Hosting Performance Contest – June 2016 Roundup (Devil’s Dozen)

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Here’s the fifth Monthly Hosting Performance Contest Roundup for June 2016!
I’ve been testing the devil’s dozen of hosts in a non-stop manner the whole month and will show you the results right away. The competing for the title of the best hosts was pretty tough this month with four new hosts added in the Contest!

By the way, you can find the latest roundups here and the performance tables and charts here.

The added hosts are SiteGround, MochaHost, LunarPages and HostWinds. SiteGround is a more expensive host, and as expected, it showed the best results among the newcomers. Let’s see how all the hosts stand against each other!

Common Information

As you may already know, I’ve been monitoring the performance of some of the best hosting providers I know as well as some other well-known hosts.

In short, since 2013 I’ve been picking out great hosts judging by real users reviews, professional hosting community opinion, long honorable business experience and other factors which make a great hosting.

And I buy anonymously hosting accounts with different hosts in order to closely monitor their performance (basically, uptime checked every minute and full page load time checked every 15 minutes) using a professional monitoring service monitis.com. I buy the most basic and the cheapest plan of each hosting. You can read about my monitoring methodology here.

And I’m happy to share these statistics with you so that you could see how these hosts perform and who is the best from the best!

You can find some real-time performance charts on my recommended hosts page for the hosting which I’ve been recommending and monitoring.

Also, you can see real-time monitoring charts for all hosts that I am monitoring on this page. In addition, the page contains monthly historical data on hosting performance (speed, uptime, satisfactory apdex) – very interesting and useful.

Besides, you may read more information about this Hosting Performance Contest on this page. I will be adding monthly and yearly Contest results on the page too.

And other monthly Hosting Performance Contest roundups are available from here.

June 2016 Hosting Performance Contest – Results

Thirteen hosts for your judgement this month. A half of them are more affordable, and the others are from a bit higher price segment.

• GeekStorage (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• SiteGround (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• Squidix (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• StableHost (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• VeeroTech (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• HawkHost (I recommend it, here’s my review)
• InMotionHosting
• A2Hosting
• MochaHost
• LunarPages
• HostWinds
• GlowHost
• Eleven2

I’ll do a breakdown of hosting performance by prices in the sections below.

And now let’s get an overview of the hosting performance in the order of how the hosts performed in general regardless of how affordable or expensive the hosts are.

The winner of this month’s contest is InMotionHosting! The previous month it did not make it to the top due to a bit lower uptime. But this time its performance was superb.
Very close to the top go several hosts: A2Hosting, GeekStorage and SiteGround.

Average full page load time of InMotionHosting (the winner) was 0.82 seconds (it’s very fast). Its Uptime was 99.98% (very good indeed!) And its Satisfactory Apdex was 99.85% (i.e. 99.85% of time the full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds – it’s very good). All these parameters are brilliant and much above the benchmarks specified for the great performance. And since this month it was the fastest host among the hosting which exceeded the benchmarks for the great hosts InMotionHosting wins the gold.

The silver medal goes to A2Hosting. it was very close the the winner, but little behind in speed.

In June 2016 A2Hosting was on average as fast as 0.93 seconds that is just 0.11 seconds slower than the leader.A2Hosting‘s uptime was 99.98% which is brilliant. Its Satisfactory Apdex was 99.92% (i.e. 99.92% of all time full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds). Very good!

The bronze medalist is GeekStorage. It’s a great host which performance has been staying superb from the very beginning since day one when I started monitoring it. It has been the winner of the Contest in previous months. And very solid third place this time!

GeekStorage performed in June 2016 as fast as 1.0 second which is close to the leaders. Its uptime was nearly perfect 99.99%. And the Satisfactory Apdex was 99.96% (99.96% of all time the speed was faster than 2.5 seconds, the highest result among the hosts). All the performance results are very much above the standards for best hosting.

