As an O2switch user for several years, I’ve tried several of their hosting plans. First, there was their famous “unique offer“, truly one of a kind, priced at €5 ex. VAT per month (oh, those were the days!). Good performance, unlimited storage, and a cPanel interface to manage everything.
Since then, the lineup has expanded. In early 2024, two high-end options were introduced: Scale’Up and Managed Bare-Metal. Then, at the start of 2025, the original single plan was restructured into three tiers: Grow, Cloud, and Pro. Users were migrated from the single plan to Cloud, or downgraded to Grow at their request, and Scale’Up was discontinued due to its overlap with Pro.
To get a clear picture of O2Switch’s actual hosting performance, I tested each plan using Hosting Benchmark Tools. Each WordPress instance tested was fresh, with the same theme and plugins, and is the only site on its hosting.
“o2switch, the best, no debate!” Let’s take a look.
WordPress hosting evaluation approach and methodology
Objective
This publication isn’t just another copy of the infinite lists of features displayed on hosting companies’ sales pages; rather, it focuses on what counts as good WordPress hosting: performance, efficiency, and robustness.
Measurement units
Let’s be honest: regardless of the hosting provider, it’s always a battle of big numbers. When comparing plans, we juggle between bytes, octets, and bits. In this post, I convert the values into bytes to avoid confusion.
Renewal
The rates shown reflect the annual cost for standard renewal, without taking into account one-off promotions or entry discounts. The aim here is to assess the real cost of hosting over the medium and long term, after the first year. By opting for a multi-year commitment (2, 3, or more years), some hosts provide reduced monthly rates, which can lower the overall cost over time. In this article, the annual price (incl. VAT) corresponds to renewal once a year.
Advertised consumption / energy efficiency
Web hosting companies are increasingly promoting their green credentials. Between promises of carbon offsetting, “green” data centers, labels, and so on, it’s easy to fall into the trap of greenwashing. Advertisements often focus on carbon footprints, the use of renewable energy, or infrastructure optimization, but rarely on the real day-to-day impact of web hosting. Correlating the performance measured on a WordPress instance with its water and electricity consumption (which should not be produced by fossil fuels) seems to me a solid approach.
About advertised consumption
When hosting is shared, resources are shared between multiple instances. The consumption indicated corresponds to that of the entire server, whether it is used alone or shared with other accounts. It is up to the hosting provider to manage the number of accounts per server to optimize resource utilization while maintaining good performance.
WordPress instance tested
A WordPress website on a web hosting package.
- Active installed theme: GeneratePress.
- Active plugins: Hosting Benchmark tool, SQLite Object Cache or Redis Object Cache.
- Object caches tested: APCu and/or Redis.
- PHP : 8.3
Glossary
A basic glossary of web hosting vocabulary.
Consult the glossary
- RAM: Random Access Memory, used to temporarily store data utilized by applications for rapid access.
- CPU: Central processing unit, the server’s brain, which executes instructions and processes data.
- vCPU: Virtual CPU, a part of a physical processor allocated to a virtual machine to simulate a dedicated processor.
- NVMe: High-performance storage protocol for SSDs, optimized to reduce latency and increase throughput.
- IO: Input/Output, measuring the server’s ability to read/write data to disk or network.
- Bandwidth: The maximum volume of data that can be transferred between the server and users over a given period, often expressed in Gbit/s or MB/s.
- Shared hosting: A solution where multiple sites share the resources of a single server.
- VPS hosting: A Virtual Private Server that provide dedicated resources (CPU, RAM, storage) on a shared physical server.
Tested hosting plans
O2Switch Grow
Hosting plan information
- Hosting type: Shared hosting
- Annual renewal price : €84 excluding VAT | €100.80 including VAT
- Announced annual consumption: No public information available
Advertised resources
| CPU | RAM memory | Storage | Read/write | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 vCPU | 16 GB RAM | Unlimited* on NVMe | I/O 16 MB/s | ? MB/s |
Measured performance
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t launch a valid test.
