Here’s the 54th Monthly Hosting Performance Contest Roundup for July 2020!
I’ve been testing 15 hosts in a non-stop manner the whole month and I’ll show you the results below. The interesting observation is that the top hosts demonstrate even more improved speed which looks shameless compared to previous periods.
By the way, you can find the latest roundups here and the performance tables and charts here.
All monitored hosts are presented in the pricing categories according to the most affordable plan they have. Also, I bought the most affordable plans available at each hosting company to test hosting performance.
Let’s see how the hosts performed in July 2020!
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 20 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.
Please note that although all hosts mentioned in this post are well-established and considered to be very good, I highly recommend not all of them. My recommended hosts are here.
July 2020 Hosting Performance Contest – Results
Here are the fifteen hosts that you can compare this month. I’ve broken down them in three groups: very affordable (below $5/mo), middle class (upto $8/mo) and more expensive ($8+/mo).
- SiteGround (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- GeekStorage (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- A2Hosting (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- VeeroTech (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- MDDHosting (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- HawkHost (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- Squidix (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- InMotionHosting
- StableHost
- HostWinds
- HostPapa
- MochaHost
- Eleven2
- GreenGeeks
- GlowHost
You’ll see a breakdown of hosting performance by prices in the sections below.
Let’s start from 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 HostPapa!
In the Top-3 also go HawkHost and Veerotech.
What’s remarkable about the winners this month is that all hosts are from different pricing categories.
HostPapa took the 1st place. Its full page load time (0.47) seconds was amazingly fast. And its uptime (99.99%) was almost perfect and very much above the highest standards set for the greatest hosts (99.9%). My site was not available this month for just 4.5 minutes. As regards Satisfactory Apdex, it was simply perfect 100% which is of course above the benchmark level (99%) determined for the greatest hosts. The host surpassed the benchmark tests and thanks to the best speed it got the gold this month!
The silver medalist is HawkHost.
HawkHost performed just perfectly and satisfied both benchmarks set for the greatest hosts. Its average speed was 0.52 seconds which is astonishingly fast. It was slower than the leader by just 0.05 seconds. And its uptime (100%) was simply perfect and much above the benchmark level (99.9%) set for the greatest hosts. My site hosted with this hosting was available all the time this month. The host’s Satisfactory Apdex (100%) was also perfect and of course much above the highest standards (99%). And since this hosting was the second fastest host among the hosts which exceeded all the benchmarks determined for the greatest hosts HawkHost wins the silver medal.
The bronze medal goes to VeeroTech.
Average full page load time of VeeroTech was 0.66 seconds (it’s super fast). It was slower than the leader by just 0.19 seconds. Its Uptime was very high 99.9%. It’s very exactly at the benchmark level set for the greatest hosts. My site hosted with this host was available all the time during the whole month except 44.6 minutes. And the host’s Satisfactory Apdex was brilliant 99.95% (i.e. 99.95% of the time during this month the full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds). It’s much above the benchmark level (99%) set for the greatest hosts. Since all these parameters are above the benchmarks specified for the greatest hosting performance and this hosting was the third fastest host among the hosts which exceeded all the benchmarks determined for the greatest hosts VeeroTech wins the bronze medal.
GreenGeeks took the 4th place. The host performed in this month as fast as 0.71 seconds which is impressively fast. Its uptime was perfect 100%. It’s very much above the benchmark level (99.9%). My site hosted with this host was available all the time during the whole month. And the Satisfactory Apdex was also perfect – 100% (100% of the time the speed was faster than 2.5 seconds, and it’s much above the highest standards set for great hosting which is 99%). Perfect performance!
A2 Hosting took the 5th place. Its average speed was brilliant (0.75 seconds full page load time). The uptime was almost perfect 99.99%, which is very much above the benchmark level (99.9%). My site was not available for just 4.5 minutes this month. And the host’s Satisfactory Apdex (100%) was simply perfect and very well above the highest standards (99%). Outstanding performance!
