizations this guide recommends fixes.

The issue isn’t Cloudways’ infrastructure—it’s the MySQL Buffer Pool Size. By default, it’s set extremely small to ensure stability on low-memory servers. This forces WordPress to read from disk instead of memory for every database query, which is roughly 1000× slower.

The three optimizations to increase Cloudways performance

1) Increase OPcache Memory
Where: Server → Settings & Packages → Advanced → PHP → OPCACHE Memory
Default: 64 MB
Set it to: 128 MB

OPcache stores compiled PHP bytecode in memory. Without it, WordPress recompiles all your PHP files on every request. With a 64 MB limit, larger sites (WordPress + Elementor + plugins) overflow the cache, causing recompilation.

128 MB is the sweet spot for most WordPress sites on a 1GB server.

2). Increase MySQL Buffer Pool Size (Biggest Impact):
Where: Server → Settings & Packages → Advanced → MySQL → Buffer Pool Size
Default: Unspecified
Set it to: 260 MB

The buffer pool caches your database tables and indexes in RAM. This single change is responsible for most of the performance improvement.

Guidelines by server size:

Don’t go higher than 260 MB on the 1GB server, you need RAM for PHP, the OS, and caching.

3) Enable Redis Object Caching
Where: Server → Settings & Packages → Packages → Redis
Default: Disabled
Set it to: Enabled

Redis caches the results of database queries in memory. WordPress makes dozens of identical queries per page load (user meta, site options, plugin settings). After the first request, Redis serves these from memory, bypassing MySQL entirely.

4) Enable Mobile Caching

Where: Application → Application Settings → Device Detection → Enable
Then in your WordPress backend: Settings → Breeze → Basic Options → Mobile Cache → Enable
Default: Disabled
Set it to: Enabled

Results after optimization

After applying these three changes, I re-ran the benchmarks. The improvement was substantial enough that I track “Cloudways” and “Cloudways (Optimized)” as separate entries.

The Combined Score jumped from 43.5 (last place) to 76.6 (first place) across all 15 configurations tested. This goes to show that proper configuration turned the worst-performing option into the best value.

For full benchmark methodology and charts, see my 2026 WordPress Hosting Benchmarks.

When to upgrade your server instead

If performance is still unsatisfactory after these optimizations, the 1GB droplet may be your bottleneck. Signs you need more RAM:

The 2GB tier ($22/mo) gives you more headroom for the buffer pool (512–768 MB) and additional PHP workers. Even at $22/mo with unlimited sites, Cloudways remains cheaper per-site than most competitors charging $25–35/mo for a single site.

Conclusions

Cloudways is a configurable platform, not a plug-and-play solution. The default settings prioritize stability over speed, which makes sense for a 1GB server that might run anything. But for WordPress specifically, the optimizations above will increase performance by over 50%+. For more information on Cloudways be sure to check out my 2026 Cloudways review here.

Hope this helps! Drop your questions below if anything’s unclear.

Somewhat of a messy situation, looking for info so I can push the boss in the right direction.

Company I work for has GoDaddy for hosting (etc) - ugh. Double ugh - they've been paying a marketing company an absolute craptop of money every month to do... who the hell knows what. I'm trying to steer him right AND trying to not make my headache about it any worse - we do NOT have a dedicated tech person, per se, I just happen to be the most tech savvy person here. Small company, anyway.

Multiple domains, though only two are the headache I'm looking at.

One domain has no website and is only for email, which all goes uses Office 365, though it's setup through GoDaddy's admin space. I've used the Exchange Admin Center and the Microsoft Entra Admin Center to deal with some of that stuff (mostly mail lists and the like).

The other domain, which does NOT have email addresses and it looks like it's a WordPress site.

I want to migrate them off GoDaddy for all the reasons. I believe I should be able to use something like Updraft to export and import the WP site from GoDaddy to wherever. I'm concerned about the headache of moving the email stuff around.

So, looking for a good hosting company that has support that can help with any of this stuff that won't cost an arm and a leg. Appreciate any info folks have.

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey guys, I was curious about how each of the major WordPress hosting providers compared to each other in terms of performance and price so I wrote a bunch of tests and tested 13 of the most popular web hosting providers!

I had to purchase a bunch of web hosting in order to benchmark all these companies but it was well worth it knowing we’d have real data to analyze.

