WPX hosting review: WordPress-exclusive hosting

WPX hosting is a rather unique provider that centers its selling point around 2 things: love of dogs and that it’s “allegedly the world’s fastest WordPress hosting company.” In this WPX review, I'll test that brave claim alongside its pricing, ease of use, security, and customer support.

WPX might not be the biggest name in the industry, yet it’s not quite a newcomer either. The Bulgaria-based company came to be in 2013, and as the CEO himself specifies, this project was born from the pure frustration of having to deal with other hosting services.

And naturally, if you can’t find a good host, you become one… Not my words.

This is where the host gives 3 bold promises:

• Your page load speed will be seriously FAST,
• The average customer support’s response time will be no longer than 30 seconds,
• Simplicity is the main priority when it comes to hosting and website management.

That’s why I’ve purchased a plan to get to the bottom of it all. Is the host really as good as it claims? In this WPX hosting review, I’ll share with you everything that I’ve uncovered in terms of pricing, performance, ease of use, security, support, and more.

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Pros and Cons of WPX

WPX pricing & plans

WPX offers only 1 hosting solution: managed WordPress hosting on shared servers, and there are a total of 3 pricing plans. As for WPX hosting prices, the provider is on the premium end of things – with prices starting from $20.83/mo and going up to $83.25/mo.

Let’s take a look at the plans.

For starters, all 3 plans share some similarities. They come with a one-click WordPress installation, unlimited site migration services, SSL certificates, and email addresses, as well as staging, content delivery network (CDN), DDoS protection, fixes for offline sites, site speed optimization, and more.

So, how do they differ from each other?

For what you pay, you get good value for money. Although its resources don’t seem very generous, they are more than sufficient for most WordPress websites. Plus, the plans are chock-full of features and have pretty much everything you need. However, do note, you will have to spend a little extra as a free domain is not included.

If you’re still on the fence, WPX has a 30-day money-back guarantee so that you can test out the host risk-free. But, keep in mind that the guarantee doesn’t cover domain-related purchases, which is pretty standard.

Additionally, WPX keeps all upselling attempts to a minimum. There’s no annoying and persistent push for you to upgrade, automatic additions to your cart, or anything like that. The only thing that comes close is that the yearly plans are slightly cheaper than the monthly options. Again, this is a pretty common practice in the industry.

Overall, WPX hosting pricing is on the higher side. However, you do get reasonable server resources, extensive security measures, and speed-oriented service for the price.

Hosting management – is WPX easy to use?

When it comes to hosting management, WPX is easy enough to use. The provider uses its own custom control panel that also works as its hosting dashboard. The interface is slightly cluttered, and the many bright colors take some time to get used to. But, once you do, it’s actually rather intuitive and certainly very functional.

At first glance, the bright colors of WPX’s proprietary control panel can be overwhelming. However, once you get over the initial surprise, you’ll see that things are actually well-organized.

This is what it looks like:

Right at the top is a menu to quickly get to the dashboard, services, account, support, and more. Speaking of dashboard, you’ll find all the tools and features you need to run your WordPress website. They’re all neatly tucked to your left.

Let’s go through some of the key features:

• WordPress installation – while WPX dubs this as a one-click installer, it actually requires a few clicks. Nevertheless, the entire process is straightforward and painless. The most labor-intensive thing you need to do is to fill in your website and account details such as email, username, and password.
• Staging – staging is like a playground where you can test out themes, plugins, layouts, and more without affecting your published site. Once satisfied, you can easily merge the staging site with your live site. Just note that there are 1GB database and 5GB files size limitations for the staging sites.
• Email – If you’re new, you’ll need to set up email boxes and configure the settings first, which could be done very quickly. Then, you can proceed with your basic mailing needs. Note that this feature uses the same resources as does your site. This means that the built-in email feature is not meant for large marketing campaigns. Instead, WPX allows a maximum of 50 emails to be sent in the space of 30 minutes.
• Domains – domain configurations and settings can be found under the tab Edit DNS. This includes adding a new domain, domain and subdomain management, and third-party domain services management. Note that you will have to add a domain yourself since WPX does not offer a free domain.
• Backups – here, you can create manual backups, manage, restore, and download both manual and automatic backups. Besides that, you can manage system backups here, too. The backups are stored on a separate server from your site and are kept for up to 28 days.