In this month StableHost took the 6th place in the Contest. This month my site was on average as fast as 0.75 seconds that is brilliant. And its uptime was very high 99.97% which is much above the highest standards set for the best hosts (99.9%). My site hosted with this host was available all the time during this month except 13.4 minutes. And its Satisfactory Apdex was perfect 100% (i.e. 100% of the time the full page load time of my website hosted with this host was less than 2.5 seconds). It was much above the highest standards set for the best hosts (99%). Since StableHost’s uptime was a little bit lower than A2’s uptime, even if both hosts had the same speed this month, StableHost goes after A2 in the ranking. Superb performance too!
In this month MochaHost took the 7th place in the Contest. It was on average as fast as 0.85 seconds that is really fast. And its uptime (100%) was simply perfect and of course very much above the benchmark value set for the great hosts (99.9%). My site hosted with this host was available during this month all the time. And its Satisfactory Apdex was also perfect – 100% (i.e. 100% of all the time full page load time of my website hosted with this host was less than 2.5 seconds). It’s very much above the benchmark level set for the great hosts (99%). Perfectly awesome.
Eleven2 goes to the 8th place. Its 0.86 seconds full page load time was very good. Its uptime (99.95%) was very high and of well above the benchmark level which is set for great hosts (99.9%). My site was available all the time during this month except 22.3 minutes. This host had great Satisfactory Apdex (99.95% of the time my website hosted with this host was faster than 2.5 seconds). It was much above the benchmark set for the greatest hosts (99%). Awesome results.
SiteGround has got the 9th place this month. It performed as fast as 0.87 seconds which is pretty fast. Its uptime (99.99%) was very high and almost perfect. It’s above the highest standards level set for the greatest hosts (99.9%). My site hosted with this host was available all the time during this month except 4.5 minutes. And the Satisfactory Apdex was simply perfect and of course much above the highest standards as well – 100% (100% of the time this month the speed was faster than 2.5 seconds). It’s above the highest standards (99%) too. Great.
MDD Hosting this month took the 10th place. The average speed was 0.9 seconds which is really fast. And its Satisfactory Apdex (100%) was simply perfect and of course above the highest standards (99%). Uptime (99.96%) was very good and much above the highest standards set for the greatest hosts (99.9%). My site hosted with this hosting was available all the time during this month except 17.9 minutes. Really good performance!
Squidix took the 11th place with 1.39 seconds speed, which is brilliant. And it had uptime (100%) which is perfect and of course above the highest standards (99.9%) set for the greatest hosts. My site hosted with this host was available this month all the time. Also, it had a very high Satisfactory Apdex – 99.86%. It means that 99.86% of the time in this month my testing site was faster than 2.5 seconds in this month. This is very well above the highest benchmark (99%) which is set for great hosts. Very good performance.
Other hosts could not meet at least one of the benchmarks set for the best hosting. However, the results of some hosts were very close to the benchmarks and pretty good in general.
GeekStorage took the 12th place this month.. Its speed was amazing (0.73 seconds). But its uptime (99.72%) was below the benchmark (99.9%) set for the greatest hosts. My site was not available for 2.08 hours this month. This host’s Satisfactory Apdex (99.77%) was great and pretty much above the benchmark level (99%). Because of the failed strict uptime benchmark test this host did not get higher in the rankings.
InMotionHosting took the 13th place. The host had generally good speed (1.08 seconds on average). And it had uptime (99.97%) which is above the highest standards (99.9%). My site hosted with this hosting was 13.4 minutes offline. But its Satisfactory Apdex (96.76%) was below the benchmark (99%). 96.76% of the time the site was faster than 2.5 seconds.
HostWinds got the 14th place. Its average speed (1.32 secs) was really great. But its uptime was 99.86%, which is a little bit below the benchmark level (99.9%). My site was not available for 1.04 hours this month. The host’s Satisfactory Apdex (99.86%) was great and very much above the highest standards (99%) though.
