ChemiCloud review: How good is this WordPress host really?

Chemi… what? ChemiCloud! If the name doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry: you’re probably not the only one.

And yet, ChemiCloud has been around since 2016, and more than 150,000 website owners trust it.

On paper, its house recipe has some mouthwatering ingredients: an infrastructure built for speed, a full security arsenal, a free migration service, human support available 24/7, and aggressive introductory prices.

But can ChemiCloud really be a credible option for your WordPress site? And above all, how do its performance, interface, and support hold up in real-world use?

To find out, we rolled up our sleeves and put the beast through its paces. 

Loading speed, ease of use, security, support, pricing: here’s our full ChemiCloud review. 

By the end of this review, you’ll know its strengths and weaknesses, and above all, you’ll know whether this host is the right fit for you and your WordPress site.

Transparency note: This article is sponsored by ChemiCloud. We remain impartial: when something deserves a caveat, we say so.

What is ChemiCloud?

Founded in 2016 and based in the United States, ChemiCloud is an independent web host: it has no parent company and doesn’t rely on outside investors.

It’s trusted by more than 150,000 website owners and runs data centers on four continents.

Its philosophy can be summed up in one line: while many hosts mainly highlight their servers and their prices, ChemiCloud puts the spotlight on the people behind its infrastructure.

In practice, this translates into round-the-clock human support with WordPress expertise, and a migration that its team can handle for you.

For WordPress, ChemiCloud offers both:

• a dedicated hosting range (WordPress Hosting), which we tested with the Turbo plan
• a separate Managed WordPress Hosting offer (on managed servers), geared more toward mission-critical websites and large WooCommerce stores (with plenty of traffic and a wide range of products).

Now that you know a little more about this host, let’s take a closer look at its main services and features. 

What are ChemiCloud’s main services?

From WordPress hosting to cloud VPS

ChemiCloud makes a point of putting WordPress at the heart of its offering, with dedicated and managed hosting plans. But its overall catalog isn’t limited to the world’s most popular CMS. 

At ChemiCloud, you’ll also find: 

• shared hosting
• cloud VPS hosting
• reseller hosting, if you want to resell hosting to your own clients
• a dedicated email hosting plan.

A WordPress offer focused on performance

ChemiCloud combines LiteSpeed servers and NVMe storage, along with LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress.

Several server locations are available for WordPress hosting, including Frankfurt and London in Europe, so you can host your site closer to your audience.

WordPress can be installed in one click and managed with WordPress Toolkit. Depending on the plan you choose, you also get daily backups, staging, and tools for advanced users (WP-CLI, SSH/SFTP, Git, cron jobs, etc.).

Domain, SSL certificate, and email included

ChemiCloud includes a free SSL certificate and email accounts in its WordPress plans.

With a 36-month commitment, you can also get an eligible domain name free for one year.

The host is also a domain registrar (a company authorized to register domain names): you can buy a domain or transfer an existing one to ChemiCloud, then manage it from your client area.

Free migration and 24/7 human support

Another selling point: ChemiCloud offers a free assisted migration, carried out by its team under certain conditions.

Above all, the host promises 24/7 support provided by real people, with no AI chatbot. Further down, we’ll see whether this human support really makes a difference (stick around for the verdict).

Finally, the WordPress hosting plans come with a 45-day money-back guarantee.

On paper, all of this sounds pretty tempting. Time to log in to ChemiCloud and see whether all these features are easy to use day to day.

Is ChemiCloud easy to use?

To assess how easy the host is to use, we decided to focus on a few tasks you’ll regularly need to carry out when running a WordPress site:

• installing and managing WordPress
• creating a professional email address
• managing your domain name and its DNS.

The Lab: a central dashboard that’s easy to get the hang of…

Since we already have an active account with a WordPress Turbo plan, we won’t walk you through the standard ordering process for WordPress hosting here. 

But really, it’s dead simple. Just pick the plan you want, the billing cycle (1 month, 12 months, or 36 months), and your server location, and that’s it. Your credit card takes care of the rest. 😉

So our review picks up once you’re actually using the service.

Once you’re logged in, you land on The Lab, the name of ChemiCloud’s client area.

First pleasant surprise: you’re greeted with a guided tour of the main features The Lab has to offer.

