CloudPages vs RunCloud vs GridPane vs Cloudways

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I had been using RunCloud, GridPane and Cloudways for years and CloudPages is the new panel recently runs their lifetime deals at AppSumo. Cloudpages is the only panel that support LiteSpeed Enterprise.

This is a simple performance test to see how CloudPages stand among other big player in the market.

OpenLiteSpeed and NGINX Performance Test

This is the specifications for the performance test.

  • Digital Ocean standard droplets 2GB ram for the test except GridPane’s OLS, which is using Vultr Cloud Instances 2GB ram (*tried a couple of time to install OLS in GP with Digital Ocean but it keep stuck in middle, therefore ends up using Vultr)
  • Ubuntu 20.04 & GridPane is using Ubuntu 18.04. (GridPane does not support Ubuntu 20.04 – 7 Nov 2021)
  • OpenLiteSpeed stack & NGINX stack.
  • Blocksy‘s WooCommerce demo.
  • Speed Optimise with LiteSpeed cache plugin and perfmatters for OpenLiteSpeed stack.
    Flyingpress and perfmatters for RC & GP’s NGINX stack, Breeze and perfmatters for Cloudways’s NGINX stack.
  • All the performance tests are using server cache.
  • All the performance tests are no fine tune on panel.

Performance Test – GTMetrix

OpenLiteSpeed Stack

CloudPagesRunCloud GridPane
GradeAAA
Performance100%100%100%
Structure94%96%96%
Largest Contentful Paint636 ms620 ms636 ms
Total Blocking Time0 ms0 ms0 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift000

NGINX Stack

RunCloud GridPaneCloudways
GradeAAA
Performance100%100%99%
Structure98%94%98%
Largest Contentful Paint441 ms636 ms672 ms
Total Blocking Time0 ms0 ms0 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift000

Performance Test – Google Page Speed Insights (Mobile)

OpenLiteSpeed Stack

CloudPagesRunCloud GridPane
Score969996
First Contentful Paint1.5 s1.8 s1.5 s
Speed Index1.5 s1.8 s1.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint2.4 s1.8 s2.4 s
Time to Interactive3.1 s1.9 s2.8 s
Total Blocking Time100 ms50 ms110 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift000

NGINX Stack

RunCloud GridPane Cloudways
Score999287
First Contentful Paint1.0 s1.1 s2.5 s
Speed Index1.0 s1.7 s2.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint1.3 s2.0 s3.1 s
Time to Interactive3.6 s3.1 s3.1 s
Total Blocking Time60 ms310 ms200 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift000.003

Load Test – Loader

500 clients per test for 1 min

How does my server perform when 500 users connect over the course of 1 minutes?

OpenLiteSpeed Stack

CloudPagesRunCloud GridPane
Avg. Respone Time497 ms398 ms401 ms
Error rate0%0%0%
Respone Time
Min / Max
454 /
1506 ms
348 /
1480 ms
347 /
1817 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
500 /
0
500 /
0
492 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
49.8 KB /
48.79 MB
51.76 KB /
49.46 MB
49.11 KB /
48.29 MB

NGINX Stack

RunCloud GridPane Cloudways
Avg. Respone Time398 ms283 ms491 ms
Error rate0.1%0%0 %
Respone Time
Min / Max
350 /
1764 ms
225 /
1936 ms
445 /
1454 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
500 /
0
500 /
0
492 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
51.76 KB /
62.97 MB
49.8 KB /
62.57 MB
51.03 KB /
47.30 MB

500 clients per second for 1 min

How does my server perform when 500 users connect every second over a 1 minute period?

OpenLiteSpeed Stack

CloudPagesRunCloud GridPane
Avg. Respone Time275 ms1944 ms412 ms
Error rate0%0.9%0%
Respone Time
Min / Max
225 /
1351 ms
339 /
11275 ms
313 /
2434 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
30000 /
0
23723 /
42
29606 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
2.92 MB /
2.86 GB
2.34 MB /
2.30 GB
2.90 MB /
2.84 GB

NGINX Stack

RunCloud GridPaneCloudways
Avg. Respone Time2335 ms371 ms572 ms
Error rate0.1%0%0%
Respone Time
Min / Max
469 /
13242 ms
223 /
3247 ms
223 /
3591 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
20457 /
18
30000 /
0
29997 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
2.04 MB /
2.52 GB
2.92 MB /
3.67 GB
3.03 MB /
2.82 GB

Maintain 100 – 500 client load for 1 min

How does my server perform over a 1 minute period when there is a constant load of 100 to 500 clients connected?

OpenLiteSpeed Stack

CloudPagesRunCloudGridPane
Avg. Respone Time306 ms528 ms391 ms
Error rate0%0.9%0%
Respone Time
Min / Max
224 /
1801 ms
315 /
2717 ms
320 /
2410 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
58676 /
0
33915 /
0
45990 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
5.76 MB /
5.59 GB
348 MB /
3.28 GB
4.52 MB /
4.41 GB

NGINX Stack

RunCloud GridPane CloudWays
Avg. Respone Time779 ms323 ms443 ms
Error rate0.1%0%0%
Respone Time
Min / Max
331 /
3236 ms
223 /
3218 ms
223 /
2161 ms
Response Counts
Success / Timeout
55554 /
0
22904 /
0
40481 /
0
Bandwidth
Send / Received
2.36 MB /
2.81 GB
5.45 MB /
6.79 GB
4.14MB /
3.80 GB

Conclusion

Overall, all the performances are pretty close. I don’t think anyone can feel the different of 300 – 500 ms. I’m surprised that the results of Cloudways is better than my expectation. For small agency that handle few sites, cloudways may be your choice. But I would prefer using services like RunCloud, GridPane or Cloudpages that give you total freedom of your server.

Photo by Ian Battaglia on Unsplash