WPX Hosting review: WordPress-exclusive hosting
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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.
WPX might not be the biggest name in the industry, yet it’s not 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.
In this WPX Hosting review, I share with you everything that I’ve uncovered in terms of pricing, performance, ease of use, security, support, and more.
| ⭐ Rating: | |
| 💵 Price: | From $20.83/month |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee: | 99.95% |
| ⚙️ Hosting types: | WordPress |
| 🌎 Server locations: | The US, the UK, and Australia |
| 👨💻 24/7 live support: | Yes |
| 🔥 Coupons: | WPX coupon for $20.83/month |
Pros and Cons of WPX
WPX pricing & plans
WPX provides two hosting options: WordPress Hosting and WooCommerce Hosting. Both options are managed and built on shared servers.
Here’s a detailed review of both hosting choices.
WPX WordPress hosting
WPX offers 3 different WordPress hosting plans with prices starting from $20.83/month and going up to $83.25/month.
All 3 plans share some similarities. They come with a one-click WordPress installation, unlimited site migration services, SSL certificates, and unlimited email boxes, as well as staging, content delivery network (CDN), DDoS protection, fixes for offline sites, and site speed optimization.
I’ve listed how they differ from each other in this table:
| Plan | Features | Price |
| Business | The plan allows hosting up to 5 websites and comes with 15GB disk space and 200GB bandwidth. | $20.83/month |
| Professional | The plan supports up to 15 websites and includes 30GB storage and 400GB bandwidth. | $41.58/month |
| Elite | Can accommodate up to 35 websites and comes with 60GB storage and unmetered bandwidth under WPX’s fair use policy. | $83.25/month |
Its resources are more than sufficient for most WordPress websites. Plus, the plans have many features and provide pretty much everything you need. However, you must spend a little extra as a free domain is not included.
WPX WooCommerce hosting
WPX offers 3 different hosting plans for WooCommerce, with prices starting from $29.17/month and going up to $125/month.
Their plans include essential features such as a free SSL certificate, super-fast SSD storage, and daily backups. Additionally, WPX provides unique features, including hybrid DDoS protection, a high-speed custom CDN, and unlimited site migrations.
You can compare the offerings of each plan in the table below:
| Plan | Features | Price |
| Powerstore | Lets you host 1 website and comes with 20GB disk space and 300GB bandwidth. | $29.17/month |
| Superstore | You can host up to 3 websites and you also get 50GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth. | $62.50/month |
| Hyperstore | Host up to 5 websites, get 100GB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth | $125/month |
WPX Hosting provides enough resources to host a WooCommerce site. However, like with WordPress hosting, WPX doesn't offer a free domain, so you must buy it yourself.
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 everything is actually well-organized.
Right at the top is a menu to quickly get to the dashboard, services, account, support, and more. Speaking of the 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:
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WordPress installation. While WPX dubs this as a one-click installer, it actually requires a few clicks. Nevertheless, the entire process is straightforward. The most labor-intensive thing you need to do is to fill in your website and account details such as email, username, and password.
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Staging. This feature 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.
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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.
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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.
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Backups. 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 well. Plus, while I can’t say that WPX offers the 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
During 2 weeks of testing, WPX scored 100% on uptime tests. This is more than its promised 99.95%% uptime guarantee, meaning they do more than needed to ensure their service is perfect.
Meanwhile, its reachability was around 99.97%, meaning some checks failed but weren't uptime-related. This usually happens due to routing issues or network latency but not complete outages.
WPX’s server responsiveness was also very good. Its response time averaged at 12.2ms, far faster than the market average of 600ms.
WPX Hosting website speed
For this WPX Hosting review, I also ran speed tests to check how fast a user can access my fully built WordPress site. There are 2 main measures: the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and the Fully Loaded Time.
- LCP shows how long it takes for a website to load the largest element on the page. This element can be anything, from a big image to a large text block. For a fully built WordPress site, the LCP should be under 2.5s.
- The fully loaded time shows how long it takes for the website to load every element on the page. Anything longer than 3s may affect the user experience and may increase bounce rates.
During my tests, the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) was fully rendered in just 0.816s. This is well within the ideal range and means that users can see meaningful content almost immediately after arriving on the site.
Meanwhile, the website took around 2.2 seconds to load fully, while its size was around 980KB. I also noticed no stalling during this process, and the layout remained stable. All in all, WPX Hosting gave me perfect speed test results.
WPX Hosting stress testing
Lastly, I tested how WPX Hosting performs during high traffic spikes. To do that, I sent 50 virtual users (VUs) each minute to the site and monitored how well it handled this traffic. For perspective, 50 continuous VUs each minute would equal approximately 50,000 monthly visitors.
When reviewing stress test results, the blue line (response time) should ideally remain flat even when the purple line (number of visitors) increases. Meanwhile, the red line (failed requests) should stay at 0. The results of WPX Hosting are shown in the image below.
WPX Hosting handled my stress tests well. The P95 response time, which shows how fast a system responds for 95% of users, was 26ms. This is much lower than the recommended 2,000 ms threshold, showing excellent performance under load. Also, there were no HTTP failures, meaning the server handled high traffic stably.
All things considered, I was satisfied with WPX Hosting's performance. The host demonstrated reliable uptime, good average response time, and speedy load time results. However, I would argue about its claims of being the "World's fastest managed WordPress hosting." Some of our tested providers, such as Kinsta, InMotion Hosting, and Verpex, still surpassed it in fully loaded time, LCP, and average response time.
Security – is WPX secure?
When it comes to security, WPX Hosting 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.
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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.
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Backups. WPX Hosting 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.
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Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection. WPX Hosting includes enterprise-level DDoS protection via Incapsula in all of its plans. Incapsula’s protection covers both network and application layers against DDoS attacks, comes with auto-detection and triggering, supports custom SSL certificates, and more.
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Web Application Firewall. It is included with all plans, WAF protects your WordPress site from various application-layer attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and more.
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System-wide malware scanning and removal. WPX’s Security Team will remove all malware code if your site runs into trouble. It will also provide you with additional recommendations and information on how to avoid this situation in the future.
- Two-factor authentication. Adds an extra layer of security by requiring two forms of authentication to log into your account.
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?
In a nutshell, WPX Hosting’s support team was highly professional, helpful, and fast. I contacted them twice before purchasing a plan and once after. Both times, they responded quickly and resolved my issue.
The long story is that while testing this provider, my research team and I encountered an issue with our domain being frozen due to not receiving an email to confirm the purchase and activation. This gave us a chance to test the provider's support team. Despite this hiccup, the support agent quickly resolved this issue. Also, they helped me when I ran stress tests that weren't behaving as expected, and I couldn't pinpoint the cause. All in all, in my experience, the support service is solid.
WPX Hosting review: 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 Hosting. While more premium-priced, the host does offer high-quality services.
| Feature | Rating | Description |
| Pricing | The provider has premium pricing with plans starting from $20.83/mo. However, it offers generous features and excellent performance. | |
| Ease of use | Its custom dashboard cum control panel requires some acclimatizing. But, it’s easy enough to navigate and very functional with plenty of WordPress management tools. | |
| Performance | The performance was very good. 100% uptime was much better than the guaranteed 99.95%, and the response time was a speedy 12.2ms. A fully built site loaded in just 2.2s too. | |
| Security | The host includes ample security measures in all of its plans – including SSL, WAF, DDoS, automatic backups, and many more. | |
| Support | WPX offers swift, friendly, and knowledgeable customer support via live chat and email 24/7. Plus, its knowledge base is extensive and stuffed full of helpful articles. |
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.
Alternatives to WPX
If WPX Hosting is not what you’re looking for, or if its hosting cost is higher than what you’re willing to pay, there are many great hosting providers out there. For example, Hostinger and Bluehost.
Hostinger
Hostinger is an excellent WordPress-focused provider. It is also great if you’re looking for affordable options. Its hosting plans start from just $2.69/month and offer more 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.
Bluehost
Bluehost is another great alternative. Its prices are low, starting from $1.99/month with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Bluehost charms users with its reliability and spectacular speed. Besides that, the provider includes plenty of useful features like SimpleScripts one-click installs, automatic WordPress installation, as well as a custom control panel for easy site management.
FAQ
Where are WPX hosting servers located?
WPX hosting servers are located in Chicago, London, and Sydney. This guarantees good connection speeds and accessibility from nearly anywhere in the world.
Does WPX use cPanel?
WPX doesn’t use cPanel. Instead, it uses its WPX control panel, which contains many of the main functions of cPanel and is easier to use.
