Did you know that Seravo has been ranked as the world's fastest WordPress hosting service at ismyhostfastyet.com?
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“Is my host fast yet?” asks the speed comparison for website hosting services, ismyhostfastyet.com, published by Google employees. For Seravo’s customers, the answer is YES. Seravo has starred the top of the listing since the chart’s launch in August 2019. When comparing hosting services specialized in WordPress, Seravo clearly beats the international competition, ranking first in the whole world!

The ismyhostfastyet.com leaderboad November 2020

The latest ranking from November 2020 was published in January 2021. The creators of the site don’t wish to publish real-time rankings.

Ranking based on actual usage

The ismyhostfastyet.com ranking is unique, in the sense that it’s not measures by any tools, but is in fact real statistics based on actual data gathered from the users of the Chrome browser. This means the measured results are actual real-life data, instead of tests run on random schedule.

Google, Chrome’s developer, is gathering statistical data from the users in order to keep optimizing Chrome, in order to make it serve users even faster. The same data can be useful in other settings, as it is in this case used to compare hosting services. The measurement is based on the time-to-first-byte (TTFB), which is a very accurate measure for a hosting service, as it doesn’t depend on the content or any other user or developer affected measurements. TTFB correlates with the best practice architecture and server-level optimization. The methodology is explained in more detail on the ismyhostfastyet.com website.

Chrome doesn’t keep track of all browser events, however: the data only consists of the visits to the more popular sites. For this reason, the comparison only includes about 25 % of the biggest customers’ sites hosted by Seravo. Traditionally – and especially in the WordPress universe – the largest websites are also the heaviest, and thus more slow. However, this is not the case with Seravo’s service, as it was especially designed to solve the biggest issues with WordPress, such as speed and information security.

Techniques that guarantee the speed

The quickness of Seravo’s WordPress service is the result of years of product development. It’s not easy to come across a service that would be similar to the Seravo platform. The speed is the result of getting hundreds of small details (and a few big ones) just right. These include:

  • Servers built especially for WordPress. When you optimize to serve just one purpose, you don’t have to compromise. Seravo’s service is built for WordPress, and optimized to do just that.
  • Highly trained Linux professionals to fine-tune the servers. Seravo’s service is not built on any big international technology giant’s cloud platform. The service runs on servers we can control and optimize as needed. There are no unnecessary abstraction layers or shared resources.
  • PCIe NVMe hard drives, which are faster than SATA SSD drives. Seravo has been using only the fastest hard drives since 2018. PCIe NVMe drives can be up to 10 times faster than traditional SSD drives.
  • World-class MariaDB knowledge. Besides Linux, MariaDB is another Finland-based tool our staff is specialized in. Seravo’s developers take part in developing MariaDB, which gives us a unique know-how in optimizing the database. Database optimization is especially important, as it is often the bottleneck in the performance of WordPress.
  • Open Source. WordPress itself is open source. All elements of Seravo’s architecture are either open source or developed by Seravo – sometimes both. The best way to stay on top of the development is to take part in it. This philosophy is why Seravo is quick in adopting new technologies!
  • Latest PHP versions available. WordPress is mainly built with PHP language. Providing our customers the latest (also the fastest) version of the language is a matter of pride for us. The latest big version, PHP 8.0, was available to Seravo’s customers only a day after the release of the version. To ensure that our customers get the benefits from PHP speed, we also offer XDebug profiling tools in staging and integration with Tideways for production sites.
  • Caching by default. A lot of WordPress users are accustomed to having to set up caches and optimizing tools. With Seravo, things are a bit different. All of our sites come with ready-made HTTP-level cache, Redis cache for WordPress, PHP caches, database caches, and really all the caches that are of any real use. This is why we recommend that when you transfer your existing site to Seravo, you should remove all speed optimization plugins. The architecture Seravo has built around WordPress is handling the same details better and faster, so the optimization tools usually end up doing more harm than good!
  • HTTP/2 and HTTPS for all of our customers, all the time. All modern browsers support the HTTP/2 protocol, which speeds up the way in which browsers load websites from the servers.
  • Built-in image optimization. SVG support by default, stopping harmful traffic to the site and many other useful and necessary tools to optimize WordPress. Our service takes care of our customers’ needs, and this is why we have developed automated image optimization. These in-house developed features are how we make life easier for our customers, not only by optimizing the speed of the website, but also saving the time of customers.
  • 24/7 monitoring, which also tracks the loading times. Seravo is a premium WordPress hosting and upkeep service, only hosting professional websites. For all of our customers, it is important that their websites are working and operating superbly. All hosted websites are under constant monitoring – we don’t just “ping” the service, we make sure that WordPress is running and proactively monitor the speed. If the site slows down, it is usually because of an error in the code. We notice these errors and inform the customer. Even after all the preparations, you still need people ready to get on top of new arising issues. Seravo is the only WordPress host to offer constant monitoring, done by our employees with very competitive pricing.

Can this be real?

Yes. With over 4000 websites in our premium hosting and WordPress upkeep, there are a lot of public references we can proudly showcase. For example, the Finnish COVID-19 service koronavilkku.fi did a national record in visits per day, when the coronavirus infection tracking app Koronavilkku was first published. Nearly a million people interested in the app visited the site in approximately 12 hours, to read up on how the contact tracing works, and how to install and use the app.

Security and stability are also highlights of Seravo’s premium hosting and WordPress upkeep. Robit, a tool manufacturer operating nowadays in more than 100 countries, has also trusted Seravo with the upkeep of their website. A point of first contact between customers and Robit, the website plays a crucial part in their growing business. For Robit, Seravo is a trustworthy partner, Seravo’s service allowing them to focus on their core business and growth.

We encourage you to see for yourself how we can make your WordPress website faster! Order a service plan from us and import a copy of your current site on our server. Then, run a speed test on your current site as well as the one hosted in our service. You can use a third-party tool like webpagetest.org to convince yourself of the amazing speed we provide with our premium hosting and WordPress upkeep!

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