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If you are planning to buy Cloudways hosting with a Linode server, and you want to know the performance of the Linode server, then you are in the right place. In this blog post, We will test the speed and performance of Linode in Cloudways hosting with 10+ different and extensive tests.
Let’s Get Started!
Cloudways Hosting
Cloudways is a modern type of hosting which lets you host your websites in cloud hosting providers like AWS, GCP, Digitalocean, Vultr, and Linode without the knowledge of Linux or SSH. Cloudways offers an innovative and modern control panel for hosting and managing WordPress, Magento, Laravel, Drupal, Joomla, or any PHP website.
Cloudways offers us to choose cloud hosting providers like AWS, GCP, Digitalcean, Vultr, or Linode. In this blog post, we will choose the Linode server to test the speed and performance of Cloudways hosting.
Plans & Pricing
Cloudways offers four different plans in the Vultr HF server. The basic plan is priced 12$ per month, which provides 1 GB RAM, one core Processor, 25GB SSD storage, and 1 TB bandwidth. I recommend starting with this plan first if you want to host your website. After that, you can scale it anytime if your website is getting high traffic.
Testing Environment
To test Linode server speed and performance, I bought a plan. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will already know that I create the same testing website when I perform speed tests. After buying the plan, I installed WordPress and connected it with my domain which I bought from NameCheap.
I do not want to run tests on a blank website, so I installed Blocksy Theme and one of its demo websites called ‘Tasty.’ I have to install four additional extra plugins with the demo website: Blocksy Companion, WP Forms Lite, Stackable, Recipe Card Blocks by WPZOOM.
Hosting: Cloudways – Linode
Plan: 12$/month
Server Location: Dallas
WordPress Version: 5.8
Themes: Blocksy (Active), Twenty twenty One
Plugins: Blocksy Companion, WP Forms Lite, Stackable, Recipe Card Blocks by WPZOOM
After setting this testing environment, I did not perform any extra optimizations like caching, Image compressing, modification, or any other kind of speed improvement. It would be best if you always did these optimizations to improve your website, but I wanted to know the actual performance of Linode server without any optimizations.
Quick Disclaimer:
I want to inform you guys that all the results are honest and authentic in this blog post. To do these kinds of tests, I have to spend a lot of money from my pocket, So I would like to request that if you want to buy Cloudways Hosting or any other hosting, please use our affiliate links. You will get an extra discount, and this website will earn a small amount of commission from it. So, we can do more feature speed tests, reviews, and comparisons without any sponsors.
Now, without wasting your precious time, let’s start testing.
TTFB Test
TTFB stands for time to first byte. To put it simply, this is a measurement of how long the browser has to wait before receiving its first byte of data from the server. The longer it takes to get that data, the longer it takes to display your page.
TTFB depends on the Hosting server, Themes, and plugins. But most of the part is played by the hosting server. If hosting using a high-performance server, you will get low TTFB, and if hosting uses a standard specifications server, it will be high.
Most of the hostings stores your website files in a single location. From that server, the hosting will send all the files to the visitors. If your hosting server is located in the USA, your website will get very low TTFB in the USA, Canada, and European countries. But it will be much higher in Asia and Australia.
Therefore when you buy hosting from any of the providers, try to choose the nearest server location from your website’s audience. (not closest to you but closest to your website users)
When visitors come to your website, the browser will send all the requests and ask for the required files to the hosting server. After that, hosting will send an initial reply to the browser. Now, the time between browser requests and hosting initial response will be called TTFB.
Your website will load fast if your hosting TTFB is low. Means, as low is the TTFB of your website, visitor have to wait for less. By this, the bounce rate of your website can decrease drastically.
TTFB can be different from location to location and time to time. Therefore, we will do multiple tests from multiple worldwide locations. So, we can get the best accurate value. In the TTFB test, we will use three different tools and will take five different results.
KeyCDN TTFB Test
TTFB test one is done from KeyCDN Tools. This tool will measure the TTFB from 10 different worldwide locations. I have taken three different results of this test from different other days.
| Server Location | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frankfurt | 386 ms | 388 ms | 390 ms |
| Amsterdam | 367 ms | 384 ms | 371 ms |
| London | 357 ms | 352 ms | 347 ms |
| New York | 136 ms | 118 ms | 129 ms |
| Dallas | 13 ms | 13 ms | 13 ms |
| San Francisco | 157 ms | 153 ms | 137 ms |
| Singapore | 656 ms | 633 ms | 638 ms |
| Sydney | 544 ms | 543 ms | 541 ms |
| Tokyo | 396 ms | 399 ms | 397 ms |
| Bangalore | 763 ms | 757 ms | 756 ms |
| Global Average | 377 ms | 374 ms | 371 ms |
GT Metrix TTFB Test
TTFB test two is done from GTMetrix. I have done seven different tests to measure the TTFB from seven different locations.
| Server Location | TTFB |
|---|---|
| Vancouver, Canada | 220 ms |
| Hong Kong, China | 583 ms |
| London, UK | 352 ms |
| Mumbai, India | 753 ms |
| San Antonio, TX, USA | 91 ms |
| Sydney, Australia | 543 ms |
| São Paulo, Brazil | 454 ms |
| Global Average | 428 ms |
Fast or Slow TTFB Test
TTFB test three is done from Fast or Slow. Fast or Slow will measure the website TTFB and Speed from 18 worldwide locations. This is the heaviest test from all of the tests.
