Selecting the right application server for your WordPress website is one of the crucial decisions you will have to make. The server type determines the performance, security, and ease of management of your application. The most common server choices are Apache, NGINX, and LiteSpeed. Each one has its own specifics, but according to our tests, LiteSpeed has a clear advantage over the others when it comes to WordPress hosting:
- Test 1: Clean Installation Performance Results
- Test 2: WordPress Installation with Some Content
- Test Results
Here are some of the main reasons why LiteSpeed is a great solution for those who want to achieve the best performance and security without spending too much time on server management.
- In-Built Cache
For a personal blog or a web store with a lot of static content on pages, such as product descriptions and images, it’s important to cache your content to speed up page load times. LiteSpeed has you covered here. LiteSpeed Web Server’s cache engine is built into the server core and includes a dedicated LSCache plugin for WordPress.
With its help, you receive optimization for the pages, images, CSS, and a CDN integration (if you use, for instance, Cloudflare or some other CDN solution) so that you don’t need to install separate plugins for these purposes that bring another load on the server. It’s almost essential to use WooCommerce for WordPress if you want to make product management easier. LSCache also provides personalized WooCommerce support, so you have nothing to worry about.
- Security Protection
With the title of the best CMS on the market also comes security threats. WordPress’s open-source code makes it vulnerable. Almost 70% of WordPress websites fall victim to hacker attacks through malicious software in plugins. Another popular hacking activity is using programs that guess admin login details, also known as brute force attacks. Apart from posing security threats, these attacks place a heavy load on server resources, and even if your password is not guessed, it can still become slower.
To prevent such attacks, LiteSpeed protects the most vulnerable files, xmlrpc.php and wp-login.php. It also moves the Security Captcha from the application level to the server level and prevents unwanted login attempts by automatically blocking IP addresses. It is achieved by setting an automatic login quota that is reduced after each failed attempt. Once it reaches zero, throttling, denying, or dropping the requests will be applied to protect your WordPress installation.
- Easier Migration From Apache Server
While the majority of Shared hosting solutions run on Apache, changing the server type can be challenging. It means that if you choose to go with NGINX, all configurations have to be set up from scratch. With LiteSpeed, you won’t face such an issue as it is built with an understanding of all Apache configuration files. As a result, there is no need for re-configuration from scratch, which saves a lot of time and money spent on development resources.
- Better Performance
To illustrate LiteSpeed's performance, we compared Apache-based and LiteSpeed-based hosting services without additional server optimizations. Below, you can find our test results.
Test 1: Clean Installation Performance Results
We have installed a fresh WordPress installation without any modifications, content, or plugins and tested speed results with GTmetrix and Pingdom tools from different locations.
Clean installation on Apache
- GTmetrix results from Canada
- Pingdom results from the USA
Clean installation on LiteSpeed
- GTMetrix from Canada
- Pingdom from the US
While the difference between loading time in GTmetrix is not visible, it is clear that the page size and overall metrics are much better. However, when testing from Pingdom, we see that WordPress on LiteSpeed is two times faster. One can say that’s because we have LSCache working by default, so let’s install some content to compare the results once again.
Test 2: WordPress Installation with Some Content
For this test, we have installed the following content:
- 3 pages with dummy text
- randomly chosen theme – Storefront
- randomly chosen set of plugins
- Contact form 7
- WooCommerce
- W3 total cache (only for Apache-based server)
- Sucuri
- GA Google Analytics
- Mailchimp
- Really Simple SSL
Apache-based installation
- GTmetrix from Canada
- Pingdom from the US:
LiteSpeed-based installation
- GTmetrix from Canada:
- Pingdom from the US
In the installation with some content, we saw that the speed and compression work better for the LiteSpeed-hosted website. Also, the difference in loading time is even more visible.
Test Results
The numbers speak for themselves. Also, it is worth taking into account that the second test was a practically fresh installation with a relatively small amount of content. The difference in loading will be even more apparent for fully developed stores and blog websites.
Of course, some users may argue that it’s possible to achieve the same results on the Apache server, which is true to an extent. However, when it comes to balancing the performance with the time and effort spent on server optimization, LiteSpeed is a clear winner.
Our conclusion:
- Although Apache can be highly optimized for WordPress, it requires a lot of time and effort to achieve results similar to other servers. As a result, we cannot recommend it for WordPress hosting.
- NGINX shines at simple sites. Just set it and go without many settings to optimize. However, once you have a complicated site, NGINX will require more and more attention. Some NGINX features aren’t easy to configure and will require a server admin to fine-tune.
- LiteSpeed has more easy-accessible features than NGINX. Like when you need some things cached but not others. Or when dealing with server-level redirects via htaccess. LiteSpeed also has a WordPress cache plugin that NGINX does not.
Based on these test findings, we have developed WordPress auto-installation packages that are based on the LiteSpeed application server by default (with NGINX as an alternative).