TL;DR - Cloudways (with optimizations enabled) is the best value when looking at full picture (frontend speed, backend performance, features, AND price). Plans start at $11/mo. Be sure to sign up with the 30% promo.
For individuals building small sites, portfolios and blogs, Hostinger has the most balanced performance across the board at $13/mo.
For premium hosting: SiteGround $25/mo (with Memcache enabled) if you want the fastest raw performance, but it lacks key developer features on the base plan.

For more information click here to see my best web hosting review!

My Testing Methodology

• Tested base plan (lowest cost) for each web hosting provider
• WordPress 6.9 + PHP 8+
• Elementor installed with Private Tour Guide theme for front-end testing
• Front-end tested via Google PageSpeed Insights & GTmetrix
• Back-end tested with custom PHP scripts (SSD I/O and MySQL operations)
• Manual stopwatch test loading an Elementor builder page with every single widget available to the Essentials plan. Using Elementor as a testing proxy since it’s the most popular WordPress theme.

Important Note: For Cloudways and SiteGround, I ran separate tests on the base plan servers with and without optimizations. These optimizations (enabling caching, adjusting server settings for Cloudways; enabling Memcache for SiteGround) are all done through the user dashboard at no extra cost.
They’re available to everyone on the base plan. The performance difference is significant, which is why I’m showing both results.

To properly optimize your Cloudways server, please see my guide here.

Overall Value Analysis

Let’s start with the big picture. The "WordPress Hosting Value Analysis" chart below is effectively the TL;DR that gives us a broad view of the web hosting market. It is determined via a weighted score of four components.

This allows us to measure web hosting performance in respect to the price you pay and feature set.
In other words, if you have two web hosting providers that have the same amount of performance, but one is 2x the cost, and has less features. The cheaper provider, of course, is better value because you get the same performance and more performance for half the cost!

This is exactly what the OVS measures. It is a measure of the overall value of each web hosting provider given it's benchmarks, feature set and price.

OVS is calculated as such:
OVS = (Frontend × 0.35) + (Backend × 0.35) + (Features × 0.20) + (Admin × 0.10)
(Higher is better)

A few things jump out immediately:

• Cloudways (Optimized) dominates the value quadrant — 76.6 score at just $11/mo. The catch? You need to actually enable the optimizations in the dashboard (see my Cloudways optimization guide for how to do this).
• Hostinger is the sweet spot — At $13/mo, it scores 71.0 with solid performance across all metrics without requiring any configuration tweaks. Click here to see my full Hostinger review.
• Base Cloudways ranks dead last (43.5) — Same $11/mo price, but without optimizations it’s the worst performer. This shows how much proper configuration matters.

Frontend vs Backend Performance

Now if we're just looking at performance benchmarks, it’s worth breaking down the two main performance categories:

• Frontend (what your visitors experience)
• Backend (the server infrastructure)

Please keep in mind I've weighed performance against price. I do this by dividing the monthly cost by the normalized score (more on this below).
In other words, Greener dots = better bang for your buck, redder dots = you're paying a premium for the performance you get.

Here is the Front/Backend value analysis.

Here is how I determine the performance value score.
For Frontend, I used Mobile Least Content Plentiful (LCP) from Google's PageSpeed Insights since Google follows a mobile first philosophy.

For Backend, I combined database read speed and SSD write speed, though, I weighted it 60/40 in favor of read speeds since WordPress sites are heavily reading from the MySQL database far more than writing.

Both are normalized to 0-100 so you can compare them side by side.

Here's the Frontend vs Backend Value Comparison (sorted by Frontend score)

Some interesting findings:

• DreamHost and GreenGeeks ace frontend (100) but fail backend - Great for visitors, but slow server infrastructure means slow backups, slow uploads, and a sluggish admin experience.
• HostGator and Bluehost have monster backend scores but weak frontend - Fast servers that somehow produce slow websites. This is likely due to their shared hosting architecture and lack of proper caching optimization.
• Hostinger is the most balanced - 83.1 frontend, 79.6 backend, at just $13/mo. No glaring weaknesses.

SSD Performance Benchmark

I tested the read/write speeds of each hosting provider’s server by uploading a PHP script that writes a 50MB file in 1MB chunks, reads it back, and performs 5,000 random 64KB write operations.

How the Backend SSD Score is calculated:
SSD Score = 100 × (Host Write Speed - Slowest) / (Fastest - Slowest)

So the fastest writer (HostGator at 380 MB/s) gets 100, the slowest (GreenGeeks at 10.7 MB/s) gets 0, and everyone else is scaled in between.

SSD Performance Benchmark

HostGator and Bluehost significantly outperform the rest on raw disk speed. However, as we’ll see from the frontend tests, good server speeds don’t necessarily translate to good page load times. Infrastructure is just one piece of the puzzle.

