Intro It’s quite a common mistake to measure hosting speed by checking Server Response Time or Time To First Byte (TTFB). The right way to test hosting speed is measuring Full Page Load Time. And although Server Response Time is connected with hosting speed, it’s absolutely not correct to use TTFB for evaluating hosting speed. In this article I will demonstrate you this. I have collected … [Read more...]
My Hosting Is Slow, I Want To Migrate To A Faster Host. Read This Before Doing It
October 18, 2019 By
Having used more than 100 hosts since 2013, still using 17 different hosts and talking with my readers via email now and then I’ve got quite an experience in dealing with hosting speed issues. And there are two types of extreme reaction of hosting users when then encounter speed issues: Leaving the hosting because of a bad speed ASAP, or Tolerating the awful performance with a concern in … [Read more...]
Hosts Can’t Have Zero Downtime, And Other Sad Truth About Hosting Uptime
September 18, 2019 By
One of the illusions that many hosting users have is that hosting can have 100% uptime. To add insult to injury, some hosting companies promise 100% uptime. But even promising 99.9% uptime can be just a marketing gimmick. The devil is in the technical details what uptime really is. People and hosts understand uptime differently. Don’t fool yourself when expecting high uptime. And don’t let the … [Read more...]
What You Need To Know About RAM And CPU On Shared Hosting Plans
August 19, 2019 By
Let me guess. When choosing a shared hosting you want more CPU and RAM for your account for less money. But some shared hosts do not even display this information. So embarrassing! “What’s wrong with them?!” – you may say. And your second though is “Perhaps CPU and RAM is not what guarantees a shared host to be powerful and fast?” Let me show you the details. In this article: You will … [Read more...]
Does Cloudflare increase Time To First Byte (TTFB)? Tested on 3 hosts. 6480 manual measurements
July 17, 2019 By
One of my readers contacted me regarding experiencing bad Time To First Byte (TTFB) on his website. After a little research I suspected that using Cloudflare and/or a caching plugin can influence TTFB. And I decided to make thousands of speed and TTFB tests with and without using Cloudflare as well as with and without using a caching plugin. I tested it on three different shared hosts. I did … [Read more...]
Is A2Hosting Turbo Boost Really Worth It (After 4176 Tests)?
June 19, 2019 By
I get asked quite frequently what I think about A2Hosting Turbo plan. It's advertised as being up to 20 times faster. I'm always very skeptic about such boasting. And I shared my skepticism whenever I was asked about A2 and before this research I could not really answer the question if A2Hosting Turbo Boost (formerly Turbo) really worth it. And finally I decided to check the performance of … [Read more...]
The Uncomfortable Truth About Testing Website Speed And Hosting Speed
May 17, 2019 By
Intro I’ve seen many times how bloggers test website speed or hosting speed. And it makes me sad. It’s sad because the way they test it does not make sense. And it gives no value to the readers. There are two problems: The first problem is that most people run the speed tests just once or maybe a couple of times. The results of such “testing” are misleading and do more harm than … [Read more...]
Server Response Time And Time To First Byte (TTFB) To Estimate Hosting Speed? 16.5 Mln Tests In 2018
February 18, 2019 By
Intro When people want to estimate hosting speed, they often use Server Response Time or Time To First Byte (TTFB) value. Whereas they should use Full Page Load Time metric. And In this post I show you the data collected during the whole 2018 year on how fast the hosts were and how their speed is connected with Server Response Time (or Time To First Byte (TTFB) to be more … [Read more...]
Is Cloudflare with Cache-Everything rule effective? Tested on StableHost 6336 times from 16 locations
July 17, 2018 By
This is the second part of my practical research on Cloudflare free service. The first part is dedicated to Cloudflare free service without considering Cache-Everything rule. And in this article I present the results of testing free Cloudflare service with and without Cache-everything rule enabled (this option is free). Also, I compared the speed with and without a caching plugin used in … [Read more...]
How fast is A2Hosting with and without free Cloudflare Service?
June 17, 2018 By
I’ve heard quite a few controversial opinions about using a free Cloudflare service. The main point that users blame a free Cloudflare service for is that it sort of brings more harm than good. I decided to check it myself. The main thing I tested thousands of times is website speed with and without free Cloudflare service. By the way, this is the first part of the research. Read the second … [Read more...]