Methodology

What are we analyzing?

At Prehost.com, we analyze web hosting performance and speed using the TTFB parameter, based on real user sessions on over 17 million websites worldwide.

TTFB (Time To First Byte) refers to the time elapsed from when a client sends a request to the server until the client receives the first byte of response. It is an indicator of server response speed to a request and is crucial for user experiences and SEO optimization, as it affects page loading speed.

The data

The source of information on the TTFB parameter is The Chrome User Experience Report (also known as Chrome UX Report or CrUX). CrUX is an official dataset of the Web Vitals program created and shared by Google under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, which shows how real users interact with popular online destinations.

The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) collects and organizes user experience data from Chrome users to provide insights into website performance.

Key Takeaways about CrUX methodology:

• Websites must be publicly discoverable, sufficiently popular, and meet user eligibility criteria to be included in the CrUX dataset.
• CrUX aggregates user experiences at both the page and origin (website) level, with some limitations for single-page apps and iframes.
• The CrUX dataset undergoes filtering and “fuzzing” to ensure statistical validity and protect user privacy.

CrUX dimensions on which our analyses are based:

• TTFB P75 – Time To First Byte value for a given website for the 75th percentile.
• Percentage distribution of TTFB values for a given website divided into:
  • good (0-800 ms),
  • needs improvement (800-1800 ms)
  • poor (over 1800 ms)

At Prehost.com, we independently verify all the websites in the dataset by querying DNS servers (Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Google 8.8.8.8) for their nameservers (NS records). Then, based on our own database, we assign the nameservers to specific companies and brands that offer hosting services.

The results of TTFB P75 and the percentage distribution into good, needs improvement, and poor presented on Prehost.com are the latest available weighted average for all analyzed websites serviced by the given host.

Updates

All data (dimensions from CrUX and information about which hosting currently services a given website) are updated every month.