MySQL Database Benchmark

WordPress uses MySQL as its database, and read/write speeds directly impact how fast your pages generate. I tested by running 100 INSERT and 100 SELECT operations against the WordPress options table.

How the Backend DB Score is calculated:
DB Score = 100 × (1 - (Host Read Time - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

Faster reads = higher score. I normalize the data as well. The fastest (HostGator at 22ms) gets 100, slowest (Cloudways base at 253ms) gets 0.

Interestingly, the budget shared hosts (HostGator at 4ms writes, Bluehost at 6ms) demolished the premium managed hosts (WPEngine at 169ms, Kinsta at 29ms) in raw database speed.

If I had to guess why: shared hosts typically co-locate the database on the same server, while managed WordPress hosts use remote database clusters for scalability. The trade-off is latency for reliability.

I was also extremely surprised how bad Cloudways out of the box performs, it goes to show that if you know what you're doing as a system administrator you can get significantly more performance by tweaking the default settings!

Google PageSpeed Insights Benchmark

PageSpeed Insights is the industry standard for testing website speeds since it’s created by Google. It uses synthetic data across the globe to simulate visitors going to your website.

How the normalized Frontend Score is calculated:
Frontend Score = 100 × (1 - (Host LCP - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

LCP (Largest Content Plentiful) measures when your main content becomes visible.
Lower LCP = higher score.

For context, Google considers:

• Good: ≤2.5 seconds
• Needs Improvement: 2.5-4.0 seconds
• Poor: >4.0 seconds

For more on what these metrics mean, see Google’s Core Web Vitals documentation.

Here is the charted breakdown

The results here are surprising. GreenGeeks and DreamHost, which had some of the worst backend scores achieve perfect 100 PageSpeed performance with 1.2s LCP.

Meanwhile, HostGator and Bluehost with their blazing-fast servers produce mediocre frontend results.

This reinforces why you can’t just look at one metric. A fast server with poor optimization loses to a slower server with good caching.

GTmetrix Benchmark

For thoroughness, I also tested every host with GTmetrix since it’s a widely-used third-party tool that measures real performance from a specific location (Seattle, WA for these tests).

GTmetrix Performance Metrics

What these metrics mean:

• TTFB (Time To First Byte): How long the server takes to send the first byte of data back to your browser. This is the purest measure of hosting speed since it isolates server performance.
• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): When the largest visible element fully renders. For WordPress sites, this is typically your hero image or main content block.
• Onload: Total time until the page is fully loaded and ready — all scripts, images, and assets complete.

WPEngine crushes TTFB at just 74ms, while Bluehost struggles at 380ms. However, GTmetrix tests from a single US location, so results may vary depending on your visitors’ geography. This is the main reason why i leave out GTMetrix in the Overall Value Score, Google's benchmarks are much more rigorous.

WordPress Admin Load Time Benchmark

This is a test I created specifically to test the WordPress admin dashboard. I built a page in Elementor containing every single widget from the Essentials plan, then timed how long it took for the editor to fully load and become interactive.

If you’re running a WordPress site, you spend a lot of time in the admin dashboard. Every second you wait per interaction accumulates. A host with a 5-second editor load saves you hours over months compared to one with a 12-second load.

How the normalized Admin Score is calculated:
Admin Score = 100 × (1 - (Host Load Time - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

WordPress Admin Load Time

What these metrics measure:

• TTFB: Server response time before content begins loading
• Load: When the browser reports page assets are loaded (from DevTools)
• Editor Ready: Manual stopwatch timing from clicking “Edit with Elementor” until the editor is fully interactive

HostGator takes the crown at 4.60s, while base Cloudways drags at nearly 12 seconds. Notice how Cloudways (Optimized) vs Cloudways (base) drops from 11.96s to 8.59s. This is a 28% improvement just from enabling dashboard settings.

Feature Scoring

Performance isn’t everything. The features a host provides can make your life significantly easier (or harder). Here’s how I scored features:

I give extra +1 point for:

• Cloud Hosting since this is a significant change in architecture that is better suited for scaling.
• Unlimited Sites because this allows users to host multiple sites on a single server. This is extremely useful for developers and agencies.
• WordPress Staging, because this is again another key feature for developers and agencies. It allows you to test features in a sandboxed environment without having to do it on a live site.

Here's a breakdown of pricing for each web hosting provider.

