Rocket.net Review: 100ms Worldwide TTFB For WooCommerce/International Sites + Cloudflare Enterprise (Who I Use)

If the fastest hosting means the fastest TTFB, Rocket.net averages 100ms globally.

They’re specifically good for WooCommerce/dynamic sites since all plans use free Cloudflare Enterprise and 32 CPU cores/128GB RAM – arguably the fastest CDN with plenty of resources. You also get faster tech like NVMe SSDs, Redis (Redis Pro on higher plans), and LiteSpeed’s PHP.

When you compare them to other cloud hosts (Cloudways, SG, Kinsta, WPE), there are 3 main reasons Rocket.net wins: TTFB, more resources, better support (4.9/5 on TrustPilot). I moved from Cloudways Vultr HF in 2011 (and previously SiteGround cloud) and can vouch for this. Ben Gabler (CEO) has a crazy impressive background and he did some great video interviews below.

The main con is price from limited bandwidth. But if you’re using one of the cloud hosts I mentioned, they’re a major upgrade where people have seen a 500% faster TTFB (and 200% – 450% faster LCP). They do unlimited free migrations and $1 the 1st month so you can try them.

 

1. 100ms Global TTFB → Better Core Web Vitals

Rocket.net averages a <100ms global TTFB:

Rocket. Net 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.

Keycdn global ttfb

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

Average ttfb speedvitals

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

Importance of ttfb

Time to first byte lcp

Hosting/CDN are the 2 main ways to optimize TTFB.

Ways to optimize ttfb

So when you upgrade to both a faster host/CDN, it can improve all these:

Omm pagespeed insights

Omm gtmetrix 2023

 

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 Free Cloudflare Enterprise (read)
CDN locations 183 310 310 310
Full page caching
Smart routing Anycast x Argo Argo
Image optimization Limited x Mirage/Polish Mirage/Polish
DNS 2M sites blocked by Google 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/RAM 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 $26 + CDN $25 when paying yearly

 
Notes:

Out of these hosts, only Rocket.net + Cloudways use NVMe SSDs, Redis Pro, and Cloudflare Enterprise. However, Cloudways’ Cloudflare Enterprise is $5/mo, low cores/RAM often leads to high CPU usage, and they use slower tech like PHP-FPM. Cloudways also has “other problems” after being acquired by DigitalOcean… like a confusing dashboard with too many settings and worse support. Rocket.net has a much easier dashboard, faster tech, and much better support.

Compared 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… usually with a smaller network and less features. Cloudflare’s network has 310+ PoPs with speeds of 228 Tbps (almost 3x BunnyCDN’s).

RocketCDN (WP Rocket) FlyingCDN (FlyingPress) SiteGround CDN Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise Rocket.net Cloudflare Enterprise
CDN BunnyCDN BunnyCDN Google Cloud Cloudflare Cloudflare
Speed (Tbps) 80 80 Not listed 228 228
Locations 114 114 183 310 310
Full page cache x x APO APO
Smart routing SmartEdge SmartEdge Anycast Argo Argo
Priority routing x x x
Load balancing x
Image optimization x Bunny Optimizer Very limited Mirage/Polish Mirage/Polish
Firewall x
DDoS protection x
Bandwidth Not unlimited as advertised Unlimited Unmetered 100GB Determined by hosting plan
Price $8.99/mo $.03/GB $14.99/mo $5/mo Free

 
Cloudways copied Rocket.net’s Cloudflare Enterprise and charged $5/mo even when it didn’t support APO and served annoying challenge pages. Kinsta’sWP Engine’s integrations aren’t Cloudflare Enterprise since they only have a few Enterprise features. 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 and has many lacking speed/security features. WPX’s CDN (XDN) only has 39 PoPs and doesn’t have full page caching.

