Rocket.net is a great option if you are looking for a more affordable solution to host your high-traffic WordPress sites. With similar features, it charges lower prices than other cloud hosting providers like Kinsta and WP Engine.
I switched from SiteGround to Rocket.net in 2024 with the hope of getting a better performance for my websites. And that’s exactly what I got.
After switching to Rocket.net, the performance of my websites (including this one) skyrocketed. FYI, I don’t install an optimization or caching plugin on this website.
If you are planning to switch to Rocket.net too and are looking for more insights about the hosting provider, I will share my honest experience with it in this post.
Shortcuts ⤵️
- Rocket.net in a nutshell
- Hosting infrastructure
- Hosting features
- Performance
- Support
- Pricing
- Rocket.net vs Kinsta vs WP Engine vs Pressable
- Pros and cons
- The Verdict
👋🏻 Rocket.net in a Nutshell
Rocket.net is a cloud hosting service designed specifically for WordPress. No other applications or CMS platforms can be installed on it.
It offers a managed hosting service for WordPress. Meaning that it handles the technical aspects related to site administration. From performing the backups, updating the software (WordPress core, themes and plugins) to protecting your website from cyberattacks.
Rocket.net comes with a built-in CDN powered by Cloudflare. That’s why you will find your site performance increases significantly after moving to it because CDN is enabled by default.
Apart from CDN, Rocket.net also comes with the following key features:
- Caching
- Image optimization
- Automatic updates for WordPress core, plugins and themes
- Scheduled daily backups
- WAF (Web Application Firewall)
- Malware protection
- Staging environment
Unlike other hosting services, you don’t need to buy add-ons to use those features.
All features above are available as the core features and are available on all plans, including the lowest plan.
All Rocket.net customers can install the WP Rocket plugin for free in case you want to make some advanced optimization settings.
To use Rocket.net, you need to be familiar with DNS settings. You will need to connect your domain manually by setting up the DNS records since Rocket.net doesn’t offer domain registration service.
Since you need to connect your domaiin manually, Rocket.net might be not the best solution if you are just getting started with WordPress.
But if you want to go straight with a managed hosting provider for your first-ever WordPress website, that’s cool, though. I have published a resource that you can read to learn how to connect your domain with your website hosted on Rocket.net.
Rocket.net Review Summary
| Performance score | 100* |
| Average load times | 147.88 ms |
| Average response time | 3.8 ms |
| Built exclusively for WordPress | ✅ |
| Automatic updates | WordPress core, themes and plugins |
| Add-ons | ❌ |
| Support | Live chat by humans |
👨🏻💻 Hosting Infrastructure
Rocket.net has 9 different server locations you can choose from. They are spread into four continents: America (mostly in the US), Europe, Asia and Australia.
Here are the locations of the Rocket.net servers:
- Ashburn (US)
- Dallas (US)
- Phoenix (US)
- Frankfurt (Germany)
- London (UK)
- Amsterdam (Netherlands)
- Singapore (Singapore)
- Brisbane (Australia)
- Sydney (Australia)
You can monitor the uptime status of each server on this page.
The server location you choose for your website will only be used to host the application (your WordPress website) and database.
Once your website has gone live, your visitors will be served by 275+ CDN servers.
The Rocket.net hosting service is integrated with Cloudflare Enterprise for the CDN feature.
The Rocket.net servers have the following specs:
- 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2667 v2 @ 3.30GHz (32 Cores)
- 128GB RAM
- RAIDED SSD Hard Drives
Technical Server Configuration
Some WordPress plugins demand high server configuration to run properly. WooCommerce, for instance, requires your hosting to have at least 256MB of memory limit.
The default server configuration of Rocket.net is more than enough to run the vast majority of WordPress plugins. From e-commerce plugins to LMS plugins.
Here are some key configuration items on the Rocket.net hosting service.
- PHP memory limit: 1GB
- Max input time: 400
- Upload max size: 100MB
- PHP post max size: 100MB
- Web server: Apache
- PHP handler: LiteSpeed
📚 Hosting Features
If you are new to WordPress, you may think that Rocket.net is an expensive hosting service because the lowest plan it offers is available at $30 per month.
There are many hosting services with a lower starting plan than that.
