Is Expensive WordPress Hosting Really Effective? (Speed Test)

I upgraded my Hostinger WordPress Hosting Plan. I was previously using the Business WP Plan for 5,000 KRW per month, but I decided to invest a bit more and upgraded to the Cloud Startup Plan at 12,000 KRW per month. In this post, I’ll share whether the hosting upgrade had any noticeable effects.

I try to be as accurate as possible when writing blog posts, but sometimes there are errors in the information. If you find one, please comment and I’ll correct it. If you make a purchase using a link on this blog, I may earn a small commission.

How to Test WordPress Speed

When thinking of website speed testing, many people immediately think of Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix, which are general tools for measuring overall site performance. The following screenshot shows the PageSpeed Insights result after completing my website with WordPress in 2023, following the transition from my Tistory blog.

Do you see the Total Blocking Time 280ms in the bottom left corner? In the SEO evaluation from Google, my Sensible Statistics Life blog passed most metrics, but the Total Blocking Time was the only one that didn’t meet the required standard. After searching around, I discovered that Total Blocking Time is heavily influenced by the performance of the hosting service.

Hosting Performance Test

When measuring the performance of a hosting provider, you should also test the CDN (Content Delivery Network) performance. To do this, visit the keycdn website and go to the performance measurement page.

Once there, enter your website URL in the provided field and click the Test button. What you should pay close attention to is the TTFB (Time To First Byte) metric.

What is TTFB (Time to First Byte)?

TTFB (Time to First Byte) is the time it takes for a user’s web browser to receive the first byte of data from the server. This metric is an important indicator of a website’s server response time. A faster TTFB contributes to higher website performance and a better user experience. Search engines like Google tend to rank websites with faster loading times higher, which can result in better SEO performance and search engine rankings.

Performance Comparison After Hostinger Plan Upgrade

Blog Performance Measurement (Before Upgrade)

he server for StatisticsPlaybook is located in Singapore, and the lowest TTFB is observed in that region. Google recommends keeping TTFB around 300ms, and it was satisfied in Singapore, Germany, and the Netherlands. However, in other regions such as New York or Bangalore, the TTFB exceeded 1 second.

Although I was somewhat satisfied with this setup, I decided to upgrade because one of my other blogs has a primary user base in the U.S.

Blog Performance Measurement (After Upgrade)

Here are the keycdn performance results after upgrading to the Cloud Startup (or WordPress Pro) plan.

As you can see, the TTFB in Singapore is almost instantaneous, which indicates a significant speed improvement for StatisticsPlaybook. The TTFB distribution is generally more stable, and extreme delays exceeding 1 second have become rare. Given the ₩12,000/month investment, the results are quite satisfactory.

• January 2024 update: After testing everything, I created the fastest blog (wplaybook.com) I could with the maximum resources available (hosting, optimization plugins, SEO). I hope you’ll give it a try and compare it with the wise statslife blog.

PageSpeed Insights Measurement Results (After Upgrade)

PageSpeed Insights shows a noticeable reduction in Total Blocking Time compared to before. Although it still occasionally exceeds 200ms, the overall performance is much better than with the previous plan.

It would be interesting to analyze how hosting performance impacts search engine rankings over time. Changes made on October 19, 2023, may take about a month to reflect in Google’s indexing. Hopefully, the upgrade will result in an improvement in the site’s rankings.

June 2024 Update

The hosting upgrade was definitely effective. The StatisticPlaybook website has passed Core Web Vitals, and the daily visitor count is increasing (about 1,000 visitors per day). As of June 2024, the blog has grown into a solid brand.

I created WPlaybook based on my trials and experiences with WordPress. If you’re interested in WordPress or online monetization, feel free to visit! 🙂