Rocket.net Review: How Their 100ms Global TTFB + Free Cloudflare Enterprise Can Help You Pass Web Vitals (Who I Use)

If the fastest hosting means the fastest TTFB, Rocket.net averages <100ms globally (feel free to test my own site). They’re also a top performer in Kevin Ohashi’s 2023 WP Hosting Benchmarks.

How much does a 100ms TTFB improve web vitals? TTFB is 40% of LCP and part of FCP/INP. In total, it affects 4/6 user metrics in PageSpeed Insights with hosting/CDN being the 2 top factors.

A 500% faster TTFB (or 200% – 450% faster LCP) isn’t coincidence. Both Rocket.net’s hosting + Cloudflare Enterprise outperform Kinsta, SG, and Cloudways. 100ms is also 4x faster than WPX.

This is also reflected in their specs… all plans use 32 cores/128GB RAM, NVMe SSDs, MariaDB, LiteSpeed’s PHP, Redis (Redis Object Cache Pro on higher plans), 1GB memory limit, and no PHP worker limits. Their Cloudflare Enterprise uses 285 PoPs with full page caching, Mirage + Polish for image optimization, and better routing through Argo Smart Routing, load balancing, and prioritized routing. When you compare their specs to other cloud hosts, it’s not even close.

If you have an international audience or WooCommerce store, you’re not going to beat Rocket.net’s performance and 100ms global TTFB. The hosting is easy, it’s $1 your 1st month, and they have awesome support with all 5/5 TrustPilot reviews and unlimited free migrations.

 

1. 100ms Global TTFB → Better Core Web Vitals

Rocket.net averages a <100ms global TTFB:

KeyCDN measures TTFB in 10 global locations (unlike GTmetrix). You’ll want to test your site 3 times to make sure your resources are cached and served from your CDN’s closest data center.

SpeedVitals measures TTFB in 40 global locations. Again, test your site 3 times.

Google says TTFB is 40% of LCP and impacts FCP + other metrics.

They list hosting + CDN as the 2 main ways to optimize TTFB.

So when you upgrade to both faster hosting and Cloudflare Enterprise, it can improve all these:

 

2. Rocket.net’s Specs Are Faster Than [SG, CW, Kinsta, WPE, WPX]

	SiteGround Cloud Jump Start Plan	Kinsta Starter Plan	Cloudways Vultr HF (2GB)	Rocket.net Starter Plan
Type	Cloud	Cloud (shared containers)	Cloud	Private cloud
Server	Apache + Nginx	Apache + Nginx	Apache + Nginx	Apache + Nginx
Nginx reverse proxy	✓	$50/mo	✓	✓
CPU Cores/RAM	4 cores + 8GB	12 cores + 8GB	1 core + 2GB	32 cores + 128GB
Storage	40GB SATA	10GB SATA	64GB NVMe	10GB NVMe
Object cache	Memcached	$100/mo Redis	Redis Pro	Redis (Redis Pro on Business plan)
PHP processor	FastCGI	FastCGI	FPM	LiteSpeed
PHP workers	Not listed, but common CPU limits	2	No limit	No limit
Memory limit	Adjustable	256MB	Adjustable	1GB
Database	MySQL	MySQL	MariaDB	MariaDB
Bandwidth + visits	5TB/mo	25k/mo	2TB/mo	50GB + 250k/mo
CDN	$14.99/mo SiteGround CDN	Cloudflare APO + firewall rules (read)	$5/mo Cloudflare Enterprise + challenge pages	Free Cloudflare Enterprise (read)
CDN locations	176	285	285	285
Full page caching	✓	✓	✓	✓
Smart routing	Anycast	x	Argo	Argo
Image optimization	Limited	x	Mirage/Polish	Mirage/Polish
DNS	Blocked by Google (4 days)	Amazon Route 53	$5/mo DNS Made Easy	Cloudflare
Cache plugin	SG Optimizer	Use FlyingPress	Breeze	Use FlyingPress
Data centers	10	35	44	Served from Cloudflare’s edge
Control panel	Site Tools	MyKinsta	Custom (difficult)	Mission Control
Email hosting	✓	x	x	x
Support	C	B	C	A
Migrations	$30/site	Unlimited free	1 free + $25/site	Unlimited free
TrustPilot rating	4.6/5	4.2/5	4.5/5	4.9/5
How it starts costing more	High initial price, CPU limits, CDN, price increases, internal incidents	PHP workers, add-ons, monthly visits, bandwidth, price increases	CPU limits, CDN, backups, price increases	Bandwidth
Incidents	TTFB, DNS, CPU issues, controls Facebook groups	None	Acquired by DigitalOcean, raised prices, removed Vultr/Linode	None
Monthly price	$100 + CDN	$29 when paying yearly + add-ons	$30 + CDN	$25 when paying yearly

 
Notes:

• NVMe SSDs are faster than SATA SSDs.
• LiteSpeed’s PHP is faster than FastCGI.
• MariaDB is more powerful than MySQL.
• Redis is more powerful than Memcached, especially Redis Pro.
• Here’s a table comparing Rocket.net vs. WPX, WP Engine, Flywheel.

Out of these hosts, Rocket.net + Cloudways are the only ones using faster NVMe SSDs, Redis Object Cache Pro, and Cloudflare Enterprise. However, Cloudways’ Cloudflare Enterprise is $5/mo and you’re more likely to run into high CPU usage from low CPU cores/RAM. With Rocket.net, all plans have 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM with LiteSpeed’s PHP (Cloudways uses FPM). You only get NVMe SSDs on DO Premium (they removed Vultr HF after the DigitalOcean acquisition while raising prices). Support is overly technical or expects you to do things after sending how-to articles. Rocket.net’s support does everything for you (for the most part) and the platform is easier – no need to launch servers or configure server/application/CDN settings. 

Moving to SiteGround Cloud/Kinsta/WPE/WPX.

These use slower SATA SSDs, MySQL, have 16x less RAM, and do incomplete CDN integrations whether it’s so-called “Cloudflare Enterprise” or their own CDN’s lacking features. You’re likely to run into forced upgrades from CPU limits or PHP workers. Both Kinsta and WPE include 10x less monthly visits and get ridiculously expensive when you run into low limits, add-ons, and bandwidth overages. WPX is shared hosting who targets a 400ms international TTFB. All 4 rely on heavy marketing. But the performance, TTFB, and technology aren’t reflected in their claims.

 

3. Why Their Cloudflare Enterprise Beats Cloudways/Kinsta’s

Their Cloudflare Enterprise is the closest thing to “true Enterprise” mainly because it has more features. These help with TTFB/routing, image optimization, security, and dynamic requests on WooCommerce. It’s a big reason Rocket.net averages a 100ms global TTFB and makes choosing a data center close to users pretty much irrelevant. It’s also 100% free and works automatically.

This has a lot to do with Ben’s Gabler’s experience as StackPath’s Chief Product Officer.

Most hosts do partial integrations and forget key features like full page caching, smart routing, and image optimization. Or they use their own CDN which has a smaller network + less features.

	RocketCDN	SiteGround CDN	FlyingCDN By FlyingPress	Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise	Rocket.net Cloudflare Enterprise
CDN	StackPath	Google Cloud	BunnyCDN	Cloudflare	Cloudflare
Tbps	100	Not listed	80	192	192
Locations	73	176	114	285	285
Full page cache	x	✓	x	APO	APO
Brotli	x	✓	✓	✓	✓
Smart routing	x	Anycast	SmartEdge	Argo	Argo
Priority routing	x	x	x	✓	✓
Load balancing	x	✓	✓	✓	✓
Image optimization	x	Very limited	Bunny Optimizer	Mirage/Polish	Mirage/Polish
Compression	x	✓	✓	✓	✓
WebP	x	x	✓	✓	✓
Mobile resizing	x	x	✓	✓	✓
Firewall	x	x	✓	✓	✓
Anti-DDoS	x	x	✓	✓	✓
Challenge pages	No	No	No	Yes	No
Bandwidth	Not unlimited as advertised	Unmetered	Unlimited	100GB	Determined by hosting plan
Price	$8.99/mo	$14.99/mo	$.03/GB	$5/mo	Free w/ hosting

 
Cloudways copied Rocket.net’s Cloudflare Enterprise and charges $5/mo when it didn’t support APO and serves annoying challenge pages. Kinsta + WP Engine’s integration aren’t Enterprise since they only include a few Enterprise features. WPX’s CDN (XDN) only has 39 PoPs (compared to Cloudflare’s 285) without full page caching. SiteGround discontinued Cloudflare (previously free) and partnered with Google Cloud to market it as their own CDN for $14.99/mo. Even after v.2, there are complaints it makes your site slower. Plus, I trust Ben’s CDN experience.

