Here’s the third Monthly Hosting Performance Contest Roundup for April 2016!
I’ve been testing 7 hosts in a non-stop manner the whole month and will show you the results now.
By the way, you can find the latest roundups here and the performance tables and charts here.
This time I’ve added 3 more hosts. I knew that two of them are great hosts. And the third host is well-known, from the same price range, but after some reviews research I assumed it was not as great. And this contest roundup confirmed it. it’s good to have it for a more interesting hosting comparison!
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 some of these 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 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.
April 2016 Hosting Performance Contest – Results
I’ve been monitoring 7 hosting this month. Some of them are very affordable and some of them are a bit more pricey:
- GeekStorage (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)
- GlowHost
- Eleven2
And the winner of this month’s contest is GeekStorage!
And pretty close to the winner go Squidix and StableHost.
Average full page load time of GeekStorage (the winner) was 1.01 seconds. Uptime was 99.99%. And Satisfactory Apdex was 100% (i.e. 100% of time the full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds). All these parameters are very close to perfect and much above the benchmarks specified for the great performance. And for being the fastest host GeekStorage wins the gold.
Close the the winner but little behind comes Squidix. It’s the owner of the solid silver medal.
In April 2016 Squidix was on average as fast as 1.09 seconds that is just 0.08 seconds slower than GeekStorage.
Squidix‘s uptime was 99.97% which is great.
Its Satisfactory Apdex was 99.9% (i.e. 99.9% of all time full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds). It’s very close to the winner and very good performance!
I’d like to emphasize the bronze medalist – StableHost. It is nearly two times more affordable than the leaders of this contest, but it still could compete with them on par. Also, StableHost was the winner of the previous monthly contest.
During April 2016 StableHost maintained full page load time for my website 1.37 seconds on average. It’s truly fast. The uptime was 99.96% which is above the highest standards. And the Satisfactory Apdex was 99.21% (99.21% of all time the speed was faster than 2.5 seconds). It’s also above the standards for best hosting.
Also, you may want to see how StableHost performed in the past.
Other monitored hosts have not satisfied uptime benchmark level for the best hosting (99.9% or above). But they did it in different ways and presented different performance.
VeeroTech presented very good both speed (1.16 seconds full page load time) and Satisfactory Apdex (99.64%). But since its uptime (99.76%) was a bit lower the best hosting uptime benchmark (99.9%) it could not beat StableHost.
By the way, I was contacted by VeeroTech representative and he was concerned about the uptime performance of this hosting. After a short talk we decided to double check VeeroTech’s uptime using another shared hosting account that VeeroTech set up for me. As it appeared, the new hosting account (marked as “VeeroTech – 2” on the screenshot further in this page) performed also with almost the same uptime (99.75%). Since these are two different acconts, we can see how uptime differs, which is good for more objective results. This month both accounts have performed relatively.
Anyway, Veerotech’s uptime is not bad. But it’s below the benchmarks for this Contest. If VeeroTech’s uptime were a bit better (99.9% or above), then this host would win very solid third place. But today I just wish it good luck in the following month!
If you want, you can see how VeeroTech performed in the past here.
The same story with HawkHost. Its speed was great (1.27 seconds) and its Satisfactory Apdex (99.71%) was good, but its uptime (99.85%) did not meet the hisghest standards (99.9%) and it did not let HawkHost be among the best hosts in this month.
Also, here you can see how HawkHost performed in the past.
Not very bad results were presented by GlowHost. Of course, its uptime (99.7%) was below best hosting standards standards (99.9%), but its speed was not very bad (2.32 seconds full page load time). Anyway, its Satisfactory Apdex (91.22%) was below the benchmark, which is not good.
However, even if its uptime and Apdex were above the standards, GlowHost would not win the prize anyway, because it’s slower than other great hosts in this contest.
And the last competitor of the contest – Eleven2 hosting. I did not hope it would win any prize from the very beginning, because this is the contest with very high standards and benchmarks. And you can see that this host was pretty bad compared to others.
Its biggest issue is uptime – just 92.02%. it’s really poor. However, its average speed looks not so bad (1.64 seconds). But if you look at its Satisfactory Apdex (88.39%), it’s not good at all. In other words, Eleven2 was faster than 2.5 seconds just 88.39% of time in this month, whereas 99% is what we should expect from a great host.