| Server Location | TTFB |
|---|---|
| S Africa | 798 ms |
| Sweden | 422 ms |
| India | 745 ms |
| France | 388 ms |
| England | 359 ms |
| Ireland | 380 ms |
| S Korea | 588 ms |
| Bahrain | 724 ms |
| Japan | 453 ms |
| Brazil | 456 ms |
| Canada | 193 ms |
| Hong Kong | 610 ms |
| Singapore | 717 ms |
| Australia | 554 ms |
| Germany | 402 ms |
| USA (VA) | 129 ms |
| USA (OH) | 108 ms |
| USA (OR) | 193 ms |
| Global Average | 456 ms |
Here is the end of the TTFB tests, now we will start the Speed Test.
Speed Test
We will measure the website’s fully loaded time and some core web vitals in the Speed test. The website’s fully loaded time and core web vitals can depend on Hosting servers, Themes, Plugins, and testing page content. But, as I told you before, We used the same testing environment to avoid the Theme, Plugins, and testing page content.
Google PageSpeed
If you want to rank higher in Google search, you should strictly follow the Google Core web vitals. You can measure these parameters from the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, which is the official testing tool of Google.
Therefore, we will do our first speed test in Google PageSpeed Insights. Speed Index and Time to Interactive are parameters we should follow. Google PageSpeed Insights results are not consistent. Therefore, I will conduct three different tests on separate days to get the most accurate results.
Mobile
| Metrics | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 90 | 90 | 91 | 90 |
| Time to Interactive | 5.2 s | 5.1 s | 5.1 s | 5.1 s |
| Speed Index | 3.6 s | 3.1 s | 3.3 s | 3.3 s |
Desktop
| Metrics | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 98 | 96 | 99 | 97 |
| Time to Interactive | 1.2 s | 0.7 s | 1.1 s | 1.0 s |
| Speed Index | 1.4 s | 1.4 s | 1.2 s | 1.3 s |
Pingdom Test
The second speed test is done with Pingdom from seven different worldwide locations. Load time is the factor that we will consider in this test.
| Server Location | Load Time |
|---|---|
| Tokyo – Japan | 2.07 s |
| Frankfurt – Germany | 1.67 s |
| London – UK | 1.56 s |
| Washington D.C. – USA | 562 ms |
| San Francisco – USA | 639 ms |
| Sydney – Australia | 2.41 s |
| Ṣo Paulo РBrazil | 2.09 s |
| Global Average | 1.57 s |
GTMetrix Test
The third speed test is done with the GTMetrix tool from seven different worldwide locations. GTMetrix is based on Google PageSpeed Insights. You should look up to Fully Loaded time. I have taken seven different tests from all of the seven locations of GTMetrix. At last, you will see the global average results.
| Server Location | Fully Loaded Time |
|---|---|
| Vancouver, Canada | 896ms |
| Hong Kong, China | 2.9 s |
| London, UK | 1.5 s |
| Mumbai, India | 2.9 s |
| San Antonio, TX, USA | 761ms |
| Sydney, Australia | 2.1 s |
| São Paulo, Brazil | 1.7 s |
| Global Average | 1.8 s |
KeyCDN Speed Test
The fourth speed test is done with KeyCDN Tools. There are ten different worldwide locations in the KeyCDN Testing tool. We can measure the website load time, page size, requests, and performance grade with this tool. Page size, requests, and performance grade will be quite the same in all of the tests.
| Server Location | Load Time |
|---|---|
| Frankfurt | 1.86 s |
| Amsterdam | 1.92 s |
| London | 3.06 s |
| New York | 1.11 s |
| Dallas | 1.25 s |
| San Francisco | 1.72 s |
| Singapore | 2.49 s |
| Sydney | 3.47 s |
| Tokyo | 1.74 s |
| Bangalore | 3 s |
| Global Average | 2.16 s |
Fast or Slow Speed Test
Test 5 is done with Fast or Slow from 18 different worldwide locations. In these results, we measure website interactive time. The Time to Interactive (TTI) metric measures how long it takes a page to become interactive to the site visitor.
| Vital | Score |
|---|---|
| Performance Score | 95 |
| First Contentful Paint | 90 |
| Speed Index | 96 |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 88 |
| Time to Interactive | 98 |
| Total Blocking Time | 100 |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 100 |
Load Test
In the Load test, we will send some visitors to the testing website, and after the test, we can see the load handling performance of the hosting. To do the load test, I conducted two different tests. In the first test, I sent 100 virtual users to the website. In the second test, I send 250 virtual users to the testing website.
| Response Times | 100 Visits/Minute | 250 Visits/Minute |
| Average | 99 ms | 108 ms |
| Minimum | 66 ms | 100 ms |
| Maximum | 205 ms | 240 ms |
| Success | 100 | 246 |
Final Results
- Global Average TTFB: 374 ms
- Global Average Load Time: 2.16 s
Conclusion
If you like this blog post, please share this article. If you have any suggestions, doubts, or queries, please let me know in the comment section. I will reply to you as soon as possible. If I have made any mistakes, please let me know.
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