If the fastest hosting means fastest TTFB, Rocket.net averages 100ms globally.
They’re specifically good for dynamic and resource-demanding sites with free Cloudflare Enterprise and 32 CPU cores/128GB RAM – arguably the fastest CDN with plenty of resources.
Compared to my previous host Cloudways, they use LiteSpeed’s PHP and CPU processors with 3.3/4 GHz base/turbo frequencies. Plus, you still get NVMe SSDs and Redis (or Redis Pro). That’s why Rocket is 90/90 for “performance reviews” and 33/33 on migrations from other cloud hosts.
While they have less bandwidth, there’s no stingy limits on CPU cores/RAM, staging resources, monthly visits, PHP workers, or PHP memory limit. That’s why “resource limits” are a common complaint in many cloud host’s 1-2 star TrustPilot reviews. There are 0 add-ons since your CDN/software are included on all plans (with the exception of free Object Cache Pro on the Business plan and up). There’s no need to pay $100/mo Redis (Kinsta), $14.99/mo for an inferior CDN (SiteGround), or upgrade from CPU usage (Cloudways). Support is also night & day.
They’re popular in several Facebook groups with posts like a 500% faster TTFB and 200% – 450% faster LCP. Even for WooCommerce/Elementor. You can also test my TTFB in SpeedVitals.
Ben Gabler (CEO) is one of the smartest guys in the industry and you’ll find 2 video interviews below. They do unlimited free migrations, $1 the 1st month, and I’ve been with them for 2 years.
- Rocket.net’s specs are faster
- 100ms global TTFB → better core web vitals
- Why WooCommerce/dynamic sites need Cloudflare Enterprise
- More resources, less limits
- 4 Ghz turbo frequency CPU processor
- LiteSpeed’s PHP outperforms FastCGI/FPM
- Redis (Object Cache Pro on Business plan and up)
- Top performer in Kevin Ohashi’s WP hosting benchmarks
- What support should be on “managed” hosting
- Better security on both the server/CDN level
- 7 server locations
- Price is by bandwidth (no paid add-ons)
- Ben Gabler background/interviews
- Continuing to blow up in Facebook groups
- $1 your 1st month + unlimited free migrations
- Configure FlyingPress on Rocket.net (my setup)
1. Rocket.net’s Specs Are Faster
I made several notes in the sheet, but they disappear when it’s made public. Here are a few important ones:
- Rocket.net recommends using a plugin for image optimization (I like Optimole).
- Object Cache Pro’s Relay is great for speeding up WooCommerce/dynamic sites.
- Cloudflare’s DNS is fast and free (see dnsperf.com). You don’t need a premium DNS.
- When TTFB is 100ms worldwide, physical location of your server is negligible to TTFB.
- Kinsta started migrating from Google Cloud C2 to C3D in 12/23 and calls them “boosted regions.” C3D uses AMD EPYC 9004 processors with 3.7 GHz boost clock speeds. C2 uses 2nd Generation Intel Scalable Processors (Cascade Lake) with 3.8 GHz boost clock speeds.
- SiteGround Optimizer and Cloudways Breeze plugins don’t do a great job optimizing core web vitals… this is why many customers also have to configure FlyingPress or WP Rocket.
- In the TrustPilot section, certain keywords were searched in 1-2 star reviews which tells us “common complaints” about each host. These were averaged among 27 different hosts to determine if the number of complaints are high (red) or low (green). Since it’s well-known positive reviews are solicited, 3-5 reviews were not analyzed… but feel free to read them.
2. 100ms Global TTFB → Better Core Web Vitals
Rocket.net averages a <100ms global TTFB:
KeyCDN measures TTFB in 10 locations (unlike most speed tools). You’ll want to test the 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.
Hosting/CDN are the 2 main ways to optimize TTFB.
So when you upgrade to both a faster host/CDN, it can improve all these:
Here’s a WooCommerce + Elementor site:
Ben Gabler’s post shows WooCommerce checkout speeds:
It’s time to stop the bleed to Shopify. What if I showed you the fastest @WooCommerce install ever? Then, what if I showed you the entire 20GB store failing over to another region in 37 seconds? Serious business needs a serious solution. Let’s talk #enterprise #Woo #hosting pic.twitter.com/e5K8UGldQ3
— Ben Gabler (@ben_gabler) February 6, 2024
3. Why WooCommerce/Dynamic Sites Need Cloudflare Enterprise
Dynamic requests are routed faster thanks to premium/Enterprise features like Argo Smart Routing + Tiered Cache, prioritized routing, and full page caching. Cloudflare’s network is also one of the largest/fastest with 310 PoPs and transfer speeds of 248 terabytes per second (Tbps).