This well-designed onboarding (called “Quick Tour”) walks you step by step through the different sections of the client area, with short explanations of what each one is for: 

Once the tour is over, the interface turns out to be clean and uncluttered. The main navigation sits in a sidebar on the left, with direct access to the dashboard, services, domains, billing, support, and add-ons. 

The labels come with large icons, which makes it easy to spot the different sections at a glance.

The dashboard then acts as the control center for your ChemiCloud account. Several indicators give you an instant overview of your active services and domains, any unpaid invoices, your credits, and your support requests.

Just below, you’ll find the key information about your hosting. In our case, The Lab shows our Turbo plan, our server location in Frankfurt, the next due date, and the disk space used.

Several shortcuts also take you straight to the main features of the service, including cPanel.

So our first impression is positive: The Lab manages to pack in a lot of information without feeling cluttered, and it’s organized intuitively enough that you quickly know where to go.

The Lab is also a gateway to ChemiCloud’s various services. 

… That also makes cPanel easier to access

To manage your hosting in more depth, ChemiCloud relies on the well-known cPanel. 

This server control panel, offered by many hosts, lets you carry out most of the usual webmaster tasks:

• managing your site’s files and its databases
• managing your domains and DNS, your SSL certificates (to switch WordPress to HTTPS), FTP accounts, and email accounts
• creating or restoring backups
• installing WordPress in one click
• or choosing the PHP version your site uses.

The only problem: with so many options, cPanel can feel pretty overwhelming at first. Take a look: 

ChemiCloud partly works around this with The Lab, which acts as a simplified gateway to its main features.

From the “Services” menu of your client area, clicking on your hosting plan opens a dedicated page that first displays some key information (service status, disk space and bandwidth usage, billing details, etc.).

Even better, a “Quick Shortcuts” section gives you direct access to the most common features:

• email accounts
• forwarders
• backups
• file manager
• domains
• cron jobs
• MySQL databases
• phpMyAdmin.

When you click on one of them, ChemiCloud automatically logs you in to the matching section of cPanel.

No more opening cPanel and hunting for the right option among its many menus, although a link still lets you open it directly whenever you need to go further.

In everyday use, this setup is super handy. The Lab simplifies routine tasks without limiting what you can do with cPanel.

Installing and managing WordPress with ChemiCloud

Once you’ve gotten the hang of ChemiCloud’s client area, you’ll still need to roll up your sleeves a little and install your WordPress site.

For that, head over to cPanel. And here again, to make your life easier, ChemiCloud was smart enough to add a direct link to Softaculous, the tool that installs WordPress automatically in just a few clicks.

Once your site is up, WordPress Toolkit brings much of its management together in a single dashboard.

You can easily get there through the “WordPress Management” shortcut, also located in cPanel’s left sidebar.

From there, you can: 

• manage themes and plugins, with the option to automate WordPress updates
• back up and restore your site
• access the logs
• use WP-CLI, the WordPress command-line interface
• clone your site and copy its data.

The Pro and Turbo plans also let you create a staging environment. It’s handy for testing a plugin, a major update, or a change to your site before pushing it live.

In practice, though, this option is pretty well hidden, which is a shame. You actually have to go through Softaculous if you want to set one up, as explained here.

ChemiCloud also offers a Website Builder to create your website without any technical skills. Available from cPanel, this tool works with drag and drop. You choose a website template from the many themes available, then customize your pages by adding elements: text, images, videos, buttons, etc.
The goal? To let you quickly build a brochure site, a portfolio, or a small business website, without touching a single line of code.
However, you’ll never get the same level of customization and scalability as with the WordPress editor or a tool from its ecosystem, such as a page builder (Elementor, Divi Builder, etc.).

Creating an email address

Let’s move on to another important point: creating a professional email address, such as contact@yourdomain.com.

Here again, there’s no need to go through cPanel. From the “Services” menu of your hosting plan, a “Quick Create Email Account” section lets you enter the name you want (for example, contact), then choose a password.

The associated domain name is selected automatically. A click on “Create” is all it takes to generate the address.

To go further, you’ll find the dedicated email tools in cPanel.

They let you manage your various accounts, set up forwarders or autoresponders, and access webmail.

Managing your domain and DNS

Hosting isn’t just about your site’s files (otherwise, it would be too easy).

