TTFB issue

I know this subject has been hashed over and over. My question is NOT how to IMPROVE TTFB but to determine WHY it excels on one server but not on another.

I do not have the technical expertise (or access) to do a side-by-side comparison of the server settings. My hope is that one of you expertise out there might be able to spot what is going on.

I have the exact same site running on two different hosting services.
Hosting service A gives me this test result WebPageTest - Running web page performance and optimization tests...

Hosting service B gives me this result: WebPageTest - Running web page performance and optimization tests...

I am trying to work with Hosting B to spot the difference and I am getting pushback that it’s because of my plugin setup which makes no sense since we’re testing the EXACT same setup. I believe there’s some internal setting which is making the difference. I also see pattern where the TTFB is not good on hosting B for several sites. Again, with pushback from the hosting B company.

If anyone can provide me insight into this, I would be very grateful.

P.S. Don’t worry about WHY I want to be with Hosting B… it’s a long story.

TIA

No, you’re not comparing oranges to oranges, as

  • one site uses http: and the other uses https:
  • one site has wp-rocket fpc installed and the other doesn’t

Apart from the final image ( lazy load? ) the overall performance is little different.

Good catch. I assure you the WP Rocket was on both when we did the tests. I’ve been diddling around with this for a day and a half.
True, that we didn’t add https to one of them. Ironically, the one without HTTPS is the one performing well. Do you think that will cause that much of a problem?

Well if you’re measuring TTFB then the HTTP content will be served quicker than the content being served via HTTPS. Extra calls are required for TLS enabled sites which would result in a higher TTFB in a direct comparison of the two protocols.

Looks like you have found the issue as the time to first byte is similar on both now.

When the test was made the website on hosting ‘A’ had page caching installed, where as the website on hosting ‘B’ didn’t have page caching enabled as seen by the long TTFB.