Rocket.net released their Cloudflare Enterprise long before Cloudways (who originally didn’t use full page caching and had annoying challenge pages). I also trust Ben Gabler’s experience with CDNs more since he was StackPath’s Chief Product Officer. It’s been called the closest thing to “true Enterprise” for a reason. Plus, it’s free with their hosting and works 100% automatically.
Like most SiteGround products, they replaced something good (free Cloudflare with full page caching) with their “own” inferior CDN from Google Cloud for $14.99/mo. Kinsta + WP Engine only have a few Enterprise features – that’s why they won’t advertise it as Cloudflare Enterprise.
I don’t believe CDN trackers (cdnperf.com and SpeedVitas) take into which Cloudflare plan is used. If everyone used CF Enterprise, I’m sure “Cloudflare” would be ranked 1st most months.
Key Features
- APO – caches HTML and one of the best ways to improve TTFB.
- Prioritized routing – traffic gets prioritized to avoid congestion.
- Argo Smart Routing + Tiered Cache – detects traffic congestion and routes traffic through faster network paths. Cloudflare says assets load 30% faster and reduces requests to your origin server. Specifically good for WooCommerce/dynamic sites.
- Load balancing – re-routes traffic from unhealthy origin servers to healthy origins.
- Enterprise WAF – scans every request before it hits your server. The Enterprise WAF has a more advanced firewall, bot protection, and custom rule set (OWASP). Cloudways also uses their Enterprise WAF, but Kinsta doesn’t. Besides blocking attacks, Rocket.net also says there’s a 90%+ reduction in comment spam. I can vouch for this and noticed my spam comments went way down after migrating.
- Early Hints – sends early preload & preconnect hints to reduce server wait time.
- Brotli – compresses pages to smaller file sizes compared to GZIP compression.
- Smart caching – only purges HTML when certain changes are made, which uses less server resources while also keeping your cache warm for CSS, JS, and images.
Argo further reduces latency for dynamic requests and Rocket.net also includes Argo’s Tiered Cache. Cloudflare says “enabling Argo Smart Routing shaves an average of 33% off HTTP TTFB.”
4. More Resources, Less Limits
They list most of these here and here.
- 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)
- 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM: Kinsta/SiteGround Cloud have 16x less RAM (8 GB) and Cloudways has even less. They also have significantly less cores which is why “CPU limits” are specifically common on SiteGround (4 CPU cores) and Cloudways. I had to go from SiteGround’s GoGeek plan to $180/mo cloud hosting because of it.
- No staging limits: Kinsta limits staging sites to 1 CPU core and Rapyd.cloud limits them to 2 GB RAM. Rocket.net doesn’t, meaning you’ll still have access to 32 cores.
- No PHP worker limit: Rocket.net doesn’t limit PHP workers like Kinsta/WPE/WPX. Read this case study for a site with 1M+ visitors per 60 minutes where the need to scale PHP workers was eliminated. Kinsta only has 2 PHP workers on their lowest plan and recommends WooCommerce sites start at $115/mo due to workers/visits.
- 250,000 monthly visits: this is 10-25x more than Kinsta/WP Engine, so it’s unlikely you’ll need to upgrade from this. Rocket, Kinsta, and WP Engine all count visits which include unknown bots and users with ad blockers (about 32.8% of people). Rocket.net’s starter plan has 250k/mo which means it’s about 168,000 visitors/mo.
- 1 GB memory limit: it’s 256MB on Kinsta and Servebolt, and 512MB on WP Engine.
5. 4 Ghz Turbo Frequency CPU Processor
Rocket.net’s processors (Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2) have higher base/turbo frequencies than DigitalOcean Premium and Vultr High Frequency at Cloudways. SiteGround uses the Google Cloud N2 machine family which has a choice of 2 processors. While I wasn’t able to get their processor model, neither have higher clock speeds than E5 v2. Kinsta’s processors don’t either.
NVMe SSDs 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’?
These tests were done by Rocket.net using WP Hosting Benchmark. The plugin runs tests on CPU/memory, filesystem, database, object cache, and network tests (try it out)!
