Regrettably, I referred hundreds and potentially thousands of customers to Rocket.net.

Ben Gabler is misleading us into thinking Rocket.net is something they’re not. The fastest WordPress hosting, operating independently of hosting.com, powerful hardware, industry-leading affiliate payouts… none of these are true and they’re often the complete opposite.

Rocket.net’s “fastest WordPress hosting” uses Intel Xeon CPUs from 2013 (the same year iPhone 5c was released). These are so old, they’ve been discontinued by Intel and rank over 400th in PassMark. They only support DDR3 RAM + PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs which are ~4x slower than DDR5 + PCIe 5.0. The multithread rating for those CPUs (which determines concurrency) performs about 5x worse than modern CPUs. This is why customers have a slow admin, load time, and especially poor concurrency. You also have to use $649/mo Enterprise plans to get dedicated CPU/RAM, which means they’re charging up to $200/mo for shared hosting on a 16 core processor (since 8 cores x 2 for dual = 16 cores), not 32 cores like they claim. Rocket.net is so busy pushing Cloudflare Enterprise when their actual hosting (CPUs/RAM/storage) is slow. Which can be seen if you bypass caching when testing TTFB, or switch to a host who does use fast CPUs/RAM/storage and replace Cloudflare Enterprise with FlyingCDN which costs 3-6x less.

What about hosting.com? “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 CEO or CTO, which are now loaded with scam reports. Rocket.net is fully integrated with hosting.com who is owned by World Host Group, who has been described as EIG on steroids, backed by Oakley Capital, which closed at €4.5 billion. More recently, hosting.com laid off more than 30 staff before the holidays which is what other people predicted who aren’t flying in a jet collecting acquisition checks from EIG or WHG. With Rocket.net’s director of marketing Jeff Trumble denying up to 76% of affiliate sales and both Rocket.net and hosting.com closing accounts, the scams have already started where they can screw people out of the most money — their affiliate programs. There’s your warning.

When I called out Ben via email (then eventually publicly), he deleted his Instagram. Guess he knew that flaunting his wealth to the same person he’s scamming… probably isn’t a good look.

Before you flush money down the toilet at Rocket.net and hosting.com (who charge absurd amounts for arbitrary limits like bandwidth, visits, and websites), do your research on Reddit. Look at what’s happening with hosting.com, A2, and other hosts bought by WHG. Ben will say just about anything if it means another acquisition check while leaving you for private equity.

2 x intel(r) xeon(r) cpu e5 2667 v2 @ 3. 30ghz (32 cores) — Rocket.net uses 2x Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 CPUs

Intel® xeon® processor e5 2667 v2 — Which only use 16 CPU cores (8 cores x dual = 16, not 32 CPU cores like Rocket.net claims) have been discontinued, and support DDR3 RAM + PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs even though DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 are ~4x faster

[dual cpu] intel xeon e5 2667 v2 @ 3. 30ghz — They’re ranked 400th+ in PassMark with a **~2-5x lower single/multithread rating vs. modern CPUs**

Rocket. Net enterprise plans dedicated cpu ram — Only 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.

Rocket. Net dashboard — What hardware is my site using and much CPU/RAM is it getting? We don’t know! But those other limits…

Rocket.net charges ~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.

Flyingcdn vs rocket. Net bandwidth pricing — FlyingCDN’s Cloudflare Enterprise costs 3-6x less than Rocket.net

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.

Rocket. Net wp hosting benchmark tool (2) — Rocket.net (Hosting Benchmark Tool)

Rocket. Net php vitals — Rocket.net (PHP Vitals)

Scalahosting wp hosting benchmark tool (2) — Scala VPS (Hosting Benchmark Tool)

Scalahosting php vitals — Scala VPS (PHP Vitals)

Onlinemediamasters. Com ttfb — And if you care about TTFB that much, it’s also faster than Rocket.net’s 100ms (make sure you run 3 tests)

I just went from Rocket.net’s $100/mo Business plan to a $27/month VPS (+$10/mo for FlyingCDN) and my resource usage is just 4%. Not only am I saving $63/mo, I can easily fit 3 more similar sites. Holy overcharging!

Hosting. Com is the worst — Hosting.com is described as “the worst“

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:

“We are consolidating hosters around the world, more in secondary markets, and putting them in one infrastructure layer, taking all the synergies, and really making them better and much more profitable.”

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

Rocket. Net affiliate program scam — Source: this TrustPilot review

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