Database and other more advanced tasks – the control panel is also home to other web hosting management tasks, including SSL management, database management, and CDN activation (WPX Cloud).

To sum it up, WPX’s control panel might be overwhelming initially but, in reality, it is well-structured and contains all the necessary actions to help you run your site smoothly.

Performance – is WPX fast?

As for performance, WPX excelled in every way. The provider is extremely reliable and handles a surge in traffic like a champ. Plus, while I can’t say that WPX offers the “world fastest WordPress hosting,” it could compete with some of the fastest website hosting providers.

For this WPX hosting review, I’ve put the provider through 3 different tests to gauge its reliability, speed, and traffic handling ability. Let’s check out the details.

WPX hosting uptime and response time

First things first, instead of the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, WPX comes with a reasonably better 99.95% uptime guarantee. And it seems like it has no problems carrying out the promise.

In 2 weeks of examination, WPX had only 1 outage with 2 minutes of downtime. This has resulted in a near-perfect 99.99% uptime.

Meanwhile, WPX’s server responsiveness is very good too, and far faster than the market average of 600ms. Instead, the provider’s response times averaged at a speedy 463ms.

I must also mention WPX’s stability. Throughout the entire observation period, the biggest difference between the host’s maximum and minimum response times was just slightly above 100ms. No sudden peaks or drops, so that’s another star in my book.

Next up, I tested WPX’s loading speed.

WPX hosting website speed

For this WPX hosting review, I also ran speed tests to find out the provider’s website speed on both an empty WordPress site and a built one. And, well, WPX passed with flying colors.

With this test, we’ll focus on 2 main measures – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Fully Loaded Time.

1. Ideally, the LCP should be below 600ms for a blank WordPress site and below 2.5s for a built one. These results are considered extremely fast – and that's always great for user experience and search engine ranking.
2. When it comes to a Fully Loaded Time, it should be no longer than 3 seconds for a fully built site. Anything longer than that tempers with user experience and may increase bounce rates.

For my empty WP website, I tested for 3 different locations. I’d expected the fastest performance for the US since my website is hosted in the provider’s Chicago data center. And, naturally, London and Mumbai being further away would suffer slightly due to latency.

True enough, that’s exactly what the tests revealed. The LCP for the US took just 572ms – very speedy, indeed. Meanwhile, the LCP in London and Mumbai required 716ms and 1.4s, respectively.

Next, I tested on a built WordPress site. Here, the LCP took longer and required 1.1s. But, that’s still far below the 2.5s that Google considers to be “good.”

It’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on load times for a built site as well. You want to keep it under 3s for a better user experience. Well, as always, WPX doesn’t disappoint as its fully loaded time took just 1.5s.

In short, WPX demonstrated fast loading speed with both an empty and fully built site.

WPX hosting stress testing

The final hurdle for performance in this WPX hosting review is a stress test that reveals how the host handles traffic spikes.

Here, ideally, the blue line (speed) should remain flat even when the gray line (number of visitors) goes up. Meanwhile, the red line (failed requests) isn’t welcomed at all.

To kick off the test, I sent 50 virtual users (VUs) to the site. For perspective, 50 continuous VUs each minute would equal approximately 50,000 monthly visitors. Simply put: that’s a lot of visitors. And, WPX handled it effortlessly.

As the number of visitors increased (grey line), the response time (blue line) remained very speedy and very stable. There were no exaggerated slowdown and no failures whatsoever, meaning the host could handle traffic even more intense than this.

All things considered, I’d happily give WPX’s performance a gold star. The host demonstrated reliable uptime, good average response time, and very speedy load time results. More so, it had no problem handling pretty intense traffic too. Simply put, this is as good as it gets.

