Review · Kestrel Cloud
Forty days on the fastest host we measured
The median is genuinely best-in-set. The p95 says something else about Sunday 21:00 UTC, every week, without exception.
Run 118 · 3,400 words · 19 Aug 2026
Run 118 · day 40 of 40 · 11 probe cities
Nine hosts. One identical WordPress site. A request every four minutes.
We rent every plan at retail and hammer the same 2.1 MB cart page from eleven cities until the bill runs out. Drag across the chart to read any moment in the run.
Response time · four fastest plans · milliseconds
Run median · 14,400 samples each
600
400
200
13 Jul
23 Jul
2 Aug
12 Aug
22 Aug
Kestrel Cloud
168ms median
Northwind
191ms median
Anvil Host
214ms median
Bluepeak
238ms median
Standings
Where the nine finished this run
Sorted by median response
Swipe the table for p95, uptime, fail windows and price
| Host | Median | p95 | Uptime 40d | Fail windows | Renews at | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kestrel Cloud | 168 ms | 402 ms | 99.987% | 2 | $34/mo | Fastest median in the set. Sunday-night p95 is the catch. |
| Northwind | 191 ms | 336 ms | 99.994% | 1 | $29/mo | Steadiest curve on the chart. Nothing spiked past 400 ms. |
| Anvil Host | 214 ms | 590 ms | 99.961% | 6 | $41/mo | Raised renewal 22% mid-run. Same hardware, new invoice. |
| Bluepeak | 238 ms | 474 ms | 99.979% | 3 | $19/mo | Cheapest plan that never dropped a checkout request. |
| Mistral Servers | 262 ms | 705 ms | 99.943% | 9 | $24/mo | Fine for brochure sites, thin under a warm cart. |
| Foundry Web | 277 ms | 512 ms | 99.972% | 4 | $45/mo | Support answered in 6 minutes at 3am. You pay for that. |
| Terra Nine | 301 ms | 889 ms | 99.902% | 14 | $12/mo | Cheap, and the chart shows exactly where it goes. |
| Halyard | 344 ms | 1,120 ms | 99.868% | 21 | $16/mo | Not recommended for WooCommerce. Two hour-long outages. |
| Pico Stack | 358 ms | 964 ms | 99.911% | 17 | $9/mo | Ran out of PHP workers at 40 concurrent users. |
Write-ups
Latest from the run
Pricing · Anvil Host
Anvil raised renewals 22%. The servers didn't change.
Same vCPU, same NVMe, same PHP build — we diffed the machines. Here is what the second year actually costs.
Run 118 · 1,900 words · 15 Aug 2026
Guide · Contracts
What "unlimited bandwidth" means in nine contracts
We read every fair-use clause and found the real ceiling. On two hosts it sits below 400 GB a month.
Guide · 2,600 words · 11 Aug 2026
By need
Pick the shortlist that matches your site
Method
How the numbers on this page are made
Probes
11 cities
Frankfurt, Ashburn, London, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and five more, on residential-grade links.
Cadence
Every 4 minutes
14,400 requests per host per run. Cache cleared hourly so nothing sits warm for the test.
Payload
The same cart
One 2.1 MB WooCommerce cart page, identical plugins, identical PHP version, cloned to every host.
Accounts
Bought at retail
We pay list price on a normal card. No review units, no press plans, no host is told which site is ours.