Choosing a fast WordPress hosting is hard. Comparing their speed and metrics is even more confusing. What if there’s a metric that could quantify how fast a 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).
The Core Web Vitals alongside other metrics forms the new Google Page Experience SEO algorithm. Choosing technologies with great Core Web Vitals metrics will make your website have better results in SEO.
Time to First Byte (TTFB) and Core Web Vitals
Time to First Byte (TTFB) has a lot of influence on the Core Web Vitals metric Largest Contentful Paint(LCP), affecting your website ranking on the Google Page Experience algorithm, alongside other metrics.
Bad LCP scoring is one of the WordPress pain points according to the Core Web Vitals Technology report, with WordPress way behind Shopify and Squarespace in the metric.
By improving your TTFB, you’ll also 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 starting point for measuring server response, even as we take only WordPress platforms in the equalization.
Fastest WordPress Hosting Rank
How would a rank be made with this metric? We can use field data as a measure and aggregate data from the CRUX(Chrome User Experience Report), a dataset with field data from websites around the web.
Here’s a leaderboard of the top WordPress hosting ordered by mobile TTFB and also Core Web Vitals:
- Seravo: 67% Good TTFB and 71% Good CWV
- Wp Engine: 24% Good TTFB and 37% Good CWV
- Pagely: 20% Good TTFB and 34% Good CWV
- Siteground: 17% Good TTFB and 28% Good CWV
- Flywheel: 14% Good TTFB and 32% Good CWV
- Kinsta: 11% Good TTFB and 31% Good CWV
- Bluehost: 10% Good TTFB and 17% Good CWV
WP Engine has the best overall TTFB and Core Web Vitals metrics filtering to USA location, with 37% of origin with ‘good’ TTFB and 54% having good Core Web Vitals.
With CRUX data, we can measure real-world user experience, not just test(lab) data. The following chart paints the WordPress hosting with the best TTFB(Time to First Byte) and Core Web Vitals metrics on mobile:
Fastest WordPress Hosting rank UK
By filtering the CWV report for United Kingdom hosting, we get the following rank of Best UK hosting by TTFB:
- WP Engine: 44% Good TTFB and 56% Good CWV
- Siteground: 33% Good TTFB and 50% Good CWV
- Pagely: 31% Good TTFB and 48% Good CWV
- Kinsta: 22% Good TTFB and 51% Good CWV
Seravo
Finish WordPress hosting provider. Founded in 2011, does have WordPress as its main product since 2014. Offer website deployed in specific countries: Finland, Sweden, Germany, USA, and Singapore.
Seravo currently defines its plans with HTTPS requests. Monthly hosting plans pricing is:
- 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