Here’s the tenth Monthly Hosting Performance Contest Roundup for November 2016!
I’ve been testing 15 hosts in a non-stop manner the whole month and you are about to see the results right now. In general, the result can be described as consistent by speed – the fastest win without sudden benchmark tests failures.
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 what results hosts has shown in November 2016!
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.
November 2016 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 $4/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)
- MDDHosting (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- VeeroTech (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- StableHost (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- HawkHost (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- Squidix (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- A2Hosting (I recommend it, here’s my review)
- InMotionHosting
- LunarPages
- HostWinds
- 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 GeekStorage!.
In the Top-3 go also HostWinds and A2Hosting.
What’s special about the leaders is that the best two winners are from the middle-price category. Not always the most expensive hosts are the best-performing hosts!
Average full page load time of GeekStorage (the winner) was 1.36 seconds (it’s fast). Its Uptime was 99.99% (almost perfect) And its Satisfactory Apdex was 100% (i.e. 100% of time the full page load time was less than 2.5 seconds). Fantastic! All these parameters are much above the benchmarks specified for the greatest performance. And since this hosting was the fastest host among the hosts which exceeded all the benchmarks determined for the greatest hosts GeekStorage wins the gold medal.
It’s worth mentioning that GeekStorage is absolutely not expensive, especially compared to some other hosts tested. And it wins all of the other hosts the second month in a row. Congratulations!
The silver medal goes to HostWinds. A little bit slower than the leader.
In November 2016 HostWinds was on average as fast as 1.38 seconds that is 0.02 seconds slower than the leader. HostWinds‘s uptime was not bad 99.2%. And its Satisfactory Apdex was flawless 100% (i.e. 100% of all time full page load time of my website hosted with it was less than 2.5 seconds). Very good results!
The bronze medalist is A2Hosting.
A2Hosting performed in November 2016 as fast as 1.45 seconds which is pretty good. Its uptime was very high 99.98%. And the Satisfactory Apdex was perfect 100% (100% of all time the speed was faster than 2.5 seconds, and of course it’s above the highest standards set for great hosting).
LunarPages took the 4th place with 1.48 seconds speed, good uptime (99.98%) and great Satisfactory Apdex (99.96%). The values are much above the highest standards set for the best hosts.
MDDHosting has taken the 5th place. It was quite fast (1.55 seconds full page load time). And its uptime (100%) was simply perfect. Its Satisfactory Apdex (100%) was also the best possible. It’s the only host this month to pass both benchmarks tests at perfect 100%!
SiteGround took the 6th place. Its 1.55 seconds full page load time was great. Its uptime (99.95%) was very good. And its Satisfactory Apdex (99.28%) was also above the benchmark. Very good performance!
VeeroTech has taken the 7th place. Its speed was very good (1.61 seconds full page load time). And its uptime (99.98%) was also great. And its Satisfactory Apdex (99.31%) was a above the benchmark (99%) determining the greatest hosts. Very solid performance and all benchmarks test passed!
InMotionHosting goes to the 8th place. Its performance values were also above the benchmarks which is very good. Its speed (1.68 seconds) was pretty good. As well as its uptime (99.99%). And its Satisfactory Apdex (99.74%) was very high. not the fastest host, but very good performance.
Other hosts could not meet at least one of the benchmarks set for the best hosting, though the results of some hosts were very close to the benchmarks and pretty good.
GreenGeeks took the 9th place. Although its average speed was not bad (1.71 seconds full page load time) it failed both benchmarks. Its uptime was 99.78% which is below the best standard (99.9%). And its Satisfactory Apdex was 98.56% which is also a bit below the highest standards (99%) set for great hosting.
StableHost goes the 10th place.. Its speed was good (1.77 seconds). But it could not make its uptime a little bit – 99.88% (the highest standard is 99.9%). And its Satisfactory Apdex (99.6%) was quite above the benchmark (99%), which is great.
MochaHost goes to the 11th place. Its average speed (1.87 secs) was not bad. But its Satisfactory Apdex (97.52%) could not get to the highest standards (99%). Its uptime (99.91%) was above the benchmark (99.9%).
Squidix goes to the 12th place with its speed 1.96 seconds which is not bad. What did not work very well for this host is its Satisfactory Apdex which was 96.47% (96.47% of time its Full page load time was below 2.5 seconds). But its uptime (99.99%) was nearly perfect and much above the benchmark level (99.9%).
HawkHost took just the 13th place. Its average speed (1.96 seconds) was slower than the above hosts. And its Satisfactory Apdex (95.4%) did not meet the highest standards (99%). Its uptime (99.18%) was also below the benchmark set for great hosts.
Eleven2 got the 14th place. Its average speed (1.97 secs) was slower than the above hosts. And it failed both benchmarks. Its uptime was 99.75%, which is below the benchmark (99.9%). And its Satisfactory Apdex (95.33%) could not get to the highest standards (99%) as well.
And finally, GlowHost is again on the last, 15th place. This host could not get higher because of its low speed. This month it showed good uptime (99.95%), but its speed was not good (2.84 seconds). And as expected, its Satisfactory Apdex (5.71%) is far from reaching the benchmark level (99%).
Generally, the competition this month revealed slight speed improvement of many monitored hosts. Thanks to it more monitored hosts could meet Satisfactory Apdex benchmark level which is set to determine great hosting in regards of good speed stability. Also, it’s interesting that all monitored hosts this month took their places in the Contest strictly according to their speed values. In other words, there were no discrepancies between speed performance and the places taken as it can be sometimes because of failing some of the benchmarks when other performance values being great.
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 November 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 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 November 2016:
November 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.
