An Independent Test of 7 Hosting Providers

Choosing a provider is not an easy task, you always want to find something «cheap and cheerful». However, quite often it is hard to find a golden mean and you have to choose between computing power, speed, and cost, not mentioning additional features such as DNS-servers, control panel, etc. In this article, I will present you test results for several providers of various sizes, and I’m hoping that it will guide you in a decision-making process of choosing a hosting.

Disclaimer: I do not claim that these tests are complete and technically literate. The main goal was to obtain a high quality result that shows main directions in selecting a hosting. If it helped you – great, if not – I don’t mind.

I took three parameters as metrics, which are computing power, response time (ping), and download speed.

The Servers

So, I will compare seven hosting providers I worked with. Among them there are two Dedicated Servers, four Virtual Private Servers and one Shared Hosting:

1. Hivelocity

This is the most costly server among other in this test:

• Provider: hivelocity.net (USA)
• Hosting type: dedicated server
• Location: Tampa, FL
• Price: $183 / month
• CPU: Quad-Core 3.3GHz E3-1230-V3 Haswell Xeon
• RAM: 16 GB

2. PoundHost

This one is also a dedicated server, but with very cheap CPU:

• Provider: poundhost.com (GB)
• Hosting type: dedicated server
• Location: London
• Price: $50 / month
• CPU: Dual-Core Intel Atom D525 @ 1.8GHz
• RAM: 2 GB

3. DigitalOcean NL

This is a virtual private server in Amsterdam:

• Provider: digitalocean.com
• Hosting type: virtual private server
• Location: Amsterdam
• Price: $20 / month
• CPU: 2 CPUs
• RAM: 2 GB

4. DigitalOcean NY

This is another VPS of the same provider, but located in New York:

• Provider: digitalocean.com
• Hosting type: virtual private server
• Location: New York
• Price: $10 / month
• CPU: 1 CPU
• RAM: 1 GB

5. Ruweb VDS

This is a VPS of Russian provider located in US data center:

• Provider: ruweb.ws
  
• Hosting type: virtual private server
• Location: Reston, VA
• Price: $9.5 / month
• CPU: 1 GHz
• RAM: 750 MB

A decent hosting in RU zone*
*based on editor’s experience

6. REG.RU VPS

This server belongs to another major Russian provider located  in Moscow data center:

• Provider: reg.ru
• Hosting type: virtual private server
• Location: Moscow
• Price: $3.5 / month
• CPU: 2 GHz
• RAM: 128 MB

7. Ruweb Shared

The last one is the most cheapest hosting solution from Ruweb, a shared server:

• Provider: ruweb.net
  
• Hosting type: shared hosting
• Location: Moscow
• Price: $1 / month
• CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @2.00GHz
• RAM: 32 GB

Test #1: computing in PHP

In this test I used a simple PHP Benchmark Performance Script to estimate computing power of the servers and got the following results:

What do we see:

1. The fastest was, of course, Hivelocity.
2. PoundHost turned out to be the slowest, although it is the second most expensive, low processor power is to blame.
3. Two processors in DigitalOcean NL indeed provide additional calculating power against a single one in DigitalOcean NY.
4. The cheapest virtual hosting from Ruweb ($1) works as fast as a virtual server from DigitalOcean ($10).

Findings:

1. If you need more computing power, get a dedicated server with a powerful processor or buy additional processors for a virtual server.
2. Don’t buy the cheapest processor for a dedicated server; it’s better to get a virtual server, cheaper and faster.
3. Virtual hosting is not worse, and sometimes even better, than virtual dedicated server in terms of computing speeds.

Test #2: PING from six different locations

In this test I used site24x7.com service to determine server response time when it is pinged from six different locations: California, Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, Singapore and Russia. Here is what I got:

What do we see:

1. The fastest turned out to be PoundHost, which was the slowest in the previous test.
2. Ruweb virtual hosting was the slowest, but not much slower than the cool server from Hivelocity!
3. Server location plays a role, no wonder. There is a 2-3 times difference in delay between Europe and America!
4. The number of processors and server power does not influence ping.

Findings:

1. If you need a fast response, it is better to select the closest server. It is particularly important when choosing between Europe and America.
2. Processor power won’t give a faster response; it’s better to find a hosting with better bandwidth (in this case, PoundHost)

Test #3: File downloading speed

In the last test I downloaded the same file of 5 Mb from each server in question to two different places:  USA and Europe. For this I used wget utility (both for Linux and Windows).

What do we see:

1. PoundHost turned out to be the fastest again.
2. The speed depends on the location, of course, but between European servers it is much greater than between American servers. We saw this in the ping-test as well.
3. In short, dedicated servers won over the virtual ones.

Findings:

1. It looks like PoundHost has good bandwidth indeed.
2. Hivelocity won American hosting (it is also the most expensive), followed by Digital Ocean NL.
3. Within Europe transmission is quite fast.

Conclusion

So, what do we have?

If you are looking for a cheap hosting, Ruweb virtual hosting will satisfy you. Even though it hasn’t shown the best results, for a $1 per month hosting it was not bad! To be honest, I’ve been using this provider for many years and I’ve noticed that the speed of their virtual servers is even higher than that of some VPS servers. I think it is due to the fewer number of websites that are hosted on a single machine compared to other providers.

If you need fast European hosting, Proudhost showed quite good results in terms of data rate. But don’t skimp on CPU!

As for CPU power, good alternatives to the more expensive physical dedicated servers are virtual dedicated servers, which are hot on their heels in terms of computing. It will save you considerable amount of money!