Key Features

  • APO – caches HTML which is one of the best/easiest ways to improve TTFB.
  • Prioritized routing – traffic gets prioritized which avoids traffic 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.
  • WAF – Rocket.net also has built-in WAF rules, Imunify360, and real-time malware scanning. Which unlike other hosts, protects your site at both the server/CDN level.
  • Mirage/Polish – optimizes images without adding bloat or using resources like plugins do. It supports image compression, WebP, and several viewport/network optimizations. Polish doesn’t always serve images in WebP (usually if the savings aren’t high enough) which you can check in Chrome Dev Tools. However, when I manually converted images to WebP using a free online converter, savings were often 50%+. So if this happens to you, you can either convert them manually or install a dedicated WebP plugin such as Converter For Media (or WebP Express).
  • Early Hints – sends early preload & preconnect hints to reduce server wait time.
  • Brotli – compresses pages to smaller file sizes compared to GZIP compression.
  • Smart cachingsmart caching uses less resources when purging the cache by identifying what needs purging and when, then it only purges necessary assets.
  • Less challenge pages – unlike Cloudways, Rocket.net serves 0 challenge pages to logged out users and only serves 1 challenge to wp-login, then it’s gone for 1 year.
  • 3 less plugins – you shouldn’t need image optimization, security, or CDN plugins.

Rocket. Net cloudflare enterprise vs apo
Ben explains a few key differences between Cloudflare Enterprise vs. APO
Keycdn performance test cloudflare 1
Cloudflare free (no full page caching)
Rocket. Net keycdn performance test 1
Cloudflare Enterprise + full page caching
Rocket. Net analytics
Cloudflare analytics from Rocket.net’s dashboard (about 90% of bandwidth is served from Cloudflare)

 

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.

Rocket. Net woocommerce elementor

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’?

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)!

Rocket. Net ssds
Rocket.net with SSD hard drives
Rocket. Net nvme
Rocket.net switches to NVMe

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.

Apo impact on ttfb

Apo impact on lcp

Apo impact on fcp

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.

Argo latency reduction

Redis (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

 

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?

  • CPU/RAM: with 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM, it’s highly unlikely you’ll need to upgrade from this. I had to go from SiteGround’s GoGeek plan to their $180/mo cloud hosting because of this. Can also happen on other hosts who don’t give you enough resources (and if they don’t list cores/RAM, it’s probably not a good thing).
  • PHP workers: 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 because of workers/visits.
  • Monthly visits: with 10-25 more monthly visits than Kinsta/WPE, it’s also 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 42.7% of people). Rocket.net’s starter plan has 250k/mo which means it’s about 106,750 visitors/mo.
  • Memory limit: it’s 256MB on Kinsta, 512MB on WP Engine, and 1GB on Rocket.net.

 

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.

Rocket. Net 2023 wordpress hosting benchmarks
Credit: wphostingbenchmarks.com

 

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.

Rocket. Net ben gabler testimonial

Rocket. Net is amazing

 

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?

Rocket. Net plans pricing

 

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. 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.

Rocket. Net trustpilot

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

Move to rocket. Net from sitegroundKinsta to rocket. Net resultsRocket. Net vs cloudways cpu usageRocket. Net no competitionRocket. Net trustpilot review
Siteground to cloudways to rocket. Net 2Rocket. Net vs siteground commentMoved to rocket. Net vs sitegroundKinsta to rocket. Net ttfb redisRocket. Net vs kinstaRocket. Net vs kinsta priceRocket. Net faster than cloudwaysRocket. Net vs. Cloudways comparisonBluehost to cloudways to rocket. NetSiteground to rocket. Net post 2Rocket. Net vs cloudways vultr hf trustpilot review

 

12. $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 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 FlyingPress , then retest your core web vitals (specifically TTFB, LCP, FCP).
Rocket. Net hosting go live
Add your site and update TXT records, or point your DNS to Rocket.net (they use Cloudflare’s DNS)
Rocket. Net dashboard 2
Update PHP version and configure advanced settings

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.

Hsts preload

 

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).

Disable social sharing plugins perfmatters

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.

Rocket. Net hosting poll short

Cheers to a faster TTFB/LCP/FCP.
Tom

Try them for $1

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131 Comments...

  1. I am a new client of rocket.net, thanks to your review. If you want a managed environment I would recommend them. Thought, I think you are ignoring information here.

    Two things to comment from

    If you are on the starter plan that comes with 10GB, take in mind that if you want to use the staging option it will clone your site and take over your storage, so if your site is 6GB and create a Staging site, that would mean you would take over 12gb you just took all your space and more, the same with manual backups.