ChemiCloud, for instance, charges only $13.95 per month for its lowest plan. But, you need to understand that shared hosting services like ChemiCloud have limited inodes.
Also, you are required to pay extra fees to use features like CDN and other advanced features.
Most “cheap”, shared hosting services don’t have built-in image optimization feature, caching, and scheduled backups.
As I mentioned above, all Rocket.net features are available in the core hosting service, not as add-ons.
If you calculate it correctly and carefully, using Rocket.net is more cost-effective than using a so-called cheap hosting service.
Also think about easier maintenance since you don’t need to manage tons of plugins.
| Features | Rocket.net | Monthly cost without Rocket.net |
|---|---|---|
| CDN | Free | $8.99 Rocket CDN |
| Advanced caching | Free | $4.90 WP Rocket |
| Automated daily backups | Free | $12.40 BlogVault |
| Image optimization | Free | $9.99 ShortPixel |
| Firewall | Free | $12.40 Malcare |
| Total: $48.68 |
Here are the key features you will get from Rocket.net:
- CDN and caching
- Image optimization
- WP Rocket
- Automatic updates
- PHP manager
- Security
- Backups
- File manager and SFTP
CDN and Caching
Rocket.net has only 9 server locations, fewer than Kinsta which has 37 server locations. But as mentioned above, the Rocket.net hosting service is integrated with Cloudflare Enterprise which has 275+ CDN server locations.
So technically, your visitors will be served by 280+ servers.
In case you are not familiar with CDN yet. It is a network of geographically distributed servers over the globe. CDN is created to store the static files (HTML, images, CSS, JavaScript, etc) generated by the original hosting server.
The aim is to reduce latency because users/visitors will be served by a server nearest to their location. CDN can also reduce round-trip times as users are not served directly by the original server — which is in a more distant location.
CDN is enabled by default in Rocket.net. You don’t need to make any setting or configuration.
You can monitor the CDN usage from the Reporting menu inside Rocket.net control panel. As you can see on the screenshot below, the origin server serves only 13.9% requests. While CDN servers serves 86.1% requests during the last 7 days on my blog.
Caching
To make your websites even faster, Rocket.net also offers a built-in caching feature. The caching is not installed on your website (application level), but on the CDN servers.
With Rocket.net, you will have what’s called edge caching.
The combination of CDN and edge caching is what makes Rocket.net capable of delivering excellent performance.
While CDN plays a role to store static files generated from the origin servers, edge caching focuses on storing frequently accessed data closer to the end-user, within a CDN’s edge servers.
Unfortunately, Rocket.net offers no feature to control the caching like, for instance, Kinsta. But it still allows you to clean up the cache which is quite useful when you are troubleshooting design-related issues.
Image Optimization
Rocket.net also comes with an image optimization feature, but chances are you don’t realize it exists. That’s because it doesn’t offer a dedicated setting option to enable or disable it on the control panel.
In other words, image optimization is always enabled.
The image optimization feature itself is installed on the CDN servers. Cloudflare Enterprise (the CDN platform that Rocket.net uses) will automatically convert JPG and PNG images to WebP, but only when necessary.
If an image is small enough and it’s already being delivered under the threshold, Cloudflare preservers the original format (JPG or PNG).
Advanced Optimization via WP Rocket (Free)
Rocket.net already offers caching and image optimization features. If you need to apply some advanced optimization tweak, you can install WP Rocket.
Every Rocket.net customer gets a free WP Rocket license, you can installl from the plugin management screen inside the Rocket.net control panel.
Since Rocket.net already comes with CDN and caching, you can use WP Rocket to apply some advanced optimization settings like minify, preload, lazyload and so on.
You can also use WP Rocket to perform a database clean up.
Unfortunately, it has no feature to disable unnecessary features like emoji, oEmbeds, XML-RPC, etc. As a comparison, FlyingPress and Perfmatters come with the feature.
🚨 Despite the name similarity, Rocket.net and WP Rocket are totally different products from two different companies.
Automatic Updates for WP Core, Plugins and Themes
There are tons of hosting providers claiming to offer automatic updates. But some of them require you to pay for add-ons. Or, they require you to use a higher plan.
WP Engine, for instance, requires you to subscribe to the Core or the higher plans to use the automatic plugin and theme updates, with the subscription fee of $400 per month!
In Rocket.net, automatic updates are available in all plans — without exception.
Rocket.net gives you options to enable or disable the automatic updates feature.
For the WordPress core, you can set which version (major releases or minor releases) you want to get the updates of.
Theme and Plugin Management
If you are managing multiple WordPress websites, then this particular feature is super useful. You can easily manage plugins and themes from your control panel.
Three actions you can do related to plugin management are:
- Installing a plugin or theme
- Deleting a plugin or theme
- Deactivating a plugin
- Updating a plugin or theme
Rocket.net is integrated with the WordPress repository to bring in the plugins and themes to your control panel. You can search for a plugin and install it right from the control panel.
Thanks to the feature, you no longer need to subscribe to a service like ManageWP, WP Remote or WP Umbrella.
PHP Manager
By default, every WordPress website added to Rocket.net will be powered by PHP 7.4. But if you use a theme or plugin that demands a higher PHP version, you can simply switch to a higher version.
The PHP manager that Rocket.net offers allows you to switch between PHP versions. Be it to a lower version or a higher version. Rocket.net even still supports PHP version 5.6 in case you have an old WordPress website that you want to keep alive.
Speaking of PHP, Rocket.net offers unlimited PHP workers for faster request processing. It uses LiteSpeed as the PHP handler. Rocket.net itself uses Apache as the web server.
Security
Rocket.net comes with some security features to protect your websites. You don’t need to make any setting or configuration to use them.
When you add a new website on your Rocket.net hosting account, it will automatically be protected by a firewall both on the origin server and CDN servers.
On the origin server, your website will be protected by Imunify360. Apart from a firewall, Imunify360 also offers real-time malware scanning.
On the CDN server, your website is protected by Cloudflare Enterprise’s WAF, which scans every request before it hits the server. You can monitor the WAF activities on your control panel.
Rocket.net also has a feature called Lock My Site, which you can use if you have a static WordPress website. When enabled, the feature will turn your website into read-only mode to prevent any changes from being made. It can prevent a plugin or hacker from making any change.
However, it should not be enabled on dynamic websites like e-commerce or a blog. If you enable it, you won’t be able to make a new change to your website, including publishing a new post.
Another security feature that Rocket.net offers is SSL, which is powered by Cloudflare.
Again. You don’t need to pay for an add-on to use those security features. They are available as core features.
Automatic Backups and On-Demand Backups
This is one of the most useful features that Rocket.net offers. After switching to Rocket.net, you will find your website is backed up every day without even installing a backup plugin.
If, for a certain reason, your website is broken, you can simply restore to normal version from the available backups. You can restore your website with only a single click.
Rocket.net stores each backup for 14 days. If you want to have a copy of your website on your local storage, Rocket.net also allows you to download it.
You can simply create a manual backup and download the backup file (you can backup both WordPress files and database).
In some hosting services, including SiteGround, you need to pay an extra fee to download the backup files of your website, which is ridiculous.
Where does Rocket.net store your backup files?
For the backup feature, Rocket.net utilizes the service from JetBackup, which stores the backup files to S3 server. Which also means that the backup files are stored to a different location from your website.
According to this blog post, Rocket.net has also been working with another backup vendor called Acronis in parallel to JetBackup.
File Manager and SFTP
WP Engine and Kinsta are two popular cloud hosting services that don’t have a file manager feature. If you find the feature is important, then you will thank Rocket.net for providing the feature.
The Rocket.net file manager is quite useful to apply minor changes to a certain file (e.g., wp-config.php). It is also useful when you need to confirm your site ownership on platforms like Google Search Console or Pinterest.
The Rocket.net file manager supports the following operations:
- Upload
- Download
- Edit
- Delete
- Create new file and folder
SFTP
If you prefer to access your WordPress files the techy way, you can create an SFTP account and use an FTP client app like FileZilla or Transmit.
You can create a new FTP account from the main screen of the hosting control panel.
Other Features
Apart from the features mentioned above, Rocket.net also comes with some handy features to manage your websites. Including:
- WP CLI
- PhpMyAdmin
- Staging environment
- Free migration
📈 Performance Tests
I said that the performance of my website increased significantly after I migrated from SiteGround to Rocket.net. I will prove it in this section.
A little note. The performance testing results may be varied depending on the page builder you use.
If you use a page builder for your website, you may get lower performance score compared to Gutenberg. That’s because most page builder-powered websites ususally have more CSS and JavaScript files that need to be loaded.
But after those static files are stored to CDN, you will get a better performance score.
I use Google PageSpeed Insights for the test.
🚨 The accessibility score has no correlation with the hosting performance. It is purely determined by the design.
Testing Results with Divi
💡 Divi offers a 30-day money back guarantee in case you want to try it yourself.
TRY DIVI
Testing Results with Elementor
Testing Results with Gutenberg (Twenty Twenty-Four Theme)
I’ve also created a monitoring page on UptimeRobot to allow you to learn the uptime history of Rocket.net. From the page, you can also learn the average response time of Rocket.net.
☎️ Support
Support is the area where Rocket.net seems to be unbeaten. It offers live chat support available 24/7, which is powered by LiveChat.
Anytime you need help, you can simply click the floating image on the bottom-right corner to get help from the support team. You will be greeted directly by a human, not an AI bot!
You can start the conversation right after providing your name and email.
The Rocket.net support is the best one compared to other web hosting services I have ever used.
As a comparison. In SiteGround, you won’t be greeted by a human when trying to get help. Instead, you will be presented with a ChatGPT-powered prompt asking you to explain your issues. It will provide useless documentation that won’t solve your issue.
On a blog post, Rocket.net puts an emphasis that its customer support is staffed by humans, not bots. If it doesn’t change, then it’s easy to conclude that the Rocket.net support is one of the best in the hosting company space.
💰 Pricing
Rocket.net has a higher starter plan compared to SiteGround and other shared hosting services. But keep in mind that its core hosting features already include CDN, caching, firewall and automatic backups.
If you use the plugin approach to add the above features, you will end up spending more money on a monthly or yearly basis.
Also, since you don’t need to install plugins to add the above mentioned features, site maintenance will be much easier. Thus, you can put more focus on your business growth.
Rocket.net itself offers three plan types: Managed Hosting, Agency Hosting and Enterprise Hosting. Each plan still has some tiers.
Managed Hosting Plan
| Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $30/mo | $60/mo | $100/mo |
| WordPress installs | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Visitors | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 10GB | 20GB | 40GB |
| Bandwidth | 50GB | 100GB | 300GB |
Agency Hosting Plan
| Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | Tier 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $100/mo | $200/mo | $300/mo | $400/mo | $600/mo |
| WordPress installs | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 60 |
| Visitors | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 50GB | 75GB | 100GB | 150GB | 175GB |
| Bandwidth | 200GB | 500GB | 600GB | 800GB | 1200GB |
| Tier 6 | Tier 7 | Tier 8 | Tier 9 | Tier 10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $900/mo | $1100/mo | $1200/mo | $1400/mo | $1600/mo |
| WordPress installs | 100 | 125 | 150 | 175 | 200 |
| Visitors | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 225GB | 300GB | 325GB | 350GB | 375GB |
| Bandwidth | 1500GB | 2000GB | 2500GB | 3000GB | 3500GB |
Enterprise Hosting Plan
| Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $649/mo | $1299/mo | $1949/mo | $2599/mo |
| CPU Cores | 8 | 32 | 64 | 96 |
| RAM | 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 256GB |
| Storage | 1000GB | 1000GB | 2000GB | 2000GB |
| Bandwidth | 1000GB | 1000GB | 2000GB | 2000GB |
Rocket.net says that the number of monthly visitors is unmetered, but you have a bandwidth limit.
Each hosting plan comes with unlimited PHP workers. For the Managed Hosting and Agency Hosting, you only need to pay $1 for during the first month of use.
⚔️ Rocket.net vs Kinsta vs WP Engine vs Pressable
Rocket.net is the close competitor of Kinsta, WP Engine and Pressable. They operate in the same hosting segment which targets those already familiar with WordPress.
They offer similar features. I have tried them all when I was looking for a SiteGround alternative to host my websites. And to be honest, they have similar performance.
They have a performance score of 90+ on Google PageSpeed Insights. Much better than SiteGround.