You’ll also sometimes need to work on your domain name and its DNS, for example to point your domain to your ChemiCloud hosting, connect a third-party service, or set up your email correctly.

At ChemiCloud, most of this is handled from The Lab’s “Domains” menu.

When you select your domain, you get to a page that brings together its status, its renewal date, and information about its SSL certificate. The interface even detects the certificate automatically when it’s active.

The side menu then gives you access to the main operations:

• changing the nameservers
• turning auto-renewal on or off
• locking the domain
• updating the registrant’s contact information
• getting the EPP code needed to transfer the domain to another registrar.

From this area, ChemiCloud also lets you register a new domain name or transfer an existing one.

For more advanced DNS settings, such as editing A, CNAME, MX, or TXT records, you can use the corresponding tools in cPanel.

Our take on ChemiCloud’s ease of use: Our impression is very positive. The Lab makes cPanel much more accessible thanks to a clean interface and shortcuts to the essential features. Beginners can easily handle everyday tasks, while advanced users keep all the power of cPanel.
Our only small regret: some useful features are a bit hidden, like staging in Softaculous. All in all, ease of use is clearly one of ChemiCloud’s strengths.

How does ChemiCloud’s free migration work?

Switching hosts? Why not. But you still need to move your site without breaking anything, right?

Files, database, email, DNS: a migration can quickly make you break into a cold sweat.

To make things easier and spare you a lot of stress, ChemiCloud handles your site’s migration for free when you sign up for a hosting plan.

The host says the process can be completed in under an hour with no downtime, although the timing obviously depends on the site involved.

You submit your request directly from The Lab, via the Transfer To Us > Migrate Website menu at the top of the page. 

You then fill out a form with the login details for your current hosting, the sites to transfer, and some additional information about your DNS, your email, and when you’d like the migration to take place. And you’re all set.

The free migration does come with a few conditions, though. You must submit your request within 60 days of activating your hosting.

ChemiCloud can transfer up to 200 cPanel accounts for free, or up to 10 websites and 10 email accounts from a non-cPanel environment. Beyond that, fees apply.

Also note: the site migration doesn’t include transferring your domain name, which is a separate process.

Our take on the migration: the process is simple and, above all, reassuring if you’d rather not migrate your WordPress site manually.
Having ChemiCloud’s team handle it is a real plus in our eyes when it comes to switching hosts.

Once your site is installed or migrated, one key question comes up: is ChemiCloud fast and reliable enough to host it properly? Find out in the next section.

Speed and uptime: is ChemiCloud a high-performance host?

Infrastructure designed to speed up websites

On paper, ChemiCloud brings together several interesting technologies to reduce your site’s loading time.

First, the host relies on LiteSpeed Web Server, an alternative to Apache and NGINX built for performance.

It works hand in hand with LiteSpeed Cache, a WordPress plugin that caches your pages and offers various optimization tools.

ChemiCloud rounds it all out with AMD EPYC processors, the HTTP/3 protocol, and 100% NVMe storage, which is faster at reading and writing data than traditional SSDs.

The host also says it limits the number of sites on each server to preserve their performance.

Server location matters too. ChemiCloud has several data centers around the world, including Frankfurt and London in Europe.

Choosing the data center closest to most of your visitors reduces the distance your data has to travel and, as a result, latency.

To speed up content delivery to a more distant audience, you can also take advantage of a global CDN powered by the Cloudflare network, present in more than 200 cities.

Finally, performance isn’t just about speed. ChemiCloud advertises a 99.99% uptime guarantee, designed to keep the periods when your site is unavailable to a minimum (that’s about 4 minutes and 23 seconds of downtime per month, at most).

Our ChemiCloud speed test

All of this looks promising on paper. But rather than taking the host’s marketing claims at face value, we wanted to see what ChemiCloud really has under the hood with our own test site.

Setup used on our test site: 

• active theme: Astra
• number of active plugins (7): Akismet, Imagify, Redirection, UpdraftPlus, WooCommerce, Wordfence Security, Yoast SEO
• amount of content: 5 items (3 pages and 2 posts).

To see whether this site holds its own in terms of loading speed, we first used Pingdom Tools, with a test location in Frankfurt, Germany, the same city as our hosting server.