SiteGround has also shown stellar performance: speed (just 1.03 seconds, just a bit behind the winner group), perfect uptime (100%, which is not easy to achieve) and Satisfactory Apdex (99.95%, nearly as good as the best results). The performance is all much above the highest standards. In general standings this hosting took the 4th place due to a very high competition.

And I’d like to emphasize the fact that SiteGround was 100% uptime, which is the perfect result and it’s a dream for any host to perform like that. Only two hosts in this month could get to it.

LunarPages has taken the 5th place. Its performance was good. With its performance results in this month the host looks really not bad: 1.13 seconds fast, 99.96% uptime and 99.86% Satisfactory Apdex (99.86% of the time it was faster than 2.5 seconds). These values are pretty much above the standards. But please note that the plan (the most basic one) that I use with this host does not contain cPanel with WordPress autoinstaller (it means manual WP installing). The most basic plans of other hosts do contain cPanel with 1 click WP install.

Squidix is on the 6th place. All performance values are good and much above the required standards for great hosting. Full page load time was 1.14 seconds, uptime was 99.98% and Satisfactory Apdex was 99.75% (99.75% of the time the host was faster than 2.5 seconds).

No surprises here – Squidix has been performing very well before too.

HostWinds took the 7th place. it had pretty solid performance results: 1.15 seconds fast, 100.00% (!) uptime, 99.95% Satisfactory Apdex was 99.75% (99.95% of the time the host was faster than 2.5 seconds).

StableHost moved to the 8th place, but still showing performance way much above the highest standards. The speed of my website hosted with this host was 1.52 seconds, great 99.97% uptime and Satisfactory Apdex was 99.75% (99.75% of this month it was faster than 2.5 seconds). It’s good performance for an affordable host like this.

HawkHost is on the 9th place and its performance was very close to StableHost. Full page load time was 1.57 seconds, uptime was nearly perfect 99.99% and Satisfactory Apdex was 99.75% (99.75% of this month it was faster than 2.5 seconds). All values are much above the benchmarks for great hosts. HawkHost is also one of the most affordable hosts which show great performance.

VeeroTech appeared on the 10th place. Although it was faster (1.40 seconds) than the two previous hosts and its uptime was great (99.96%), its Satisfactory Apdex (96.01%) did not meet the highest standards. It’s not bad for affordable hosting, but in order to be among the leaders it needs to perform continuously well to get higher Apdex to comply with very strict rules of this Contest.

The other three monitored hosts in this month failed both benchmarks (uptime and Satisfactory Apdex). So they did not meet the highest standards which are set to determine the greatest hosts. These harsh rules allow to feature in this Contest only the hosts which perform the best of the best.

MochaHost goes to the 11th place. Its main problem in this month was uptime (99.28%). Its speed performance is not generally bad (1.61 seconds full page load time). But its Satisfactory Apdex was below the highest standards 97.69%.

Eleven2 is on the 12th place. Its performance in general was not too bad (uptime 99.85% and Satisfactory Apdex 98.22%). This is better than the previous host. But it did not meet the highest standards. So, with a bit lower speed (1.63 seconds) it could not fight for the better standing in this Contest.

And the outsider is GlowHost. This host, although it’s not as affordable as many others in this Contest, can be only on the last place. It failed badly Satisfatory Apdex (61.45%), which means it was slower than 2.5 seconds 61.45% of all the time in June. Its uptime was comparatively bad as well (only 96.70%). The worst performance with the average speed of full page loading too (2.59 seconds).

The competition in this month was pretty tough. Most hosts have met the highest standards and it made the Contest very intense.

By the way, keep in mind, that for this Contest I pick out the hosts which are considered to be good, great and superb. These hosts are established businesses for many years and some of them are widely recommended in the Internet. So, the idea of this Contest is to determine the best performing hosts from a technical point of view, giving you objective information for making your own decision regarding hosts.

Let’s see now the results in tables and charts for more convenience, more information and more insight.