O2Switch Cloud
Plan information
- Hosting type: Shared
- Annual renewal fee: €192 excluding VAT | €230.40 including VAT
- Announced annual consumption: No public information available
Advertised resources
| CPU | RAM | Storage | Read/write | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 vCPU | 48 GB RAM | Unlimited* on NVMe | I/O 47 MB/s | ? MB/s |
Measured performance
APCu object cache
| Type | Function | Score /10 | Time / Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU & Memory | Operations with large text data | 7.84 | 4.7 sec |
| Random binary data operations | 6.59 | 9.8 sec | |
| Recursive mathematical calculations | 3.52 | 15.4 sec | |
| Iterative mathematical calculations | 5.32 | 5.5 sec | |
| Floating point operations | 5.44 | 4.6 sec | |
| Filesystem | Filesystem write ability | 3.92 | 15.8 sec ~63 MB/s |
| Local file copy and access speed | 6.02 | 11.9 sec ~84 MB/s | |
| Small file IO test | 8.3 | 0.5 sec ~135 MB/s | |
| Database | Importing large amount of data to database | 6.8 | 3.8 sec |
| Simple queries on single table | 9.13 | 1.1 sec | |
| Complex database queries on multiple tables | 3.99 | 8 sec | |
| Object cache | Persistent object cache enabled | 0 | Failed |
| Persistent object cache write | 10 | 0.9 sec | |
| Persistent object cache read | 10 | 3.9 sec | |
| Persistent object cache mixed usage | 10 | 3.5 sec | |
| Wordpress core | Shortcode processing | 3.46 | 10.6 sec |
| Wordpress Hooks | 6.37 | 8.3 sec | |
| Wordpress option manipulation | 5.77 | 7 sec | |
| REGEX string processing | 0 | Failed | |
| Taxonomy benchmark | 3.6 | 6.4 sec | |
| Object capability benchmark | 5.1 | 4.9 sec | |
| Content filtering | 2.54 | 14.8 sec | |
| JSON manipulations | 1.54 | 15.8 sec | |
| Network | Network download speed test | 9.63 | 1.9 sec ~40.1 MB/s |
| Your server score | 5.3 | ||
Redis object cache
| Type | Function | Score /10 | Time / Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU & Memory | Operations with large text data | 8.02 | 4.5 sec |
| Random binary data operations | 6.71 | 9.6 sec | |
| Recursive mathematical calculations | 3.52 | 15.4 sec | |
| Iterative mathematical calculations | 5.67 | 5 sec | |
| Floating point operations | 5.4 | 4.6 sec | |
| Filesystem | Filesystem write ability | 3.52 | 19.8 sec ~51 MB/s |
| Local file copy and access speed | 4.74 | 19.8 sec ~51 Mo/s | |
| Small file IO test | 8.3 | 0.5 sec ~135 Mb/s | |
| Database | Importing large amount of data to database | 6.87 | 3.7 sec |
| Simple queries on single table | 9.12 | 1.1 sec | |
| Complex database queries on multiple tables | 4.03 | 8 sec | |
| Object cache | Persistent object cache enabled | 0 | Failed |
| Persistent object cache write | 10 | 0.8 sec | |
| Persistent object cache read | ?? | ?? | |
| Persistent object cache mixed usage | 10 | 2.6 sec | |
| Wordpress core | Shortcode processing | 3.4 | 10.8 sec |
| Wordpress Hooks | 6.61 | 7.8 sec | |
| Wordpress option manipulation | 6.36 | 6 sec | |
| REGEX string processing | 0 | Failed | |
| Taxonomy benchmark | 3.97 | 6 sec | |
| Object capability benchmark | 5.04 | 5 sec | |
| Content filtering | 2.64 | 14.4 sec | |
| JSON manipulations | 1.49 | 16 sec | |
| Network | Network download speed test | 9.63 | 1.9 sec ~40.3 Mo/s |
| Your server score | 5.3 | ||
O2Switch Pro
Plan information
- Hosting type: Shared
- Annual renewal fee: €288 excluding VAT | €345.60 including VAT
- Announced annual consumption: No public information available
Advertised resources
| CPU | RAM memory | Storage | Read/write | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 vCPU | 64 GB RAM | Unlimited* on NVMe | I/O 84 MB/s | ? MB/s |
Measured performance
APCu object cache
| Type | Function | Score /10 | Time / Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU & Memory | Operations with large text data | 8.11 | 4.4 sec |
| Random binary data operations | 6.5 | 10 sec | |
| Recursive mathematical calculations | 3.14 | 17.3 sec | |
| Iterative mathematical calculations | 6.43 | 4.1 sec | |
| Floating point operations | 5.87 | 4.1 sec | |
| Filesystem | Filesystem write ability | 8.34 | 1.3 sec ~792 Mo/s |
| Local file copy and access speed | 8.36 | 1.6 sec ~609 Mb/s | |
| Small file IO test | 9.9 | 0.1 sec ~559 Mb/s | |
| Database | Importing large amount of data to database | 8.09 | 2.5 sec |
| Simple queries on single table | 9.44 | 1 sec | |
| Complex database queries on multiple tables | 2.95 | 12.1 sec | |
| Object cache | Persistent object cache enabled | 0 | Failed |
| Persistent object cache write | 10 | 0.9 sec | |
| Persistent object cache read | 3.68 | 13.3 sec | |
| Persistent object cache mixed usage | 10 | 2.5 sec | |
| Wordpress core | Shortcode processing | 3.89 | 9.3 sec |
| Wordpress Hooks | 7.01 | 7 sec | |
| Wordpress option manipulation | 7.67 | 4 sec | |
| REGEX string processing | 0 | Failed | |
| Taxonomy benchmark | 5.19 | 4.8 sec | |
| Object capability benchmark | 6.94 | 3.1 sec | |
| Content filtering | 2.76 | 14 sec | |
| JSON manipulations | 3.42 | 8.7 sec | |
| Network | Network download speed test | 9.68 | 1.8 sec ~40.4 Mo/s |
| Your server score | 6.0 | ||
Redis object cache
| Type | Function | Score /10 | Time / Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU & Memory | Operations with large text data | 7.93 | 4.6 sec |
| Random binary data operations | 6.24 | 10.5 sec | |
| Recursive mathematical calculations | 2.95 | 18.3 sec | |
| Iterative mathematical calculations | 6.92 | 3.6 sec | |
| Floating point operations | 5.74 | 4.3 sec | |
| Filesystem | Filesystem write ability | 8.39 | 1.2 sec ~816 MB/s |
| Local file copy and access speed | 8.44 | 1.6 sec ~643 MB/s | |
| Small file IO test | 9.92 | 0.1 sec ~595 MB/s | |
| Database | Importing large amount of data to database | 7.33 | 3.2 sec |
| Simple queries on single table | 9.31 | 1 sec | |
| Complex database queries on multiple tables | 5.48 | 5.8 sec | |
| Object cache | Persistent object cache enabled | 0 | Failed |
| Persistent object cache write | 10 | 1.1 sec | |
| Persistent object cache read | 10 | 3.7 sec | |
| Persistent object cache mixed usage | 10 | 2.9 sec | |
| Wordpress core | Shortcode processing | 4.31 | 8.4 sec |
| Wordpress Hooks | 7.29 | 6.4 sec | |
| Wordpress option manipulation | 7.69 | 4 sec | |
| REGEX string processing | 0 | Failed | |
| Taxonomy benchmark | 6.06 | 3.9 sec | |
| Object capability benchmark | 6.55 | 3.5 sec | |
| Content filtering | 3.86 | 10.4 sec | |
| JSON manipulations | 3.25 | 9.3 sec | |
| Network | Network download speed test | 9.68 | 1.8 sec ~42.1 Mo/s |
| Your server score | 6.2 | ||
Summary of all plans tested
| Plan | Hosting type | Annual rate incl. VAT | Annual consumption | Best Score/10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O2switch Grow | Shared | 100.80 € INCL. VAT | No public information | Not measurable |
| O2switch Cloud | Shared | 230,40 € INCL. VAT | No public information | 5.3 |
| O2switch Pro | Shared | 345.60 € INCL. VAT | No public information | 6.2 |
Sources & References
- Hosting Benchmark tool
- WP Benchmark
- Comparison of o2switch’s Grow, Cloud, and Pro plans (in french)
- Offre Unique Grow (in french)
- Offre Unique Cloud (in french)
- Offre Unique Pro (in french)
- Shared hosting vs dedicated hosting: Key differences
- HDD, SSD, NVMe – The different storage technologies (in french)
- APC User Cache
- Redis
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