WHMCS's TTFB is consistently about 200ms slower than others like Wordpress on the same server, normal?

[startover909]

I'm currently in the process of setting up WHMCS (7.5.1) along with a main site on a pretty much empty dedicated server (decent E3 with SSD). The site does not run "slow" by any means. It loads in about 650ms to 800ms on Pingdom and GTMetrix tests. What I did find curious is that it is exactly and consistently around 200ms slower TTFB compared to the same sites on the same server, mostly running Wordpress. All running the same PHP and MySQL and over SSL (so all the overheads are accounted for). So while the other site would have a TTFB of say 250ms to a given test server (including SSL handshake), WHMCS would take about 450ms, pushing it just a bit over the most "ideal" ballpark. This can be also easily verified by using Chrome's developer tool - network tool.

Is this 200ms due to the IonCube encoding, or is the speed of the application itself just what it is? Does this number seem right to you? If you have any other PHP/MySQL site especially Wordpress running along side WHMCS on the exact same server, and not utilizing CDN's such as cloudflare that can skew the results,  do you mind doing a test and see if your WHMCS is also consistently a bit slower TTFB (test during idle times)?

Thanks.

Edited May 8, 2018 by startover909