Here’s a table view to compare the Hosting Performance Contest results in June 2016:

Table column notes:
Place: The place a hosting has won in this Contest (the less the better).
Load Time: Average Full Page Load Time (the less the better). Checked every 15 minutes.
Uptime: Uptime (the more the better). Checked every minute.
Uptime OK: If Uptime Benchmark (99.9%) passed (YES is very good, NO is not very good).
Apdex-S: Satisfactory Apdex, i.e. how often a test website on a tested hosting was loading faster than 2.5 sec (the more the Apdex-S the better). Checked every 15 minutes.
Apdex-S OK: If Satisfactory Apdex benchmark (99%) passed (YES is very good, NO is not very good).

Here’s a table with hosting prices:

1 year: Regular prices (after the first invoice) for 1-year plan.
2 years: Regular prices (after the first invoice) for 2-year plan.
3 years: Regular prices (after the first invoice) for 3-year plan.
Min Price: The minimum price officially available for the first invoice (can be for 1-year, 2-year or 3-year plan).
*StableHost discount code is given in my review.
Limited-time offers with more discounts are not included in these prices. Check out if there are special offers currently available by visiting the hosting websites.
Worthy: This column contains my recommended hosts. (Under review label means that the host is a newcomer which performs not bad or has potential in winning prizes in the Contest and I want to have proved records of its performance for a couple of months.)

Here’s a table with places within pricing categories:

Since it’s not always correct to compare hosts from different price categories together, I’ve broken down the monitored hosts into two categories to compete within. The first category includes budget hosts which cost less than $5/mo for 1-year hosting plan, and the seconds category contains more expensive hosts.

The prices presented in this table are regular prices (i.e. applied after the first invoice). Note that prices for the first invoice (1-,2- or 3-year plan) are usually less (see them in the previous table). And special promo prices are not included (check them out on the hosting websites).

And here are the charts with the Hosting Performance Contest results in June 2016:

June 2016 Hosting Performance Contest Results – Notes

I use monitis.com services for uptime and full page load monitoring. The monitoring is performed from two locations in order to decrease chances of false alerts and make monitoring results more objective. You can read more about my methodology of monitoring here.

Here are the monthly monitoring reports screenshots:



These monitor checks are performed with 1-minute interval, which makes it great for detecting website uptime and downtime.

So, we need Uptime values from this table for finding the winner of our Contest.
By the way, downtime is detected if server response time (time-to-first-byte) is more than 10 seconds.

Other values (just for information):
– Response time is not that important for this Contest, because I’ve got a better indicator monitored, which is Full page load time (see below).
– Number of failures may be interesting to look at, but this is just an additional information to Uptime, which is more important for the overall hosting evaluation.

Only three last hosts on the screenshot have not passed the uptime benchmark test for great hosting. The other hosts I’m monitoring were up more than 99.9% in June. Websites on the three failed hosting were not available for more than 44.6 minutes in total in this month.

Here are some uptime details for the hosts in the order of the places the hosts took in the Contest in June 2016:

InMotionHosting had very good uptime 99.98%. It was not available 0.02% of the time which equals about 9 minutes this month.

A2Hosting had also 99.98% uptime (and not available for 9 minutes).

GeekStorage had even better uptime (99.99%). And 0.01% it was not available (4.5 minutes). It’s nearly perfect.

SiteGround was simply perfect with 100% uptime. Not a single second of being not available.

LunarPages showed pretty good uptime 99.96%. And 0.04% (a bit less than 18 minutes) being unavailable is a solid result.

Squidix had very high uptime (99.98%). The site on this hosting was not available 0.02% of the time in June (about 9 minutes minutes).

HostWinds showed perfect uptime (100%). No downtime. Awesome.

StableHost had 99.97% uptime. It makes 0.03% (13.4 minutes) when the site on this host was not available. Very good result for the affordable host.

HawkHost was brilliant with 99.99% uptime. It was not available for 0.01% of the June time (4.5 minutes). Superb!

VeeroTech performed with 99.96% uptime. My site hosted with it was not available 0.04% (a bit less than 18 minutes) in June. Very good for this affordable host.