GlowHost went to the last 15th place. This host could not get higher because of its relative slowness. Its uptime (99.87%) was a bit below the benchmark level (99.9%) which is set to determine the greatest hosts. My site was not available for 58 minutes this month. But the host’s speed was not excellent (2.89 seconds). And as expected, its Satisfactory Apdex (0.08%) was the lowest among other hosts in this Contest; and it was far from reaching the benchmark level (99%). The loading time of my test website was worse than 2.5 seconds during almost the whole month.
Generally, the competition of the monitored hosts this month was pretty tight as usual, especially considering that the speed of the hosts has generally improved.
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 July 2020:
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 20 minutes.
Uptime: Uptime (the more the better). Checked every minute.
Superb Uptime: If Uptime Benchmark (99.9%) passed (YES is 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 20 minutes.
Superb Apdex-S: If Satisfactory Apdex benchmark (99%) passed (YES is very good).
Color areas: Green is superb and above the highest standards. The greener, the better. Yellow is good, but below the highest standards. Orange is not very good; worse than yellow. Red is comparatively the worst.
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).
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 performs well or/and has a good potential in winning prizes in the Contest, but I want to have more proved records of its technical and support performance.)
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 three categories to compete within as you can see above in the table.
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 July 2020:
1. The golden medalist: HostPapa.
2. The silver medalist: HawkHost (it’s in my list of the recommended hosts; see my review).
3. The bronze medalist: VeeroTech (it’s in my list of the recommended hosts; see my review).
July 2020 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.
Just three hosts on the screenshot have not passed the uptime benchmark test (99.9%) for the greatest hosting. The other hosts I’m monitoring were up more than 99.9% in this month. The websites on the uptime-failed hosting were not available for more than 44.6 minutes in total this month.
These tests are performed with 20-minute interval from two locations. It makes it a perfect real-user performance monitor. This monitor’s activity is equal to 144 unique visitors per day (about 4,320 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.
Conclusion
The best hosts which have demonstrated the best performance in July 2020 are the medalists: HostPapa, HawkHost and VeeroTech.
By the way, all the top winners have passed the strict benchmarks determined for great hosting!
As regards the winners in different pricing categories, here they are:
The best hosts in the higher pricing category ($8+/mo) in this month go in the following order: HostPapa, GreenGeeks and A2 Hosting.
The best three hosts in the middle pricing category ($5.01-8/mo) in this month are VeeroTech, Eleven2 and Squidix.
The best three hosts in the most affordable pricing category (up to $5/mo) in this month are HawkHost, StableHost and MochaHost.
Please note, that I’m using the cheapest plans available on each of the monitored hosts.
It’s noticeable as usual that some of the less expensive hosts outperformed hosts from more expensive categories.
And the hero of the Contest this month is HawkHost. This is the hosting which being the fastest had perfect both uptime and Satisfactory Apdex!
You can download a PDF version of this article (740 KB):
BTW, I respect your privacy, and of course I don't send spam, affiliate offers or trade your emails. What I send is information that I consider useful.
Hello Everyone,
Is there any chance to participate in this competition now?
Hi Raihan,
I’d say no, unfortunately. I choose the participants in a conservative manner. You can’t pay to participate, I change the participants of this Contest very rarely etc.
Do you plan to review HostPapa? I’m curious about it receiving first prize, but not being recommended.
Thanks for all your work on this topic!
Hey David,
Thanks for the request.
First of all, this Contest displays no more than just results of speed and uptime performance for the month in question. And only using the cheapest plan. And only using pretty simple WP installation. And no using caching plugins. And this Contest does not consider anything else, e.g. it does not review technical support, tools, features, overall clients’ satisfaction etc. As you can see the Contest is pretty limited to be the ultimate tool to evaluate a host. The contest is about speed and uptime performance during a month and that’s it, no more no less. As you can see, the average speed difference presented in the Contest is sometimes is almost none (less than a tenth of a second). So the first prize sounds cool, but in fact the difference with other places is often too little. The Contest is a great tool to see how the hosting performance evolves though!
Now back to your question.