Here’s the result:

To get a more complete picture, we also used PageSpeed Insights, Google’s performance analysis tool: 

The bottom line: the results are very convincing. On Pingdom Tools, our page loads in 906 ms (under one second), despite a more middling performance grade of 75/100.

That grade reflects various technical recommendations, not just the speed perceived by visitors.

PageSpeed Insights does even better, with a performance score of 100/100 on desktop (and on mobile too).

Among the Core Web Vitals, the LCP is just 0.4 seconds, while Total Blocking Time (TBT) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) are both zero.

In practical terms, our test site displays very quickly, stays stable while loading, and doesn’t block interactions.

So ChemiCloud passes our speed test with flying colors.

One caveat, though: our WordPress site is very lightweight, and these results come from lab tests. On your end, performance will vary depending on your site’s weight, theme, plugins, and optimization.

Security and backups: is your WordPress site well protected?

A fast site is good. A fast and secure site is even better. On this front, ChemiCloud stacks up layer after layer of protection.

First, the host relies on a redundant cloud infrastructure: server data is distributed across several cloud servers to reduce the risks associated with hardware failure.

On the security side, ChemiCloud offers:

• a web application firewall (WAF) with custom rules designed to block attacks targeting web applications
• Imunify360, which detects suspicious behavior and attacks, including brute-force attacks
• Proactive Defense protection, which analyzes the execution of PHP scripts to block malicious behavior before it can damage your site
• DDoS protection at the network level
• 24/7 proactive monitoring of its servers’ health
• account isolation with CageFS and CloudLinux. On shared hosting, each user’s data and processes stay separate from those of other customers
• two-factor authentication (2FA), which you can turn on to better protect your account.

ChemiCloud also performs daily off-site backups, which you can restore from your control panel.

However, the retention period depends on your plan. At the time of our test, the WordPress Starter, Pro, and Turbo plans kept 10, 20, and 30 days of backups, respectively.

And if needed, you can always back up and restore your site manually in one click with the JetBackup tool in cPanel (available in the “Files” section): 

In short, ChemiCloud doesn’t rely on a single feature for security. Attack prevention, account isolation, backups, and infrastructure monitoring complement each other, making for a solid setup to protect a WordPress site.

Is ChemiCloud’s support really as responsive as advertised?

We now come to one of ChemiCloud’s main selling points. Remember the beginning of this article?

The host makes a big deal of one thing: human support, available 24/7, with no AI chatbots. So, how does it hold up?

To start with, note that support is only available via live chat and email tickets (no phone), backed up by a comprehensive knowledge base.

If needed, you can also check out ChemiCloud’s YouTube channel. Although it hasn’t been updated in four years, it contains several handy videos and tutorials, like this one, which shows you how to create a staging environment: 

ChemiCloud advertises a response time of about 10 seconds on its live chat and a median resolution time of 35 minutes for its tickets.

Bold promises that we obviously wanted to put to the test. 🙂 To do so, we first tested how responsive the live chat support was, asking several different questions at different times of the day (never at night, though).

Each time, the result was the same: we got a relevant answer after waiting 10 to 20 seconds at most (yes, we timed it).

Above all, the live chat was indeed handled by a human agent named Jerusalem T: 

As for our support ticket, we got an answer just 6 minutes after sending our question: 

Our take on ChemiCloud’s support: Fast, knowledgeable, and helpful, ChemiCloud’s support really won us over. With 10 to 20 seconds of waiting time on the live chat and a reply to our ticket in just 6 minutes, the host even beat its own advertised response times during our test.
And speed doesn’t come at the expense of quality: the answers we received were relevant and precise.

So far, ChemiCloud has some serious technical and human arguments going for it. But one key factor will decide whether it’s really worth it: the price.

How much does ChemiCloud cost?

For its shared “WordPress Hosting” offer, ChemiCloud has three subscription plans: 

1. WordPress Starter ($1.95/month with a 3-year commitment paid upfront): 1 website, 20 GB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
2. WordPress Pro ($2.95/month with a 3-year commitment paid upfront): unlimited websites, 35 GB, unlimited bandwidth.
3. WordPress Turbo ($3.95/month with a 3-year commitment paid upfront): unlimited websites, 50 GB, unlimited bandwidth.

