Analysing the performance of your website(s) can take an inordinate amount of time. It often involves many distractions. But at the end of the day, you have to come to some conclusions, which may involve taking some actions.
I’m not quite at the conclusion stage yet. But I do have some preliminary results on my comparison of different hosting solutions; Tentahost (original choice) versus WP Engine and SiteGround.
Objectives
oik-plugins.com needs to be faster
Sub-objectives
- oik-plugins.com needs to be faster: back-end, front-end, and when under load
- other sites, such as this one, also need to be faster
- find the best hosting solution for my sites, taking into account performance, value for money, ease of use, etc..
Intermediate results
Server response (secs) – 18th March
| Hosting | Cacheing | Domain | Average | Average response – top 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tentahost | wp-super-cache | oik-plugins.com | 1.94 | 1.71 |
| Tentahost | none | oik-plugins.co.uk | 1.37 | 1.26 |
| SiteGround | sg-cachepress | oik-plugins.biz | 0.69 | 0.65 |
| WP Engine | WP engine’s | oik-plugins.uk | 0.33 | 0.28 |
Preliminary conclusion: Maybe I should GoGeek with SiteGround.
Webpagetest – 18th March
| Hosting | Domain | First view | Second view | Speed index | 2nd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tentahost | oik-plugins.com | 6.217 | 2.382 | 5305 | 2173 |
| Tentahost | oik-plugins.co.uk | 5.470 | 3.776 | 4325 | 2269 |
| SiteGround | oik-plugins.biz | 3.813 | 2.2277 | 3073 | 1623 |
| WP Engine | oik-plugins.uk | 5.790 | 0.903 | 4616 | 823 |
Analysis Method
- Set up sites to be as similar as possible
- Log information for each server transaction invoked
- Summarise total execution time
- Compare results
See also
- H2GD Part 42: Battling 100% CPU performance issues
- en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving, en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding, and en.wiktionary.org/wiki/forget,_when_up_to_one%27s_neck_in_alligators,_that_the_mission_is_to_drain_the_swamp
- www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm
- wpengine.com/plans
- www.tentahost.co.uk/turboresellerhosting.php
- www.carriedils.com/wordpress-hosting
- www.wpsitecare.com/performance-of-7-top-wordpress-hosting-companies-compared
- www.firstsiteguide.com/hosting-comparison ( Added 1 May 2016 )
Price comparison
| Hosting | Reseller | Domains | GB | Normal monthly | Price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tentahost Turbo+ | ∞ | 25 | £63 | £4 | |
| SiteGround GrowBig | multiple | 20 | £9.95 | £5.75 | |
| WP Engine Personal | 1 | 10 | $29 | $3.33 |
Notes:
- Tentahost Reseller hosting allows me to create and manage multiple separate environments. The price paid figure is an estimate, taking into account the other sites. The number of daily / monthly visits varies per site.
- WP Engine hosting had a special offer in November 2014. Yearly price then was $290. The current yearly price is now $348.
- SiteGround hosting offer a discount for meetup members. Figure varies depending on the plan you choose. I should have used the Meetup70 coupon code at www.siteground.com/meetup
- The discount codes apply to the first year.