Looking for the best WordPress hosting company?
You have come to the right place
because today
I want to help you find a hosting provider that is perfect for you.
I am aware we all have a different hosting requirement, and I wished there was a one package fits all. But in reality, we are all at the various stages of our online journey.
You might be in the process of
creating your first blog or wanting to move to a WordPress Optimized host.
In both cases, my recommendation would be different.
So here is what we will do today, below you will see a few providers I have been using over the last 8 years. Some of which I used to host websites where I’m testing an idea and others for my larger site which attracts millions of visitors each year.
Below you will see a snapshot of all the companies featured in this guide, and as you scroll below, you will get a more in-depth breakdown of the Pros and Cons of each of them.
Why choosing the right hosting provider is important?
- Slower server speed = Bad user experience
Slow loading web pages don’t provide an optimal experience for your users. Nobody likes sitting around waiting for a web page to load. If your site is hosted on a poor quality server page load times can become slow. And frustrating forcing users to leave your website and possibly never return.
- Low Reliability = Loss of revenue
If you generate income via your website even 5 minutes of downtime a day can turn out to be extremely costly. When a user is confronted with an error message they won’t hang around for the website to come back up, they’ll simply go elsewhere.
- A negative effect on SEO
Google has stated that page load times are taken into consideration by their page ranking algorithm. Therefore having slow web hosting negatively affects the position your website appears in Google’s resulting in fewer visitors.
- Management options
Some hosting providers restrict you from using basic options such as a CPanel, the ability to have FTP access in the case you require custom work and don’t what the developer to have full access. That is why, I have only included companies that facilitate these features.
- Support
We all get stuck, lost or confuse sometimes, and it is great to know that someone is on hand to help you with any issues or question you might have. What is more important is that your hosting company support team have a solid understanding of WordPress to serve you better.
- Price
If you are not careful, you could end up paying way more than you need to and even worse for an inferior service. That is why I have a price check each provider and rated them on the overall performance so that you know you are getting great value for money.
What are WordPress Hosting Requirements?
- PHP 5.2.4 or greater
- MySQL 5.0 or greater
- Apache mod_rewrite module
Due to the popularity of WordPress, there’s no shortage of hosts that meet these requirements.
Web Hosting Market Analysis.
It is said that there is a well over 15000 different web hosting company in the US alone which makes it increasingly difficult for webmaster like yourself to make an informed decision as to who to host your site with. The entire industry has grown immensely from what it was ten years ago, and it’s now said it to be a 15 billion dollar industry in the US and 8bn in the UK. This is also welcome used to consumers like yourself and me as it means a web hosting company has been forced to provide higher value and customer service due to the increased competition. The growth of the industry and average is trending at 11% which shows no signs of slowing down according to ibisworld.com. In recent years of a mass popularity of WordPress is giving birth to specialize WordPress hosting company such as Kinsta, Synthesis, and WP engine being one of the most popular for managed WordPress hosting.
According to
strategyr.com the global
web hosting service market is said to reach 567 billion by the year 2020. The US retained the big lead in the world market followed by Europe, Asia, and Pacific.
Different Types of Web Hosting Plans Explained.
When looking for a potential web host, you’ll come across multiple types of hosting plans. There are five hosting plans commonly provided; most sites will only require shared hosting, but it’s good to know the difference and benefits each hosting option provides.
How to get Free WordPress hosting?
There are a few options to consider when it comes to free WordPress hosting and the number one choice being hosted on wordpress.com as a subdomain. This can be an excellent way to start blogging online for many that want to test out the idea for free and build up an audience and then transfer over that blog onto their domain. If you do go down this route, wordpress.com does allow you to blog on their platform using your own domain which comes out a cost. For me, there’s only one way to run a WordPress powered website properly, and that is via the self-hosted version which you can download from wordpress.org. Now that being said that there are a few other free hosting companies to consider and we’ve written an in-depth blog post and which is the best free hosting company for WordPress to consider.
Best Shared Hosting
Hosting companies can provide affordable hosting plans by grouping multiple low traffic websites onto a single server. Shared hosting will be able to handle a couple of thousand visitors per day which is perfectly suitable for low traffic sites or when you’re just starting out.
VPS hosting for WordPress
VPS (Virtual Private Server) is hosting on a single server that is partitioned into several smaller servers. Each of these VPS’s can then be individually configured to meet the needs of the site they’re hosting. VPS hosting costs slightly more than shared hosting but can handle more traffic.
