Choosing the best WordPress hosting is by far the most important aspect of building a website.
Your search engine ranking (SEO), user experience, and ultimately your website’s success rely on the hosting provider you use.
When you’re first starting out, it’s hard to know which is the best WordPress hosting company?
I mean, there are hundreds of companies to choose from. Even if you narrow down to the popular ones like Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator, WP Engine, etc … how do you know which is the right WordPress host for your needs?
To help you pick the right WordPress host, we did the research for you and created a detailed comparison of the top WordPress hosting companies.
Whichever host you choose, you need to make sure that you use these top 3 most important factors in choosing a WordPress hosting company:
- Speed (load time): Speed is a critical element to provide the best user experience on your site and boost your SEO.
- Availability (uptime): Users expect your site to be up around the clock, so you’ll need to choose a WordPress hosting with maximum availability.
- Support: Choose a WordPress hosting that has a good reputation for resolving customer issues in a timely manner.
With these factors in mind, let’s take a look at the top 10 WordPress hosting providers with their Pros and Cons.
Top 10 Best WordPress Hosting Companies (with Pros and Cons)
We put each of these companies through multiple tests (speed, uptime, features, support, and pricing). You can read through each to see which WordPress host best suit your needs. At the bottom of the article, we also have an explaination of our detailed WordPress hosting review process along with a quick comparison table for you to see everything at glance.
Having that said, let’s get straight to the top WordPress hosting companies starting with #1 in our list.
1. Bluehost
- Load time: 689 ms
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: Bluehost.com
Bluehost is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world, powering over 2 million websites worldwide. Since 2005, they’ve been involved in the WordPress community. They’re also an officially recommended hosting provider by WordPress.org.
We recommend Bluehost to anyone who wants to start their WordPress blog or website with ease. When you purchase WordPress hosting with Bluehost, you’ll get over 60% discount on your hosting fees, a free domain name, and free SSL.
You’d also like to read our experts’ opinion between:
- Bluehost vs HostGator
- Bluehost vs WP Engine
- Bluehost vs Dreamhost
- Bluehost vs iPage
- Bluehost vs InMotion hosting
- Bluehost vs GreenGeeks
- Bluehost vs A2 Hosting
- Bluehost vs Liquid Web
Prices start at as low as $2.75 per month.
Pros:
- You get a free domain name, free SSL and free site transfer.
- With their custom WordPress setup, Bluehost makes it easy to build a website even if you’re an absolute beginner.
- They’re officially recommended by WordPress.org.
Cons:
- They no longer provide email based support for technical assistance. However, you’ll get superior support via live chat or phone.
- Monthly billing option is not available.
- To avail maximum discount, you’ll need to opt for 3-year hosting plan.
2. SiteGround
- Load time: 649 ms
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Support: 10/10
- Website: SiteGround.com
SiteGround is one of the few top hosting brands that’s not been acquired by Endurance International Group, a leading web hosting company. With SiteGround, no matter which plan you choose, you get the latest speed technologies and proactive security.
We recommend SiteGround to users who need a great hosting service, which is stable, secure, and super fast. Check out this SiteGround coupon.
You’d also like to check out our expert’s comparison between SiteGround vs HostGator.
Prices start at as low as $3.95 per month.
Pros:
- For blazing fast website, you’ll get Solid State Drives with any SiteGround plan.
- Get enhanced performance with NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free CDN.
- Data centers in 3 continents for superior site experience.
- Geeky WordPress features such as WP Staging and Git Integration are available for advanced users.
Cons:
- Starting plan is a bit costlier than other hosting providers.
- You can’t waive off the domain name registration fee.
- For geeky WordPress features like special cache, one-click WordPress staging and repo creation, you’ll have to choose their expensive GoGeek plan.
3. HostGator
- Load time: 691 ms
- Uptime: 99.96%
- Support: 10/10
- Website: HostGator.com
HostGator hosts millions of domain names from all over the world. They particularly rock the shared hosting space with their affordable starter plans. They also offer you a 45-day money back guarantee, so you can try out the hosting service service risk-free.
All hosting plans include AdWords credits worth $100 and Bing + Yahoo Search credits worth $50. You can use our HostGator coupon to get big discount on web hosting.