    Pros
    Fast Hosting
    Optimized for WooCommerce
    Excellent Support
    Automated daily backups (they are hosted in another server)

    Cons

    Expensive and low Bandwith
    Expensive Storage
    Staging is a good feature, but if it takes over your Storage it cant be used for small plans
    Manual Backups also takes over your space

    Reply
  2. I just tested a site on Rocket.net. It actually had slightly worse (by a few points) Google Lighthouse and GTMetrix scores compared to my Cloudways site.

    However. during load testing with Loader.io it performed much better but still crashed with 200 sustained users per second.

    Reply
    • Hm, not sure why Cloudways would give you better results. I made the same switch and would ask:

      • Was it tested on a live site or staging?
      • Was Redis installed on Rocket.net?
      • Were you using Cloudflare Enterprise on Cloudways or no? Cloudways doesn’t have full page caching on theirs which is a big disadvantage.
      • Exact same plugins (and same cache plugin with same settings)?
      Reply
      • It’s also worth noting that if you were testing on a temporary URL at Rocket.net, no premium plugins like WP-Rocket work because of the license.

        Comparing a test site with no traffic vs a live site with traffic also makes a difference.

        Typically we’re 3-5x faster globally than cloudways at minimum. The only possible way to see “better” results on a commodity cloud provider/control plane like cloudways is if you’re comparing optimized HTML/CSS/JS against non optimized HTML/CSS/JS.

        If you could email me both GTMetrix reports I’d be happy to take a look, but 9 times out of 10 that’s the issue :)

        I’d also love to know what kind of test you ran for concurrent users. If they were dynamic requests then the test was probably more of a DDoS simulation than real human simulation.

        In any case, would love to know more so we can do better if there is in fact an issue.

        My email is ben.gabler@rocket.net

        Thanks!

        Reply
  3. Tom, I follow your content and appreciate it. I have been reading your articles since, some time now.

    I recently switched to Rocket.net. It’s fast. It’s secure. It’s easy. However, the support is not great. It feels just a bit better than almost any other host out there. From your article, and the verbiage on their website, I expected much better quality support.

    Reply
    • I’m sorry you feel that way Muhammad. What went wrong if you don’t mind me asking?

      I do think their support is top notch based off a few things: my experience, feedback through blog comments/emails people have sent me, and feedback I’ve seen in other places like FB groups.

      They have a great reputation and it’s something Ben has always taken seriously, so I’m genuinely curious what happened.

      Reply
    • While no one is perfect, we try our very best to be as close to perfect as we can be.

      In almost three years this is the first time I’ve seen “our support is not great”. We take great pride in our customer experience and always go above and beyond for our customers unlike any other host in the world (based off my twenty years of experience ranging from Hostgator to Godaddy).

      Please email me directly ben@rocket.net so I can look into this further as a subpar support experience is simply not acceptable nor is it a thing at Rocket.net.

      Reply
      • I guess not many take time to post about their experience.
        I would like to, because I didn’t had a smooth experience either.

        I’ve had a similar experience getting my domain correctly pointed.
        Not sure what the name of the support guy was, but I had to tell him what the solution was. It felt a bit like he was trying to Google the answers. At the end I told him what the issue was. The domain forward/setup tool felt a bit buggy, might need some checks. Sometimes it was checking SSL, failed, needed to redo from step 1 and then suddenly it was in step 3.
        The domain forward/setup tool also asked for a domain name , i.e. domain.com , but things stopped working for me then, when I then put in http://www.domain.com everything worked again. At other hosting companies it doesn’t matter, it’ll work if you either fill in with or without “www”. Or if you can only use without “www” it fixes it with the setup / WP installation. That was my 1st encounter of not going smooth.

        My site was also migrated to show the speed of Rocket.net (which is great, nothing to complain about that). Although noticed sometimes a bit lower speed, as if the server needed to get out of sleep mode and as soon as it was going ( /- 5 – 10sec, full speed – no that’s my own connection, noticed it also in GTMetrix sometimes).

        The migration itself was not done properly. All plug-ins were deactivated, Gravater image not showing anymore my existing user account in Wordpress was gone. I fixed that myself, but do want to mention it, perhaps good feedback for future improvment. It felt a bit like the migration was rushed.

        Lastly, I cancelled my account. I received a confirmation mail -> “The service will be terminated within the next 24 hours.”.

