Rocket.net 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.

Rocket.net is a Florida-based web hosting company focusing on mid-tier and high-end WordPress websites and marketing agencies. Created in 2020, Rocket.net set out to only host WordPress websites, meaning everything they do is geared towards optimizing WordPress. However, with a starting price of $25/month, it is clear that Rocket.net is focused on WordPress websites with good traffic already – if you are starting out, you should look at beginner WordPress plans like Hostinger.

In this review post, we will detail Rocket.net’s services, how they performed on our performance benchmarks and speed tests, and our overall ranking of their web hosting services. Note that Rocket.net also offers Agency Plans for marketing agencies managing multiple WordPress websites.

And full disclosure: FastestWP.Website is hosted on Rocket.net!

Rocket.net WordPress General Features

Rocket.net offers almost everything we would want in a WordPress Hosting Provider. From high performance to 24/7 support, we feel that Rocket.net is a very well-rounded WordPress hosting provider. Although Rocket.net isn’t geared toward starter or beginner websites, Rocket.net provides an amazing experience for everyone else.

When things go wrong – which they will – it is important to consider the website host’s support policy. Rocket.net offers 24/7 support via email, live chat, and by phone. This is the ultimate support and is much better than other WordPress hosts that offer 24/7 support but by email only. We also appreciate being able to call a human to get help!

Our only true disappointment is that Rocket.net does not offer email hosting. 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 must buy a separate email hosting plan from another provider. This adds cost and complexity to your WordPress setup, so keep that in mind.

Rocket.net Optimization Features

Rocket.net is quick to point out that it provides faster loading for WordPress websites than other hosts, which means better Google Core Web Vitals ratings. In turn, better Google ratings mean Google will rank your website higher and provide you with more traffic and more sales. Rocket.net also notes that it “works with all of the major Adtech companies” to ensure clients “generate the most money possible.”

When we tested Rocket.net using GTMetrix, we found Rocket.net scoring above almost all other WordPress hosting providers. In fact, we are thrilled with Rocket.net’s performance – it blew us away! This is awesome, and if you are looking to grow your website, having top scores on Google Core Web Vitals is vital to SEO success. You can also manually ensure your website performs well through manual optimization, such as ensuring all images are in WebP format and sized appropriately.

The biggest highlight of Rocket.net is that Cloudflare Enterprise CDN is included in all hosting plans. Note that it is not just Cloudflare, but Cloudflare Enterprise being included, which is a step above the basic Cloudflare offering. CDNs are important, and Cloudflare is one of the largest in the world. In fact, Cloudflare claims they support “20% of all websites” and “30% of Fortune 1000 companies.” We genuinely appreciate that Rocket.net bundles Cloudflare Enterprise in all of its plans, and the amazing GTMetrix scores show its importance.

Rocket.net WordPress Managed Hosting Plans

Rocket.net’s WordPress hosting services are not for beginners, as the cheapest plan starts at $25/month just for one website ($30/month if you pay month-by-month). We believe that Rocket.net’s Managed Hosting Plans are best for business owners and bloggers with good traffic coming through (at least 10,000 visitors/monthly) and who need or want extra performance over their current web host. Otherwise, you are probably better off with a cheaper starter plan from another provider like HostXNow.

Which plan you decide on depends on how many websites you have and how much storage you need. If you only have one smaller website, chances are the Starter package is ok. However, if you have a media-heavy website with lots of photos and/or videos hosted locally (not embedded from YouTube or Vimeo) or a large blog with hundreds of articles, then you’ll have to upgrade to Pro. You’ll probably need to get the Pro version for many mid-tier websites.

On the other hand, if you need the features of the Business plan, you should look below at the Tier 1 Agency plan and compare the two plans. The Tier 1 Agency plan is the same price and has almost all of the same features as the Business plan. However, Tier 1 Agency allows unlimited visitors, although the bandwidth is reduced to 200GB from 300GB for the Business plan.

Rocket.net Agency Hosting Plans

Rocket.net’s Agency Hosting Plans have the same performance and optimization standards as Rocket’s Managed Hosting WordPress plans. Agency Hosting is ideal for agencies and business owners managing 10-30 websites. We like that each plan provides for an unlimited amount of visitors and high bandwidth limits.

However, the storage amounts are lower than the maximum number of websites you can host. Rocket.net notes that you can buy additional storage space at $2/GB per month and additional bandwidth at $0.08GB per month. If you commit to additional storage and bandwidth, you can get each at a monthly discount as part of your plan. Depending on your website’s size and growth potential, we believe you’ll need to be prepared to purchase additional space or bandwidth if you go with Rocket.net.

Unless you are a small agency or don’t need more than 50GB of storage and Tier 1 works for you, we believe the Tier 2 Agency plan is the best value. You’ll want to be aware that while Tier 2 comes with 75GB of storage, Tier 3 only gets you 100GB of storage. Even if you didn’t get a discount and bought 25GB more of storage at $2GB/month, you’d still be better off buying the Tier 2 plan, as long as you have 20 or fewer websites.

Rocket.net WordPress Performance Tests

As with all of our web hosting reviews, we tested Rocket.net using our test WordPress website to see how Rocket.net performs in real life. We ran all of these tests using the Starter Managed Hosting plan, which is the cheapest WordPress hosting plan Rocket.net offers. There are three components: Google Core Web Vitals, GTMetrix Performance, and Worldwide Load Testing. The results are below, and you can read our fully-disclosed testing parameters here.

Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores

Rocket.net lives up to its promise and performed extremely well on the mobile Google Core Web Vitals. The scores above are not the actual Lighthouse mobile 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. The raw Lighthouse values are in the table below.

GTMetrix Performance

Wow! We were incredibly impressed by Rocket.net’s performance on GTMetrix. Every location fully loaded in less than two seconds, by far one of the best performance of the WordPress hosts we have tested (GoDaddy also has similar performance). Most LCP scores were 1.2 seconds or less, which is the top grade on GTMetrix. Rocket.net blew us – and the competition – away. If you want top-tier performance and have customers worldwide, Rocket.net needs to be one of your top choices, if not your top choice.

Worldwide Load Testing

With Rocket.net’s ten servers in North America, Europe, and Asia, plus 275 global servers from its Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, it is no surprise that Rocket.net delivers incredibly fast results across all international test sites. Rocket.net will deliver fast results for blogs and businesses that want a global audience. The only exception is Dubai, although 162ms is still incredibly fast.

Our Rocket.net WordPress Review Recommendation

We definitely recommend Rocket.net for WordPress Web Hosting if you have a mid-tier or higher website. Rocket.net’s plans come fully loaded, and our real-world performance tests match Rocket.net’s performance boasting on their website. Fast-performing websites are important to your clients and to Google, so paying a higher price to get Rocket.net’s strong performance is worth it for many blogs and businesses.

We only have two real drawbacks for Rocket.net. Because of the pricing, Rocket.net is not for beginner websites. Plenty of providers will provide hosting for less than $10/month – Hostinger and Bluehost are our two favorites in this category – but Rocket.net is not one of those. Once your website gains traction, then you can consider switching to Rocket.net.

The other drawback is that Rocket.net does not offer email hosting. This will be an extra monthly expense and another configuration setup to manage. Other web hosting providers offer email hosting, so everything is together. Having said that, as Rocket.net notes, you can easily add on an email hosting plan from Google. We really like Google’s email service, but it is another expense you’ll need to budget for, especially if you have more than one email domain.

Nonetheless, we genuinely liked Rocket.net and are thrilled their promises about fast performance were kept during real-world testing. You will want to check out Rocket.net if you run multiple websites and need high performance.