Review Signal Report 2021: Building on Our Success from Last Year

Review Signal Report 2021: Building on Our Success from Last Year

We scored very highly in all three categories of this year's Review Signal WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. We're happy to share (and, perhaps, brag a little about) these results with you!

Last year was the first year we entered the judging with Raidboxes and were very pleased with the results. We received the Top Tier Award in both award categories submitted.

This time we managed to top that! We submitted three different award plans for Review Signals WordPress Hosting Benchmarks and received two top tier awards and one notable honour.

So, what is Review Signal and how do they rate?

Review Signal is considered by many to be the gold standard for honest, unbiased reviews of hosting services. It's a really important platform for anyone looking at hosting services, as the hosting market is often dominated by paid content and sponsored reviews. So it's hard to figure out which hosting provider is the right one.

Founded in 2013 by Kevin Ohashi, Review Signal began by rating hosting providers by analysing Twitter comments. Since then, the company has evolved and takes a number of different features into account when awarding its accolades. With all the hubbub, it's clear that hosting is pretty important, especially for people in the web industry for whom a reliable host is essential.

Normal hosting is one thing, but we at Raidboxes specialise in WordPress hosting, which doesn't quite fit Review Signal's format for rankings. For some time now, Review Signal has published an annual blog post ranking WordPress hosting providers. With 40% of all websites on the internet using WordPress, it was very welcomed when Review Signal launched a new website: wphostingbenchmarks.com, which provides WordPress hosting providers like us with our own platform for reviews.

This annual compilation is such important news for the WordPress community that the respected publication WordPressTavern has even published an article naming the various top performers this year.

Review Signal uses a variety of tests to evaluate hosting providers and takes all of these tests into account when making its judgement. Essentially, these tests fall into two different categories: Performance and Accessibility. It's pretty obvious why these two terms are important when you're thinking about your website. But let's look a little closer at how exactly they are tested and why they are important when you are considering a hosting provider.

Power

To test load time, a provider's websites are tested with Loadstorm, which is "designed to simulate real users visiting, logging in, and using the website." It measures how many requests a site can handle and how many errors it throws. Loadstorm also measures average Web page response time and login response time. This is a crucial test, as research has shown that up to 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. 

The next test is performed with K6, which is similar to the Loadstorm test, but measures the performance of the website in the cache by repeatedly requesting a website. Again, success is measured by the number of requests a web page can handle and the response time the server takes. This is of similar importance to the Loadstorm test, but it tests how effectively pages are cached.

It is also important to see how a web page loads from different locations around the world, for this the Web Page Test is used. It tests the loading time from twelve different locations around the world.

In the Performance category, WordPress performance is tested. These are benchmark tests to see how the server handles frontend requests and how long it takes to calculate backend functions in PHP.

Accessibility

Accessibility in the hosting world mainly refers to uptime, the time a website is online vs. offline. To monitor uptime, Review Signal uses two different tools: Hetrix Tools and Uptime Robot test the uptime of a website over a period of three months. A third independent tool is also used, but only if the first two tools find a significant discrepancy in the results. Uptime for a website is extremely important, even a few seconds offline can be costly for a large e-commerce company.

SSL certificates are also included in the evaluation. This is the modern standard for encryption and plays an important role in SEO (Google uses SSL as a low level ranking metric).

With all the parameters tested, it's hard to hide weaknesses in performance and accessibility. Like last year, we once again submitted our performance in the under $25 /month and $201-$500/month categories. It was the first time that we were evaluated in the most expensive price category starting from $500/month (Enterprise Hosting). 

How well did we do? (Attention, a lot of data)

As already mentioned, Raidboxes has achieved wonderful results in all three categories. In two we received the Top Tier Award and in another we received a notable honour. Therefore, we would like to share a few results where our service stood out.

It's easiest to break down these results into the WP Hosting Benchmarks categories. That way you can skip a category if it doesn't suit you. (Unless of course you like numbers and want to read about how consistent and scalable our various hosting solutions are!)

Under $25/month: Top Tier Award!

LoadStorm Test (User Test)

  • 448,671 requests with only 13 errors.
  • Average response time of 446 milliseconds.
  • Login response time of 748 milliseconds.

K6 (Cached Test)

  • 394,453 requests with 0 errors.
  • Average response time 142 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

  • Average response time under 1.2 seconds.
  • Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

  • More than 400 queries/second
  • Under 10 seconds response time for PHP

$201-$500/month: Honour worthy of mention!

LoadStorm Test (User Test)

  • 640,766 requests with 33 errors.
  • Average response time of 595 milliseconds.
  • Login response time of 1012 milliseconds. (We missed a top tier by only 0.012 seconds!)

K6 (Cached Test)

  • 1,576,769 requests with 0 errors.
  • Average response time 143 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

  • Average response time under 1.1 seconds.
  • Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

  • More than 800 queries/second
  • Under 5 seconds response time for PHP

$500+/month (Enterprise): Top Tier Award!

LoadStorm Test (User Test)

  • 2,036,073 requests with an astonishingly low 17 errors.
  • Average response time of 513 milliseconds.
  • Login response time of 876 milliseconds

K6 (Cached Test)

  • 1,972,189 requests with 0 errors.
  • Average response time 142 milliseconds.

Web Page Test

  • Average response time under 1.2 seconds.
  • Response time from London and Frankfurt: approx. 0.5 seconds!

Performance benchmarks

  • More than 800 queries/second
  • Under 5 seconds response time for PHP

SSL certificates

Our SSL certificates have been rated A+.

overview of Raidboxes ssl certificate results from Review Signal 2021
Review Signal 2021

What do the results mean for our customers?

As you can see, we're quite proud of our results, but there's a reason for that: our job is to ensure the greatest possible uptime of our hosted websites, optimizing them so that our clients can focus on their business. We've already mentioned that there are plenty of companies offering hosting services. We think: choose the provider that best fits your needs. Equally important is to provide the best experience to your users . 

All the tests that Review Signal has conducted can be broken down to one goal: the quality of the user experience. Because you have to remember, all your hard work to give your users the best possible experience is quickly undone if the performance of the host servers is poor. Long load times, poor SSL quality and frequent downtime play a big role in users returning to a site and their conversion rate.

That's why it's important to choose a hosting provider like Raidboxes whose performance you can rely on. But don't just take our word for it. Here you can find our company profile and last year's results.

Do you have any other questions?

What questions do you have about our results? We are looking forward to your comment. Are you interested in WordPress, hosting and our offers? Then follow Raidboxes on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or via our newsletter.

Did you like the article?

Your rating helps us improve our future content.

Post a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *.