Rocket.net Review: Managed WordPress Hosting = Fastest Core Web Vitals (Global TTFB <100ms) + 2x Firewalls + Near 0 Vulnerabilities

I want a WordPress blog that makes money online.

And I hosted it myself, but even as a certified and experienced IT guy, I took 2 months to get the technical portion set up.

This means I could have launched my blog 2 months earlier if I had used a managed WordPress hosting provider from the start.

Like Rocket.net.

In fact, Rocket.net provides the best value if you want the best performance for WordPress websites but don’t want to worry about technical chores.

For one, it has 2 incredible setups: 1) Servers with NVMe SSD storage, 32 CPU Cores, 128GB RAM, and 2) Cloudflare Enterprise with a global Time to First Byte (TTFB) of < 100ms.

In other words, the most powerful servers and potentially fastest global speed by a hosting provider.

Cloudflare Enterprise also comes with a WAF which is paired with Rocket.net’s Imunify360 firewall, to protect your website against cyber threats.

All free and fully managed.

This frees you up to focus on your website and business.

Let’s see if Rocket.net is as good as it claims and can be trusted with handling everything technical for me. I will also share in my Rocket.net review how you can get the best setup.

1. NVMe Storage, 32 CPU Cores, 128GB RAM

Or why Rocket.net owns the competition.

What’s insane is these are default specs (Yes, even basic plan too).

Which other providers can’t match even with their most powerful servers.

2. Free Object Cache Pro (Worth $95/mo)

Speed Test (W/O CDN)

Rocket.net offers Object Cache Pro for free. It comes with Relay, the next-generation caching for PHP. 

Object Cache Pro isn’t installed by default but you can ask the support team to set it up for you. It only took 1 minute for me.

Let’s see if Object Cache Pro is really the most advanced caching plugin as it says.

I compared:

1. A WordPress website with Object Cache Pro on Rocket.net (Purged its CDN cache).
2. A clone with Redis on AWS (No CloudFront).

Each has the same plugins, 2,500 words, 20+ images, and 1 YouTube video.

According to GTMetrix, Rocket.net’s TTFB is 3x faster at 55ms and its page loading speed (Fully Loaded Time) is almost 2x faster 😐.

3. Cloudflare Enterprise (Free)

I’m surprised Rocket.net offers Cloudflare Enterprise, Cloudflare’s most premium plan, for free when the second most premium costs $200/mo.

And its features are nothing to scoff at:

1. CDN + Argo – Optimized + smart routing for your web traffic to 285 cities.
2. Brotli – The successor to gzip that compresses your web content better.
3. Polish + Mirage – Load images faster.
4. Full Page Caching – Load web pages faster.
5. WAF – Protects your WordPress site at the edge in front of your server.
6. DDoS Protection (Layers 3, 4, 7)
7. Bot mitigation
8. PCI compliance – Secure credit card transactions on WooCommerce websites.

All set up and configured by Rocket.net for you so you don’t need to.

4. Best Core Web Vitals

Speed Test (W/ CDN)

We saw that Rocket.net servers are good enough to get you < 100ms TTFB, but if you think your website couldn’t get any faster, it just did.

According to GTMetrix, the same website is almost 10% faster at 416ms with Cloudflare Enterprise.

Even their already insane Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Contentful Paint (FCP) got faster by 66%.

That’s the fastest page loading speed I have seen.

And it’s not just one server from Vancouver confirming this. 

KeyCDN showed that Rocket.net’s TTFB is < 100ms worldwide.

SpeedVitals supports KeyCDN and even gave it an A grade.

If you’re wondering why I am geeking out over getting faster when my page load time is already < 1s, know that TTFB, LCP, and FCP make up what Google calls Core Web Vitals. 

They measure your website speed. The faster your Vitals, the higher Google will rank you on their result page.

So, better Core Web Vitals = better SEO.

And the easiest way to improve your Vitals is to use a good hosting provider.

Like Rocket.net who promises global TTFB < 100ms.

Source: Rocket.net

Even WPX, often called the fastest WordPress host, has not put a value on their speed.

Verdict: Rocket.net kept their word and even overdelivered 👍. 

5. Best Firewalls

Rocket.net gives you double firewall protection.

Source: Rocket.net

As the front door for your website and your first line of defense, Cloudflare Enterprise scans for malicious traffic and only allows legit visitors to reach your second firewall.