Don’t miss these comparisons between,
- HostGator vs DreamHost
- HostGator vs. GreenGeeks
- HostGator vs InMotion Hosting
- HostGator vs WP Engine
- HostGator vs iPage
- HostGator vs Liquid Web
- HostGator vs A2 Hosting
Prices start at $2.78 per month.
Pros:
- Get award-winning support 24/7 whenever you need via email, live chat or phone.
- Get all the beginner-friendly tools you’ll need in your hosting plans including free website builder, one-click WordPress install, unlimited email addresses.
- 45-day money back guarantee to try out the hosting service risk-free.
Cons:
- A free domain name isn’t provided with any of their hosting plans.
- For shared hosting, SSD storage isn’t available.
- Onboarding experience isn’t as smooth as other WordPress hosts, like Bluehost. This can confuse newbie users who have never worked on a cPanel to build a WordPress site.
4. WP Engine
- Load time: 582 ms
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: WPEngine.com
WP Engine is a leading managed WordPress hosting service provider based in Austin, TX. Being one of the first companies to offer WordPress centric managed hosting solutions, they boast an impressive customer list including Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, PBS, and MyFitnessPal.
To offer your WordPress website the highest possible availability, speed, scalability, and security around the clock, they’ve partnered with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud platform.
We recommend WP Engine to users who need a truly superior managed WordPress hosting for their high traffic website.
Check out our comparisons between,
- WP Engine vs DreamHost
- WP Engine vs InMotion Hosting
- WP Engine vs Liquid Web
- WP Engine vs iPage
- WP Engine vs A2 Hosting
- WP Engine vs GreenGeeks
Prices start at $20.42 per month!
Pros:
- They’re more than just a managed WordPress hosting company and equip you with a suite of high- performance solutions for your WordPress site.
- 24/7 chat support.
- One-click staging tool for testing new WordPress plugins and other features before pushing it to your production site.
Cons:
- Plans are expensive for small websites.
- Built specifically for users who want managed WordPress hosting. Unmanaged WordPress hosting option isn’t available.
- In order to ensure high website performance, not all plugins available in the WordPress repository are allowed to install on the WP Engine environment.
5. DreamHost
- Load time: 445 ms
- Uptime: 99.90%
- Support: 7/10
- Website: Dreamhost.com
DreamHost is a leading web hosting service provider that hosts around 1.5 million websites, with over 400k happy customers, spanning throughout more than 100 countries.
DreamHost is an officially recommended hosting provider by WordPress.org. It’s also a PCI compliant web hosting.
DreamHost comes with everything you need to start a WordPress site. For effortless website creation, your hosting account will be preinstalled with WordPress. All plans include a free domain name, free SSL certificate and free website firewall.
If you’re looking for a superior WordPress host that offers effortless website creation with high-speed SSD storage, then DreamHost could be the best choice.
Prices starting from $2.59 per month.
Pros:
- Unmatched 97-day money back guarantee
- Independently owned and operated
- Powering millions of websites since 1997
Cons:
- Low uptime
- Live chat support is not available 24/7.
- Phone based support requires additional payment.
6. InMotion Hosting
- Load time: 982 ms
- Uptime: 99.91%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: InMotionHosting.com
Get started with InMotion Hosting »
InMotion Hosting comes with a lot of desirable features, including SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain. Unlike most other shared hosting services, InMotion Hosting gives you a choice of data centers. That way you can choose the nearest data center for improving the page load time.
They often emphasize their commitment to the environment on their marketing channels. To reduce carbon output and cut cooling costs, they use advanced Outside Air Cooling Technology. This reduces carbon output by 2000+ tons per year. They’ve also opened up a green data center in Los Angeles.
They offer unmatched 90-day money back guarantee to try their service risk-free. Their reseller hosting plans help you in distributing the web hosting and earn money from it.
Their friendly hosting support team gives you fast, accurate responses to your hosting questions via email, phone and live chat.
Prices start at $3.49 per month.
Pros:
- Get SSD storage for all hosting plans. Unlike old spinning hard disk drives, SSDs don’t have any moving parts, which improve your site’s performance.
- Free automated data backups
- Best in-class money back guarantee. Try the service risk-free for 90 days.
- They’re committed to eco-friendly policies.
Cons:
- Since InMotion Hosting only offers SSD storage, their plans are expensive than other web hosts.
- Montly payment plan isn’t available.
- No plan in shared hosting allows unlimited website hosting.