Each plan comes with a 45-day money-back guarantee, and you don’t have to commit for 3 years either.

You can also pay monthly (from $14.95 for the Starter plan) or yearly (from $3.49/month), but of course, the final bill will be higher.

For a more detailed look at ChemiCloud’s 3 WordPress hosting plans, check out the screenshot below: 

Which ChemiCloud plan should you choose?

Even though we tested the Turbo plan, it’s not necessarily the one we’d recommend to everyone.

Starter is enough for a single small site, but its limits quickly become restrictive if you manage several WordPress sites.

For most WPMarmite readers, the Pro plan seems to offer the best balance. It supports multiple sites and comes with 35 GB of NVMe storage, 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM, 20 days of backups, and one-click staging.

Turbo makes more sense for busier sites, or if you want to take advantage of Redis, OPcache/APC, 6 GB of RAM, 3 CPU cores, and 30 days of backups.

Speaking of which, these differences between the Starter, Pro, and Turbo plans also show that there’s no single type of user, as you’ll see in the next section. 

Who is ChemiCloud for?

Based on our test, ChemiCloud seems particularly well suited to freelancers, small agencies, and businesses hosting one or more WordPress sites, who don’t necessarily want to handle every technical aspect of their hosting on their own.

Its main strength for this audience? The quality of its customer care. Between the free migration handled by its team and 24/7 human support that proved responsive and relevant during our test, ChemiCloud is a good fit for anyone who wants to be able to count on someone quickly when something goes wrong.

The Lab interface and its many shortcuts also make the host accessible to less experienced users, while cPanel, WP-CLI, Git, and staging meet more advanced needs.

Our own experience already gives us a good idea of what the host is worth, so let’s take a step back and compare it with feedback from other ChemiCloud users.

What do customers say about ChemiCloud?

The reviews available online are very positive overall. At the time of our check, ChemiCloud had, for example, an overall rating of 4.9/5 on its Google listing, based on nearly 300 reviews.

Same story on Trustpilot, which shows an overall rating of 4.7/5 based on nearly 1,400 reviews.

On both platforms, most reviews praise the performance, the ease of use, and above all the efficiency and responsiveness of the customer service. 

What are ChemiCloud’s pros and cons?

ChemiCloud pros	ChemiCloud cons
Clean, intuitive management interface (The Lab), with shortcuts that make cPanel’s main features easier to reach	No phone support
Excellent performance in our test, including a 100/100 score on PageSpeed Insights	The number of days of backups varies depending on the plan
Solid infrastructure: LiteSpeed, NVMe storage, AMD EPYC servers, and several data center locations	Free domain name for the first year only
Very fast, knowledgeable, and helpful support, which even beat its advertised response times during our test	The best prices require a 3-year commitment, paid upfront
Free migration from another host
Comprehensive security: Imunify360, firewall, DDoS protection, account isolation, and two-factor authentication
Daily off-site backups, restorable directly from the control panel
Easy WordPress installation and management with Softaculous and WordPress Toolkit
Competitive introductory prices and good value for money, starting at $1.95/month
45-day money-back guarantee

Performance, ease of use, security, support, features, and pricing: we’ve covered the whole offer. All that’s left is to answer the key question: do we recommend ChemiCloud for hosting a WordPress site?

Our final verdict on ChemiCloud

So, does ChemiCloud deserve a spot among the WordPress hosts worth considering? After testing it, our answer is yes.

First, the host won us over with how easy it is to use. The Lab makes the main tasks accessible, while leaving cPanel and its many settings available to more experienced users.

Installing and managing WordPress is also well supported thanks to Softaculous and WordPress Toolkit.

Performance-wise, the results from our test are very satisfying: under one second of loading time with Pingdom Tools and 100/100 on PageSpeed Insights, on both desktop and mobile.

Another plus: the customer care. The free migration makes switching hosts easier, and its 24/7 human support impressed us with its speed and the quality of its answers.

Of course, it’s not all perfect. The lack of phone support may put some people off, and the best prices require a three-year commitment.

All in all, with competitive introductory prices, good performance, a well-designed interface, and responsive support, ChemiCloud is a serious option to consider for freelancers, small agencies, and businesses that want to host one or more WordPress sites without being left to fend for themselves.

If you want to see for yourself and test its features firsthand, just click the button below: