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About a month ago, I switched from cloudwayshosting over to rocket. Net hosting. Now, I still got a few sites left on cloudways, but I’ve moved blogmarketingacademy. Com over to Rocket, and I’ve now got a bunch of clients over there and more to come over. So after a month of using Rocket Hosting, what do I think? I want to go ahead and give you my official review of Rocket after a month of use, and let’s get into it. First, let’s talk about performance with Rocket. Net. I mean, as you can see on their site, they build themselves as the world’s fastest WordPress hosting. Now, in the real world of hosting and marketing with these hosting companies, you know that most of them are going to call themselves super fast. I’ve seen several of them that literally call themselves the fastest. I’m not going to sit here and have the balls, frankly, to tell you, oh, yeah, Rocket. Net is the fastest. But I will tell you, they’re really fast. A big reason why it’s so fast is because they’ve got a really, really strong and native integration with Cloudflare enterprise. They basically work together like that.

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Now, Cloudflare enterprise is pretty much It’s the super expensive version of Cloudflare. I think it costs upwards of $6,000 a month, that stuff. It’s got a bunch of stuff that is really only relevant, generally, to the largest of organizations. Now, you’re going to get a lot of those benefits when you use Rocket. Net Hosting because they’ve got everything integrated, and you also don’t need any plugins to use it. You won’t even need a caching plugin because all the caching is going to be taking place on Cloudflare. And because it’s also being cached at Cloudflare, it’s going to be delivered across that content delivery network at the point that’s closest to your end user. So it’s going to be really, really fast. Your time to first bite is going to be really small as long as it’s serving cached content coming out of Cloudflare. Now, at those times where you might have somebody who’s logged into your site or it’s something to where the cache won’t apply to them, it’ll hit the actual rocket. Com. Net server at that point. Now, the servers at Rocket. Net are very fast. I think they’ve got 32 CPU cores, 128 gigs of RAM.

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They’ve got a really good tech stack. It’s much more highly optimized than what I had over at Cloud Waze. And I don’t even think you can get a server that powerful at Cloud Waze. So it’s a very different thing. Now, in the real world here, I’m not going to give you a bunch of raw performance scores and all that because it’s really dorky. But I will say that my performance scores definitely did increase. I’m routinely getting 98 and 99 out of 100 on the scores. Obviously, there’s more than just hosting that goes into site performance scores, but they’re definitely great. I mean, it does definitely go like a rocket over there. The other thing is that when you’re in the WordPress Admin Panel, that’s where you can really start to see the true horsepower of your hosting. And when I was over on Cloudways, I would have the Admin Panel routinely just slow away the heck down. You click on something and you’d have to sit there and wait for a long time. And in many instances, especially when the server was busy doing a backup or some background task, I would have my server just die, and I would hit the publish button and the database would just go out, and I’d have to sit there and wait for it to come back.

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Well, I don’t have any of those issues with Rocket. Net Hosting, getting around on the back-end is significantly faster than it was on Cloudways because it simply has more horsepower. And so that’s basically it. The real world, my performance scores went up, and the back-end noticeably sped up. It is fast, and there’s definitely no doubt about it. To show you what the back-end looks like, they call this the control center. It goes with the whole rocket theme, of course. But I’ve got 18 sites in here right now. A bunch of them are client sites. You got your 18 out of 20. If I want to go over 20, I got to upgrade the account. But you got the basic stats here. Now, let me just drop into blog marketing academy real and you can see what things look like in here. So you get some basic bandwidth stuff. Now, I don’t even know if this one includes what’s coming out of Cloudflare. And then you can get your list of plugins, your list of themes. You can actually manage your plugins and themes from in here. So I can activate them, deactivate them, update them.

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I’ve got the file manager. Of course, we’ve got backups, both the automated daily backups that always happen, but we can also create a manual one anytime that we want. So that’s super convenient. When it comes to logging, we’ve obviously got the access logs. But the other cool thing under activity log is we can actually enable this, and I can actually see what users are doing on the site and see when people log into the site. It’s a good thing as an agency owner when you have clients to be able to see that stuff. I have other ways of doing that, too, but it’s handy that it’s inside of here. We got the reporting, which is some basic metrics and CDN hits and application firewall hits and all that stuff. We could do password protection if we want to, of course. And then under the advanced tab, we can pop in the PHP on my admin, manage the database. I can do WPCli for command line stuff, change the PHP version, do auto updates on plugins, themes, and WordPress core. That’s basically it, too. Now, that’s the interesting thing about this is that this is a noticeably simple control panel, which is very typical of a managed WordPress host, where a lot of the really nerdy stuff, they just take care of it for you.

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You don’t have to think about it. And so basically, they’ve got a very easy to use control center that is a bit of a breath of fresh air, especially if you’re coming from a host that’s using cPanel, because I particularly despice cPanel. I think cPanel is just a sea of icons, and it leaves too much up to you as the end user. It’s too manual, too much clicking. Cloudways has a pretty decent control panel, but just the nature of having your own VPS server, now you’re going to have some nerdy things in there, too. When you come over to something like Rocket, it’s just simple because they’re just giving you what you need, and it’s got a nice interface, and it’s very easy to use. And if you need to do anything, that’s a little bit nerdy, you just go ask support, and they’ll do it for you, and you don’t even have to worry about it. It’s fully, fully managed. Now, obviously, support is super important with any web host, and I will say, I think rocket. Net is probably the best support I’ve ever had with a web host. I’ve had fast support before.

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Wpx Hosting has pretty good support for an email support desk. I remember back when I used to work with Pair Networks, they had pretty fast support via email. But when it comes to Rocket. Net, they have both email, but they have live chat, which is definitely my preference. I’m not one that wants to pick up the phone and call anybody. I just want to be able to hit up a live chat and have somebody who knows what the heck they’re doing talking to me as fast as humanly possible. Now, we’ll test it here on screen in just a second. But generally speaking, you will get a person talking to you via live chat support in probably 30 seconds or less. It’s very, very fast. And I will say, they actually know what they’re doing. These people are not just following a tech support flowchart. They’re not treating you like you’re a moron. They actually treat you like an equal. For me, it’s like dealing with a coworker in a lot of cases, and they’re just really, really good. And then in those instances where live chat support has to dive a little deeper, they just put it into an email ticket, and then even then, they reply back to that really, really fast.

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And on two or three occasions now, I’ve actually had the CEO, his name is Ben, get back to me via that support ticket as well. So he’s definitely intimately involved with day to day affairs. So let’s go to screen. Let’s just I’m going to open up a live support thing here, and let’s just see what the heck happens. Okay, so down here in the corner, we’ve always got live chat available, and it’ll show you the mug shot of somebody who’s working at the time, okay? And it’s funny, as you do work here, you will find that you see people’s faces and you recognize them. So what we’re going to do is I’m going to go and hit the button, and I’m going to start up a live chat. So that was fast. I think we’re at 14 seconds here. Hey, David, how you doing? We’re at 17 seconds. He read it for 26 seconds. He’s there. He’s fast. And I actually talked with this guy this morning because he helped me out already. So yeah, support’s quite fast. Email support’s fast. They’re just easy to deal with. They call you first name. Now, of course, I know their system is helping you with that.

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But the thing is, it’s like dealing with real people, and It’s very, very different than dealing with the crap web host like Bluehost and that type of stuff. The Rocket is in a league of its own, as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to support. And there are times where you might need support because it is fully managed. That’s the idea. It’s not like you’re going to them because, oh, my God, there’s some massive serious problem. It’s just because it’s their job to make sure your site is running like a champ, and they’re really good at it. I’ve had them debug stuff that really gets into WordPress itself. They will do it for me. They’re actually really handy. It’s like having an extension of my own team with Rocket. Net support. Now, when it comes to pricing for Rocket. Net, you’ll see that the starter is 30 bucks a month, goes up to 60 bucks a month for three sites, 100 bucks a month for 10. And then basically from there, you start to be around the $10 per month per site type of area. You can see if we go up to Expert, you can get 25 sites or 200 a month, but that’s basically where it goes as you go to an agency plan.

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So I will say, this is not the cheapest host out there. I mean, especially for one site, it does start off a little on the high end compared to some of the more consumer-level host out that you might go with. Now, because of the pricing, I’m not going to sit here and say that I think Rocket is going to be the best fit for everybody. It will make everybody’s site go faster for sure. However, it’s a little expensive. If you’re just bringing one small blog into the fold. And so where I think Rocket. Net really excels is if you’ve got a site with a pretty decent amount of traffic, or if you’re running a membership site or a Woocommerce store, or something that’s a little bit more involved. If you’re just running a hobby blog, it’s not getting a whole lot of traffic, I don’t think Rocket. Net is the right fit for you because it’s just too overpriced for that type of site. For that, I would recommend going with a smaller, more consumer-level company like Hostinger, SiteGround, something like that. I even still keep my Cloudways account, even though I don’t have my big sites there anymore.

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Cloudways is really great for a lot of different things. And so I still maintain a virtual private server over at Cloudways, and I keep a bunch of smaller sites over there because Some things, the economics of it, don’t work out for Rocket. Net. Rocket. Net is more of a premium web host, and their pricing is definitely in line for a managed WordPress host. It isn’t as if it’s an incredibly high price. It’s just that for some types of sites, it’s not the right fit, and that’s just the way that it is. So is there anything I don’t like about Rocket. Net? Well, to be honest, not a heck of a lot. I’ve got a few little, minor little things, for example, the one-click admin login into WordPress. It seems like it’s tied to user ID number one, and so I can’t map it to a particular user. If we have more than one administrator, that’s one little interface thing that I might see if I can get them to fix. I did have a little bug at one point with getting one of my clients access to their own site control center, and we had to work it out.

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I had to get the support people to fix it, but they did, and they were pretty quick about it. The only other thing would be, it would be nice if their pricing didn’t jump, and as an agency, it will double once I go over a certain threshold. My bill basically doubles, and I have to fill those slots really fast. Otherwise, my cost per site goes up. So it would be nice if it was a per site pricing instead of these big tiers based on 10 sites at a time. But hey, that’s a little thing, right? At the end of the day, I’m really, really happy with Rocket. Net Hosting. It’s probably the best host I’ve worked with so far, and it just It is. What else am I going to say? So that’s my review of Rocket. Net Hosting. I’m very happy with the company. I think I’ll probably be with them for a while. When you switch web hosts, there’s always gives and takes. There’s always going to be things like, It was nice that I could do that with, say, Cloudways, and I can’t do it over here at Rocket. Net. That type of thing is normal when you switch hosting companies because every company has their own way of doing things, and rocket.

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Net certainly has its, too. So you have to get used to it. And there were a few questions that I had at the very beginning that I now understand that this is just the way that rocket. Net works. And once I know that, I can work with it. But overall, it’s a great company to work with. I like the fact that I’ve got people at support that are very quickly accessible and know what the heck they’re doing. My sites are fast. My client sites that I bring over to Rocket are fast. So it makes my life as a service provider to my clients easier because I know that Rocket is there, and it’s just alleviating a lot of hassle, just merely the fact that it’s sitting on rocket. Net. And so that’s overall my review. It’s a great company to work with. I think I don’t have it on screen now, but if you want to trust pilot, their reviews are off the charts. Awesome. So they’re doing a great job. I hope they keep it up. And that’s what I’ve got to say about rocket. Net. If you do decide to give, it’s an affiliate link, but I use it.

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I only recommend what I use. And so if you have any questions about it, feel free to hit me up, and I’ll be happy to get back to you. Okay, talk to you later.