Read our InMotion Host review >>
7. iPage
- Load time: 2.60 s
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Support: 8/10
- Website: iPage.com
iPage provides reliable web hosting for the cheapest possible price. It was founded in 1998, and now hosts over a million websites around the globe. iPage was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2010, and now they have offices in 6 worldwide locations and 2 data centers in the US.
iPage provides the cheapest hosting solution in the shared hosting vertical. Regardless of the size of your business, you can find the right hosting plan that suits your needs. They also offer 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee.
Unlike other hosting providers, iPage provides only one shared hosting plan. For just $1.99 per month, you can host unlimited domains with your iPage hosting account.
They also offer $200 worth of ad credits for Google and Bing.
Pros:
- Free tools including one-click WordPress installer, free domain name and SiteLock security tool.
- You can create unlimited email addresses for your website.
- No hidden charges when signing up for a web hosting account.
Cons:
- Unlike other hosting providers, the basic plan doesn’t offer cPanel.
- There is only a single hosting plan for shared hosting.
- The website builder comes with hosting is not entirely free. If you ever wish to choose their website builder over WordPress, then bear in mind that you’ll be able to build only 6 pages for free.
8. GreenGeeks
- Load time: 697 ms
- Uptime: 99.92%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: GreenGeeks.com
GreenGeeks is the world’s #1 green energy web hosting provider. They’re an excellent WordPress hosting provider that delivers security, reliability, and performance while staying committed to the environment.
No matter what hosting options you need, GreenGeeks platform will meet your requirements.
GreenGeeks offers blazing-fast SSD based hosting solution for you. Whenever you need assistance, you can count on their 24/7/365 superior customer support. They also provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee and a 30-day money back guarantee.
They put back 3 times the power they consume into the grid in the form of renewable energy.
Prices start at $3.49/month.
Pros:
- Offer SSD storage for blazing fast website performance.
- Free domain name or transfer
- 300% green web hosting
Cons:
- The hosting fee can be a bit expensive since they offer only SSD storage.
- Low uptime
- If you opt for the monthly plan, then you’ll have to make a one-time payment of $15 as the setup fee.
9. A2 Hosting
- Load time: 1.28 s
- Uptime: 99.90%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: A2hosting.com
A2 Hosting is a developer-friendly hosting provider that gives you all the flexibility you need to build a website. A2 Hosting gives you unlimited disk space and bandwidth for hosting your website. They also allow you to choose from Windows or Linux hosting and install WordPress with the one-click installer.
The money back guarantee is one of the main things that sets A2 Hosting apart from its competition. A2 Hosting provides anytime money back guarantee to try out their service risk-free. If you’re not satisfied with their hosting, you can cancel your hosting account and request a full money back within 30 days. EvenAfter the first 30 days, you’ll be eligible for a prorated refund for unused service.
Prices start at $3.92 per month.
Pros:
- Developer-friendly hosting platform
- Two great OS options to choose from – Windows or Linux
- Anytime money back guarantee
Cons:
- Starting plans are a bit expensive compared to other hosting services such as Bluehost.
- There are 4 different WordPress hosting plans, so choosing the right plan can be overwhelming to an average user.
- Low uptime
10. LiquidWeb
- Load time: 901 ms
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Support: 10/10
- Website: LiquidWeb.com
Liquid Web is the leading managed hosting company, which specializes in WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting and more.
Liquid Web handles all the technicalities of operating a hosting server, so you can build a website without having to worry about maintaining or optimizing your server for better performance.
Most managed hosting providers update your WordPress installation while leaving your plugins alone. However, Liquid Web automatically updates your plugin as well to secure your website from any potentially vulnerable threats.
We recommend Liquid Web to our users who’re looking for a managed WordPress hosting provider.
Check out this comparison between shared vs. managed WordPress hosting.
Prices start at $21.39 per month.
Pros:
- No metered pageviews or traffic limits
- Hassle-free hosting with automatic WordPress plugin updates
- Easily setup website with developer tools and staging site option.
Cons:
- Not an affordable solution for a small website with minimal traffic.
- Hosting discount is applicable only for 3 months.
- Unmanaged hosting service isn’t available.
About Our WordPress Hosting Review Process
This WordPress hosting review is created with a single goal in mind: Help users choose the best WordPress hosting easily.
Although choosing a highly performing WordPress hosting is critical for your website, you might not want to spend your time and resources on testing every single hosting service available. To save you time, unlike other sites, we’ve set up a test site on all the top WordPress hosting providers out there and conducted a few different server performance tests as well.
