HostXNow WordPress Hosting Review

Disclaimer: Our reviews are not sponsored, as we used our own money to purchase hosting subscriptions. Our reviews are 100% based on our sole opinions. Reviews contain affiliate marketing links where we get a commission when you purchase or subscribe to that service. Read our Affiliate Marketing Policy here. Also, please verify all product and pricing information directly with the linked brands, as product offerings change often. FastestWP.Website is not responsible for errors or product discrepancies.

We proudly host our website on Rocket.net.

HostXNow is a UK-based web hosting company we have used on one of our websites for the past year. Although they are a smaller company, we have had very good results using HostXNow. Speed has been very good, and they have been quite easy to deal with. In fact, the only negative we have to say is that they stopped their US-based hosting service in 2022, so their servers are only based in the United Kingdom.

In this review post, we will detail HostXNow’s services, how they performed on our performance benchmarks and speed tests, and our overall ranking of their web hosting services.

HostXNow General Features

With more than 15 years of hosting experience, HostXNow is a solid web host provider that is “optimized” for WordPress. They offer a 99.9% uptime promise, and they post their uptime monitoring to the public. Reviewing the statistics back to March 2023 – the earliest available data – HostXNow does seem to have very reliable uptime, which is awesome.

When things go wrong – which they will – it is important to consider the website host’s support policy. HostXNow offers 24/7 support, which is common and what we recommend. When we have communicated with HostXNow, it generally seems to be the same person, meaning HostXNow probably has a small support department. Yet, they have also responded on the weekends, and the response times are fast.

HostXNow also offers email hosting too. If you have a separate email plan through Google as part of Google Workspace, you don’t need to worry about email hosting – Google is your email host. But if you host your own email server, you need to consider who that will be and whether there will be an extra charge. HostXNow includes email hosting in the price, so that is a very good value. We strongly recommend having your own email domain instead of just yourbusiness@gmail.com.

HostXNow Optimization Features

HostXNow uses LiteSpeed Hosting web servers as part of its optimization services, promising up to 50% better PHP performance and increased SSL performance. Personally, we have had excellent results using LiteSpeed with HostXNow. HostXNow also advertises that their NVMe SSD chips are a newer SSD transfer standard than old PCI chips. What matters most is how your website performs, and you can see our test data benchmarks at the bottom of this HostXNow review.

On the other hand, HostXNow does not offer CDN access, unlike some other web host providers. That HostXNow does not offer a CDN is not necessarily a negative, as you may want to have your own CDN, such as through Cloudflare or QUIC.cloud. Or, if you are targeting a local audience in or near the United Kingdom, you won’t need a CDN either. But not including a CDN is a notch below other top web hosting providers and something you will want to consider if you are going for higher-level professional hosting plans, such as Rocket.net’s WordPress plans that include Cloudflare’s top-tier Enterprise CDN.

HostXNow Basic Shared Hosting Plans

HostXNow’s shared hosting web plans are reasonable, starting at around $4/month with no contract for a basic site and up to $11-12 per month for their upgraded plan with no contract. However, if you can commit to at least six months, you’ll get a discount (of course), with a three-year plan obviously being the best price. That brings the basic plan to under $3/month, perfect for just starting.

Between the three plans, we recommend opting for the Micro plan unless you know you will need additional storage space or you will be managing more sites on the same plan. Otherwise, all three plans offer almost the same performance; only the Standard plan offers two CPU cores vs. one CPU core. For most basic websites, this isn’t much of a boost to make a significant performance difference. And if it is, then you should consider going for the Performance Semi-Dedicated Hosting plan we detail below.

Note that HostXNow’s starter plans are shared hosting plans geared toward beginning to mid-level WordPress sites. HostXNow’s shared hosting plans are on par with Bluehost’s plans for beginner sites. Between the two companies, we would choose HostXNow for better customer service. However, HostXNow also offers upgraded semi-dedicated for higher-traffic and more-intense websites.

HostXNow Professional (“Semi-Dedicated”) Hosting Plans

All of HostXNow’s semi-dedicated hosting plans come with unlimited domains/sites, which is great if you manage many sites. But the main draw of the semi-dedicated plans is the performance. The Semi-Dedicated plans offer a lot more memory and better CPU performance than the shared plans. These plans are built for high-performing websites, and if your website is receiving tens of thousands of views per month, you may want to explore these plans instead.

We recommend starting with the lowest plan – the Performance plan – unless you know you need more processing power. Otherwise, the price doubles between the Performance and the Professional plans, and if you have to ask if you need it, you probably don’t.

HostXNow Performance Tests

As with all of our web hosting reviews, we tested HostXNow using a test WordPress website to see how HostXNow performs in real life. We ran all of these tests using the Performance Semi-Dedicated plan, which is our recommended plan. There are three components: Google Core Web Vitals, GTMetrix Performance, and worldwide speed testing. The results are below. (You can read our full testing criteria and algorithm here.)

Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores

HostXNow optimization performs very well on the Google Core Web Vitals. Despite its servers being in the United Kingdom and not having a CDN, HostXNow’s Lighthouse scores rank among our top WordPress performers, including Rocket.net and WPX. This is excellent performance by HostXNow!

The scores above are not the actual Lighthouse values but rather the scores Lighthouse assigns to each metric. We chose to display these scores instead of the actual values to make comparing scores across web host providers easier. Below is the chart showing the actual Lighthouse values for those of you who are more technically minded.

GTMetrix Performance

Since HostXNow does not use a CDN and its servers are based in the United Kingdom, it is not a surprise that the two fastest locations (see full table below) by far are in Europe: London and Frankfurt. Both had fully loaded site times under two seconds, which is excellent!

In fact, although HostXNow doesn’t score as well in locations furthest away from the United Kingdom, HostXNow’s performance is still good. In fact, HostXNow achieved fully loaded times of less than three seconds in North America, Dubai, Singapore, and India, which is fantastic in our opinion. According to GTMetrix, HostXNow’s main problem in locations further away from the UK is the time it takes for the data to travel because HostXNow doesn’t use a CDN.

Having said that, FCP and LCP scores suffered outside of Europe, which will hurt Google Core Web Vitals scores. This is something to remember if you have customers and clients in Asia, Australia, South America, and southern Africa. If so, you will want to look at another host or add on your own CDN, such as through Cloudflare. However, if you are European-focused, or even focused on North America, the Middle East, or India, HostXNow provides solid performance without needing a CDN. That is awesome!

Worldwide Load Testing

Because HostXNow does not use a CDN, all of the traffic flows through its servers in the United Kingdom. Thus, it is no surprise that sites took longer to load the further away from the United Kingdom they were. You will be fine if your customers are in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and most parts of North America. However, if your customers are in South America and Asia, you’ll want to look elsewhere or subscribe to a CDN.

Our HostXNow Review Recommendation

We recommend HostXNow for WordPress web hosting. HostXNow’s shared web hosting plans are great for beginning sites, while mid-level and higher-end websites can upgrade to HostXNow’s semi-dedicated hosting. Prices are very reasonable compared to competitors at this level, and HostXNow includes e-mail hosting, saving you money each month. HostXNow’s performance is excellent, and we love that HostXNow displays its uptime reliability statistics to the public.

We are disappointed that HostXNow only has its servers in the United Kingdom and does not offer a CDN. While this is fine for companies with a European or UK-focused clientele, it is not so great for companies with customers outside of Europe. Yet, HostXNow provides extremely fast connections in Europe and performed very well in North America, the Middle East, and India. We’d recommend HostXNow for websites with visitors from these regions, as long as you are okay with hosting your website in the UK.

Overall, HostXNow performs well, has many standard features, and pricing is very competitive. Thus, we recommend HostXNow – even without the CDN – especially if you are in Europe. And if you have customers in South America, Africa, and Asia, add a third-party CDN such as Cloudflare’s CDN.