Performance, uptime & infrastructure
How this is scored
What runs the sites and how reliably: CPU, RAM and storage per tariff stated, SSD or NVMe storage, current PHP versions and how long old ones are kept, HTTP/2 or HTTP/3, server-side caching (OPcache, Redis, a page cache), a CDN, databases and their limits, resources that are guaranteed rather than shared without a stated limit, an uptime SLA with a service credit, a public status page with incident history, and redundancy of the platform. Where the data centre is located is scored under sovereignty.
0 — Not a hosting product; websites or web apps cannot be run on it.
3 — Storage and a number of sites per tariff are stated and the product is described as fast; resources, PHP versions, caching and uptime are basic or not described.
5 — Resources per tariff stated (CPU or a performance class, RAM, SSD or NVMe storage), several current PHP versions selectable, HTTP/2, server-side caching or a cache plugin documented, free SSL, a stated uptime target, and a public status page.
8 — Dedicated or guaranteed resources stated per tariff, HTTP/3 and a CDN included, Redis or an object cache, PHP versions kept current with an end-of-life policy published, an uptime SLA with a service credit, a status page with incident history, and a redundant platform (replicated storage, failover) described.
10 — Infrastructure documented to the level an operator could audit: hardware generations and storage architecture named, performance measured and published with method, an SLA with credits and exclusions at 99.95 % or above, every incident on the status page with a post-mortem, and scaling without downtime documented.
The Freelance App Developer
The numbers I want to see are there: guaranteed RAM up to 8 GB per package, NVMe storage with the vendor citing up to 10x faster reads and up to 50 % lower time-to-first-byte than SSD, PHP-FPM on an nginx-Apache stack, and a Hamburg data centre with named carriers, redundant disks, power supplies and switches and around-the-clock on-site monitoring. The captured pages give different figures for availability — a guaranteed uptime of at least 99,5 % on the agency page and at least 99 % in the annual average in the terms — and I found no public information on a status page, HTTP/2 or HTTP/3, a Redis or object cache, or a service credit. 1 2 4 6 10 11