After launching earlier this year, our WordPress plugin PHP Vitals already has hundreds of active installations that have been used to run thousands of PHP benchmarks on servers all around the world. The plugin packages together a series of PHP performance tests which can be run in a matter of seconds, and lets users submit results to a global leaderboard.
Our goal is simple: we want to make it quick, easy and free for you to compare hosting hardware. Whatever your budget, PHP developers ought to know what server speed is available to you. The PHP Vitals leaderboard lets you compare grades from hosts in your part of the world, or anywhere else, and see how your servers rank. Overall performance grades, from A+ to F, make it easy to see where different hosting products sit.
We've received great feedback from early users which, combined with our own plans, have led to PHP Vitals v1.2, which is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory now.
In this new version, the grading system has been tweaked to make it more useful. In a separate improvement, the leaderboard will now include more user-provided details, including hosting costs.
Test results include the type of hosting and its cost
The original PHP Vitals leaderboard showed a server’s grade from A+ to F, its location, and the company that supplies it. Now v1.2 will add more information to make comparisons fairer and more useful.
Let’s say that your PHP Vitals results are outperformed by another server in the same city. You'd want to know whether the quicker infrastructure next door is a hosting platform with an entry-level $10 package or a $500 dedicated server.
So now when you submit benchmarking results PHP Vitals will ask what type of hosting you’re assessing (shared hosting, VPS or dedicated server, or self-hosting) and an indicative price. This info will help you, and every other PHP Vitals user, make apples-to-apples comparisons and know whether you're getting value for money.
12 equal-sized grading bands
Another question we've grabbled with is how to make sure that PHP Vitals grades remain relevant in the future, not just at the time they're taken. After all, history and Moore's Law tell us that things will keep getting quicker. Or if you’d prefer sports metaphor, think of the Olympic 100m race. Every single one of 2024’s semi-finalists ran fast enough to win gold…in 1960.
So PHP Vitals grades are now distributed by percentile, and will be retrospectively adjusted over time.
The 12 grading bands (A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, E, and F) will all be of equal size. The top ~8% of results earn an A+, the next ~8% get an A, and so on. Taken together, A+, A, and A- will include the top 25% and D, E and F will represent the bottom 25%.
Every time a new test result comes in, the leaderboard will adjust existing grades to fit these percentiles. You can expect to see historical test results get downgraded as hosting improves. In the race for WordPress performance, standing still is the same as losing ground.
This changes replaces static thresholds, for example an old rule that saw any total test time faster than 5.7s awarded an A+. These rules were bound to fall out of date and eventually lead to more A and A+ results than anything else.
Other smaller changes
The hashing and crypt tests have been tweaked to make them even more useful for differentiating CPUs.
Rather than take space in the main menu of your WordPress dashboard, PHP Vitals has moved to the Tools menu.
PHP Vitals v1.2 is available now
Our goal is simple: we want to make it quick, easy and free for you to compare hosting hardware.
Find the new and improved PHP Vitals in the WordPress Plugin Directory today. Once you've run some benchmark tests we’d love to hear your feedback. Email support@phpvitals.com or leave a review.