Managing your cloud server has never been simpler, thanks to the Cloud Hosting Panel. This tool lets you launch, configure, and oversee your server instances directly from the web panel. Its user-friendly interface allows for seamless management of multiple cloud servers simultaneously.
I have extensively used RunCloud, GridPane, and Cloudways over the years. Recently, CloudPages launched a lifetime deal on AppSumo. It’s noteworthy that CloudPages is the only panel supporting LiteSpeed Enterprise. However, as of 1 January 2025, I’ve noticed limited development with CloudPages and no longer recommend it.
Below is a straightforward performance test of web panels in real-world conditions.
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
| CloudPages | RunCloud | GridPane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade | A | A | A |
| Performance | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Structure | 94% | 96% | 96% |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 636 ms | 620 ms | 636 ms |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 0 ms | 0 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0 |
NGINX Stack
| RunCloud | GridPane | Cloudways | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade | A | A | A |
| Performance | 100% | 100% | 99% |
| Structure | 98% | 94% | 98% |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 441 ms | 636 ms | 672 ms |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 0 ms | 0 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Performance Test – Google Page Speed Insights (Mobile)
OpenLiteSpeed Stack
| CloudPages | RunCloud | GridPane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 96 | 99 | 96 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.5 s | 1.8 s | 1.5 s |
| Speed Index | 1.5 s | 1.8 s | 1.5 s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 2.4 s | 1.8 s | 2.4 s |
| Time to Interactive | 3.1 s | 1.9 s | 2.8 s |
| Total Blocking Time | 100 ms | 50 ms | 110 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0 |
NGINX Stack
| RunCloud | GridPane | Cloudways | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 99 | 92 | 87 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.0 s | 1.1 s | 2.5 s |
| Speed Index | 1.0 s | 1.7 s | 2.5 s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1.3 s | 2.0 s | 3.1 s |
| Time to Interactive | 3.6 s | 3.1 s | 3.1 s |
| Total Blocking Time | 60 ms | 310 ms | 200 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0.003 |
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
| CloudPages | RunCloud | GridPane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. Respone Time | 497 ms | 398 ms | 401 ms |
| Error rate | 0% | 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 Time | 398 ms | 283 ms | 491 ms |
| Error rate | 0.1% | 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
| CloudPages | RunCloud | GridPane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. Respone Time | 275 ms | 1944 ms | 412 ms |
| Error rate | 0% | 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 | GridPane | Cloudways | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. Respone Time | 2335 ms | 371 ms | 572 ms |
| Error rate | 0.1% | 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
| CloudPages | RunCloud | GridPane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. Respone Time | 306 ms | 528 ms | 391 ms |
| Error rate | 0% | 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 Time | 779 ms | 323 ms | 443 ms |
| Error rate | 0.1% | 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