All the hosts in this Contest are well-performing or/and well-established hosts. And any host can serve you more or less well, some hosts are better than others in my opinion which is based not only on the performance, but more or clients satisfaction and the value-for-price feeling. Hostpapa is a good host in general, but I already have the preferred host in this segment – and this host is SiteGround. So it means that if a person hesitates and does not have preferences which host to choose, I suggest SiteGround over HostPapa.
At the same time, if you have specific preferences (e.g. price or your friend’s recommendation etc), then of course you can go with HostPapa.
Also, for your information, initially I used LunarPages which was not long ago acquired by HostPapa. LunarPages was cheaper but worse in service than HostPapa.
So, in short, currently my hosting preferences regarding HostPapa’s segment are SiteGround is the first option to consider, then GreenGeeks, then HostPapa, then InMotionHosting. A2 stands apart since it’s in a slightly different client segment.
Hope it helps.
Michael, thank you for such a detailed reply! I am still a little confused — why do you test hosts that you don’t recommend?
David,
Initially I picked out some of the top hosts in the shared hosting industry. Also, I excluded EIG hosts deliberately since this corporation spoils the industry IMO and I don’t want to give them even a chance to participate in my Contest. Then I added some of the less known hosts that I recommend after studying reviews and analyzing how the hosts solved the conflict situations (usually a founder or CEO participated) to give these great little guys more exposure and more chances to take place under the sun among bigger guys.
Now about why I test the guys that I don’t explicitly recommend.
The main point is that the hosts which I recommend are segmented. In other words, each host that I recommend is for each client segment. In very simple words, my list of recommended hosts is limited to help people narrow down the choice. I did not want to suggest more than one host in the same client segment.
So, the hosts which I don’t include in my recommended list are not necessary bad hosts. They are just less preferable from my point of view compared to the guys that I explicitly recommend.
Probably I could do this way as you say, i.e. testing only the guys that I recommend. But it would be sort of too bold marketing, i.e. let the hosts compete without any true competing you know. I wanted to make it more sophisticated. I guess it turned out to be more complicated though haha :))
Another point why I monitor the hosts that I do not put in my recommended list is to avoid the following psychological trap. Once you start recommending a host, you sort of marry the host 🙂 And then it takes comparatively high efforts to stop recommending the host once its quality drops (sort of divorce). Keeping in the pool both recommended hosts and not recommended hosts under my radars (even if both kinds of hosts are more or less on the same level of attractiveness for clients) helps me to keep my head colder, be more objective and be less sticked to my recommendations (i.e. this way I can “divorce” much easier once the time comes).
Hope it clears out something 🙂
Hey Michael,
you have given great insights! its very easy to undertand and well explained each points. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. keep posting deep insights article, looking forward to read more from you.
Heu Sai, the true power of the data that I present is in the tons of tests and the understanding that comes after that. I’ve got many articles with my testing results. Feel free to explore and ask any questions.
Hey Michael,
Great article, thanks for sharing us your knowledge and ideas with us, I completely agree with all your points, since i am not a technical expert, your article is written in such a way that any layman can understand easily. keep up the good work.
cheers
Appreciate your feedback, Jones. if you have any questions regarding any article, feel free to ask!
HeyMichael,
Great article, never regret time which invested to read the entire article, everything is so detailed,which shows the quality of your blog. keep up the good work.
Cheers.
Glad you found the articles useful. Feel free to share it!
Hi micheal
I love the way you have tested all hosting servers and gave us right choice to choose the best one
You are welcome. Feel free to share it. This kind of monitoring is a unique initiative. By the way, I have not been testing all hosting servers but just 15 😉
Hi Michael,
Your articles are very intersting and inspiring. You are the real blogger, Michael. I have to compliment that! But I cant find WPX hosting in the list. Any reasons?
Hi Mary,
WPX is a host from a higher pricing category (considering initial prices before renewal) than all other hosts in the Contest.
Besides, there are many other hosts in the world that I have not put in my Contest as I have a limited budget for my tests. All this monitoring is not sponsored and it’s anonymous (hosts are not informed).
WPX is currently in the list of my recommended hosts, after all.