I have created the following table to compare Rocket.net and other cloud hosting providers above. To make the comparison fairer, I use the lowest hosting plan as the sample. I firmly believe that the lowest hosting plan depicts the real value of the hosting company.
| Rocket.net | Kinsta | WP Engine | Pressable | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $30/mo | $35/mo | $30/mo | $25/mo |
| CDN Provider | Cloudflare | Cloudflare | Cloudflare | Undisclosed |
| Monthly visits | Unmetered | 35,000 | 25,000 | 30,000 |
| Bandwidth | 50GB | 125GB | 75GB | Undisclosed |
| Storage | 10GB | 10GB | 10GB | 20GB |
| PHP workers | Unlimited | Undisclosed | Undisclosed | 10 |
| Automatic backups | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automatic updates | WP core, plugins and themes | ❌ | WP core | WP Core |
| Firewall | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Malware protection | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Support | Live chat by humans | Live chat by humans | AI-powered chat | Live chat by humans |
| LEARN MORE | LEARN MORE | LEARN MORE | LEARN MORE |
Pros and Cons
Pros
There are two main things you will get after switching to Rocket.net. First, you will have a faster website. Especially if you switched from a shared hosting service like SiteGround.
Second, site administration will be much easier since you don’t need to install tons of plugins for CDN, caching, backups, security to image optimization.
It is easy to say that Rocket.net is a great hosting service. Not because it is capable of delivering an excellent site performance, but it also truly adopts a customer-first business approach. It uses humans to handle support, not AI bot like SiteGround.
Rocket.net is also super transparent about the pricing. No price hike on the renewals. No add-ons sacking your money.
Rocket.net Pros:
- Excellent performance
- All features are available as core features. No add-ons
- Automatic updates for all WP components (core, themes and plugins)
- Useful file manager
- Super-fast support by humans
- More affordable to handle higher traffic
- $1 for the first month
- Free WP Rocket plugin
Cons
The very first thing you need to know if you consider Rocket.net to host your WordPress websites is that it is probably not the best solution if you are just getting started with WordPress.
Bluehost and ChemiCloud are the better options if you want to create your first-ever WordPress website as they come with a domain registration service. Thus, you don’t need to connect your domain manually — which is required if you use Rocket.net.
Most cloud hosting providers (including Kinsta, Pressable and WP Engine) don’t offer a domain registration feature. You need to know how to set up DNS records to connect your domain.
Rocket.net doesn’t have a DNS feature. It uses the DNS service from Cloudflare. So, to be able to connect your domain, you need to make sure that your domain registrar allows you to set up DNS records.
Hover is a domain registrar I recommend if you want to register a new domain. It has a super easy-to-use DNS manager.
Another downside of Rocket.net is that it offers no email hosting. So, if you want to have an email account under your domain (e.g., contact@yourdomain.com), you need to use an email hosting service like Google Workspace.
FYI. Hover also offers email hosting service costing only $2.5 per month with the capacity of 10GB.
Rocket.net Cons:
- Requires you to connect your domain manually
- No email hosting
- Lacks setting controls on CDN, caching and image optimization
📝 Conclusion – Is Rocket.net Really That Good?
More and more WordPress users are recommending Rocket.net these days. Is it really that good?
Rocket.net is good not only at providing hosting service, but it is also good at handling customers.
Its cloud hosting infrastructure, which is bundled with CDN and caching, is capable of delivering a great site performance.
Similarly, its human-staffed customer support shows that Rocket.net truly cares about its customers’ issues, not just raking their money.
Rocket.net is a great hosting service. But again, it requires some technical knowledge because you need to set up DNS records to connect your domain.
You can use Rocket.net if you:
- Desperate with the performance of your shared hosting provider
- Are looking for a more affordable hosting provider to host your high-traffic sites
- Want to pass Core Web Vitals assessment effortlessly
- Hate paying add-ons for extra features
- Are looking for a hosting provider that offers human-staffed customer support, not AI bot
- Want to use WP Rocket for free
Conversely, you better go with Bluehost or ChemiCloud if you:
- Want to create your first-ever WordPress website
- Not familiar with DNS records
- Are looking for a hosting service with an email hosting feature
You can try Rocket.net without a risk as it only charges you $1 for your first month.
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