How to Check Server Speed of your Website?

Juhil Mendpara
Content Manager

In all our web hosting reviews, we mention something called server response time. That’s precisely what we mean here when we say server speed.

Don’t mistake it for loading speed because your loading speed can be subpar even if the servers/hosting is excellent. In fact, more often than not, it’s your fault ⁠— installing unnecessary plugins, heavy code, high-res images, etc. ⁠— that the site takes comparatively more time to load.

However, some horrible web hosting providers can’t process user requests & find the demanded content fast enough. Plus, it’s possible that the servers are very far from your target audience and hence all the latency.

Is it your hosting provider’s fault that your website is slow? Check server speed to know the facts!

What is Server Speed?

Server speed or server response time (SRT) is the total time between a browser sending a request and getting a response back from the server.

It primarily depends on the location of the server your site is hosted on; therefore, we always choose the nearest data center when testing for our reviews.

How to Check Server Speed of your Website?

The easiest way to check server speed is to use a third-party app.

Now, there are many web apps like GTMetrix, Pingdom, WebPageTest, Dotcom-tools, etc., that can show you the results ⁠— each uses its own algorithms and has machines across the globe to perform tests. However, these tools test the website as a whole and not just the server speed ⁠— you’ll need to extract the server speed data from the result.

For just the server speed/server response time stats, we use Bitcatcha. Why? For one, it grades the performance based on Google’s recommendation (i.e., you should reduce your server response time under 200ms).

This is how it works:

You enter your URL in the server speed testing tool.

It pings your website from 10 different locations (US, London, Singapore, Bangalore, etc.).

Once done, you’ll get the result with a performance grade mentioned. If it’s A or A+, it’s in Google’s recommended range.

If your site’s response time isn’t at least ‘B,’ we recommend switching to a different web host immediately. Some of the ‘A+’ performing hosts we like are Hostinger, Bluehost, SiteGround, A2 Hosting, and Kinsta.

Final Words

Server speed is one of the most crucial elements that directly affect your website performance. Hence it should be your top priority to test it (preferably in the free trial days) & determine whether you are with the right host or not.

Alternatively, you can always search for the web host beforehand on forrst.me to see our professional views about the web host as a whole (we test server speed and loading speed, uptime, customer support, features, and more.).