6. LiteSpeed’s PHP Outperforms FastCGI/FPM
Rocket.net uses LiteSpeed’s PHP which outperforms FastCGI (used on SiteGround/Kinsta) and FPM on Cloudways. Even PHP.net says “LSAPI is similar to FCGI, but is more efficient” and that it’s a “highly optimized API.” WordPress is built on PHP, so it’s a big performance win for Rocket.
7. Redis (Object Cache Pro On Business Plan And Up)
Redis is more powerful than Memcached, especially when using Redis Pro’s Relay integration. It’s good for speed, admin speed, and resource usage on WooCommerce/dynamic sites. Most hosts don’t support object cache, use Memcached instead, and Kinsta charges $100/month for it. Rocket.net uses the Redis Object Cache plugin (you’ll need to ask support to 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 | ✓ |
8. Top Performer In Kevin Ohashi’s WP 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.
9. What Support Should Be On “Managed” Hosting
Definitely one of the biggest complaints of “managed” hosting:
- Cloudways charges $100/mo for “advanced” support.
- Rapyd.cloud also charges $100/mo (except on Performance plans).
- SiteGround’s scope of support doesn’t get better on their cloud hosting.
- Like Cloudways/SiteGround, Kinsta/WP Engine also have lots of complaints.
- Migrations aren’t always free or reliable, and support doesn’t help with web vitals.
First off, the amount I need on Rocket.net’s support is little because everything just works. I don’t need to bug them about server crashes, downtime, plugin compatibility, CDN issues, control panel bugs, and they don’t constantly change things up by releasing buggy products prematurely. Many of these hosts can’t even “manage” to keep their own infrastructure stable.
Ben, Chad, and their team run a lot more complex sites than mine, so migrating my site was a breeze. After requesting a free migration, the only thing I did initially was upgrade PHP versions + ask support to install Redis. Besides asking about specs, I probably use support 3 times a year.
While I didn’t need help optimizing core web vitals, they will help you with it. Many of their agents have 20+ years experience. They’re obviously picky who they hire and I appreciate that.
Go read complaints in other host’s 1-2 star reviews, then start a live chat with Rocket. You’ll see.
10. Better Security On Both The Server/CDN Level
On the server level, you get Imunify360’s firewall and real-time malware scanning. Hosts like SiteGround/Cloudways use their own “custom” security instead of an established security suite. Hence, why they have security complaints in TrustPilot reviews. As soon as your site is moved to Rocket.net’s platform, it’s automatically scanned/patched for malware. No need to deal with SiteGround’s $2.99/mo Site Scanner, WAF plugin on Kinsta, or bots/security risks on Cloudways.
On the CDN level, you can monitor Cloudflare Enterprise’s WAF in Rocket.net’s dashboard which scans every request before it hits the server. You get features like DDoS mitigation, bot management, and Page Shield. They’re also one of the only cloud hosts that is PCI compliant.
11. 7 Server Locations
Rocket.net has locations in the following regions:
- US (Ashburn, Phoenix, Dallas)
- UK (London)
- DE (Frankfurt)
- NL (Amsterdam)
- SG (Singapore)
- AU (Sydney, Brisbane)
They don’t own these data centers, instead, they own their own cloud. Server location hardly matters when TTFB is ~100ms globally. The main exception is if you need a location for GDPR.
12. Price Is By Bandwidth (No Paid 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.
Rocket.net uses soft limits, meaning they’re not going to shut down your site and lock you out of wp-admin 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.
Quality, performance, price… pick 2.
13. Ben Gabler 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.
14. Continuing To Blow Up 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 16,000 TrustPilot reviews, not 1 person came from Rocket.net.
Ben also did an AMA in a Facebook group, or here’s more feedback.
15. $1 Your 1st Month + Unlimited Free Migrations
Getting started:
- Sign up for $1 your 1st month.
- Talk to Ben or request a Zoom demo if you need an intro.
- Benchmark your TTFB in SpeedVitals and your LCP/FCP in PSI.
- 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 any security or CDN plugins (Cloudflare Enterprise already handles this).
- Configure FlyingPress, then retest your core web vitals (specifically 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.
16. 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 view screenshots of 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’ll need is the script manager to disable plugins where they’re not being used (which helps remove unused CSS/JS) and possibly preloading Gutenberg’s CSS or other CSS/JS files. You could also use a free plugin like Asset CleanUp, but Perfmatters’ interface is cleaner. You’ll enable test mode to prevent the script manager 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).
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
