When you want to cut costs, getting a Hetzner Server is an affordable option, even for hosting WordPress sites. However, with their extensive offering, it may be hard to choose which subscription fits your needs.
In this article, I have compared the Hetzner Cloud server offerings for Intel and AMD. Since their Intel offering has just been renewed, it would be interesting to see how they compare. I will also briefly talk about Hetzner cloud pricing. Since we’re all about WordPress here, I did test these Hetzner Servers using WordPress-related benchmarks.
Please note that Hetzner provides VPSes. So you need to have the technical skills or tools to install WordPress by yourself on a VPS. Which may be a daunting task if you have never done it. Luckily, several tools make it very easy for you to do this: the best WordPress control panels.
Hetzner Server: AMD is Faster, Intel is Cheaper
If you don’t want to read the whole article: AMD is a lot faster, but also almost twice as expensive. Depending on your use case (if you need more memory or faster processing), the Intel offering from Hetzner may be interesting as it roughly has twice the memory and cores for the same price.
Hetzner vs Hetzner: The Benchmarks
Alright! This is what you’ve been coming for. How well do the Hetzner Servers compare? In the benchmark, I compared an exactly equal setup (and empty WordPress installation) on similarly configured servers. Both servers had 4 CPU cores and 8GB of RAM.
I did three different tests:
- Two WordPress-related benchmarks, using a benchmark plugin
- The famous post benchmark (developed in-house).
- A load test using a command line tool.
Let’s see what the results are:
WordPress Benchmarks:
The first benchmark is done through the wp-benchmark plugin, which tests on various aspects.
| Intel | AMD | |
|---|---|---|
| Large Text Data Operations | 9.4 sec | 6.6 sec |
| Binary Date Operations | 9.8 sec | 7.5 sec |
| Recursive Mathematical Operations | 8.4 sec | 5.2 sec |
| Binary Data Operations | 4.5 sec | 2.1 sec |
| Filesystem Write | 955 MB/s | 1621 MB/s |
| Local File Copy | 842 MB/s | 1431MB/s |
| Small IO Test | 805 MB/s | 1436 MB/s |
| Large DB Import | 4 sec | 2.7 sec |
| Simple DB Query | 1.4 sec | 1 sec |
| Complex DB Query | 2.9 sec | 1.9 sec |
| Network Speed | 577 mbit/s | 867 mbit/s |
In general, AMD seems to be 50-70% faster than the Intel offering. Also, the disks and network for AMD are a lot faster.
The second test is done through the WP Performance test, which runs in WordPress and does some queries and calculations. The left is Intel, while the right is AMD.
| Intel | AMD | |
|---|---|---|
| Server (lower is better) | 16.369 | 9.565 |
| WordPress | 1047 queries/s | 1956 queries/s |
AMD is a lot faster here, especially in the MySQL part, being able to pull off many more queries.
WordPress Post Benchmarks
At last, we’re testing how long it takes to insert, query, and delete 10000 posts. How does Intel compare to AMD? Again, the left is Intel, while the right is AMD.
| Intel | AMD | |
|---|---|---|
| Insert 10000 posts | 18.06 seconds | 11.984 seconds |
| Query 10000 posts | 0.232 seconds | 0.147 seconds |
| Delete 10000 posts | 33.557 seconds | 21.607 seconds |
Again, we see that the Hetzner AMD Server is about 50-70% faster here compared to Intel.
Load testing with h2load
At last, I did some load testing with h2load, an amazing benchmarking tool. These are the results in terms of queries per second.
| Intel | AMD |
|---|---|
| 52.62 requests/s | 85.75 requests/s |
By now, it should not surprise you that AMD is doing about 70% better here.
Hetzner Cloud Pricing
Here’s where the interesting part comes in: how does pricing compare, and if we weigh performance against price, does the offering compare?
| Intel | AMD |
|---|---|
| – | CPX11 (2CPU, 2GB Ram, 40GB Disk) – €4.35 |
| CX22 (2CPU, 4GB Ram, 40GB Disk) – €3.79 | CX22 (3CPU, 4GB Ram, 80GB Disk) – €7.55 |
| CX32 (4CPU, 8GB Ram, 80GB Disk) – €6.80 | CX32 (4CPU, 8GB Ram, 160GB Disk) – €13.60 |
| CX42 (8CPU, 16GB Ram, 160GB Disk) – €16.40 | CX42 (8CPU, 16GB Ram, 240GB Disk) – €25.20 |
| CX52 (16CPU, 32GB Ram, 320GB Disk) – €32.40 | CX52 (16CPU, 32GB Ram, 360GB Disk) – €54.90 |
For lower levels, AMD is roughly twice the price for about 70% better performance, but with more disk space as well. Price-weigh the benchmarks, then Intel offers more value against lower disk space.
Compared to other famous server providers (such as Digital Ocean or Vultr), Hetzner is almost 60% cheaper while offering very comparable performance levels. The only caveat: Hetzner is not available in many locations in the world (just America, Germany, Finland, and Singapore).
Hetzner DDoS Protection
One aspect I want to mention specifically is that each server comes with a nifty feature: Hetzner DDoS protection. This is included in the base price, whereas many other providers ask a premium for DDoS protection.
Hetzner vs Others
But how does Hetzner compare to other providers, such as Digital Ocean, Upcloud, or Vultr? In another article, I have thoroughly analyzed the performance of these various providers and how they compare. In short: performance is comparable, but for a much lower price. What are you waiting for?
Intel or AMD? It’s up to you.
So, given these results, what do I need to choose to get an optimal WordPress site on a Hetzner server? Would it be AMD, Intel, or even another Hetzner Server? Here are my recommendations in short:
- Pick Hetzner’s AMD offering if you have a dynamic site, such as a webshop, forum, and so forth. Or if you want to have better back-end performance and use WordPress’ backend frequently.
- Pick Hetzner’s Intel offering if you want to cut down on costs, and want to handle more requests concurrently although at a slower pace. Think of static sites, sites that you can cache well, or sites in which you don’t do frequent updates.