        Checked today if all was taken care, but I don’t have an account anymore, it got fully deleted, instead of only the hostingservice. Would be nice then to also get refunded as stated in the refund policy, but I’m not refunded. Not that I need that $ 1,00 I can imagine transaction fee’s and the time you spent also cost money , but it felt a bit strange the way the whole account was suddenly closed (instead of only the hosting service) and at the end nothing got refunded. Just a matter of principal.

        The reason I refunded was based on my experience I didn’t find it worth to pay a high amount for only having the best speed, small storage and limited amount of websites. Currently running on an Enterprise LiteSpeed server and reaching similar speeds ;) for half the price, 10 sites running, a slower support, but technical skilled people. And then perhaps also a bit of trust (see cons below).
        Perhaps the advantage in speed would be more visible if I would have a website with much more traffic.

        My opinion :

        Pro’s :
        – Speed
        – Easy setting up sites
        – 24/7 support
        – Staging
        – Backups
        – CEO is dedicated to the company and willing to reply/comment

        Cons :
        – High pricing
        – Basic options
        – Not a real reseller feeling, or support couldn’t explain me how it exactly works, but wasn’t the reseller options I’m looking for
        – Maybe a bit of trust? Feedback that I read on social media is that not many people know Rocket or read about it. They are scared of services going down etc.
        – Communication -> i.e. onboard the same way as you offboard, makes customers perhaps come back

        p.s. Carefull with staging, if you selected the wrong tab and press deploy it’ll not ask you for a confirmation :) (thank god for backups)

        Reply
        • Hi Menno,

          First and foremost, I want to apologize. I’m sincerely sorry your experience was not the typical Rocket.net experience. I was not made aware of this situation, but will certainly look into it and see where we went wrong.

          Second, I want to thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. The only way we can do better is to know where and when we’re failing, so this will not go unnoticed.

          I’ve been in the industry for twenty years and have seen/built it all. DNS at Rocket can definitely be tricky and far from traditional hosting where you’re forced to change name servers or use cloudflare DNS seamlessly. We have many improvements coming to our portal to address this.

          As for the migration with plugins being deactivated, we always ask customers to check and test on the temporary URL before pointing their live DNS to us, it seems this issue either happened after that or DNS was updated before hand.

          We never ever rush migrations or anything for that matter at Rocket.net, in fact I always tell the team if something takes five hours, it’s OK, we’re here for our customers no matter what it takes… but we do have multiple methods of doing them, the primary being a plugin based migration. If we received feedback that things were not correct, we would have tried another method.

          Regarding the cancellation and refund, that’s personally on me. I miss clicked the Cancel process and did not check the refund box. Honest mistake, not trying to keep anyone’s money and not honor our guarantees, your $1 has been refunded.

          For you and anyone reading this , my inbox is always open – ben.gabler@rocket.net.

          Every thing listed here could have been addressed had we had the proper opportunity, in any case it will all be addressed internally to ensure we don’t have this type of situation in the future.

          Reply
    • Hi Muhammad,

      I did some digging and the last interaction was from December and we were tying to help you with MainWP 500 error reports. I asked for more information on December 27 and never heard back.

      After our first reply where Naqi was simply tying to help correlate things with our logs and explain what can cause 500 errors from a high-level (with no data to go on other than some screenshots), you jumped the gun and replied with:

      “I expected a better response honestly.

      Anyway, just close this ticket please. From your response, I know this issue won’t be resolved by talking to support.”

      So basically you assumed we didn’t care or were blowing you off (probably due to how other hosts treated you over the yeas), but we were simply trying to work together to get to the bottom of the isolated issue you were having with a third party plugin and all we had were some vague screenshots of emails.

      I’m sorry you felt this was subpar, but we do take our support very seriously and had you followed up with the requested logs from MainWP we could have kept digging into things on our side.

      Reply
  4. Great article! I’m moving to Rocket.net. You mentioned in the article:
    “How does Rocket.net optimize images?

    Cloudflare Mirage/Polish, which means you don’t need an image optimization plugin. If you don’t see an image is optimized on the frontend, it probably means the savings weren’t high enough for Cloudflare to optimize (which is why you may not see it served in WebP).

    “What saving are we talking about?

    Reply
    • Thanks Ezra! See this Cloudflare Doc.

      “Polish creates and caches a WebP version of the image and delivers it to the browser if the Accept header from the browser includes WebP, and the compressed image is significantly smaller than the lossy or lossless compression”

      Reply

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