We tested using the following criteria:
I believe our testing methodology gives us the truest picture of how fast a WordPress hosting provider is out of the box. We measured performance using Core Web Vitals (learn how LCP, CLS, and INP affect your site). Therefore, you get a better idea of just how well your speed foundation operates.
Here’s our criteria for testing shared hosting speed:
Testing Environment:
Metrics Measured:
We start with a fresh install of WordPress. We used the Astra Pro theme as it’s one of the most efficient and popular themes available. Identical content (posts and pages) are used for testing. And, to get the truest picture of the host’s speed, we didn’t add any additional optimization plugins.
We use GTmetrix to measure page speed and core web vitals. And we use loader.io to test load management and concurrent user performance during traffic spikes.
When you install and activate WooCommerce with WordPress, you’re adding more plugins and weight to your site. Also, because WooCommerce sites usually have a lot of product pages with images of all sizes, website structure and design can also slow things down.
The other huge area in assessing WooCommerce hosting performance is the checkout process. Typically, caching is disabled for checkout pages during the checkout process. For that reason, while speed on WooCommerce site home and other pages may test faster due to caching, the real test comes when customers actually make purchases. We made sure to include all phases and pages of a WooCommerce site when performing our testing.
Because web hosting, as your website foundation, has the most impact on speed and performance, we wanted to get the most accurate picture of our WooCommerce hosting provider speeds. In that regard, we used the following methods for testing:
We focused heavily on the following metrics for our testing: