About StackForge

I got burned. Twice, actually.

The first time was recommending a client move their WooCommerce store to a host I'd read about on a “best hosting” listicle. The site crawled to 6-second load times during their Black Friday sale. Lost revenue. Awkward phone call. The second time: different host, different client, same story.

I started keeping my own spreadsheet — TTFB from three locations, 30-day uptime logs, support response times. Eventually the spreadsheet became a process, and the process became this site.

StackForge exists because most hosting review sites have never paid for the hosting they recommend. We have.

How we test

Every reviewed host runs on a paid account — no free trials, no “here's a year free in exchange for coverage.” We use the plans your clients would be on.

We deploy the same WordPress stack on each host:

• WordPress 6.5 + WooCommerce 8.8
• 12 plugins (Yoast SEO, WP Rocket, Stripe for WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, and 8 others matching a typical agency client setup)
• Storefront theme, 50-product catalog, 3 images per product
• Caching disabled for raw TTFB tests. Enabled for real-world LCP/CLS tests.

We run each location 5 times, drop the high and low, average the rest:

• Dallas, TX (US East)
• London, UK (EU West)
• Singapore (APAC)

Uptime is monitored for 30 days via UptimeRobot at 5-minute intervals. Every benchmark is screenshotted and timestamped.

How we score

• Performance (35%): TTFB, LCP, 30-day uptime
• Value (25%): introductory vs. renewal price, what's actually included
• Agency features (20%): staging, team access, multi-site, client billing
• Support (20%): 3 test contacts per host, scored on response time and answer quality

We re-test every host quarterly. Significant changes get flagged on the review page.

On affiliate links

Some links earn us a commission. That's how we cover the cost of hosting accounts, testing tools, and time. It doesn't change what we recommend — if anything, a bad recommendation costs us more trust than any commission makes up for.

We've ranked Cloudways above hosts that pay double the commission because the numbers said so. See the full affiliate disclosure.

Contact

Disagree with a rating, have benchmark data to share, or want to suggest a host to test: hello@stackforge.com