Rocket.net Review: Shared Hosting On 2013 CPUs With Cloudflare Enterprise = Fast TTFB, But Poor Actual Performance (Slow Load Times, Admin, WooCommerce)

Rocket.net bragging about their ~100ms global TTFB is like showing your friends a 5G signal from a Motorola Razor.

The 5G signal is Cloudflare Enterprise and the Motorola Razor is Rocket.net which is shared hosting with discontinued CPUs from 2013 which rank poorly (over 400th+) in PassMark.

This is why so many Rocket.net customers complain about slow admins, load times, and poor concurrency for WooCommerce/dynamic sites. Because their CPUs have a ~2-5x worse single + multithread rating versus newer CPUs (and only support old DDR3 RAM + PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs).

Why wouldn’t you just use FlyingCDN’s Cloudflare Enterprise which costs ~10x less and lets you any host you want? Meaning you could use a host who actually uses fast CPUs/hardware with ~2x better performance, pay 3x less, and probably have enough extra resources to host 3-4x more sites without being limited by bandwidth, WP installs, and Rocket’s low storage limits. That’s why I did and I can confirm, FlyingCDN on a good VPS makes Rocket look like HostGator.

Speaking of which, Ben Gabler already sold out to EIG before with HostNine/HostGator, so if you’re sticking around to see what happens with hosting.com, look at other hosts bought by WHG. Unless you want to see Ben flying around in a jet, then sure, pay those bandwidth limits.

This is why so many Rocket.net customers complain about slow WordPress admins and load times (because of poor single thread performance) as well as poor concurrency for high traffic sites and dynamic/WooCommerce sites (because of their even worse multithread performance).

Your wp-admin is doubly slow since Cloudflare Enterprise can’t really optimize it, leaving Rocket.net’s old CPUs/RAM/storage exposed. So while they claim to average a 100ms global TTFB, that’s not always the case (plus, this only measures first byte, not your actual load time).

Rocket.net is also shared hosting since only $649/mo Enterprise plans get dedicated CPU/RAM.​

Ever wonder why Rocket.net’s control panel shows you nothing about hardware and CPU/RAM resources? Maybe it’s because they’re using Cloudflare Enterprise to hide these.

They’re also charging ~3-6x more for Cloudflare Enterprise bandwidth compared to FlyingCDN which still supports all major Cloudflare Enterprise features and lets you use any host (e.g. a VPS with fast CPUs/RAM/storage + dedicated resources without bandwidth limits). Not sure why Rocket.net partnered with WP Rocket if FlyingPress is #1 in Chrome’s UX report.

I made this exact switch (FlyingCDN + ScalaHosting’s Build #1 VPS) and to no surprise, my admin/frontend load ~2x faster and every single benchmark improved including TTFB which is now ~50ms globally (this makes sense because FlyingCDN promises a 50ms global latency).

Making Rocket.net look like Bluehost.

 

Despite being acquired by hosting.com whose owned by World Host Group (called “EIG on steroids”), whose backed by Oakley Capital, which closed at €4.5 billion… Rocket.net claims they’re still “operating independently.” Even when Rocket.net’s CEO Ben Gabler stepped down as GM and became hosting.com’s new chief product officer. Meanwhile, Rocket.net’s support is now co-mingled with hosting.com’s. I mean literally, I can’t think of a bigger operational change.

And have you seen what’s been happening to A2?

More quotes:

• “Hope you can scale caring while preparing for a financial exit” – source.
• “A2 hosting was remarkable for the last 9 years. Not any more!” – source.
• “If your host gets acquired by a group like this, you should get out asap” – source.
• “I found out A2 was taken over when my price increased by ~50% overnight” – source.
• “Milking the [host] for as much money… while spending as little as possible” – source.
• “I can guess their style given the cheerful tone of chopping 5% of A2’s workforce” – source.

Tom Strohe (founder of World Host Group) says:

“This was not an exit; it was an entrance.”

Says Ben Gabler, the CEO flying around in a private jet after he sold out to EIG when HostGator/HostNine were acquired in 2012 after Ben was either CEO or CTO. More recently, hosting.com laid off more than 30 staff right before the holidays which falls in line with what other people predicted who aren’t flying in a jet collecting acquisition checks from EIG/WHG.

Thinking of becoming a Rocket.net or hosting.com affiliate?

I was one of Rocket.net’s top affiliates (back when I didn’t know better) and up to 76% of my affiliate sales got reversed. Today, I’m still getting notifications for hosting.com affiliate sales (not sure why, I never recommended them after A2’s fiasco) which don’t register in my affiliate account. So I called Ben out on X and he didn’t respond to me. But he did change his Instagram photo with that jet and has since deleted his Instagram (but you can still find him on Facebook).

Hey @ben_gabler and @RocketDotNet, is a 76% reversal rate on 100 affiliate sales normal? Also, why did Ben just change his Instagram photo? I wanted to see how big that stack of cash is on that private jet now that you sold out to https://t.co/gOyXw0pyRb. pic.twitter.com/pJmP4GPLNe

— Tom Dupuis (@TheDupMan) October 17, 2025

I could go on, but I think I made my point clear. All I see is lie after lie and there will be no more Rockets for me. And I’m sorry if I steered you towards them… lesson learned and I should have known he would sell out to private equity when I checked his background and gave very broad specifications on their hardware (32 cores and NVMe SSDs was the best he could come up with).

If you’re a customer/affiliate for Rocket.net or hosting.com (which is a stripped down version), I encourage you to ask these questions to Ben or support and decide yourself whether it’s shady.

-Tom