Powered by Imunify360, this second firewall blocks any attack that slipped through the cracks like zero-day exploits and scans for malware.

Rocket.net fully manages these 2 firewalls for you.

For free across all their plans.

But is this free stuff any good?

Let’s test their firewalls.

I launched 13,577 cyberattacks against my Rocket.net website:

• 8,177 were blocked by Cloudflare (60% of my attacks).
• 5,120 were blocked by Imunify360 (95% of the remaining attacks).
• 1 out of 30 high risk vulnerabilities detected:
  • SQL Injection for SQLite – 4 out of 495 attacks successful. Okay as Rocket.net doesn’t use SQLite.
• 0 out of 12 medium risk vulnerabilities.
• 1 out of 2 informational alerts. These aren’t vulnerabilities.

6. Outages (2023)

Rocket.net’s incident history recorded 55 hours of outage (in any location) in 2023.

Note that:

1. This only includes incidents where the severity is Partial Outage or Major Outage.
2. Other issues like performance degradation were not factored in.

You can subscribe to get their latest system status.

7. Easy-to-use Dashboard

I mastered their dashboard in less than 5min. It’s just so intuitive. 

I think it’s so simple and uncluttered because there is nothing much for you to do in the dashboard; Rocket.net fully manages everything technical.

8. Detailed Monitoring

Rocket.net offers insightful details of your traffic like cache performance, countries, and device types. Personally, I find the latter two useful if I want to know if I’m reaching the right audience.

I wished they provided a bit more info though (More on this below).

9. Issues Fixed < 5 min

Prompt, professional, and helpful support. None of my issues lasted 5 mins 👍.

10. Set Up < 5 min ($1 first month)

Their TTFB isn’t the only thing that’s fast; Setting up in Rocket.net was super fast too.

See their speed for yourself:

1. Create an account with your info (Credit card needed).
2. Verify your details.
3. Click on Create Site to launch your WordPress website.

11. Optimize < 5 min

Because Rocket.net optimizes everything (well, almost) for you, there isn’t much you need to do.

Except maybe these three.

1. Use the latest PHP. Go to Advanced > Site Settings and select the latest version.

2. Install Object Cache Pro. Just open a chat and ask their team to install for you (Shoutout to Enrique). Almost immediately, I saw Redis in my Plugins. 

3. Enable automatic updates (optional) – If you want the latest features all the time, you can select this in Site Settings. Be warned it might break your site.

I suggest testing new changes in Staging first (a private clone of your website) before confirming them in Production, where the changes will be public.

This also ensures these changes don’t crash your website.

Just toggle from Production to Staging in the dashboard:

12. Cons

Lowest Bandwidth and Storage – Here are the specs:

The complete opposite of their servers. The bandwidth and storage of their best server can’t match those of the most basic AWS server.

No information about slow pages and queries – Cloudways offers these and I found them useful. Alternatives: Google Search Console for slow pages and Query Monitor for slow queries.

No free domain names – You can buy one from Namecheap and add it to your website here.

No email hosting – Not a major downside since hosting an email server slows your website. Use an external email service like Gmail in Google Workspace instead.

13. Evaluation

Let’s revisit my 3 requirements (on my main page) and see how Rocket.net did.

✅ < 2s page load time – I got page load times averaging 416ms and global TTFB < 100ms.

✅ Security – Rocket.net’s websites have 1 high risk vulnerability (My blog has 2), which doesn’t affect WordPress at all. Unlike mine though, it has bot mitigation and PCI compliance.

✅ > 95% uptime – Currently 99% uptime.

14. Final Thoughts

Rocket.net offers the fastest managed WordPress hosting I have seen so far. Hands down. 

Though I’m curious if it matches up to WPX, generally billed as the fastest provider.

And if its speed is as easy to get.

Many of these big name providers still need you to do some technical chores in their complicated control panels or dashboards to squeeze the best speed out of them.

Rocket.net hands their speed to you on a silver platter.

Along with incredible security and uptime.

Which is why I think Rocket.net is ideal for normies or non-technical users, who’d rather think about what Themes to use than setting up HTTPS on their WordPress websites.

It’s a shame it isn’t more well known and people still think big name providers are the best.

To me, Rocket.net is one of the best WP Engine or Bluehost alternatives that proves popularity =/= better hosting.

But don’t take my word for it.

Try it yourself. It’s only $1 for your first month. And let me know in the comments how Rocket.net went for you.