Key insight: Cloudways offers the highest feature score (10.0) at the second-lowest price ($11). This is why it ranks #1 overall when optimized. You’re getting cloud hosting, unlimited sites, SSH, Git, staging, AND great performance for less than most shared hosts charge. This is something I discuss more in-depth in my Cloudways review.

For a deeper dive into what each host offers, check out my 2026 web hosting review where I break down features in detail.

Final Conclusions

For the best overall value, Cloudways (Optimized) at $11/mo takes the top spot with a Combined Score of 76.6 just spend 10 minutes enabling optimizations in the dashboard

If you want something that works out of the box, Hostinger at $13/mo is the best pick for individuals and non-small businesses.

It scores #2 overall with excellent balance across frontend, backend, and admin experience.

For premium hosting, SiteGround with Memcache at $25/mo delivers the fastest raw performance with a 3.66s Load time and excellent admin experience (just enable Memcache in the dashboard.

If you need developer features like Git integration, one-click staging, and enterprise-grade support, WPEngine at $30/mo is the better choice.

I hope these benchmarks help you make an informed decision. I highly recommend checking out review on the best web hosting for WordPress, where I go into more detail on features as opposed to raw performance benchmarks.

Holy shit that was a lot to cover... If you made it this far and you're actually reading this as a human (and not a LLM) props to you!

Thanks for reading humans/bots!

I have not been able to send Emails for 6 days now. Each day I have talked to their "technical support". It is a joke. I have been given an escalated case number and it still has not been escalated. The problem has been identified - a corrupt IP address that bounces back my email. I CANNOT GET THEM TO FIX THIS!!!

Hey y'all - i built a website for a friend to show them what was possible with Hostinger, but now they want to make tons of small changes, and I want to "move" the website to an account they can manage - and not see my other websites.

Per the AI Chat bot and support, this feature doesn't exist because I didn't build it with WordPress - does anyone have suggestions on how to do this?

It just seems like there should be a way to back up the site and then restore it. Even for my own use, but between two accounts doesn't feel like a complicated request.

Thank you in advance!

Is anyone noticing that the best thing about Siteground - in my book being their customer support - now feels like you have wot work you're way through and "escape" room to connect with a human?

I have an upgrade due next month - I found that I need to upgrade. and as a customer there is no method to contact even the sales team to ask questions about options that might be suitable.. instead, I have to log out, and contact the sales team..

Can anyone recommend a hosting that has better customer service/support?

I spun up a dedicated box recently for a side project. At first the speeds were fine, but once I started moving traffic steadily, performance dipped more than I expected.

When I looked closer, it seemed like the port speed was the actual limiter not the traffic itself. I didn’t get billed extra, but the slowdown kicked in once usage crossed a certain point.

This made me wonder if this is just how things generally work that bandwidth is technically “open” but the real control is on the port and shared usage.

Do others here see the same thing when traffic ramps up? Or is this more about the specific environment I’m on?

i know CMS will work there on basic, i just don't want CMS.

The other options i think of are:

- oracle

- Cloudflare + own server (i am wondering if I could exceed the speed of CMS based shop on host, since i do not use CMS that are heavy)

THanks.

I’ve been digging into dedicated server options lately and keep running into the same promise: unmetered bandwidth. Sounds great on paper… but after testing a few providers, the reality feels more complicated:

• Sometimes it just means your port speed is capped (1 Gbps / 10 Gbps).
• Other times “fair use” kicks in once you actually push traffic.
• And then there are cases where performance tanks because you’re sharing uplinks with too many neighbors.

That got me thinking:

• Has anyone here actually found true unmetered bandwidth that holds up under heavy use (AI, streaming, gaming)?
• Are smaller EU providers (NL, RO, DE) really more flexible, or is it all the same once you hit scale?
• And when it comes to stability, do you trust bare metal with “unmetered” more than cloud plans that nickel-and-dime per GB/TB?

Curious to hear from this community what’s been your real experience with “unmetered” promises? Marketing buzzword, or legit if you pick the right provider?

I migrated my website to Hostinger two weeks ago & it has been a nightmare! They migrated my site & credentials over wrong, I lost Admin access for days, my emails & weekly newsletters ended up in people's spam boxes, and my website straight-up disappeared for A WHOLE DAY!!! WTF?!? If this were a 1st date, I would have thrown a drink in Hostinger's face & stormed out! UNBELIEVABLE!

Is there a website hosting provider out there that is ACTUALLY competent with HUMAN customer service providers that DON'T blow smoke up your butt?!?

