Fastest WordPress hosting you can ever get in 2024

Without going into too much details – WordPress websites tend to be resource demanding because of two main technical reasons: PHP Code Compiling and Database Handling. While some, who run a relatively small websites, do not face any performance problems and can get away with a cheap shared hosting package or fix the website loading speeds purely with caching, there are many for who this is simply not enough, especially when it comes to e-commerce or multilingual websites.

Hosting type and prices

So what type of hosting should you choose for your WordPress website? – It all comes down on how often the content of your website is changing.

Hardware specification for a demanding WordPress hosting needs

For a fast WordPress hosting, you want to get the best hardware in the market. Everything counts up until the smallest detail of specification! CPU cores along with the single core performance, CPU cache size, RAM speed and amount, SSD type, generation, read and write speeds, SSD configuration (RAID or not). Just by choosing a proper hardware can get your website speed up enormously. Here’s my choice of the hardware when it comes to fast WordPress hosting:

CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 9 7950X3D or AMD Ryzen™ 7 7700

Although these are not the CPUs built for servers, they are at the top of the list of best performing processors when it comes to Apache / MariaDB / PHP performance. A while ago I mentioned “Intel i9 13900K” as one of the top choices, but because of this extensive video review published by Hosting Workshop I’ve changed my thoughts.

RAM: 64 – 256GB DDR5 ECC / Non-ECC (>= 3600 MT/S)

To determine the size of RAM you need for your WordPress server, you should look at multiple factors: How much websites are you going to host on it, what RAM dependent technology they will use (e.g. Redis Cache, ElasticPress, etc) and how much space will take your MySQL databases.

A good starting point would be at least 64 GB (which is often a minimum you can get when ordering a decent dedicated server anyway), but if you plan to host many websites on it, the more you can afford, the better.

SSD: M2 Gen5 NVME SSD drive (read/write: 10k MB/s or more)

Forget about regular HDDs or SATA SSDs – in terms of speed nothing will compete with a good M2/PCIe SSD. Always choose the latest generation (Currently Gen5) NVME SSD drive with fastest read and write speeds you can get. Currently there is only one record-breaking player in the market and that is Cruicial T700 (Read speed: 12.4k MB/s, Write speed: 11.8k MB/s). The speed of your SSD drive directly correlates with the speed of your website, because of file read / write operations (iops) performance. This is very important for speed of PHP code compilation and database operations because they are all file related.

Best choices for a WordPress server SSD:

RAID:

For a decent web server it is only logical to have a RAID array configured for SSD disks – it is not only a safety measure, but also an added performance boost. The two top choices: RAID10 and RAID1 offer a 4x better read speed with RAID10 doubling also the write speed. With most M2 gen5 RAID solutions yet to come, it could be really hard and probably also very expensive to get a RAID10 configured (4xGen5 NVME SSD disks) for the recommended specifications mentioned above, but it certainly is a topic for future in terms of speaking about best server performance for WordPress.

Benchmark tests – Cheap VPS vs VDS vs Dedicated Server

Let’s compare three different hosting options to see just how fast WordPress website we can get just by choosing a proper web hosting solution.

Hosting Environment

To ensure that we have as accurate benchmark results as we can get, all of the tested websites has identical setup for the server software & WordPress:

• Server OS: AlmaLinux v8.8.0
• PHP: 8.2.11
• Database: MariaDB 10.6
• WordPress: 6.3.2
• WordPress Plugins: Redis Object Cache 2.4.4, Query Monitor 3.14.1 and WordPress Hosting Benchmark tool 1.3.3
• WordPress Theme: Twenty Twenty Three

Server Specification

WordPress Hosting Benchmark tool – Test Results

This is by far the best benchmark test you can do for your WordPress website and its hosting environment. It comes as an easy-to-use WordPress plugin, created by one of my latvian colleagues – Anton Aleksandrov who has 20 years of experience in a web development / web hosting industry. You can read more about the testing methodology and see the global benchmark statistics on his plugin website.

Test Results – Cheap and technology outdated VPS

Specification: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v4 – 6 vCore, 24 GB DDR4-2133MT/s, 600 GB SATA SSD
Average test result: 7.1

A server with more than 7 year old CPU, regular SATA SSD and much slower RAM memory speeds – what could you expect? It gives out the slowest speeds of all three with exceptionally slow CPU and database performance! And beware – there is still a lot of hosting companies around which offer servers with an old hardware for expensive prices.

You can see test results here: Test #1, Test #2 and Test #3;

Test Results – Virtual Dedicated Server

Specification: AMD EPYC 7282 – 8 vCore, 32 GB DDR4-3200MT/s, 240 GB NVME
Average test result: 8.9

This server has a 4 year old CPU, faster RAM and NVME SSD drive. While the score of 8.9 does not seem to make a big difference, in practice this server feels like at least 10x times faster than the previous one.

You can see test results here: Test #1, Test #2 and Test #3

Test Results – Dedicated Server with AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

Specification: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16-Core, 4 x 32 GB DDR5-3600MT/s HMCG88MEBEA081N, Samsung PM9A3
Average test result: 10

A server which has almost the cutting edge technology: CPU released this year (2023), latest generation RAM and Gen4 NVME SSD disk. In practice it feels like 3x times faster than VDS I mentioned before, which is a game changer if you need to choose between 250ms or 80ms TTFB times.

You can see test results here: Test #1, Test #2 and Test #3;

Where to get a fast WordPress hosting?

With many offers around it seems that there are only a few reputable companies which offer a “best in the market” hosting for friendly prices. I’ve personally tested the Hetzner AX line and have no problems with it whatsoever (excellent service quality with 99.99% uptime).

Q & A on Fastest WordPress hosting