 

4. Highly Optimized For WooCommerce

Rocket.net is especially fast for WooCommerce sites. A few key reasons are APO, Argo Smart Routing with Tiered Cache, NVMe SSDs, no PHP worker limits, Redis Object Cache Pro’s relay integration, and Rocket.net also strategically built their data centers right next to Cloudflare’s.

NVMe SSDs

These have about 6x faster read-write speeds than SATA SSDs which are used on most shared/cloud hosts. If you’re paying $100/mo and not using NVMe storage, what are ya doin’?

APO

Full page caching is even faster when you’re using Cloudflare’s 285+ PoPs. And if you look at their post launch report, you’ll notice it improves “phone” more than “desktop.” So if you’re struggling with mobile scores, you can either pay $5/mo for APO or get it for free Rocket.net.

Argo Smart Routing

Cloudflare says “enabling Argo Smart Routing shaves an average of 33% off HTTP time to first byte (TTFB).” Argo is specifically good for speeding up dynamic sites like WooCommerce and membership sites, but it benefits static files as well. Rocket.net also uses Argo’s Tiered Cache.

Redis (Redis Object Cache Pro On Business Plan And Up)

Redis is more powerful than Memcached, especially since it uses Relay integration which is specifically good for speed/resource usage on WooCommerce/dynamic sites. Several hosts don’t support object cache, use Memcached instead, or Kinsta charges $100/month for Redis. Redis is free on all Rocket.net plans, then Redis Object Cache Pro on the Business plan and up. They use the Redis Object Cache plugin and you’ll need to ask support who will install it for you.

This table is found on objectcache.pro.

	W3 Total Cache	LiteSpeed Cache	WP Redis	Redis Object Cache	Object Cache Pro
Performance
Batch Prefetching	x	x	x	x	✓
Data compression	x	x	x	x	✓
Cache priming	x	x	x	x	✓
Asynchronous flushing	x	x	x	✓	✓
Features
Cache Analytics	x	x	x	✓	✓
Secure connections	x	x	x	✓	✓
Highly customizable	x	x	x	x	✓
Logging support	x	x	x	x	✓
Cluster support	x	x	x	✓	✓
Replication support	x	x	x	✓	✓
Reliability
Mitigates race conditions	x	x	x	x	✓
Extensively unit tested	x	x	x	x	✓
Integrations
WooCommerce optimized	x	x	x	x	✓
Query Monitor integration	x	x	x	Basic	Advanced
WP CLI integration	Basic	x	Basic	Basic	Advanced
Site Health checks	x	x	x	x	✓
Batcache compatible	x	x	x	✓	✓
Relay integration	x	x	x	x	✓

 

 

5. More Resources, Less Limits

They list these in this post.

• 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2667 v2 @ 3.30GHz (32 Cores)
• 128GB RAM
• RAIDED NVMe SSDs (they switched in 2022 after the post was written)

Kinsta/SiteGround cloud have 16x less RAM and Kinsta limits staging sites to just 1 CPU core (Rocket.net doesn’t). Cloudways/WPX only give you a very small amount of cores/RAM. And while these don’t directly mean a faster site, adding more (upgrading) is often a host’s go-to suggestion for fixing CPU limits. Rather than constantly upgrading, maybe upgrade your host?

 

6. It’s Easy

Rocket.net is super simple:

• Free migrations.
• Easy to learn dashboard.
• No launching servers (like Cloudways).
• No configuring CDNs (their Cloudflare Enterprise is automatic).
• Support goes out of the way and will help you improve core web vitals.

The whole point of “managed cloud hosting” is to be hands-off. So when you have to launch servers, configure CDNs, and migrate sites yourself, it’s not that managed. After requesting a migration, the only thing I did initially was upgrade PHP versions + ask support to install Redis.

 

7. Top Performer In Kevin Ohashi’s 2023 Hosting Benchmarks

Rocket.net was a top performer in Kevin Ohashi’s WP Hosting Benchmarks.

Anyone who’s been around the block knows Kevin’s tests are some of the most reliable out there. Most YouTubers and “fastest WordPress hosting speed tests” are garbage and ranked based on commissions, while Kevin’s methodology and non-affiliated results are more accurate.

 

8. Ben Gabler’s Background + Interviews

Ben’s background is one of the main reasons I tried Rocket.net in the first place. Previously COO at HostGator, Chief Product Officer at StackPath, Senior Product Manager at GoDaddy, and now CEO of Rocket.net. Ben and Patrick Gallagher (from GridPane) did an interview together at Admin Bar which is completely non-promotional and 100% informative. Totally worth watching.