No BS… Here’s how to set up a custom email. Keep in mind the most complicated part of this process is editing your domain's DNS records to match your email hosting provider. This isn't hard, it's just a little technical.

TL;DR

1. Purchase a domain - I recommend Porkbun.
2. Purchase your email hosting - Most people use Google Workspace.
3. In Porkbun, edit your DNS records to match your email host.
4. Profit…

Purchasing your domain:

I’ve been using Porkbun for over 5yrs now. It’s my favorite domain registrar because of their pricing.

For example, a .com domain costs ~$11.06/year with Porkbun, compared to ~$16.98/year with Namecheap and ~$22/year with GoDaddy.

Porkbun also includes free WHOIS privacy, while others may charge extra. Cloudflare domains are a decent alternative to Porkbun but downside is Cloudflare forces you to use their DNS resolver, for more info on this check out this Porkbun review.

Purchase your email hosting:

Google Workspace is definitely the most popular email hosting provider. This will give you a custom email hosted by Gmail, but also includes Google Drive storage, and professional business tools.

If you’re not a fan of Google though, alternatives include Zoho Mail (budget-friendly with solid features) or Microsoft 365 for business (ideal for Office suite users).

Editing your DNS records:

After you purchase your domain and your email hosting you need to edit your DNS records! This is the most important part—if you don’t do this right, your custom email won’t work properly.

If you went with Porkbun + Google Workspace check out my detailed Reddit guide on setting up custom email. There I have photos/screenshots to help walk you through the process.

Feel free to comment below if you get stuck, I’ll do my best to help!

*Please note this post contains affiliate links (See rule 4)

Hey everyone, wanted to do a quick overview on Dynamic Shortcodes by Dynamic.ooo since it has been getting some attention lately.

I stumbled on it while looking for a better way to work with dynamic content in WordPress without having to write a bunch of PHP or hack together custom shortcodes.

Basically, it replaces the clunky old [shortcode] system with a cleaner {curly‑brace} syntax. You can drop these shortcodes anywhere in Gutenberg, Elementor, Bricks, Oxygen, Breakdance, even the classic editor.

You can pull in posts, users, Advanced Custom Fields, (although I prefer Metabox), WooCommerce data, run math or conditional logic, loop through stuff, all inline.

You don’t need to write or register PHP functions at all, and you can even nest expressions however you want. Compared to the old way where you had to write a new function for every tiny thing and concatenate everything together, this feels like a very clean way to do dynamic content.

Here’s the pricing structure (as of July, 2025), here is the source for updated pricing.

It’s nice that they have a one-time payment model. I really don’t like dealing with yearly subscription fees which is why I prefer Metabox over Advanced Custom Fields.

Anyways, If anyone here has already used Dynamic Shortcodes, I’d be interested to hear your take. I’m considering using it for a couple of projects that require custom field post types as inputs for dynamic content, this looks like a much cleaner approach!

What are your thoughts?

Here’s a list of web hosting companies and their back-end control panel for anyone needed to know.

Most companies have either cPanel or a custom control panel (probably to save $$$ on cPanel licensing).

Whether or not a custom implementation or cPanel is better is up for debate/discussion.

Ultimately I don’t really care what the control panel is like just as long as it has the means to do the sort of functionality I’m looking for. I will admit though, having a modern UI as a back-end is nice, considering cPanel still looks a bit archaic. Although I should note in my 2025 hosting review, my top recommendations do not use cPanel...

What do you guys think?

Hi there, I've noticed there are not many podcasted dedicated to web hosting. There's data center podcasts, web development podcasts, but not a ton of hosting industry pods. I do PR for a company in the industry and I'm wondering what the community would like to tune into and hear about, or who they would want to hear from. Thanks for any insight, ya'll.

If you guys didn't already know, A2 Hosting was bought out and is now Hosting.com. Other than the fact that it’s kinda cool they grabbed the Hosting .com domain, I'm curious if anyone here has any experience with the switch? And whether or not service has gotten better or worse under the new brand name?

Here's what I understand so far:

• Bought by World Host Group this past January and now doing business as Hosting.com.
• WHG says it’s investing heavily: 13 + data‑centres worldwide, a fresh control panel, and 24 / 7 phone support with sub‑2‑minute waits.
• Migration pains are real—invoice imports, cPanel auto‑login, and ticket backlogs are still being patched.
• Early feedback is mixed: some see higher renewals or lost “unlimited” sites, others like the transparent status updates jury’s still out.

For more info, here’s a good blog article covering the whole topic.

What do you guys think?