Here’s a table view to compare the Hosting Performance Contest results in April 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).
Uptime: Uptime (the more the better).
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).
Apdex-S OK: If Satisfactory Apdex benchmark (99%) passed (YES is very good, NO is not very good).
And here are the charts with the Hosting Performance Contest results in April 2016:
April 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.
Three first hosts (the medalists of this Contest – GeekStorage, Squidix and StableHost) have shown great uptime above 99.9%. 99.9% is the uptime benchmark and it’s equal to 44.6 minutes downtime in April 2016.
GeekStorage was almost perfect with 99.99% uptime. It means that it was available only 0.01% which is equal to 4.5 mnutes during the whole month. It’s amazing for a shared hosting.
Squidix was good with 99.97% uptime. During this month it was not available just 0.03% of all time which is equal to 13.4 minutes. Great results as well.
StableHost was on par with the leaders with 99.96% uptime. It was not available 0.04% (17.8 minutes) during this month.
It’s worth noting that StableHost is pretty much more affordable than the other two leaders, and it makes this host look really good.
Uptime values for the leaders were very good and much above the uptime benchmark (99.9%) which makes a host with great uptime.
The three following hosts (Veerotech, HawkHost and GlowHost) have fallen a bit below that highest standard. But their uptime values were not bad and relatively close to the uptime benchmark (99.9%).
Veerotech performed with 99.76% uptime. It was not avaiable 0.24% of the time (equal to 1 hour 47 minutes). I would not say it’s awful for a shared hosting, but it’s not very good either. The second account with this host also performed similarly.
HawkHost (99.85% uptime) was relatively close to the uptime benchmark, but alas, it could not make it this time. It was not avaialable for 0.15% (1h 6.9min).
GlowHost had 99.7% uptime and not available 0.3% of the time (equal to 2h 13.8m).
And Eleven2 performed with pretty bad uptime (92.02%), which is below acceptable for a host of this price range. It was not available 7.98% of the month which is equal to almost two and a half days (2.47 days). It was awful performance.
Thus, only three hosts have passed Uptime benchmark test (99.9%) and could fight for the gold.
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.
GeekStorage won the first prize because it has passed both benchmark tests (Uptime and Satisfactory Apdex) and had the best Full page load time (1.01 sec). Brilliant!
Squidix was very close to the winner, but being a little bit slower (1.09 sec) made him the second. Very good!
StableHost, being a more budget host than the leaders, performed comparatively very well (1.37 seconds full page load time). It has passed all the benchmark tests in this month. Congrats to StableHost with the very solid third place.
And by the way, only these three hosts could pass all the benchmarks tests which means that it’s not easy to meet these very high standards which are set for the Contest.
Among other hosts, I’d emphasize VeeroTech and HawkHost. They are fast (less than 1.3 seconds full page load time) and their Satisfactory Apdex was great (much above the stadnards). If next month they show a little bit better uptime, they can fight for the leadership in the Hosting Performance Contest.
As regards other hosts, they were not so great.
GlowHost had not bad speed performance on average (2.32 sec), but its Satisfactory Apdex was much lower than great hosts in this Contest should have. it means that the host was too often slower than 2.5 seconds.
And Eleven2, although its speed was seemingly good (1.64 sec), it failed heavily in both critical aspects: uptime and Satisfactory Apdex.
Conclusion
Thus, the best hosts which have demonstrated amazing performance in April 2016 are the three leaders: GeekStorage, Squidix and StableHost.
The following two hosts have been good, but not good enough to be among the leaders: VeeroTech and HawkHost.
And the other two hosts (GlowHost, Eleven2) did not perform well. Moreover, the latter host was simply awful with its uptime.
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.
And my recommended hosts are here.
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.
Bravo Michael, for deeply researching on the valuable info that certainly gonna saves people from thousands of Scammy Host providers that offers so called “to good to be true services”
Thank you Ryan.
This kind of monitoring is really useful stuff.
The monitoring data speaks much better than even reviews of real users, because the users don’t check their sites performance every single minute as the monitoring does.
Always appreciate your comments!