Rocket.net is a new revelation for me coming from Cloudways, which is already blisteringly fast compared to most shared hosts. But Rocket.net takes it to a whole new level, and not only because of its frontend speed for your users, but more importantly as a website admin, the backend also rockets too.
Rocket is definitely one of the fastest WordPress hosts available apart from maybe one other contender which we will discuss in this Rocket.net hosting review. I will also conclusively show it as faster than Cloudways with fresh data I have collected for you but also tell you why you might still choose Cloudways over Rocket. Sound good? Let's go.
Specs
Enterprise level hosting for bootstrapped pricing:
Pros
The value proposition is through the roof at $25/m (Includes a $6,000/m enterprise CDN)
Support is friendly and know what they are doing
Generous bandwidth and visitor limits
Advanced built in features like file manager and database editor built in
Don't need to use a caching plugin so far!
Cons
Doesn't have an email option included so you will have to use a third party solution like Google
Jury is still out on support times
The Backstory
For the longest time now I have been so happy with hosting my websites on Cloudways after seeing a video of Adam from WP Crafter talking about his results using Cloudways Vultr High Performance servers. The interesting thing for me though was not so much the frontend performance as I was used to high speed frontend performance coming from WPX Rocket but what I noticed on Cloudways was the backend performance! Everything was so buttery smooth and instead of waiting up to 10 seconds for pages in the backend admin to load it now was up to three times quicker and life was good.
And honestly life would have continued being good if I didn't start playing around with more complex website requirements by using things like BuddyBoss for one of my sites.
The first problem is that BuddyBoss doesn't like Cloudways ‘must use' plugin called Breeze and suddenly my buttery smooth admin area was a complete mess again, taking up to 20 seconds sometimes to load screens.
The 2nd issue was I watched a webinar by BuddyBoss where they were promoting their new Rapyd Website Hosting service and they started showing all these benchmarks about how good their servers are. Naturally I didn't believe it, thinking it was just marketing hyperbole and then got these two results.
What does it mean?
Well as with anything, it's good to have some context, so in the Rapyd webinar they showed their servers scores a 9.3 and their performance benchmark is over 3,000 queries per second so almost six times faster.
Now the funny thing is that for basic WordPress websites that don't even use a page builder or plugins like WooCommerce you might only notice a 50-100% or so performance increase on the frontend. But and it's a big but, as soon as you add more complex plugins like I did with BuddyBoss then all of a sudden that almost six times performance benchmark difference becomes obvious.
So after so many years with Cloudways and their refusal to remove Breeze from my autonomous plan because of how it connects to Cloudflare Enterprise, I had to face the hard truth – Cloudways was no longer the best option for one of my websites anymore.
Thankfully in that webinar hosted by Rapyd they kept comparing their servers to another company, which is the focus of this review today and I'm so glad they did. So let's talk about Rocket.net.
What was the Score? You say…
I'm not going to keep you in suspense, here are the benchmark scores for Rocket.
So as you can see, some really good scores and after upgrading to PHP 8.1 and increasing OPCache memory limit to 256MB my highest server score is a 9.1 and the queries per second is even higher than Rapyd at over 3,330 queries per second which is starting to get close to seven times faster than what I had with Cloudways.
You can feel the snappiness on the frontend of the BuddyBoss platform for the website and most importantly for me as an admin, the backend is flying again which makes managing the website so much more enjoyable.
Plus with no more Breeze caching plugin installed I no longer have those quirks where I update a page and then go view it and nothing has changed. Caching really can be a nightmare sometimes and a lot of the time when you have quality hosting like Rocket.net you won't actually need it. Or if you do use it, you may only see a minimal performance increase, even as good as something like WP Rocket Plugin is, there's always that temptation to eke out every last drop of performance and go clicking a whole bunch of checkbox settings and your website is down for days.
Been there, done that!
Don't do what I did, so if you really insist on using caching after using a host like Rocket.net, make sure to only activate one checkbox at a time on a staging site. Your self discipline here will save you a world of hurt and lost sales!
What I'm enjoying about Rocket.net hosting
Apart from the blistering fast frontend and backend speed which is the main thing, I'm really impressed that it only costs $30 per month or $25 per month when paid annually. So in other words cheaper than Cloudways autonomous ($35/m) and almost seven times faster, which is a value proposition you will not easily find elsewhere.
I'm also enjoying their admin interface, which I would like to highlight a few things.
I'm really happy about that built in file manager because I was actually hacked one time through one of those type of plugins but the advanced tab is where you can really do some good stuff to boost your performance by deleting redundant database entries from old plugins you no longer use.
Removing this bloat is one of the best things you can do for your website but make sure you do it on staging and know what you are doing because your whole website will irreparably break and be lost if you don't have a recent backup before doing this.
This is one of the activities we offer for our white glove SuperSonic + service if you value not pulling out your hair!
But to have Rocket.net conveniently placed it here in the client dashboard shows their commitment to focusing on the activities that pay the highest dividends for WordPress performance and it really does show.
Ok so enough with the glowing review, what are the caveats…
What I'm not so sure about for now
It's still early days for me when it comes to Rocket.net but one thing I have noticed is that their support time is not as big as Cloudways, which is now owned by Digital Ocean. In their welcome email to me, Rocket said to expect support ticket times of well under ten minutes and my first test was two hours by email ticket.
This reflects in my score today by giving their support a score of 4.4, which may be a little harsh as it was a Sunday and I easily could have fired up the live chat and got my request looked at quicker. However even that one time I waited 20 minutes.
So for now I'm simply just reporting on the facts and from what I could see on that day there was two support agents on duty, which maybe for a Sunday and the amount of clients they have is enough and my email that day just slipped through the cracks while they were talking to others on live chat or eating lunch. I don't know but had to comment on it as I noticed the team is definitely smaller than the behemoth which is Cloudways.
However, unlike Cloudways who I had to wait two days to hear from before their senior level technicians could approve my OPCache memory limit increase, Rocket.net just simply did it for me on the spot. So don't get me wrong, you will receive excellent support from Rocket.net but maybe stick to their live chat if you're in a pickle and a hurry.
My Conclusion
So with all that said here are my thoughts on Rocket.net hosting vs Cloudways vs Rapyd by BuddyBoss. If you are on Cloudways and are thinking of adding new dynamic content features on your website, I highly recommend you try Rocket.net.
If you're using BuddyBoss, only then would I recommend using Rapyd for maybe a 10-20% performance increase over Rocket.net. However, every website is unique so you might find you get a 100% boost, which would then be able to justify the $100 per month price tag of Rapyd.
But my suggestion for most WordPress website owners right now is use Rocket.net.