Security – is WPX secure?

When it comes to security, WPX doesn’t slack. The provider has all the needed basic features and even sprinkled in some advanced ones, so you could run a secure site. Some of the main features included are unlimited SSL certificates, daily backups, DDoS protection, and more.

• SSL certificates – this is a ranking factor for search engines, as it helps to encrypt all the data to and from your hosting server. Simply put, it’s a must when trying to create a secure connection between your visitor and your server. Therefore, all plans come with unlimited Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates that are enabled by default but not yet installed, which you can do with just a few clicks.
• Backups – WPX comes with automated daily backups, that are kept for 28 days. For increased security, these backups are stored on a separate server from your website. Now, if you want to restore any of the elements, you can choose to restore only the files or the database.
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection – WPX includes enterprise-level DDoS protection via Incapsula in all of its plans. Incapsula’s protection blocks both network and application layers DDoS attacks, comes with auto-detection and triggering, supports custom SSL certificates, and more.
• Web Application Firewall – included with all plans, WAF protects your WordPress site from various application-layer attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and more.
• Other security measures – measures such as system-wide malware scanning and removal, two-factor authentication, and access limitations on the hardware level are available.

In brief, WPX has the whole nine yards when it comes to security. Your website is heavily-protected by default and there’s no need for more paid security add-ons.

Will WPX support help me?

WPX’s customer support team is available 24/7 via live chat and email. Besides that, it also has an extensive knowledge base covering a variety of categories.

I’ve heard great things about the provider’s customer service from various WPX hosting reviews. So, I had to try it out for myself. Since live chat is the fastest and most convenient way to communicate, that’s exactly what I’ve used.

I contacted the host’s customer support via live chat multiple times with endless questions. And, each time was a pleasant experience. There was always an agent available and the wait times never exceeded 30 seconds – just like the provider promises. As for the agents, they were helpful, efficient, and (very importantly) skilled in WordPress and web hosting. All of my questions were answered, no problem.

Besides that, I’m equally impressed by the provider’s knowledge base. It’s massive and covers all the important topics like WordPress performance, hosting panel, security, and many more. Additionally, the articles within are excellent and very helpful. The guides are clear, filled with images, and easy enough even for beginner users to follow.

Fast, knowledgeable, and efficient, WPX’s support is something the provider can be proud of. Plus, its handy knowledge base is very extensive and covers all the main topics you might need.

WPX hosting review: the final verdict

If there’s one lesson to be learned from this WPX hosting review is that there are actually many other top-notch hosts out there apart from the usual bigwigs. And one of them is WPX. While more premium-priced, the host does offer high-quality services.

I’d recommend WPX hosting for experienced WordPress users, freelancers, businesses, and agencies. Generous with features, excellent performance, and robust security – the host has all the makings of a great WordPress hosting provider.

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Alternatives to WPX

While I’ve been singing WPX’s praises, the provider might not be what you’ve been looking for. Or, perhaps its hosting cost is higher than what you’re willing to pay. Worry ot, there are many great hosting providers out there. In that case, let me introduce its 2 alternatives: Hostinger and SiteGround.

Hostinger

Hostinger should top your list if you’re looking for more affordable options than what WPX offers. Its managed WordPress plans start from just $1.99/mo and are more free-handed with included resources.

Additionally, it also offers some WordPress-centered perks like LiteSpeed Web Server, LiteSpeed cache plugin, Jetpack plugin, and WP-CLI, for fast WordPress performance. More so, the host comes with 7 data center locations to choose from. Beyond that, Hostinger also offers an easy-to-use hPanel and helpful support team.

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SiteGround

SiteGround is a popular WordPress-focused provider. Its prices are higher than Hostinger’s yet still more affordable than WPX hosting. Plans for managed WordPress start from $1.99/mo and go up to $5.99/mo.

SiteGround charms users with its reliability and spectacular speed. Besides that, the provider includes plenty of useful features like a staging environment, collaboration tools, a custom PHP setup, as well as a custom control panel for easy site management.

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