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New Year, New Speed: HostXNow Still the Fastest !

 Monday, February 7, 2022

Our newest offerings in this new year are, Semi-Dedicated hosting and Enterprise Reseller hosting services. If you’re happy with whatever package you have, you probably wouldn’t want to fix what ain’t broken. But we thought we’d explain anyway what these two new services could entail for you.

Proof of the Pudding

We compared our speed to that of our competitors’ using WPBenchmark and, well, let’s just say the results were worth a tweet – or five. If you have WordPress sites hosted elsewhere, we’d love you to install WPBenchmark and see how we stack up – and then share the results on social media, perhaps?

Of course, you’ll want to compare Cloud to Cloud, since Dedicated hosting will likely have a better score.

Even before moving on to the superior Cloud infrastructure, HostXNow consistently invested time and resources optimising every little detail to provide the most value. And that paid off: our primary source of customer acquisition has always been word of mouth from our satisfied customers, and not from any ads we may have occasionally run.

What Is So Special About Our Newest Offerings?

You may hear the term ‘LiteSpeed Server’ thrown about quite a bit. However, LiteSpeed alone cannot do much. The SSD (solid state drive) and the high speed PCIE 4.0 socket for NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) Interface protocol complete the setup.

When we say NVMe cloud hosting, we mean 6X faster loading time (and practically everything else, really) when compared to the old SSD cloud hosting which many hosting service providers still use. In addition to NVMe which we had already upgraded to, for our new services, we use AMD 9 Ryzen 5900X, the fastest server processor in the market.

Our usual Cloud Web/Wordpress/Reseller hostings run on typical Intel processors at the data centre at 2.6GHz speed. The AMD 9 Ryzen 5900X runs at 3.7GHz and is capable of a boost speed of 4.8GHz. So the upgrade is from 2.6 to 4.8GHz: almost double the speed!

That’s the difference between our Cloud Web/Reseller/WordPress platforms compared to our new Semi-Dedicated/Enterprise Reseller Hosting.

Summing it up since we spewed a lot of tech stuff: what we already offer (NVMe cloud hosting) is in any case 6X faster than the outdated SSD cloud hosting (take note of this for the next time you see someone boasting of superior cloud hosting – there’s cloud, and then there’s cloud!)

New Year, New Speed: HostXNow Still the Fastest ! 1

And then we went ahead and outdid ourselves with the Semi-Dedicated and Enterprise Reseller hosting packages which – thanks to the upgrade to AMD – offer almost double the processor speed of our other hosting plans. Yeah, that does sound like we’re competing against ourselves! Oh well.

New Year, New Speed: HostXNow Still the Fastest ! 2

Not done yet. The AMD 9 Ryzen 5900X, you see – you can’t simply install that and sit back. Apart from correct configuration, unless the server utilisation is kept below 60%, on-demand resource allocation is not possible. Even a state of the art console would be hard-pressed to deliver with high end games running continuously on three UHD monitors.

And by that analogy, we’d always hook up fewer than two monitors!

HostXNow doesn’t cut corners, doesn’t compromise, and maintains complete transparency. Third party measuring tools can’t be wrong. Or so many positive reviews at TrustPilot.

Who Needs Semi-dedicated / Enterprise Reseller?

Customers with brochure websites, for one. The LiteSpeed cache engine will render your sites flawlessly, at the fastest speed. And those being forced to make a compromise with site speed simply because they use Elementor, for another.

For DIY sites, Elementor is rightfully a very popular choice – with the most common complaint that the trade-off is speed. But here’s what no one talks about: Elementor only slows down your site when your hosting platform does not utilise a CPU with a (very) fast single core. Rest assured, with our industry leading hardware and fair business practices (no overcrowded servers), you can reap the considerable benefits of Elementor without sacrificing speed. Sound good?

Specifically about the new Reseller hosting: it should help if your sites are all high-traffic destinations with constant load and, most importantly, with occasional spikes which require instant high CPU usage. Ultra-fast server, and enhanced RAM and CPU allocation for all child accounts ensure that you can host practically any site without embarrassing downtime.

Please note, however, that while we provide consistently good CPU utilisation, and handle the occasional spikes no matter how high they may get, constant spikes will crash your sites. Our VPS package will be a better choice in such a scenario.

If you’re in two minds there’s always the £1 trial offer to know what you’re getting into. The trial is already enabled on the order links through our website at https://www.hostxnow.com

That was a longer read than usual and if you’re still with us, we hope we were able to make it worth your while! The least we can do now is opt for a quick goodbye until later 🙂 Stay safe, everyone.

Addendum / Update

Not sure if you took our word for it or tested with WPBenchMark after our last newsletter but if you did test, you might have got results that did not corroborate what we claimed. 

Here’s what this is all about: our tests were performed using version 1.0.1 of WPBenchMark. Version 1.1.1 onward, the developer included a test for Object Cache which changes the results a bit. 

What kind of changes? 

As we explained to the developer, many providers using CloudLinux / LiteSpeed will not be able to use Object Cache because it is not widely supported yet. CloudLinux is working on a new WP Optimisation Suite which will allow web hosts to offer and support Object Cache securely. 

The developer assured us he would take into account what we pointed out, and add an option to select/deselect Object Cache in future versions of WPBenchMark. Until then, you can upload and use version 1.0.1 (link below)

WPBenchMark (Version 1.0.1)

Until either of that happens, for us, it will be like getting a lower score because of an out-of-syllabus question we could not answer!

And how low is the new score, exactly? 

For one of our subscribers who had actually raised a ticket to seek clarification in this regard (which prompted this mail, frankly), the score was 8.6 and 9.6 with the version we used. To quote him, “…impressive … I usually had 4 to 5 max with other providers”.

We cannot add screenshots of the conversation because of strict GDPR compliance but it is easy to confirm this with your own tests. Rest assured, despite having reached a new low, we are still the fastest !

Looking forward to always holding on to our reputation and our valued subscribers … 🙂

Addendum / Update 2

WPBenchmark has included an option to Enable/Disable Object Cache. We do not offer Object Cache since it is not supported on our platform. Our service is already superfast without it due to the infrastructure we use.

Our tests still show the fastest speeds around. Unfortuntely, we had to block the WPBenchmark plugin due to some customers repeatedly testing the script over and over causing unnecessary load on the server. If you would like to test the speed on our platform we can temporarily allow you to use the plugin, but let us know via our contact form.

Warm Regards,
Chris Smith & The HostXNow Team

P.S. Here are the links, again:

Semi-Dedicated Hosting
Enterprise Reseller Hosting