 

9. Pricing, Bandwidth, No Hidden Upgrades/Add-Ons

Rocket.net’s pricing is essentially by bandwidth usage.

Once you learn how much bandwidth you need, choose a plan. Then subtract the costs of add-ons, CDNs, unexpected upgrades, time dealing with bad support, and lower conversions from a slower site. I’m not here to sell you on paying more for hosting, but it’s definitely worth it for me.

If you exceed the limit, Rocket.net uses soft limits and aren’t going to take down your site and lock you out like some hosts do, but you will eventually need to upgrade or reduce bandwidth usage. Monthly visits usually aren’t a problem considering you get 10x more than Kinsta/WPE.

Of course, I run a blog about WordPress speed and hosting reviews. And I’m guessing you’ll run it through speed tests and click through it. Think I’m gonna let your site load faster than mine?

 

10. Support Is Night And Day

Ben, Chad, and their team take support to a new level.

I already know they went outside a typical host’s scope of work several times for me. And I normally can’t always trust hosts to touch (let alone migrate) my site, but their work has been timely and flawless every time with many staff having 20+ years experience. Ben even hops on chats/calls sometimes so if you get the chance, grab a notepad because he’s ahead of his time.

I usually use live chat which typically responds in seconds and feels like you’re actually talking to an actual person who clearly knows what they’re doing. Other than asking about specs, I’ve probably reached out 5 times in 1 year since my site runs smoothly. Fast, nice, knowledgeable.

 

11. They’re Getting Popular In Facebook Groups

As of writing this, Rocket.net has all perfect 5/5 reviews on their TrustPilot profile. You can search keywords like “TTFB” or “Cloudways” to see specific reviews. If you do this, you’ll see several people are moving away from other hosts to Rocket.net, but not the other way around. Even if you search SiteGround’s 11,000 TrustPilot reviews, not 1 person came from Rocket.net.

Ben also did an AMA in a Facebook group, or here’s more feedback.

 

12. $1 Your 1st Month + Unlimited Free Migrations

Getting started:

• Sign up for $1 your 1st month.
• Or talk to Ben or request a Zoom demo if you need an intro.
• Benchmark your TTFB in KeyCDN and your LCP/FCP in PSI or GTmetrix.
• Update DNS or TXT records, or request a free migration from their team.
• Upgrade to the latest compatible PHP version, then ask support to install Redis.
• Remove image optimization, security, CDN plugins (CF Enterprise handles these).
• Configure the FlyingPress settings, then retest your core web vitals (TTFB, LCP, FCP).

Submit your site to Chrome’s HSTS Preload list. Use that site to see if yours supports it and if not, try this plugin. Rocket.net’s support will probably do it for you, but try to do it yourself first.

 

13. Configure FlyingPress On Rocket.net (My Setup)

This is the same setup I use and I’ve confirmed several settings with Ben/Gijo.

FlyingPress

If you’re not using FlyingPress yet, it does a better job with core web vitals and real world browsing compared to WP Rocket and other optimization plugins with new features added regularly. Configure everything normally. Page caching will remain on to serve as a fallback cache in case it misses Cloudflare. Do not add Rocket.net’s CDN URL to the FlyingPress CDN settings, and there’s no need to use FlyingCDN with Cloudflare Enterprise. You can read my FlyingPress tutorial or click the thumbnails to see screenshots of the settings, but you should read the tutorial since lazy render, delay JS, and preloading fonts require manual configuration.

Screenshots (click to enlarge):

Perfmatters

The only feature you really need Perfmatters for is the script manager to disable plugins on pages/posts they’re not being used (this helps remove unused CSS/JavaScript) and possibly preloading Gutenberg’s CSS or other CSS/JS files. You could also use a free plugin like Asset CleanUp if the script manager is all you need it for. You’ll enable test mode to prevent it from breaking your site (by only showing changes to logged in admins), then start disabling plugins where they don’t need to load. Disable test mode when you’re done. Leave all other settings off (including CDN settings which like FlyingPress, you don’t need to add Rocket.net’s CDN URL to).

Conclusion

I don’t write glowing reviews for everyone (just read some of my other hosting reviews). But Rocket.net has been a game changer and I’ve been steering people to them since I switched.

Cheers – to a faster TTFB/LCP/FCP!
Tom

Try them for $1