Rocket.net Review 2024: Here’s my verdict after 12 months

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I recently wrote an article about the fastest WordPress hosting that I’ve used over the past few years; in that list, I showed how Rocket.net is better in terms of performance. So today I’ll share my detailed review of Rocket.net and what makes it number one in my eyes after using it for over twelve months (As of September 2024, I’ve been with them for over two and a half years).

Unlike other hosting providers, Rocket.net leverages the Edge hosting infrastructure with the help of Cloudflare Enterprise; for those who don’t know, Cloudflare is one of the popular CDN providers that has been innovating to make the web fast and safe.

Overview of Rocket.net

Brand	Rocket.net
Website:	Rocket.net
Year Founded:	2020
Headquarters:	West Palm Beach, FL
Service Types:	Managed WordPress Hosting
Base Plan:	$30/month
Customer Support:	Ticketing, chat, and phone
Data Centers:	20+ Edge Locations across the world
Uptime:	100%
Reliability:	Cloudflare Enterprise WAF, Imunify360, SSL
Refund Policies:	30-day money-back guarantee
CDN Type:	Cloudflare Enterprise
Email Boxes:	Not available
Domains:	Not available
Competitors:	WP Engine, Kinsta, WPX, Cloudways

Founded in 2020, Rocket.net is relatively new compared to its competitors like Kinsta, WP Engine, WPX, etc.

The founder of Rocket.net Ben Gabler has over seventeen years of career experience in web hosting and CDN and worked with reputed companies like HostGator, GoDaddy, Stackpath, etc. So he started Rocket.net to utilize his knowledge and offer the Fastest WordPress Hosting service.

Cloudflare Enterprise with Rocket.net

While the Cloudflare Enterprise pricing is not revealed on Cloudflare’s website, it is estimated that the Enterprise plan starts at $2000/mo and is only used by reputed brands and companies. However, Rocket.net has partnered with Cloudflare to provide all of its customers with Enterprise CDN which Rocket.net claims is worth $6000.

All these terms sound exaggerated but once you use Rocket.net, you’ll be blown away by its performance. What’s more fascinating is that; no configuration is required from your end and your site will receive Cloudflare’s Enterprise-level CDN straight out of the box.

Also, it’s worth noting that Cloudflare Enterprise is totally different than the other plans Cloudflare offers in terms of speed with full access to its 250+ Edge locations across the world.

After using WPX for nearly three years, I was on Cloudways, but soon after migrating to Rocket.net, Cloudways announced they were offering Cloudflare Enterprise CDN as an add-on. However, according to the founder of Rocket.net Ben Gabler, Rocket.net is years ahead in terms of Edge caching and they have perfected it to maximum combability for the past couple of years.

Most of the web hosting reviews are corrupted by marketers who are trying to earn more commissions; however, the Trustpilot rating for rocket.net is the highest among web hosting companies with an average of 4.9 out of 5.

Main benefits of Cloudflare Enterprise with Rocket.net

Full page caching: with Rocket.net, your site will be fully cached with Cloudflare’s 250+ Edge locations on their network. While companies like Cloudways and Kinsta started offering Cloudflare APO, Rocket.net claims they’re ahead of it.

Cloudflare’s APO feature is similar to what Rocket.net offers; it allows your entire site to be cached and served by Cloudflare’s edge network. Many hosting companies seem to realize this and are starting to implement it.

Smart Caching: Rocket.net also uses smart caching, which only purges necessary URLs and only purges HTML content, improving the cache hit ratio.

Automated Image Resizing: Rocket.net also resizes your images and converts them into WebP, which will help you increase your page speed scores without using image-optimizing plugins. However, I still use these plugins and it doesn’t conflict with Rocket.net.

WAF: WAF (web application firewall) protects your site from various attacks and malware. As you know Cloudflare is also famous for its security features which can eliminate any type of attack.

With Rocket.net, you don’t have to depend on the security plugin anymore; while I still use Wordfence, I noticed that I no longer get login attempt notifications from it; Cloudflare is eliminating almost all the spam bots before they reach my site.

TTFB is better than any other hosting I tested

Before migrating to Rocket.net, my TTFB (server responsiveness) in Asian countries like India and Japan used to be higher and it would take nearly one second even with CDN.

However, Rocket.net is quite different; now my blog loads quite fast across the world, this is because Rocket.net’s servers are being statically placed in Edge locations.

Rocket.net has over 20 edge server locations across the globe which you can choose while installing your WordPress website for the first time.

I picked the New York location for this blog, still, you can see that my TTFB is constant everywhere. Rocket.net claims that their average TTFB is 70ms, and my above tests prove that they’re not wrong.

Apart from sites using QUIC.cloud CDN with LiteSpeed server, I haven’t seen any other managed WordPress hosting with TTFB this low; Although Rocket.net runs on Apache, the LiteSpeed web server is faster than both Apache and Nginx. You can see the results here of Litespeed WordPress.

However, many companies such as NameHero and ChemiCloud are offering managed LiteSpeed web servers for WordPress for an affordable price that has low TTFB. You can also utilize LiteSpeed using VPS or cloud hosting by installing a control panel such as CyberPanel on your server, here is my guide to achieve it.

Speed Test of site hosted on the Rocket.net

You might be aware of the importance of website performance and Core Web Vitals, the site hosted on Rocket.net passes all these metrics.

