Do you know that if your website is taking more than 3 seconds to load, you might be losing more than 50% of your traffic? That’s a huge number. Right?

Recently Google has announced that going forward from May 2021, the loading speed of your blog would be a ranking factor.

Yes, it’s true that earlier, speed was not directly hampering your blog ranking but that concept is going to cease soon.

Google is going to consider ” Speed” as one of the ranking factors along with other “ Web Core Vitals“. So the early you prepare for that, the better it is for your blogging career.

I am a user of Sitegorund Hosting for the last couple of years. Recently I had a chance to test Rocket.Net Managed WordPress Hosting.

And Voila! What a great hosting! I am highly impressed. The loading speed of my blog increased drastically.

That is why I decided to write a detailed review of Rocket.net hosting so that it becomes easier for you to decide if Rocket.net hosting is right for you or not.

But, Before we get into the detailed Rocket.net hosting review, first of all, let us know what Managed WordPress Hosting actually is.

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Many of us, including me, do not know much about how a web hosting process works. We don’t know how to get the best out of a web hosting service. The result is ” We start blaming our web host“

That’s not fair at all. To overcome these kinds of issues, most web host nowadays offers a service called Managed Hosting.

What does that mean is that each and everything of your web hosting service will be maintained by some experts from the web host company itself?

They will decide how the server should be optimized, they will decide the key variables and the best settings that your hosting environment should have.

In a nutshell, they will give you the best possible setup for optimum performance.

Now when we talk about Managed WordPress Hosting, your web host goes one step extra and optimizes your hosting environment to suit the requirement of WordPress and as a result, you get the best speed and experience from your WordPress blog.

Rocket.net Hosting Overview

Rocket.net is fairly a new entrant into the already overcrowded web hosting arena. But they are not the least experienced.

Rocket.net was started and backed by Aaron Phillips and Ben Gabler who are considered as the veterans in the web hosting industry.

Both Aaron and Ben have decades of experience in working with industry leaders like CPanel, Go Daddy, Hostgator, etc, before they seeded their dream to start Rocket.net during the summer of 2020.

Please Keep in mind that both were at the peak of their career at a very senior level position when they started their entrepreneurship.

The Rocket.net hosting is privately owned and the team is highly experienced. They are eager to deliver perfection and that is helping their business to grow.

What I found is that, they treat you like a partner rather than a customer. That’s something I like about Rocket.Net hosting.

Rocket.Net Hosting Business Portfolio

Rocket.net believes in ” Simply The Best“. They are the experts in WordPress and only offer Managed WordPress Hosting. No unnecessary clutters of plans.

Along with WordPress hosting, they also offer WooCommerce hosting. But logically speaking, both are the same.

While creating a site in Rocket.net, you will get an additional option for installing the Woocommerce plugin. That’s it.

They also offer white-level reseller hosting through which you can sell WordPress hosting to your clients.

You will be provided with a payment gateway, invoice facility, custom forms, and other basic facilities that a typical reseller’s hosting company offers.

Please note that, as of August 2022, Rocket.net does not offer any email hosting. That may be a problem for some people but considering the kind of service they offer, I would be happy to host my emails somewhere else.

Currently, they do not offer a domain registration facility and dedicated server hosting. Hopefully, they will come up with these features shortly so that Rocket.net can be a one-stop destination for all your web hosting needs.

Rocket.Net Managed Hosting Features [10 Key Features]

Rocket.Net is one of the fastest Managed WordPress Hosting. This is possible due to their world-class servers, Enterprise-grade CDN, Sophisticated caching mechanism, and most importantly, the experienced team.

Here are a few of those key features of Rocket.net hosting that are too tempting.

1. Enterprise Grade Servers

Rocket.net uses enterprise-grade servers comprising all SSD drives, 256 GB RAM, 16 core CPUs, and most importantly multi-gigabyte connectivity to the internet exchange.

Please note that, no matter what bells and whistles web hosts offer unless they use good servers, all are in vain. Luckily Rocket.Net did not miss that chance.

2. WordPress Optimized Stack

Rocket.net offers optimized stacks considering the WordPress environment. The result is faster load time, enhanced protection, and more benefits to customers. Here is the key configuration of their stack.

3. Edge Cloud

If you choose to host your website on Rocket.net, your site will be hosted on edge cloud, which is about 2-3 times faster than a typical cloud platform.

Rocket.net hosting has optimized edge cloud servers at 250 different strategically chosen locations that will allow you to get closer than ever to your website visitors. Here are a few of the features of their edge cloud.

Edge Cloud Locations

4. Cloudflare Enterprise CDN

Do you know that all websites hosted on Rocket.net will get the benefit of Cloudflare Enterprise CDN service? With over 200 strategic locations, your website will be much faster, no matter from which location it is getting accessed.

The best part is that the Cloudflare Enterprise CDN plan is FREE for every Rocket.net customer. Here is a couple of feature of Cloudflare CDN that is integrated with Rocket.Net. Ideally, Cloudflare Enterprise plan costs $6000/ month.

5. Dedicated Resources

Rocket.net, unlike any other hosting provider that sells normal shared hosting in the name of managed hosting.

With Rocket, you will be getting dedicated RAM, Dedicated I/O. Dedicated CPU cores. It’s more than shared hosting.

Unfortunately, Rocket.net does not reveal the dedicated resource allocation data. But when your website speed is like Rocket, then who cares about the resources?

6. Free Migration and Premium SSL

All your websites will be migrated from other hosts free of cost. What you need to do is to raise a ticket with your WordPress admin login information and FTP details.

Once you provide this information, it takes about 30 minutes to migrate the website. Currently, there is no other way to migrate a website except to raise a ticket.

There is no way to create a database by users, so you can’t transfer a website using the Duplicator plugin

Do you know that all websites on Rocket.net will be provided with Sectigo SSL for free? That’s a saving of about $600 per year.

7. Intuitive Interface

I am a big fan of custom hosting interfaces. Frankly speaking, people are bored with the C Panel interface. Rocket.net dashboard is a big shift from the boring interface that other hosting providers offer.

The interface is clean, navigation is smooth and you will find everything that you need to run your website.

Currently, if you are using CPanel, you will find the interface pleasing to your eyes. I moved from Siteground and I still feel like the Rocket.net interface is far better than the Siteground interface

Here is a couple of feature of the Rocket.net account dashboard.

8. One-Click Staging

For those who love to test new themes or plugins frequently, then Rocket.net is a great option because Rocket.net comes with a single Click staging function.

With a single click, you can create a copy of your website where you can do all your testing and once you are satisfied, you can deploy the same in the live environment. Here are the things that you can do in the staging environment.

9. BulletProof Security

Security is a great concern for any website. On top of that, if you have an established website or running an eCommerce store, then the risk is more. I am happy that Aaron and Ben have prioritized website safety over anything else.

Cloudflare Enterprise CDN comes with an advanced firewall for your website apart from brute force protection.

Rocket.net has gone one step extra and offers free malware scanning, malware removal, automated bot protection, etc. You don’t need to buy any security software or service that usually costs $1500-2000 per year.

Here are the security measures that rocket.net uses.

10. Experienced Customer Support Team

Fortunately, we have Aaron and Ben who are still handling the customer support team. They are very prompt in responses and they know what needs to be done to fix issues.

No matter whatever the problem is, be it WordPress related or hosting-related, they are eager to solve it.

A few days back I requested Ben Gabler to transfer my website. It took roughly two hours to transfer the website.

Ideally, it does not take more than 30 minutes but since I placed the request during a very odd time, so there was a slight delay. But overall I am very happy with their technical support team.

Rocket.Net team is available through live chat, support tickets, emails, or direct calls 24X7. So you will always have them ready to support your business.

Personally, I set Siteground as a benchmark when it comes to customer support. Rocket.net technical support is close to Sitegorund if not better.

Rocket.net Hosting Plans And Pricing

Rocket.net offers four Managed WordPress Hosting plans. Although the basic offering is the same among all the plans but the only difference is the number of websites you can host, the number of visits, the SSD space, and the bandwidth.

Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Sectigo Premium SSL Certificate, and Advanced WAF is free across all plans

Disclaimer: The launch offer is valid for a 1-month term only. After one month, you need to pay the regular price. Prices are shown as per annual billing. Although we try our level best to show the current price, it is advisable to check Rocket. Net website to see the latest price.

Starter Plan

The starter Plan allows one instance of WordPress installation. Comes with 10 Gigs of SSD space. This plan is good for 25K traffics per month and the bandwidth is limited to 50 Gigs per month.

You may feel that 10 GB of space is only good for a personal site or small blog. But just for your information that even a very reputed blog with 200-300 articles hardly consumes 2-3 GB of space. So 10 GB of space should be more than enough for a regular-size blog.