To mirror the production environment on these test sites, we’ve installed the default Twenty Seventeen theme, added dummy content including images, and then, conducted a few different speed and performance tests. That way you can understand how the server would perform in a real live environment
Before reading further, check out 10 Best UK Web Hosting Services (From €1.50)
Speed and Performance Tests
Below are a few speed tests and performance tests we conducted on all the top 10 WordPress hosting providers.
1. Website Speed Test with Pingdom
Pingdom is a popular way to monitor your website’s speed and availability. Using Pingdom, we recorded the page load time of our test websites hosted on all the top WordPress hosting providers.
The page load time tells you how long a specific page took to load in its entirety, including all images, scripts and other files.
2. Performance Test with Load Impact
To analyze the performance of a web hosting server, only recording the page load time is not enough. That’s why we’ve used another testing tool, Load Impact to see how a web hosting provider performs during a traffic surge.
Load Impact gives you a chart that shows a green graph that displays the number of active users in a test, and a blue graph that shows user load time during a test.
3. Server Response Time with Bitcatcha
Bitcatcha allows you to analyze server response time by ignoring the content of a site. Server response time is the time taken by a web server to respond with the first byte of content after a request is made to load a web page.
Bitcatcha averages the loading speed from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
It helps you get a broader overview of how your server responds globally to the page requests.
Aside from testing and recording the performance metrics, we’ve also conducted a thorough review of different hosting features. We also examined what type of hosting support they offer, like live chat, phone, or ticket-based email.
Choosing a WordPress Hosting Plan
Most hosting providers offer a wide variety of WordPress hosting plans. Wondering which one is the best choice for your website needs? Let’s take a look at a few different WordPress hosting plans:
Free WordPress blogging with WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a free blogging platform that helps you create a blog without having to pay a penny for hosting. While it allows you to easily set up a blog and publish content by creating a free account, the downside is that the platform comes with a lot of restrictions that limit your abilities to grow it.
Due to the fact, free WordPress.com is not a reliable platform if you’re getting serious about building WordPress blogs and websites.
- It doesn’t give full control over your WordPress site.
- It doesn’t allow you to monetize your site with popular advertising networks like Google AdSense.
- With the free WordPress.com, you’re not allowed to install a plugin to extend your site just like a hosted platform. Read the difference between WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.
- You can’t pick a custom domain name for your blog that’s easy for your visitors to remember.
You may also find other free WordPress hosting providers but they’re unreliable as you never know when they’ll stop offering their free service. I’d rather go with a paid hosting setup than an unreliable hosting service, which risks my efforts and hard earned reputation.
WordPress hosting: Shared
Choosing a shared hosting service is the best way to start your WordPress website if you’re just starting out and are expecting a low traffic volume. With shared hosting, server resources including RAM and storage space are shared across different users of your hosting provider. This is how your hosting providers can profitably sell you hosting spaces with minimal price.
Even though resources are being shared, there’s nothing to be worried because only you can access your site’s files.
Shared hosting could be the best choice for blogs, personal websites, small businesses that expect only a low traffic volume. It’s the best entry-point for users who’re just getting started with their WordPress website.
Shared hosting often comes with all the set of features you can ever expect from your hosting provider, such as one-click WordPress install, an excellent uptime guarantee and so on.
To get started with your WordPress website, you can install WordPress using the one-click WordPress install wizard, and easily customize the site and build content by logging into your WordPress dashboard.
Managed WordPress Hosting
If you’re looking to create a WordPress site with an optimized hosting server built specifically to boost your WordPress site’s performance, you need to look for a managed WordPress hosting service.
Want to know how managed WordPress hosting differs from other hosting services? Take a look at the pros and cons of managed WordPress hosting.
Pros:
- Ease of management: If you opted for a managed WordPress hosting service, you don’t have to handle the technical aspects of maintaining your server. Your hosting provider will manage it, so you can focus on the business/marketing aspects like creating and publishing great content.
- Security: Most managed WordPress hosting services come with auto-updates, automatic WordPress vulnerability fixes, and regular data backup, which give an extra layer of protection to your site. This also gives you a peace of mind since you don’t necessarily have to install and manage complex WordPress security plugins to provide bulletproof security. You should also read out the ultimate WordPress security guide for more details.