MochaHost did not perform well. Just 99.28% uptime and accordingly 0.72% of time being not available. From user point of view it was down for 5.36 hours.

Eleven2 improved its uptime compared to the previous month. But still did not get to the green zone above 99.9% which is one of the benchmarks for a great host. My website on this host was up 99.85%, which means no one could access my website on this hosting 0.15% of the time in this month (equal to 67 minutes).

GlowHost failed uptime tests (96.7%). It was not available 3.3% of the time (24.6 hours). Not good at all this month.

These tests are performed with 15-minute interval. It makes it a perfect real-user performance monitor. This monitor’s activity is equal to 192 unique visitors per day (about 5,760 unique visitors per month).

Avg Test Duration is the Full page load time, which is very clear and important factor for the Hosting Performance Contest.

We don’t need Uptime from this table because we have got a better (more precise) Uptime indicator from the previous table.

Also, we don’t need Failures from this table, because it’s less precise than the same indicator from the previous table.

But we will need Apdex, particularly its S (Satisfactory) part. This shows how much time (in %) the website loaded faster than 2.5 seconds. I call it Satisfactory Apdex.

InMotionHosting won the gold because it has passed both benchmark tests (Uptime and Satisfactory Apdex) and had the best Full page load time (0.82 sec) among the hosts which have also passed both benchmarks. Improved from the previous month and very well done in June!

A2Hosting was quite close to the winner, but being a little bit slower (0.93 sec) made it the second with silver medal. Very good!

GeekStorage was very close to the first two in regards hosting speed (1.0 sec). Very solid third place and bronze medal in result!

SiteGround could nearly won the medal, but being just a few portions of a second slower than the leaders it’s hot at their tail.

LunarPages was pretty fast (1.13 seconds full page load time). Really good for the budget plan I’m using.

Squidix was also great in June. It was as fast as 1.14 seconds full page load time.

HostWinds performed really well in June. Its speed 1.15 seconds looks impressive.

StableHost being also a budget host performed quite well. Its speed was 1.52 sec and other performance characteristics were very good in June. Its Satisfactory Apdex was also very high (99.75%) and much above the highest standards which are set for great hosts.

HawkHost is one more affordable host which performed amazingly. although it’s not among the medalists due to a strong competition. And 1.57 seconds was the full page load time of my website hosted with it.

VeeroTech could win a medal among affordable hosts, since it was fast (1.4 sec). But its Satisfactory Apdex was less than the benchmark. Being fast an average is not enough for win the prize in this Contest, because all characteristics should be stellar. However, VeeroTech is not far from it.

MochaHost had pretty good speed (1.61 sec). But it failed both benchmarks (Uptime and Satisfactory Apdex). That’s why it did not have a chance to fight for the prize in the Contest this month.

Eleven2, like a previous host, did not satisfy the strict rules of passing the benchmarks. So it goes nearly at the end of the list with its speed 1.63 seconds.

GlowHost was not fast (2.59 sec). In addition to failing badly benchmarks, it was the slowest hosting in this Contest. Only the last place in this Contest.

Conclusion

Thus, the best hosts which have demonstrated amazing performance in June 2016 are the medalists: InMotionHosting, A2Hosting and GeekStorage. Very close to them goes SiteGround. All these hosts are from the higher pricing category.

The three winners in the budget hosting category are newcomers LunarPages, HostWinds and the Performance Hosting Contest veteran StableHost. Tail to tail behind the medalists goes HawkHost, which is also a reputable veteran of the Contest.

All these budget hosts, like the winners in the higher pricing segment, have passed the benchmarks set for the great hosting.

Congrats to these hosts with really good performance in June 2016!

P.S.: Past and future Hosting Performance Contest results are (and will be) published on this page.
Also, you can see real-time performance charts of the hosts I monitor as well as historical data on the hosting performance on this page.
Other monthly roundups of this Hosting Performance Contest are available here.
And my recommended hosts are here.

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