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Websites that receive high volumes of traffic require their own dedicated server. Managed hosting is when a single client leases a server with the server setup and maintenance handled by the hosting company.
Dedicated WordPress hosting
Dedicated hosting is when you lease a physical server directly from a hosting provider. You have full control over the server; therefore server administration skills are required to setup and maintain the server.
What Makes a Good Web Host For WordPress?
One-click WordPress installation
If you’re unsure how to install WordPress manually, then 1-click installation makes it super easy to get up and running. One-click installers set up the database and WordPress files, so all you have to do is configure some basic options.
Automatic Backups
Backing your website is an essential part of running a successful online company. With the ever-increasing
threats of been hacked online, it’s ideal to go with a hosting provider who as an
automated backup and restore the system in place. It’s worth noting that creating your own backup is also recommended as in the worst case scenario you’re not left out of pocket.
WordPress Administration support
Most hosting companies provide you with free support.
Now, why is this so important?
Because in the past when I’ve been with companies who weren’t specialized in WordPress whenever I had a WordPress related support question they would fob me off or suggest I check the wordpress.org forum.
On the other hand, if you’re with a provider can provide WordPress support they are better able to answer or direct your question.
Increase Website Performance
If the company you go with supports WordPress and is geared towards the open source CMS, naturally you’ll get a website that runs smoother. However, as the competition, has become fierce for the hosting companies, many of them go the step further in providing caching and advanced technologies to ensure that your website loads blazing fast.
Server location
If your target audience is from a particular country then choosing a hosting company with servers located in that country provides many benefits. Firstly the time it takes for a website to load on a local server will be faster than if it has to be loaded from the other side of the world. Secondly, the location of the server is a factor used by Google when determining rankings for local searches.
Amount of storage space
Storage space refers to the amount of disc space allocated on your server. You need to ensure that your hosting plan has enough allocated storage space to meet your needs. Unless you are hosting video files or your site is extremely image heavy you’ll need no more than a couple of hundred megabytes of space which most hosting companies will provide even on the cheapest plans.
Amount of bandwidth usage
Bandwidth is the total amount of data transferred by users visiting your site. Bandwidth limits are usually tracked on a month to month basis. Unless you have a huge amount of traffic, are self-hosting videos or run an extremely image heavy site you won’t use up a lot of bandwidths. For example, if your average page size is 1mb and you have 1000 pages views per day you would need 30,000mb (3 gigabytes) of bandwidth per month.
Recommended WordPress Hosting companies
Hosting companies offer cash incentives for referring visitors that sign up for hosting accounts. These incentives vary from company to company, but some companies offer 100+ dollars per sign up, so you’ll often see these companies heavily promoted on shady hosting review sites so be sure to do the proper research. Start out with a monthly plan and not purchase a yearly plan until you’re sure that the service meets your needs.
Hosting FAQ
What are the differences (if any) between WordPress hosting and general web hosting?
With a specialized WordPress hosting provider you get serval benefits starting with tech support who understand WordPress in and out and could help you solve problems quicker. For example, a Plugin wasn’t working correctly on my site A hosting company that understands WordPress I better look into the issue
- You also get enhance WordPress security
- One Click Installs
- Auto updates
- Caching for WP (for faster delivery)
- Git repo creation
- WP-CLI Enabled (controlling WP from a command line)
- Free Premium WP Themes
- The support that will know how to handle WP specific issues
What is the best hosting for the latest version of WordPress?
Any hosting provider that meets the
minimum WordPress requirement, however, all the host provider mentioned here are of those we have had a good experience with and can recommend.
What is the best way to migrate a WordPress website from one hosting account to another?
cPanel to cPanel migration If you both web hosting providers have cPanel/WHM server. The providers mentioned here will migrate you.
Do I need CPanel to host WordPress?
Nope, but it helps when it is installing WordPress one-click installer and other apps and services provided by your hosting company.
Is WordPress a hosting site?
The short answer is NO; WordPress is an open source content management system that allows webmasters to create various type of websites.
Does WordPress provide hosting?
If you opted for the hosted version on wordpress.com, they would host your website on their server. However I wouldn’t recommend this as there is a lot more limitation such as not being able to run ads, you get a website that looks like this yousitename.wordpress.com and the list goes.
What is Web Hosting? (infographic)
What’s the difference between shared, VPS and Dedicated hosting(video)?
So there you have it, you learned which hosting provider to choose and avoid. The difference between this article and many others on the web is that all the information comes from years of experiencing running high traffic blogs and eCommerce website. Don’t wait until tomorrow to take just do it whether or not it is with one of my recommendation it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you get started and find your feet that way.
If you haven’t got yourself a
WP theme yet then check out
these themes and plugin
here and
here.
Let me know in the comment below who you went with and briefly why?
I’m also happy to answer your question in the comments.
The guys over at WP Dev Shed wrote a great case study on choosing the best host here.
Over users have rated and voted on 47 of the best solutions WordPress Hosting available in 2024, put them through a stringent series of examinations with the help of 209 voters like you, and assigned them FindrScores, all to help you make a smarter decision.
Our algorithm looks at over 6345 such as user satisfaction, price, geographical quirks, how the must-have functionality like Free SSL Certificate, Backup & Monitoring, 99.9% Uptime compare against these 47 solutions.
So whether you’re looking for the cheapest, easiest to use, the best overall we ‘ve got you covered.
Narrow down your search
Find the best WordPress Hosting for you, Tailor the data to find the best WordPress Hosting for your needs. See which software offers the best Free SSL Certificate, Backup & Monitoring, 99.9% Uptime or which is the easiest to use.
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In my personal experience, InMotion offers an excellent service is good. For Canadian bloggers, please go from http://www.inmotionhosting.com, that is recommended from my end.
Cheers,
Terry
Hey Terry, Thank you for stopping by and sharing your experience I have hosted with them for serval years and never had a problem. The support was very supportive and helpful while helping me migrate my website. And with any general questions I had.
Hi Brian, I was getting frustrated with which host to use as I have been searching for the best wordpress host for more than two weeks now. Bout this article helped me choose one appropriate for my blog.
Thanks
Hey Frank,
I know that feeling, I am super excited that I have been able to help 🙂 Best of luck with your new blog, be sure to let me know how you get on?
Great comparison, but why rosehosting.com is not listed. I host my sites there and I really think they offer the best hosting services for WordPress out there. You should definitely consider adding them to the list.
Hey, Jack thank you for stopping by that is is not included because I have never used it and therefore I can not recommend.
I have various personal blogs in which I use different hosting for I will check out rose hosting one day.
What as your experience been like so far?
I am using http://www.inmotionhosting.com, too. They offer great hosting services and their support is really helpful. I will recommend you to check them. Cheers.
Hey Chad,
Yes they are a great company I have used them for years now and I couldn’t recommend them enough.
Apart from your through out guide I’am using creativeon. com/wordpress-hosting they are really best in this. Here in pakistan they are well know and one of the top web hosting providers.
Hey Abid,
Thank you for stopping by and voicing your opinion 🙂
The hosting providers I recommend should work just fine where ever you are in the World as they have servers in various countries.
You missed ecomlane, great managed super fast dedicated servers. Been with them for just over a year, and I’m extremely happy with them!
Hi Heather,
I have never heard or used them before so I can not recommend to anyone(they seem pretty new too).
I have mention nine quality hosting providers which is a great selection for readers 🙂
Thanks your recommendation though.
I have found this post valuable and useful for a lot of people that need a good WordPress hosting provider, thank you Brian, I would like to write about WordPress hosting on my blog in the near future and use this link as a reference.
Hey,
I am super excited you found value in this article, it took forever to put together. You are most welcome to reference this article.
Let me know which hosting you go with?
Thanks for the informative article! I just want to give an advice to people who are looking for hosting – it’s better to choose SSD web hosting as solid state drives improve website’s speed significantly. A few months ago I used hosting with traditional hard drives, but now I see how better it is with SSDs.
Hey Josh,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing that bit of information with us.
However, I think most modern hosting companies like Inmotion and others mention here utilizes SSD drives 🙂
Good article and a very detailed information.nice to see you have touched many points.You can find and compare various hosting plans at comparemyhost and choose which one suits you best.
Hi Narmail,
Thank you for your kind words, we are always happy to help.
This is a clear and concise article and will prove useful to those searching for managed hosting sites that meet their needs. As someone scales their websites needs it becomes more clear which managed hosting service is right for you. Personally, Pagely has been exceptional with 100% uptime and an average response time of 254 ms since finding their service.
Hi Dev,
There’s many great web hosting to consider.
In terms of managed WordPress hosting, I use Inmotion hosting and would highly recommend.