All key features of rocket.net hosting like Free CDN, SSL, and Web application firewall is available in this plan. This is something really good as most web host does not offer much in the basic plan.

The starter plan starts at $30 per month. However if your pay annually then you will get two months free. So ideally it will be $25 per month.

Currently, rocket.net is offering a launch discount through which you can try this plan for just $1 for the first month.

I personally believe that $1 is worth spending to try rocket.net hosting. If you are not satisfied, you can always terminate the plan. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee also.

Pro Plan

You can install three instances of WordPress in the Pro Plan. You will be offered 20 GB of SSD space.

This plan is good for 100K visits and the bandwidth is limited to 100 GB. The Pro plan also comes with multisite features. All features of rocket.net are also available in this plan.

The Pro plan is good for small to medium-sized blogs, corporates, developers, etc. Although everything is fine in this plan I am a little concerned about the 100K visits. The visit limit does not justify the price tag.

The pro plan costs $60 per month. However, if you pay annually, then they are offering two months free.

So ideally it will cost you $50 per month. Similar to the starter plan, you can try the pro plan by paying just $1 for the first month.

Business Plan

This is the plan that can easily run medium to large side blogs. The visit limit is 250K which is fairly good.

You can install up to 10 instances of WordPress with an SSD space of 40 GB. The bandwidth is limited to 300 GB.

Other features are similar to what we already discussed in the starter and pro plan.

This plan costs $100 per month. However, if you pay for the whole year, you will get two months free which comes down to nearly $83 per month. Like other plans, you can try the business plan for just $1.

Agency Plan

This plan is suitable for large publications, high-traffic blogs, or eCommerce stores. Agency Plans have a traffic limit of a massive 500K.

You can install up to 25 copies of WordPress with an SSD space of 50 GB. The bandwidth is limited to 500 GB.

Although the 500K traffic limit is massive the 40 GB SSD is a concern if you are running a photo/ video blog or you want to run a large publication house.

The cost for this plan is $200 per month. But similar to other plans, you can get two months free if you buy for one year. You can try this plan by paying just $1 for the first month.

So it would be the best bet to try rocket.net as it just costs a dollar. I believe you will be extremely happy with their service. Even if you are not happy, you can easily opt out of the plan.

Rocket.Net Hosting Review [ Performance & Test Results]

Special thanks to Rocket.net founder Aaron for allowing me to test their hosting. I had a chance to test for 2 weeks and below are my observations in terms of speed and performance.

But before we get into the test result, Let’s have a summary of what are the mechanisms set in place to boost your website speed.

Please note that our test website was not properly optimized and still we got some excellent results.

The test website has more than 20 plugins and we used a few of the worst themes and plugins just to test how well Rocket.net performs in the worst-case scenario. We used WP-Rocket on our test website.

The test was performed in a very controlled environment. Your actual speed and Performance may vary based on how well you optimized your blog, what cache plugin you use, and from which location you are testing.

1. Speed Test

We checked the test website on GTMatrix, Pingdom Tools, and Google Page Insights, and here is the result.

The GTMetrix tool shows an LCP of 0.8 seconds which is about 40% less than what GTMetrix recommends. What does that mean that the largest element of the website is loading within .8 seconds? Please make a note that the test website is not properly optimized for speed.

Pingdom shows a load time of 656 ms which is even less than what GT Metrix shows. Anything below 1 second is considered to be very fast.

Test Result From GTMetrix

Test Result From Pingdom Tools

Test Result From Google Page Insights

2. Uptime Test

This is the result of the test website after a day of monitoring on the Uptime Robot. A long-time report is indeed pending.

However, I assume that the uptime data is not going to change even if we check for a long time duration. I will update the snapshot as and when we test for a longer duration.

3. Server Speed Test

We tested the server response time on Bitcacha and the server responded in 2-3 ms which is really awesome. Bitcatcha rated the server as A+ which is the best they can rate.

4. Load Impact Test

The load test data shows a very impressive result. Around 5K requests were made at the rate of 20 req/s and the server responded in about 17ms (avg) which is simply outstanding.

5. Time To First Byte (TTFB) Test

We tested the Time To First Byte on the KeyCDN platform and the first byte was rendered in about 30-40 ms. Did you notice one thing?

All locations show almost similar TTFB. That is the power of Edge Cloud and that means that your website visitor will get similar speed all across the globe.

How To Start A Blog On Rocket.Net

Rocket. Net Hosting Positives