Cheap Web Hosts: Speed Test

I waste a good portion of my days on message boards. Since everybody on the planet seems to be involved in Web design, development or publishing, the “which host do I use” question comes up daily. The names of various dirt-cheap Web hosting companies are thrown around my many.

In my line of work, I happen to have used a lot of Web hosts over the years. In fact, I currently have accounts with the 4 big cheap hosts that I see mentioned the most. They are:

• 1&1
• A Small Orange
• Dreamhost
• Host Gator

Disclaimer: Other than being a customer of all 4 companies, I have no affiliation with any them. I’m not an employee, and I’m not involved in any of their reseller or referral programs. I do not, in any way, benefit from you choosing any of these hosts. I’m simply here to help you make an educated decision about which host to use.

This is the first of a three-part article. Part 2 focuses on reliability, and in Part 3 I will share some personal experiences with each. For now, I’m going to focus solely on speed!

Web and FTP tests were conducted using 1 HTML page that contained 6 very large JPG images. Total combined file size: 19.1 MB. All tests were conducted 3 times with each host. What you’re seeing in the charts below are the averages of each of the 3 tests with each host.

FTP Upload

Since the first thing you do when you open a new hosting account is upload your files, I see no better place to start than with the results of my FTP upload speed test. This is how long it took to upload our files to the server:

As you can see, all 4 companies performed very similarly. In fact, they were all within about 2 seconds of each other. No clear-cut advantage here.

FTP Download

For my needs, this category isn’t particularly important. I upload a lot of files, but very rarely download any through an FTP client. But I already had the files uploaded, so I figured I might as well download them to test that speed as well.

Dreamhost was the clear winner in the FTP download category, allowing us to download our files in a mere 24.57 seconds. Host Gator was a close second, while the other two trailed far behind.

Web Download

For the Average Joe Web hosting customer, our Web download test represents the most important speed element. The chart below represents how long it to each host to load our 19.1 MB Web page.

Dreamhost and Host Gator clocked nearly identical times of just under 19 seconds. 1&1 was roughly 26% slower than the leaders, while A Small Orange’s performance was very poor.

MySQL Query

This test may or may not be of interest to you, depending on what you plan to do with your Web site. If you plan to run any scripts that require MySQL database connections (such as forums or blogs) you should probably pay attention to this section.

Note: I was unable to test 1&1’s MySQL speed side-by-side with the others. I ran these tests using Navicat (GUI MySQL client). 1&1 Hosting does not allow remote access to their databases. I could have tested through their Web interface, but that would not have been an apples-to-apples comparison, so I didn’t bother.

For this test, I ran a semi-complex query on a data table that contained 15 columns and 21,571 rows. The numbers on the chart represent the number of seconds it took each host to execute the query.

Once again, Dreamhost and Host Gator were nearly identical, while A Small Orange was significantly slower.

MySQL Import

The results of my MySQL import test will probably only interest you if you find yourself constantly updating your database from an off-line source (like an Excel, Access or ASCII text file). Here are the results of the time test I ran to import the same data file mentioned above.

All 3 were fairly close, with Host Gator getting the nod.

Parting Thoughts

There are several important things to keep in mind when using my speed tests to evaluate potential Web hosts:

1. Do not try to compare your speeds to mine. My speeds are subject to my Internet connection speed, and are not comparable to yours.
   
   
2. These hosting companies have many servers with a gajillion hosting accounts on each server. Could I have got lucky and stumbled upon a top performer from one host and a lemon from another? Absolutely! You could open hosting accounts with all 4 and end up with very different results. The results of these test should not be viewed as a summary of these hosts' performance. It is only a summary of the experience I have had with them. Think of them as nothing more than just another personal recommendation from a dude that ran some tests.
   
   
3. Despite having accounts with all 4 of these dirt-cheap hosting companies, I would never use price as my primary criteria for a mission-critical Web site. They just host too many sites, and there is too great an opportunity for something to go wrong (possibly because of what one or more of the people you’re sharing the server with is doing) for me to use a cheap-o host for any site that puts food on my table.
   
   
4. Keep in mind that speed is not the only deciding factor in choosing a Web host. Besides the obvious elements, such as price and features (which I will not be covering), you should also consider reliability and experiences others have had with the companies you’re evaluating. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 where I will cover those topics.

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