Four 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 November. Websites on the uptime-failed hosting were not available for more than 43.2 minutes in total this month.
Here are some uptime details for the hosts in the order of the places the hosts took in the Contest in November 2016:
GeekStorage performed with great 99.99% uptime. It’s much above the highest standards (99.9%). My site hosted with this hosting was not available in November for 0.1% which equals 4.3 minutes.
HostWinds showed good uptime 99.92%. It’s above the benchmark (99.9%). Being unavailable for 0.08% means 34.6 minutes of downtime this month from a user point of view.
A2Hosting had 99.98% uptime (and not available for about 8.6 minutes which is 0.02%). Very good result.
LunarPages showed also a good uptime 99.98%. And 0.02% (about 8.6 minutes) being unavailable. It’s also above the benchmark (99.9%).
MDDHosting showed perfect uptime 100%. Simply no downtime this month.
SiteGround performed very good with 99.95% uptime. Much above the benchmark, which is great. This month my site with this host was not available for 21.6 minutes.
VeeroTech performed very well with 99.98% uptime (main site) and 99.99% uptime additional testing site. My main testing site hosted with this host was not available 0.02% (about 8.6 minutes) this month. It’s very good for the affordable host like this.
InMotionHosting had almost perfect uptime 99.99%. It was not available 0.01% of the time which equals 4.3 minutes this month. Great results.
GreenGeeks failed with its uptime. 99.78% uptime and 0.22% (about 1.6 hours) being down from a user point of view. Not very good.
StableHost had 99.88% uptime. It’s a not bad result, but a bit below the benchmark set for the great hosting (99.9%). This month my testing site with this host was not available for 0.12% (51.8 minutes).
MochaHost got a good uptime (99.91%). Only 0.09% of time being not available. From a user point of view it was down for 38.9 minutes.
Squidix was almost perfect with uptime this month (99.99%). The site on this hosting was not available 0.01% of the time this month (about 4.3 minutes). It’s strongly better than the highest standards.
HawkHost was not very impressive with 99.18% uptime. It’s below the benchmark performance set for great hosting. My website with this hosting was not available for 5.9 hours in this month.
Eleven2 failed with its uptime. My website on this host was up 99.75%, which means no one could access my website on this hosting 0.25% of the time in this month (equals to 1.8 hours).
GlowHost passed uptime tests with 99.95%. It was not available for 0.05% of the time (21.6 minutes). It was pretty good from uptime point of view.
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 for the second month in a row won the gold in the monthly Contest thanks to its the best speed compared to other hosts and other metrics (uptime and Satisfactory Apdex) being above the benchmarks.
HostWinds was a little bit slower than the leader (1.38 seconds on avereage) which made it the second with the silver medal. Very good!
A2Hosting was also fast (1.45 seconds full page load time) which brought it the bronze medal. It’s a good result.
LunarPages was slower than the leaders, but not far behind them (1.48 seconds full page load time). It’s a good result for the the budget plan I’m using with this host.
For the same reason MDDHosting was pretty fast (1.55 seconds) and with perfect Satisfactory Apdex (100%). Superb results. If it were a bit faster on average, it could easily get into the top performers this month.
SiteGround did a not bad job this month. It was quite fast (1.55 seconds full page load time on average) and its Satisfactory Apdex (99.28%) passed the benchmark set for the great hosting (99%).
VeeroTech satisfied all benchmark tests like the above hosts. But being a little bit slower (1.61 seconds full page load time) put it behind the better performing hosts. But still very good results for this affordable hosting.
InMotionHosting was also a bit behind the top performers. Good full page load time (1.68 sec), but not the best one.
GreenGeeks had a good speed in general (1.71 seconds full page load time), but my site with it was available only 99.78% of time. This is less than the benchmark (99.9%). Also its Satisfactory Apdex was a bit low (98.56%) which is also worse than the coresponding benchmark (99%).
The same story with StableHost. It performed quite good from a speed point of view (1.77 sec). But some of the other hosts were faster.
MochaHost had not bad speed (1.87 sec). But it failed in Satisfactory Apdex benchmark.
Squidix had not bad speed in general (1.96 seconds full page load time. But it failed Satisfactory Apdex.
HawkHost had also not bad speed (1.96 seconds). But it failed a bit both benchmarks.
Eleven2, like in previous months, did not satisfy the strict rules of passing the benchmarks. And its not very fast speed (1.97 seconds) could not let it go higher in the rankings.
GlowHost was significantly slower than all the other monitored hosts in this Contest (2.84 sec). And as expected, it failed badly its Satisfactory Apdex (just 5.71%). So, only the last place.
Conclusion
Thus, the best hosts which have demonstrated the best performance in November 2016 are the medalists: GeekStorage, HostWinds and A2Hosting. By the way, the first two hosts are not the most expensive ones!
As regards the winners in different pricing categories, here they are:
The best hosts in the higher pricing category ($8-10/mo) in November 2016 go in the following order: A2Hosting, InMotionHosting and Squidix.
The best three hosts in the middle pricing category ($4-8/mo) in November 2016 are GeekStorage, HostWinds and SiteGround.
By the way, GeekStorage, although being an affordable hosting, has won the gold medal among all the hosts in this Contest the second month in a row! Very impressive!
The best three hosts in the most affordable pricing category (up to $4/mo) in November 2016 are LunarPages (I’m using its cheapest plan without cPanel), MDDHosting and VeeroTech.
By the way, I’m using the cheapest plans available on each of the monitored hosts.
It’s interesting that many hosts from the middle and lower pricing category outperformed hosts from the higher pricing category. And the hero of this Contest is GeekStorage which managed to leave all other more expensive hosts behind.
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.
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.
