What if there were a metric that could quantify how fast WordPress hosting serves a website?
Time to First Byte is a metric that measures the server response when loading a page. It’s a Google Web Vital metric alongside First Contentful Paint(FCP).
Here’s a leaderboard of the top WordPress hosting ordered by TTFB and Core Web Vitals on mobile as of June 2022:
| Hosting | Good TTFB (%) | Good Core Web Vitals (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Seravo | 66% | 69% |
| Wp Engine | 29% | 39% |
| Pagely | 24% | 35% |
| Flywheel | 17% | 31% |
| Kinsta | 16% | 28% |
| Siteground | 11% | 26% |
| Bluehost | 9% | 19% |
WP Engine has the best overall TTFB and Core Web Vitals metrics filtering to USA location, with 45% of origin with ‘good’ TTFB and 55% having good Core Web Vitals.
Time to First Byte and its effect on Core Web Vitals
TTFB can have a lot of effect on Core Web Vitals metric LCP(Largest Contentful Paint), affecting your website ranking on the Google Page Experience algorithm, alongside other metrics as you may know.
Bad LCP scoring is one of the WordPress pain points according to the Core Web Vitals Technology report, with only 45% of WordPress origins passing with “good” on desktop, compared to 71% of Shopify, and 65% of Squarespace.
By improving your TTFB, you’ll improve your overall page speed – a Google ranking factor since 2010 for desktop and mobile since 2018 – and the LCP metric.
TTFB can be influenced by a lot of factors, but still, it’s a start point for measuring server response, even as we take only WordPress-centred platforms onto the equalization. If you want to get into technicals, click here to fully understand the TTFB metric, and how is calculated.
Best hosting for WordPress ranked by TTFB & Core Web Vitals [Mobile CRUX data]
How would you create a rank with this metric? We can use field data as a measure and aggregate data from the CRUX(Chrome User Experience Report), which is a dataset with field data from websites around the web.
With CRUX data we can have a sense of real-world user experience, not just test(lab) data.
The following chart paints the WordPress hosting origins having a “Good” label on the Time to First Byte metric on mobile as of June 2022:
When using all the Core Web Vitals data metrics the charts are very similar, now using both mobile and desktop data:
An origin is all data present for all pages in that origin, aggregated together, either HTTP or HTTPS.
An eligible origin is if it has enough Core Web Vitals CRUx data. A good Core Web Vitals data is a page with a ‘Good’ metric within the 75th percentile of page loads, segmented across mobile and desktop devices, but in this case, we filtered by mobile metrics.
Best TTFB hosting for WordPress in the USA
With that said, there is more to be told from the fastest hosting filtering by country location. The rank for USA hosting by TTFB as of June ’22:
| Hosting | Good TTFB (%) | Good Core Web Vitals (%) |
|---|---|---|
| WP Engine | 45% | 55% |
| Pagely | 41% | 53% |
| Siteground | 22% | 41% |
| Bluehost | 20% | 37% |
Seravo
Finish WordPress hosting provider. Founded in 2011, it have WordPress as its main product since 2014. Offer website deployed in the specific countries: Finland, Sweden, Germany, USA, and Singapore.
Seravo currently defines its plans with HTTPS requests. Monthly hosting plans pricing are:
- WP PRO – 500k HTTP requests/month + 15 GB storage: €390/year
- WP BUSINESS – 1,5MM HTTP requests/mo + 30 GB storage + WooCommerce: €630/year
- WP CORPORATE – 3MM HTTP requests/mo + 60 GB storage + WooCommerce + Multisite (< 5 sites): €1.170/year
All plans include the following features:
- Domain, DNS, and SSL
- Daily backups, and staging website
- Redis Cache and built-in image optimization
- Tested WordPress updates
Websites hosted on Seravo: mariadb.org || pixelify.net
Wp Engine
WP Engine offers a WordPress hosting solution to a varied range of companies sizes.
1-year plans and their features are as follows:
- Startup – 1 site, 25.000 visits/mo, 10GB/storage, 50GB bandwidth/mo: $240/year ($300/yr after first year)
- Professional – 3 Sites, 75k visits/mo, 15GB/storage, 125GB bandwidth/mo: $472/year ($590/yr after first year)
- Growth – 10 Sites, 100.000 visits/mo, 20GB/storage, 200GB bandwidth/mo: $920/year ($1.150/yr after first year)
- Woocommerce Startup -1 site, 25.000 visits/mo, 10GB/storage, 50GB bandwidth/mo: $288/year ($360/yr after first year)
- Woocomerce Professional – 3 Sites, 75k visits/mo, 15GB/storage, 125GB bandwidth/mo: $600/year ($750/yr after first year)
- Woocommerce Growth – 10 Sites, 100.000 visits/mo, 20GB/storage, 200GB bandwidth/mo: $1.120/year ($1.400/yr after first year)
All plans include the following features:
- Automatic WordPress & PHP updates
- Themes & workflow tools
- Staging & backup
- Security & CDN
Websites hosted on Wp Engine: contactform7.com || neilpatel.com || browserstack.com
Pagely
Pagely has plans starting at $199/mo for 5 sites:
- Developer One – 5 sites, Redis caching, 30GB/storage, 20GB/bandwidth, 150GB/CDN: $200/mo
- Developer Two – 15 sites, Redis caching, 50GB/storage, 20GB/bandwidth, 350GB/CDN: $300/mo
Both development plans include:
- SSL, DNS
- Security
- Image Resizing/Optimization
- Automatic WordPress upgrades & backups
- Staging & WordPress Multisite
Websites hosted on Pagely: themeisle.com || gravityforms.com || sproutsocial.com