According to Google, if the web page loading time increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the bounce rate increases up to 32%. So, it’s a good idea to pick a hosting server that’s optimized for speed.

Below I’ve shared some of the speed tests of this site using Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix.

As you can see, I could easily achieve a 100 Performance score using Rocket.net with just a free version of the W3 Total Cache plugin using default settings. However, Rocket.net recommends the premium cache plugin WP Rocket to fully utilize your site’s performance.

I would also like to mention that the GeneratePress theme that I’m using on this site also played a role in this 100/100 performance.

Usually, getting the perfect score on mobile is not easy, but Rocket.net made it possible and I no longer use AMP; Setting up a different version of my site on mobile with AMP was kind of irritating, but now many reputed sites are already getting away from it. As long as your site meets the core web vitals metrics, it shouldn’t be an issue.

You might think I’m only showing the homepage test results as the homepage doesn’t have long content and images. To show the true performance of Rocket.net, below I’ve tested the page that had over 50+ images and 3000+ words.

The above result shows the full-page cache of Rocket.net in action; their smart technology even bypasses caching for WooCommerce, blog comments, etc. which can cause issues, eliminating the need for plugins. Also, they optimize Google fonts, supports, and file compression through Brotli, etc.

Free Migration

Another benefit of Rocket.net is that they’re beginner-friendly; they provide a free migration service for your WordPress site if you decide to migrate your site from another hosting.

Their experts will help you move your site with zero downtime. Also, the Cloudflare DNS is very fast, and the DNS update takes place within a few minutes.

Although I migrated this site myself, I recommend using this service to avoid any mishaps. Just create an account and submit your migration request.

Intituive Control Panel

Rocket.net provides its very own custom-built control panel with an intuitive Dashboard. It is quite easy to use and very helpful to manage your website. In the “Sites” tab, you can manage your website’s plugins, themes, backups, etc.

You can also view the reports of your cache status which displays the hits served by Edge and hits served by the server also with the WAF reports.

In my case, just over 50% of hits are served from the Edge. However, Rocket.net claims that its Cache Hit Ratio is 96.21; there’s also a case study to back up this data. I assume that the high-traffic sites get more out of Cloudflare’s Enterprise caching due to end users accessing that site from every major city.

Returning to the dashboard, you can create a staging site with one click. Rocket.net also allows SSH access, Database management, etc.

Anyone without any technical skills can use the Rocket.net dashboard with ease and it also feels secure with options to add 2FA.

Rocket.net Specifications

Rocket.net’s base plan comes with 10GB of Disk Space with 50GB of monthly bandwidth. They also count hits and allow up to 250,000 visitors per month. All the plan comes with free Redis which can massively help if you’re running a high-traffic WooCommerce site.

Rocket.net uses NVMe drives instead of SSDs that are used by many hosting companies, also each server configuration gets 32 cores and 128GB RAM.

In some hosts, while updating the plugins or themes my WordPress site would go into maintenance mode for a few minutes, but not with Rocket.net; the power allotted for each plan is good enough for most sites.

Rocket.net Support

Rocket.net offers excellent support through chat, ticketing, and phone; although the base plan is excluded from phone support, my overall experience with them is pleasant.

Initially, I faced an SSL issue while setting up this blog, however, the Rocket.net support team was able to fix it for me through chat.

I also had an issue with PayPal making duplicate payments for my invoice, which was resolved within an hour after opening the ticket by the founder himself.

Rocket.net Pricing

Rocket.net pricing starts at $30 per month for 1 website, which is a little expensive compared to some hosting providers like WPX which offers up to 5 websites for just $20 per month.

However, because Rocket.net offers Cloudflare Enterprise, pricing seems reasonable.

Plus, you can get 2 months of hosting for free with an annual purchase. The $60 per month plan offers up to 1,000,000 visits to 3 websites.

Feature Requests and Upcoming Innovation

Rocket.net has a tab for its customers where you can request a feature and view the upcoming innovative tools. You can also submit your vote for any feature you like displayed on the dashboard; Not many hosting companies take this type of feedback from the customers.

As you can see in the above screenshot, some of the feature requests are in progress such as the SMTP email solution and WP cache plugin; Rocket.net’s upcoming very own cache plugin can eliminate the need to use third-party plugins.

Daily Backup

Rocket.net offers a daily backup service for your sites, the backups will be retained for up to 14 days. You can restore your site from these backups in case of any emergency. It also allows you to take manual backups at any time.

Rocket.net Pros and Cons

Rocket.net Discount

Currently, Rocket.net offers discounts for new customers; you can get the first month of hosting for just $1. Use my affiliate link if you find this review helpful.

Rocket.net Alternatives

Some of the Rocket.net Alternatives to consider:

WP Engine: WP Engine claims to be the number one hosting platform for WordPress.

Kinsta: Kinsta offers WordPress-optimized WordPress hosting using the Google Cloud Platform.

WPX: For years, WPX has been known for speed and having its very own CDN.

Cloudways: Cloudways is another alternative that comes close to what Rocket.net is offering; they also offer Cloudflare Enterprise with an add-on. Read my extensive review.

Final Verdict on the Rocket.net

This is my comprehensive review of Rocket.net after using it for the past twelve months. If you can afford to spend $30 per month on hosting, then it’s worth it. And I absolutely recommend them without an ounce of doubt.

However, if you’re just starting out and want to try a little less expensive hosting, then I would say Cloudways is your best choice.

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