- Speed: Most reputed managed WordPress hosting providers, like WPEngine and Liquid Web offer content caching at the server level, so you don’t necessarily need to use a content caching solutions or content delivery network to speed up your site.
- Expert support: In case you need help regarding your WordPress site’s performance, you’ll get expert WordPress assistance from the support team.
Cons:
- Expensive: Compared to shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting is quite expensive.
- Limitations: Some managed WordPress hosting providers like WPEngine doesn’t allow you to use certain plugins that might clash with their hosting service.
- Only WordPress sites: Obviously, you can’t build a non-WordPress website on your managed WordPress hosting account.
Now that you know the good and the ugly side of hosting your WordPress site on a managed WordPress hosting environment, the next question you might be asking yourself is that whether you need a managed WordPress hosting for your site.
If your WordPress website outgrows your existing hosting environment and you constantly had to hire WordPress experts to optimize your site, you might need to choose a managed WordPress hosting service.
Conversely, if you’re a WordPress beginner, looking to build a WordPress site quickly and easily, shared hosting could be the best choice. Since all major shared hosting providers make it easy to build a WordPress website with one-click install wizard, shared hosting is the best solution for beginners.
WordPress Hosting: VPS
VPS hosting is an abbreviation for Virtual Private Server hosting. VPS hosting gives more power and flexibility to your website than a shared hosting service.
VPS is basically an independent partition of a physical server. With virtualization, it creates multiple virtual partitions of a physical server that enables you to effectively control your own resources and configure them the way you want.
While you’ll still be sharing server resources with other websites hosted on the same physical server, VPS gives you almost as much control as a dedicated server. You also get a tremendous amount of bandwidth and storage solely reserved for your site.
VPS WordPress hosting could be the best choice for websites that expand rapidly, which also need excessive bandwidth and security beyond the shared hosting ecosystem.
Best of all, VPS is scalable meaning your hosting provider can adjust the amount of server space allocated to your site as your need evolves.
WordPress Hosting: Dedicated
Hosting your WordPress site with a dedicated server could be the right choice if you need to host an extremely high traffic site without sharing its resources with any other users. With a dedicated server, you’re leasing an entire physical server only for hosting your WordPress site.
That also means you are in full control over your server, including the choice of the operating system, hardware, etc. Since you’re leasing an entire server, it’s a no-brainer that dedicated server hosting will cost you a lot more than shared and VPS hosting services.
Dedicated hosting is less vulnerable to hacking and other security threats. If you don’t want to employ a system administrator, it’s highly recommended to get a managed dedicated server.
Don’t miss this chance to read fully about web hosting including shared vs VPS vs dedicated hosting.
Best WordPress Hosting – Quick Recap
Take a look at our WordPress hosting review table for a quick recap.
Ideally, you should choose a WordPress hosting service, that’s fast, affordable and promises high availability. If you want our recommendation, we suggest you choose Bluehost. Not only Bluehost is affordable for blogs and small websites, but they’re also officially recommended by WordPress.org.
If you think it’s not right for you even after you chose it, don’t worry. You can easily switch to a new web host.
| WordPress Hosting | Cost | Money Back | Load Time | Uptime | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Bluehost | $2.75/mo. | 30 days | 689 ms | 99.99% | 10/10 |
| 2. SiteGround | $3.95/mo. | 30 days | 649 ms | 99.98% | 10/10 |
| 3. HostGator | $2.78/mo. | 45 days | 691 ms | 99.96% | 10/10 |
| 4. WPEngine | $20.42/mo. | Nil | 582 ms | 99.99% | 9/10 |
| 5. Dreamhost | $2.59/mo. | 97 days | 445 ms | 99.90% | 7/10 |
| 6. InMotion Hosting | $3.49/mo. | 90 days | 982 ms | 99.91% | 9/10 |
| 7. iPage | $1.99/mo. | 30 days | 2600 ms | 99.98% | 8/10 |
| 8. GreenGeeks | $3.49/mo. | 30 days | 697 ms | 99.92% | 9/10 |
| 9. A2 Hosting | $3.92/mo. | 30 days | 1280 ms | 99.90% | 9/10 |
| 10. Liquid Web | $21.39/mo. | 30 days | 901ms | 99.99% | 10/10 |
We hope this guide helped you find the best WordPress hosting service. For a step-by-step guide, you can check out how to start a website with WordPress.
