Best WordPress Hosting • TOP 8 Options Compared • 2017
Finding best WordPress hosting can be a painful process. You need a solution that will do justice to your content, offer rock-solid reliability and hopefully not break the bank.
The good news is that the hosting market has never been more competitive. A new generation of WordPress-focused companies have emerged who’ve raised the bar considerably in terms of price and performance.
The bad news is that it’s still tricky wading through the forest of features and packages in order to work out what’s right for your site.
In this article we’ve set out to simplify matters for you by running the rule over seven of the best hosting companies out there: WP Engine, SiteGround, Bluehost, Page.ly, Flywheel, Dreamhost, Hostgator, and InMotion.
Update: Here is the short version of our WordPress Hosting case study, if you’re in a hurry. Feel free to scroll down to read the complete post (including methodology / data).
Our findings reveal that SiteGround and WP Engine are the clear winners for WordPress users (last updated May 2017).
SiteGround offers unmatched prices for their WordPress hosting services, which was enough to put them on our radar. However, it was their WordPress-friendly features that sealed the deal, such as a free wildcard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, fast support, and daily backups with up to 30 copies in storage on their GrowBig plan (which we consider to be their best feature). In short, Siteground is perfect for bloggers & small business owners, don’t forget to use our link to get 60% off.
WPEngine is one of the most expensive WordPress hosting providers on the market, but its quality more than makes up for the high cost. This WordPress-centric web host is especially well-suited to rapidly growing sites. In addition, they offer enterprise-grade security features, albeit at a cost of disallowing a few popular plugins due to security vulnerabilities. You can get started with their cheapest plan, then upgrade as necessary.
Best WordPress Hosting Comparison for 2017
| WPEngine | SiteGround | Pagely | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  | |
| Avg. load time (LoadImpact, approx.) /ms | 260 (.26s) | 400 (.4s — After caching) | 0.8s |
| Bandwidth | 25,000 visits / month | unlimited | unlimited |
| Hosting Type | Managed | Shared | Shared |
| Custom Support (response time /m) | 11 | 0.25 | 12 |
| Cost per month | $29 | $3.95 | $3.99 |
| Visit: | Go to WPEngine | Go to SiteGround | Go to InMotion |
We’ll cover speed, performance and price to help you narrow things down. Before we get into the nitty-gritty though, let’s discuss what you should be looking for in a hosting partner generally.
What to Look for in Your Hosting Company
Hosting is not everybody’s area of expertise or favorite subject in the world so it’s important to have a clear picture of what you should expect as standard from the outset.
We’ll kick things off here with a look at features that should simply be non-negotiable in any solid WordPress hosting setup.
(If you’d rather cut straight to the chase and dive into our WordPress hosting comparison, go for it!)
- Speed: Web users are notoriously impatient so speed is vital. Google are also cracking down on slow sites so you really can’t afford to be slack in this area. This is especially the case when it comes to WordPress hosting. Left unoptimized, WordPress can be a resource-heavy application so you need top-notch hardware in place to get the most bang for your buck.
- Full feature set: This isn’t specific to WordPress hosting of course but it should go without saying that your hosting provider offers email accounts and forwarding, appropriate server access and excellent tooling on the admin side.
- Security: Nothing ruins a day quicker than discovering your site has been pawned by script kiddies. Your host should have verifiably secure systems in place to deter common attacks.
- Support: Excellent support is essential in a hosting provider. You should be able to reach friendly and knowledgeable support people at any hour of the day or night. Waiting around on email tickets isn’t good enough if there’s a real problem.
- WordPress-friendly hosting: WordPress has its own specific requirements and peculiarities and not every host is set up to handle it optimally. Right now, WordPress ideally needs to be running on PHP 5.6 (or greater) and MySQL 5.5 (or greater) to avoid security vulnerabilities and potentially broken features. Look for a host with a strong track record in dealing with WordPress sites.
- Pricing and value for money: It’s all very well having a super-fast, super-secure server, and an awesome site, but if you’re spending ten times as much on it as you can ever hope to get back, all that effort is in vain.
What We’ll Cover
- An Overview of WordPress Hosting and Server Types
- Our Seven WordPress Hosting Companies
- Our WordPress Hosting Comparison
- Features and Value for Money
- Customer Support Analysis
- The Verdict: Best WordPress Hosting
We’ll be going over a lot of ground in the remainder of this piece so feel free to hit us up in the comments if anything is unclear along the way.
Unlike many other hosting guides which are biased in favor of one particular provider from the get go, we’ve reviewed each of the hosts totally independently and are happy to answer any questions you might have.
Let’s start drilling into detail and look at the different types of WordPress hosting that are actually available for your site.
What is: WordPress Hosting and Server Types
Hosting options run the gamut from very basic shared hosting all the way up to having your website’s very own dedicated server. The hosts we’ll be looking at later each offer pretty much the full range via their various packages.
In this section, we’re going to take a whirlwind tour through some key differences between basic types of hosting to make sure you have some background context for later on. If you’re relatively experienced in this area already, feel free to skip ahead.
Managed versus Unmanaged WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is where everything regarding your site is taken care of for you by the hosting company. You don’t need to worry about server configuration or security settings and uptime should be pretty much bulletproof.
With unmanaged hosting, you are given space on a server and what happens next is essentially up to you.
Although it’s more than possible to set up, run and maintain an installation with an unmanaged host, there are a number of obvious reasons why a managed option makes an awful lot of sense:
- If anything goes wrong, you have people on hand to help and it’s their problem as well as yours.
- You’re not forced to carry the burden of system administration for your site. Running a successful WordPress site is hard enough without constantly fretting over ports, proxies and potential server meltdowns.
- Managed hosting options will almost certainly have better security systems in place than anything you can hack together and your WordPress installs will be automatically upgraded with each new release.
The plans we’ll be testing in our roundup are all managed, but it’s still useful to have an idea of the different options available to you. We’ll quickly run over the main pros and cons of each alternative before getting down to business.
WordPress Hosting: Traditional Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the common entry-level point for those new to WordPress. It’s where a single host parcels up sections of its servers to multiple websites. Everything runs side-by-side and each site can only access its own segment of the server.
There are of course pros and cons to this arrangement. Let’s start with the plus points:
- Cost: Shared hosting is typically the cheapest way of hosting a site. Deals as low as $4.99 a month are available.
- Low server maintenance burden: You’re limited in how much access you have to the actual server you’re on, but the host will take care of installing and updating services such as PHP and MySQL.
- Easy upgrades: If your site starts to pick up steam, most shared hosting providers will provide easy migration tools to one of their more advanced hosting packages.
It isn’t all peaches and cream with shared hosting, however. There are also a number of disadvantages to consider:
- Lack of control: If you want to configure advanced server options, you probably won’t be able to on a shared hosting package. This isn’t always a deal-breaker but it can throw a serious spanner in the works if you’re not aware of it in advance.
- Performance: Shared hosting packages have come on in leaps and bounds over the years but most will still struggle if you start to experience high traffic. You’re also vulnerable to sluggishness caused by issues with other sites on the machine you happen to be hosted on.
- Security: Many sites on one machine means many more ways for bad guys to potentially get at your site. Though most shared hosting providers are pretty rigorous with server-wide security, there is still a risk there so make sure you’re backing up sensibly.
WordPress Hosting: Virtual Private Server (VPS)
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a great in-between solution for sites that are too big or resource-heavy to really work well on a shared hosting account but that maybe don’t justify having their own server.
Through the miracle of virtualization, Virtual Private Servers parcel up server space in such a way that you are effectively running your own machine in isolation. Again, there are pros and cons to this. Here are the main advantages:
- You’re in control: Outside of the basic hardware at your disposal, you’re in total command of your own resources with a VPS and free to configure it however you want, within reason.
- Cost-effective: VPS is more expensive than shared hosting, but you typically have access to considerably more power and flexibility. A well-tuned, low-cost VPS can potentially deliver some quite astonishing WordPress performance.
- Security: Your site lives in its own little world on a standard VPS setup so you’re not at risk from noisy neighbors or vulnerabilities nearby.
As with anything, there are cons to consider when looking at running a VPS:
- Your control is not total: You’re free to tinker with configuration and settings, but the hardware itself is still outside your area of control. For most people, this won’t be an issue but the fact remains that you are renting a room rather than buying the deeds to the property.
- You need a system administrator: Maintaining a server on a business-critical, public-facing site is not for the faint-hearted. With a VPS, every aspect of your site’s technical setup is your problem so you either need the technical chops to handle that with confidence or someone on your team who can take care of things.
WordPress Hosting: Dedicated
Dedicated WordPress hosting is pretty much the top of the hosting tree. It’s the next logical step up from running a VPS when you want full control over your own physical machine.
If you’re at or near this stage it’s likely that you already know more than you ever wanted to about server setups in general so we won’t be spending any time on it in this article.
To put things in a nutshell with this option, the plus points are total control and the downside is often prohibitive pricing and a heavy system administration burden.
For a pithy summary of the three main options we summarized above, look no further than the illustrated video below.
With all that introductory information behind us, let’s move on to the hosting companies we’ll actually be reviewing.
Best WordPress Hosting Providers for 2017
We’re going to be running the rule over Seven hosting providers in particular, each offering packages specifically tailored for WordPress users. Let’s meet the candidates!
01. WP Engine
Our first candidate is not shy about coming forward. WP Engine describes its product as simply “the best WordPress hosting” – a bold claim to kick off with.
The company sells itself on robust infrastructure, site speed and security along with exceptional support. With over 220,000 currently active WordPress installations and serious funding behind it, WP Engine is very much one of the big beasts in the WordPress hosting space.
WP Engine offer a number of standard packages split out by traffic, storage and number of sites that can be hosted. These range in price from $29 to $249 per month. For our tests, we ran on the entry-level Personal package.
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02. SiteGround
SiteGround’s shared hosting packages are suitable for sites of all manner of sites but they also provide WordPress-specific options which include one-click installs and auto-updates.
SiteGround offer daily backups, server isolation and 24/7 support on all three WordPress packages with pricing ranging from $9.95 per month to $29.95 per month. Specialist features such as one-click WordPress Staging and GIT support are available on the higher-tiered packages.
Get a 60% discount on SiteGround (no coupon needed)
03. Bluehost
Update (Nov 2015): According to many of the comments below, it seems BlueHost isn’t the best in terms of custom service and uptime. People are having really bad overall experience — see the comments section below for more information.
Update 2 (Dec 2015): I’d definitely advice against using Bluehost. They had some major outages in last few days, also according to our customer analysis, their live chat support takes at least 35-40 minutes.
Bluehost has been on the official WordPress hosting page for many years and offer some pretty specialized options for the platform these days and include support for the handy site management tool ManageWP. Their managed WordPress hosting packages range from $24.99 to $169.99 per month depending on traffic and number of sites hosted.
Bluehost offer server setups specifically optimized for WordPress with NGINX and custom PHP-FPM configurations under the hood.
Security is also stressed with Sitelock Security and advanced CDN options in place.
Get 20% off your Hosting at BlueHost
04. Page.ly
Page.ly doesn’t beat around the bush with its marketing claims, billing itself as “the most scalable WordPress platform in the world”. They boast an enviable roster of clients including giants such as Disney, Twitter and Facebook.
We used their entry-level Business hosting package for the purposes of this article but a suite of other options are on offer ranging from $99 per month all the way up to a whopping $1799 per month.
Page.ly make use of Amazon Web Servers (AWS) to power their hosting with advanced security and performance systems in place in the form of PressARMOR, PressCDN, and PressCACHE.
WordPress-related tasks can be carried out from Page.ly’s Atomic Core control panel.
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05. Flywheel
Flywheel have pitched their services firmly at designers and creative agencies and offer advanced site collaboration tools and reseller options.
Flywheel offer a range of pricing options to cater for various scenarios along with WordPress-tuned servers, staging site options and easy transfer billing to clients. On a pay-per-site basis, pricing ranges from $15 per month to $75 per month. Bulk plans covering 10 and 30 sites are available at $100 and $250 per month respectively.
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06. DreamHost
DreamHost is unique in the WordPress hosting world. They offer both a shared plan and a managed one – both aimed towards WordPress users – with a single payment structure for each. Both plans enable you to host unlimited sites, as well as all the space and bandwidth you’ll need.
It could be said that most hosts offering one-size-fits-all plans tend to provide a service that’s less focused, but DreamHost manages to keep their standards high.
Their shared plan costs $7.95 per month, while their managed alternative costs $16.95 for the same period.
Get 15% discount off Dreamhost
07. HostGator Cloud
Quick Note: HostGator is owned and managed by same company EIG, who runs Bluehost. Before HostGator cloud, we were on their shared hosting environment and didn’t had a pleasant experience, but it seems they are working hard to build their image.
HostGator is a renowned name in the web hosting world, but not a beloved one. Lots of experienced users tend to look down on their hosting plans, but they’ve now come out swinging with a strong offering for WordPress users – their WordPress Cloud Hosting plans.
Their basic plan obtained decent results during our tests (more of which later), and they start at a reasonable $7.96 per month, going up to $14.36 per month.
08. InMotion Hosting
InMotion is one of the biggest names in hosting. Their WordPress plans are particularly attractive due to budget-friendly prices.
While InMotion doesn’t excel in any particular area, it offers an overall decent WordPress experience. Loading speeds aren’t exceptional, but aren’t too bad either. Their support team is friendly and knowledgeable, but often take ages to answer. If we had to sum up InMotion in a single word, it would be “average”.
Their cheapest plan comes in at a surprisingly low $2.95 per month. For the features they offer, that’s one of the best prices around. As long as you don’t expect exceptional performance, then you’ll be happy with them.
So, we’ve met our competitors and covered some of their standout features. Let’s briefly review how we went about the actual tests before getting on to how the hosts performed.
The Verdict: Eight of the Best WordPress Hosting Providers
| Our Final Rankings |
| 1. WP Engine |
| 2. SiteGround |
| 3. Pagely |
| 4. Flywheel |
| 5. InMotion |
| 6. Dreamhost |
| 7. HostGator |
| 8. BlueHost |
At this point, we have the tricky job of choosing a favorite from the excellent list of hosts we’ve reviewed and tested here. It’s a tough choice.
If you’re looking at hosting a site for a client, the tools Flywheel provide are massively useful. It didn’t perform that well against the other candidates in our tests, however.
SiteGround is one of the cheapest providers on the list which will be a big factor for many and may suit smaller sites just starting out. However, InMotion beats it by a small margin, which makes it the frontrunner for budget WordPress users.
If you’re planning on scaling a site the whole way up from small beginnings to a truly massive affair, Page.ly has a lot to recommend it. Their prices aren’t cheap, but you’re getting value for money great service and support and plenty of room to scale. Their Atomic Core admin is particularly impressive.
DreamHost’s modest selection of plans are powerful enough to support growing websites, and provide WordPress users with a smooth experience at reasonable prices.
HostGator has made tremendous strides in the world of WordPress hosting thanks to their new WordPress Cloud Hosting plans, but it’s still too early to say whether they’ll maintain this new level of quality over time. If they do, their service will surely become a top contender.
Bluehost’s suite of options represent an excellent compromise between quality and price and should be able to handle successive waves of traffic increases elegantly. They also have over a decade of WordPress hosting experience behind them and continue to be recommended on WordPress.org. The inclusion of ManageWP is a nice additional bonus.
On balance though, for their combination of cost, ease of use, performance, security and feature set, we’ve plumped for WP Engine as the overall winner. They have options right down to $29 per month for smaller sites and a 60-day money back guarantee so you can kick the tires with confidence. WPEngine’s backend was a breeze to use and the range of developer features on offer are impressive.
WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison Methodology
We ran all tests with a basic WordPress site installed from the hosting provider’s control and performed the following steps:
- Each site’s performance was tested using LoadImpact. In our graphs, green represents the response time while blue is the number of requests.
- We used Chrome developer tools and Pingdom’s website speed test to find out how long our page takes to load.
- We checked the average DNS response time for each host through UltraTools.
Bear in mind that we’re working with averages here and performance is bound to vary across time and due to circumstances on any given day. Nevertheless, our results should give you a ballpark set of figures for each host.
WP Engine WordPress Hosting Results
With only a couple of blips, our WP Engine WordPress hosting loaded at around 260ms with LoadImpact.
The 290kB page loaded in just 350ms on Pingdom, earning a performance grade of 75%.
It’s marked as faster than 99% of other sites tested with the same tool. With developer tools, a full page load took just 269ms.
The DNS response time averaged out at 4ms.
SiteGround WordPress Hosting Results
“Variable” is probably the word to describe this somewhat disappointing graph from the LoadImpact tests.
Peaking at nearly three seconds, results tended to stay in or around the one-second mark.
Our 189kB page came in with a load speed of 942ms, and scored 75% on Pingdom’s performance grade. It took 638ms to load with Developer Tools.
The average DNS response time meanwhile came in at 17ms.
Bluehost WordPress Hosting Results
Bluehost’s results with LoadImpact stuck at around 640ms even as requests increased. Alas, the good performance did not last.
Bluehost delivered a not-so-wonderful set of results on Pingdom, taking 2794ms to serve the content – although still managing 75% on the performance grade.
With Developer Tools, results were somewhat better (if still not stunning), taking 1150ms to serve the page. DNS average response time was 78ms, way out compared to all the other hosts.
Page.ly WordPress Hosting Results
There was a slight trend upwards for Page.ly on LoadImpact in response time as more requests were sent and a couple of big jumps along the way.
Response times tended to stick in a range between 80ms and 115ms overall.
Our 291kB page loaded in 731ms. This earned it a performance grade of 75%, better than 94% sites tested with Pingdom. 459ms was the result with Developer Tools.
The average DNS response time meanwhile, was 20ms.
Flywheel WordPress Hosting Results
The response speed on LoadImpact was a little unstable for Flywheel and tended to increase with more requests.
Overall, it stayed around the 1000ms mark.
The 290kB page took 1580ms to load up, scoring 86% in Pingdom’s performance ratings. It was faster than 66% of websites testing on the site.
It took 2776ms with Developer Tools, however. Flywheel’s average DNS response time came in at a speedy 4ms.
DreamHost WordPress Hosting Results
Our Load Impact test returned concerning results for DreamHost, with an average request response time of nearly three seconds – way above the norm compared to the other hosts in this list.
Over at Pingdom, our findings were a little better. Dreamhost scored a performance grade of 77 (which is solid), and the page loaded in 1.25 seconds. On the other hand, a quick test using the Developer Tools took 1.95 seconds – a small but significant increase.
As far as DNS response times go, DreamHost came in at an average of 37 milliseconds.
Hostgator WordPress Hosting Results
HostGator didn’t fare that well either during the Load Impact test, with an approximate average of 1.3 seconds throughout.
As for Pingdom, our test site scored a performance grade of 63 and loaded in 1.64 seconds. Meanwhile, the Developer Tools caused our site to load in 1.83 seconds.
Finally, HostGator’s average DNS response time came out at 40ms. It’s not stellar, but definitely not the worst we’ve seen thus far.
InMotion WordPress Hosting Results
InMotion came out looking decent during the Load Impact test, with an approximate average of 0.8 seconds and a couple of moderate spikes above the 1 second range. Pretty good for a budget WordPress web host.
As is to be expected, those times came down during the Pingdom test. Our website took 0.48 seconds to load and scored a modest 63 on their performance grade.
Meanwhile, Chrome Developer tools clocked its loading time at approximately one second. That’s a wide variance, but still within the range of our tests.
InMotion’s DNS response time clocked in at a respectable (but not blazing fast) 32ms.
WordPress Hosting Customer Support Analysis
Speed and cost aren’t the only metrics that matter when it comes to determining a good WordPress hosting provider. In fact, we would argue that customer support is just as important as any other metric when looking for a suitable host.
To determine how each provider fared in this criterion, we went ahead and asked each one a simple question via live chat: How do I install a new plugin on my WordPress site? Once we received their replies, each provider was scored according to their response time and how many responses it took them to guide us through the process. Finally, we gave each host a subjective score out of five. Let’s see how they fared:
| WPEngine | Pagely | SiteGround | Flywheel | Bluehost | Dreamhost | Hostgator | InMotion | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Response times /m | 11 | 7 | 0.25 | 15 | 40 | 6 | 3 | 12 |
| Number of responses until resolution | 4 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 5 |
| Overall score (0-5) | 3.5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
Needless to say, this test provided us with some surprising results. For one, SiteGround absolutely blew away the competition by responding in less than half a minute, and promptly answering our question. Secondly, HostGator offered a quality of support that was unexpected considering their reputation.
Moving on, DreamHost and Pagely scored highly overall, with decent response times and knowledgeable support staff. WP Engine and Flywheel fell behind a little, but it’s worth noting that their response times were still acceptable. Considering how many queries these hosts deal with, it’s a testament to their dedication that they respond in a matter of minutes.
That being said, one host in particular disappointed us in terms of response times and quality – Bluehost. Although the support agent who chatted with us did resolve our query eventually, their responses were generally insufficient and curt, which led to us spending more time than necessary rephrasing our request.
Summary: Fastest WordPress Hosting
We’ve summarized the results of our tests in the following table with leading results highlighted in green and lower-ranking results in red.
| WPEngine | SiteGround | Bluehost | Pagely | Flywheel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speed Tests | |||||
| Avg. load time (LoadImpact, approx.) /ms | 260 | >400 (after caching) | 640 | 90 | 1000 |
| Load time (Pingdom) /ms | 350 | 942 | 2794 | 731 | 1580 |
| Score (Pingdom) /100 | 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 |
| Load time (Developer Tools) /ms | 269 | 638 | 1150 | 459 | 2776 |
| Avg. DNS response (UltraTools, approx.) /ms | 4 | 17 | 78 | 20 | 4 |
| Features Comparison | |||||
| Email Service | X | ✓ | ✓ | X | X |
| SSL Support | HTTP/2 | HTTP/2 | HTTP | HTTP/2 | HTTP |
| Staging area | ✓ | ✓ | X | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free Migration | ✓ | ✓ | $149 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Billing Transfer & Free demo sites | ✓ | X | X | X | ✓ |
| Developer Tools | ✓ | ✓ | X | ✓ | X |
| See our Detailed Review: | WPEngine Review | SiteGround Review | BluHost Review | Pagely Review | FlyWheel Review |
| WPEngine | SiteGround | Bluehost | Pagely | FlyWheel | |
Some of the results here are obviously better than others, but we should point out that we’re looking at a very strong set of hosting options in general.
So, if one host looks to have done badly here, that doesn’t mean you should necessarily ignore it completely.
WordPress Hosting Features and Value
Though it’s a key factor, speed isn’t everything when it comes to hosting. Factors such as price, support and feature set all come into play as well.
Differences are on display in terms of traffic allowances as well. As an example, on their cheapest packages, Bluehost includes 100,000,000 visits per month, SiteGround “around 10,000,” WPEngine about 25,000, FlyWheel 5,000, while Pagely is unlimited.
Pricing will also obviously be a consideration. Each provider breaks their services out differently, but SiteGround and Flywheel offer the cheapest packages overall with Page.ly topping the charts as the most expensive.
The managed packages we tested break out their entry-level plans by traffic, storage space and number of sites supported rather than our test criteria of performance. You’ll need to consider your own anticipated traffic requirements when weighing up the exact package to suit your business.
Factors such as built-in support for ManageWP with Bluehost or Pagely’s Atomic Core admin could also swing certain users. Flywheel’s strong set of tools specifically aimed at creative agencies might sway others.
The point we’re making is that it’s important to scope out the requirements that your business truly needs before you begin your search.
Conclusion
WP Engine came out on top in the end for us (for managed hosting) but, having kicked the tires of all eight providers, we were pleasantly surprised at the overall quality of offerings on display.
If you are looking for a more reasonable option, SiteGround is the 2nd best choice. They have almost same features as WPEngine and comes up with super fast support.
Compared to the dark days of even five or six years ago, it really is remarkable how much better options for simply and affordably hosting a WordPress site have gotten.
As we mentioned at the top of the article, managed WordPress hosting really is the way to go unless you’re bringing considerable server-level expertise to the table. All eight hosting providers surveyed performed admirably in their respective ways.
We’re curious to hear your thoughts on the matter. Have you tried one of our providers and got useful information to share? Or is there another contender out there we should have included? Get in touch via the comments and let us know.
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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I think one more point to consider would be whether the host would do all the initial wordpress installations. This changes the whole equation as a user need not bother about the hard stuff (installing the blog, setting up email ids etc).
I agree with some of what you said. I believe the only real WordPress host or whoso would ever recommend to a friend if they said you know of any good WordPress hosts? would be WP engine I am hosting my site right now it’s lightning fast on it outstanding support and if you’re paying $50 or more for a host as you are with host gator you should clearly look at how little $50 extra dollars a month is for your business and put it on the pro plan on WP engine if you can’t stomach paying that use Zippy kid you get very similar hosting to WP engine a content delivery network and 100,000 viewers a month for $24 And $5 more a month for every additional hundred thousand unique visitors. Now if you want VPS WebSynthesis is the only way to go for real WordPress hosting with a VPS for only $25 a month now please remember there’s no reason you need a VPS if you’re using managed WordPress host. Last but not least I would recommend page.ly they are able to offer quite a bit and those are the only hosts I would ever recommend to my friend if they asked me about WordPress. Your girlfriends website gets half 1 million hits a month and you put her on nickel and dime hosting why? Does this site not generate enough money to have a decent host I find that hard to believe if it’s really getting half million hits a month.
I forgot to tell you one thing host gator has been accused and rightfully so please Google this “host gator found putting links customers websites” I am not going to say they do or they don’t I’m just saying apparently a lot of people on Google believe that they do.
@Thomas Zickell: Thanks for the input. And to my girlfriend’s site – a few months ago I did go ahead and move her site over from Dreamhost to WP Engine and have been happy with the change.
Hi, thank you so much for this post, I’m trying to find a good host for my WordPress blog and I didn’t know what other hosts are out there besides Dreamhost. Thanks for the info!
I’ve used dreamhost and wpengine. I’ve been using liquidio.net recently, so far it’s solid. Really just stay away from hostgator and you’ll be fine lol.
Why are some WordPress Hosting so expensive?
Is there really such a difference between something like Websynthesis.com ($47) Pagely.com (24$) or WpEngine (29$) and something like MyWoHo.com (1$) or Bluehost.com (3.5$)?
Or is the reason why most blogs list only companies like websynthesis, pagely or wpengine the fact that this companies earn 30-40 times what others earn and that they can spend this money in advertising?
I doubt there is any difference, probably a little more optimizing here and there, but not worth the cost.
Dreamhost doesnt backup. I am moving all my sites. Unbelievable a host that doesn’t BACKUP
ipage.com is the best!
I had Media Temple.
After a DDOS attack and how they couldn’t helped me I moved to DreamHost.
But my WordPress malfunctioned after the move, so now DreamHost can’t help me.
Another alternative is BlogDroid. Like WP Engine, they offer managed hosting but they are a little cheaper – and like Dreamhost they have an installer that makes it really easy for new WordPress users to get started. They also have automatic WordPress upgrades, the ability to create staging sites via a button and secure file permissions that work right out of the box.
Good, information, but still I am confused about the best host, Dreamhost is Good, when I have hosted my sites on Dreamhost, rank of my websites in Google was really nice but when I moved to Hostgator, it fall badly… I need something like hetzner.
I think the only reason that companies like Host Gator get put in these best WordPress or best Drupal (and so and so on) articles is just because they are an easy choice. WP Engine definitely has a great reputation and every one I know that uses them has been generally happy. My workplace uses Nexcess.net and we have had only good things to say about them. The support staff is knowledgeable and always quick to respond. They’re definitely worth a look.
I’m always suspicious of comments that drop a reference to some no-name hosting company at the end of the comment since in my experience a majority of them are someone from that same company astroturfing.
Thank your for this post. It is just unbelievably FRUSTRATING trying to find information on hosts for WordPress. Currently I’m with Hawk Host, which was recommended to me, but service there is by email only and spotty at best. If WP Engine really delivers on the promised security and expertise, it would be worth paying for.
Good information on comparing these hosts. I had my wordpress site hosted on shared with Hostgator, however after a while I moved it to VPS, but my site kept crashing. I did alot of research and after moving through various host, I finally host with webnet hosting. They provide quick support and also their server speed is pretty fast, I am quiet happy so far
Wpengine is not bad, but its costly. BlueHost is my favourite one. Thanks for honest reviews.
Bluehost doubled their prices and their support is crap. They used to have great support, if they had a sale and you talk to them they would the changes you requested to match their sale. Now, they got ought by EIG which own almost all hosting companies out there and they moved their support to India and they could care less about pleasing the client, they do not have the same “the customer is always right attitude”. They doubled their prices and refused to make any changes to match the $6 a month for new accounts, so I told them: Thank you, I am going to start looking for a new hosting company… and they could not care less. So I went with hawkhost and now I am paying $2.24 a month.
WP ENGINE is really bad, often down and under attack. your site will be down often
I have been to Hostgator, Media Temple, and several other shared hosting, even Synthesis. But nothing beats WP Engine in terms of performance, security as well as price. I haven’t tried Dreamhost though so I can’t comment on their services.
I just moved from a shared server to HostGator VPS (Level III) and have nothing but trouble so far. The site is 10x slower than it was on our developer’s shared server and we keep having to put out fires (figuratively), with things not working at all on our site.
I have to agree with the article. Cost should not be the primary factor when one is looking for the best wordpress hosting. However there are a plethora of web hosts out there who offer great wordpress hosting for a very competitive price. One thing to consider is page load times for the host. Any reputable host should be able to give you some examples of sites they have on shared hosting. Then you can use something like pingdom tools to test the load times and go with the host that has the fastest load times and reliable support/hardware/network.
I’ve been using Hostgator since a year and hosted many of my sites there! Their customer service is pretty good! I only faced couple of downtimes when their Provo servers had outrage. . . apart from that, I’m very satisfied with performance. . .
As a web design, I can say that WP Engine is the best for WordPress. If your a web business with lots of traffic WP Engine is a good investment , however I find Hostgator more that acceptable for most small to mid-size website, especially if you add cloudflare or a cache plugin. Hostgator also has really good support. I can hop on a chat or call and be communicating in usually 1-2 minutes, practically zero down-time. I can name several times where a website will be down and a client calls and by the time I check the website is back up.
From experience with multiple clients, I can say Godaddy Hosting is not great for WordPress, even small websites it not that good. I also don’t like that they don’t use cPanel.
Used to be a big fan of wpengine … but it looks like as they gain in popularity the service and attention to detail has gone out the window.
I am on their 10 site plan ( $249/month gulp ) and I can’t get a ticket resolved on the weekend ?!? and when it gets finally answered it’s always the guy that just came back from vacation and I have to explain everything all over again.
Just cancelled my plan with them .. I am sure for the same monthly investment I can get someone that replies on the weekend as well 🙂
Yeah, I haven’t been super impressed recently either unfortunately. Just moved a big site away from them.
Which host are you on? We’re pleased with WPEngine, but been getting 502 timeouts due to the amount of WooCommerce extensions we have. We are basically running 90 odd plugins at all times, and this causes 502 errors when we try updating the site. Add to the fact that we might soon be hitting 25k of unique visitors, we might need to look for a new host.
I’ve spoken to those awesome guys from WPE, but their ping timeout is 60 secs max. No adjustments possible 🙁 sigh. Any idea on where to host and not get 502 ping timeout?
I’m very happy with ASmallOrange so I’d try them. However your situation sounds like you need expert help with your setup instead of throwing more resources at it. It might be worth getting a company like WP Valet or similar to go through your code/plugins and do a site audit.
Excellent comparison and perfect timing as I’m in the middle of choosing a new hosting company.
Great work.
Glad you found it useful, Michael. Thanks for the comment.
One thing I recommend is do your research on how easy it is to work with the host. I started a website back in 2009 (not using a host on this list). The price was good but the backend was terrible. I had them install WordPress, so I didn’t have to deal with their backend enough to care. Then I wanted to add another website to my hosting plan. It was a pain trying to figure out how to create a folder for the domain. I finally got it. A few months later I wanted to add another one. I had to go through the process all over again because it wasn’t intuitive enough for me to remember how to add the folder. I now have 6 sites on that plan. I’ve noticed some loading issues. I’ve also noticed that I can’t install some plugins because they require a higher version of PHP than what’s on my hosting plan. I asked them about this and they said I need to move to a newer server.
Buying the plan for the new server wasn’t even intuitive. I ended up getting the wrong thing and finally had to contact them. I now have two hosting plans (one is an old Linux server and the new one is c-panel). Now I’m trying to move all of my sites to the new plan. I still don’t have it done. I had issues and now everything is back to the original plan. After a few months of trying I’m tempted to just move to a new host entirely. Thanks for this detailed overview. I might just go with one of these hosts. They all look better than the one I’m currently with.
Hi Randy!
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having such an unpleasant experience. I’ve had some bad experiences myself, so I understand the importance of having something you can just “set and forget”. If you do decide to move to a new host, I wish you a smooth transition.
Cheers,
Tom
How is inmotion? Has anyone taken a look at them and their hosting?
Cheers
E
Hi Eric,
InMotion looks like a great hosting company — we’re working on a review / roundup post, should be up in next few weeks.
Want me to give you an heads up, when it goes live?
Is your review of InMotion up?! I’m considering using them and their reseller tools but am wanting to do some research before moving from Bluehost.
It should be up by the end of next week.
Hey Kenny, we finally did the review — http://www.designbombs.com/inmotion-hosting-review/
Fantastic! I’ll check it out! Thank you!
I’ve had a very bad experience with Bluehost. First of all Downtimes! I opened a ticket and for a few days nobody answered me. Didn’t like Bluehost at all and don’t recommend it.
Hi Mark,
I’m sorry to hear that. I trust they were able to solve your issue, though?
Cheers,
Tom
well actually there were too many problems with them. i did some researh and chose another company. user reviews were really helpful.
I see. Well, at least your problems are now solved — and yes, user reviews can be very helpful when searching for the best solution (providers, products, etc).
I have been a Bluehost Client over year’s but I left because Bluehost don’t know what is happening with your account, I had 45 account’s with you and also a Reseller account ( that you close). I think that they have so many clients that they don’t seem to care about losing you.
Very sad about the bluehost experience. I moved my accounts to another company and they don’t even care. The service was slow, recently they got problems (like their where hacked) and I lost all the information in two site, when I called they said “Buy a backup plan” but they have a guarantee of 99.99% availability on their service.
So if you don’t want to wait 30 minutes for a Chat to Technical support and downtimes all time, do not use Bluehost. Very bad experience.
I came upon this site for one reason and one reason only – that I am DESPERATE to leave Bluehost. Over the last two weeks my sites have been down (COMPLETELY down – I can’t access the editor at all and people receive an error message when trying to visit them) about a dozen times that I’ve come across, sometimes for hours at a time. At other times they’ve been so slow that tiny little changes – adding a page to the menu, changing the order of pages in the menu – take minutes, and a page with nothing but a couple thousand words of text and one 200 kB image can take a minute or far, far more to load. Until I change hosts, I’ve essentially given up on my site – it’s excruciating to edit, and I do not want to market it for fear that somebody will attempt to view it for the first time, find it unavailable or unusable, and never return. Bluehost is the stuff of nightmares, and my primary goal in life right now is to find somebody reliable.
Hi David,
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such a bad experience with Bluehost. As one can expected in this kind of thing, I’ve had some issues myself, but they have always been minor and quickly went away on their own or with some help from the staff.
I assume you’ve tried to contact support. What did they have to say about that issue? How helpful where they?
Cheers,
Tom
Hi,
Nice informative article. I was a long time Blue host user but I moved onto WP Engine and I think it is the best WordPress hosting currently available.
I hope this helps the users of your blog.
Thanks,
Thanks for sharing that with us, Matthew!
Cheers,
Tom
This looks to be one of those change the dates on the title posts, but nonetheless, shared hosting today is not like it was in the past. There are bigger and badder plugins, IO rates need to be increased, you need more cores, people need to be able to handle driving traffic and not have to worry about downtime. I created a solution to handle a majority of these issues (within reason as some limits need to be imposed) but the typical limits of today are solely driven by the amount of people a host wants to cram on one server. If you design the hosting to work for the people, you won’t have to worry about it working for your pocket.
People need CPanel / WHM – One site per Panel with full reseller control capabilities via WHM. This will remove the chance of one account being infected and taking down an entire CPanel account full of sites (YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW)
People need Nginx and LiteSpeed in their configurations.
People need the latest PHP versions and be allowed to select them on the fly.
People need IO rates that are higher than 1-3Mb/s.
People need to support Multiple Backends! (HHVM, PHP7, NodeJS, etc)
People need more than a single core sometimes!
People need more than 20 Entry Processes if they are driving traffic.
People need mod_security rules with using OWASP, Gotroot, or a NAXSI setup.
DDoS protection should come standard with every account!
On the fly Malware detection, and AV scans should come standard with every account!
The list can go on and on, but there is no reason why a host needs to cram 1000’s of accounts on one server. Empower the users and charge a bit more, and everyone will win.
Hi Incendia,
Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback! I agree with pretty much everything you say – and should you ever start your own hosting company, I’d be interested in knowing.
Cheers,
Tom
Screw Bluehost – nothing but problems with them – installed a new WordPress website – they flagged it as “malware” – freshly installed WP, core files that were downloaded off of WordPress.org!
Their other tactic is to lockdown your account and to say that there’s malware, and then to offer you to buy some server cleanup service for $200-300 dollars, one time I was offered it for $79.99 and my friend was offered it for $300+, so I’m guessing it depends on which “sales rep” you get.
Every time we asked which files are infected or what type of malware is on it – “by our policy, we cannot tell you” – WHAT KIND OF POLICY IS THAT?! “We’ll generate malware.txt – but this is last time. You need to go through every single file on your server on your own and clean it up. Run your own cleanup if you don’t want to buy our service.” Their customer service reps are not nice (not all, but so far 90% of them) and keep on pushing to buy cleanup serice.
Bluehost’s WordPress plan also offers a lot of extra features to help you set up and maintain your website or blog but there are several issues that make Bluehost not ideal for those new to WordPress.
Just FYI, Pagely no longer offers their $64/mo. plan to new customers.
Their lowest plan is now called Neutrino and it runs $99/mo. for up to 5 sites.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for pointing that out — just updated the pricing.
Great review!I like how you compared these quality word press hosting sites, brief yet detailed. I see that WP Engine topped the results. Have you considered customer support with your analysis?
Nick,
Glad you liked the review / overview. No, we did not take customer support into account when doing the review. But from my personal experience, SiteGround & WPEngine has the best support.
Next, Flywheel also has a great & friendly customer staff who knows WordPress, but sometimes it can take a few hours to get a response. And if you work on weekends, their support might not be available. Though they do have a separate email for emergency situations, where the response time is much faster and available on weekends / holidays.
Bluehost, their support is mostly bad. I’d be probably stay away from them.
As for Pagely, I never created a support ticket / talked with their support staff, so have nothing to report.
Sorry for the late reply, somehow missed your comment.
Nice overview, I am personally using bluehost. So far my experience with bluehost is very good. I think bluehost & siteground may be the best choice for new bloggers.
Hey Pawar,
Thanks for sharing your experience. You are probably the first person who has said a good thing about bluehost in months. Otherwise I always heard bad / negative reviews about them.
As for SiteGround, they are definitely the best choice for beginners and for advance users, as well. I have been using them for one of my sites and their support is super fast (under 10 minutes, most of the times).
Meanwhile these hosting is the concern which handle initially so well if you’re serious then go for the option which allow you for bringing quality with consistency accessible 24/7 have a support once it down unfortunately under rare circumstances will handle collaboratively so well.
Thanks for the article (and download links). I was using blue host for years but now switch at WP engine its way much better than that..
Hey Simon, thanks for sharing your experience and congrats on making the switch. WPEngine is definitely better in all aspects. I hope your transfer was seamless.
Awesome review and needed this. My renewal is up on Bluehost and I want to leave them. I don’t want to jump on the train against Bluehost, but things said are true. To my experience, my site could not connect to them more than a few times–hence no website. Yes, the customer service is slow too. I thought I was crazy because Bluehost is known as a standard, but I have had problems like others. When they get too big, you seem to lose care. I’m going with SiteGround.
Glenn
Hey Glenn,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. The quality and customer support on Bluehost has gone down considerably in recent years. When we did the customer analysis, it took us 40 minutes to receive a response from their live chat.
Yes, for some reason Bluehost is know as standard, plus there are so many how-to guides / articles promoting them, even though, they have more negative reviews than positive. I also noticed a strange thing, pretty much anyone who writes an how to start a blog guide (like we did last week), tend to mention BlueHost.
Also, BlueHost is owned by EIG, which owns pretty much all the shared hosting providers except WordPress specific hostings.
Once again, appreciate you taking time to write an honest review.
Cheers!
I think it’s misleading that the date on the article is Nov 21, 2016 as if this was just written yet it is actually over two years old. For IT and hosting that is eons and I think you need to do the analysis and tests at least once a year for this to be accurate.
Hey Dave,
No it is not. The original article was written by Max, and it didn’t include any speed tests, you can see that via Wayback Machine — https://web.archive.org/web/20150213141430/http://www.designbombs.com/best-wordpress-hosting
We recently updated the article to include speed tests and are working on another update, to add a few more hosts and exclusive discounts.
Hope to see you around :).
WPEngine has been my go-to client website hosting solution for more than three years and I am very satisfied with them. Their support is terrific and their features and developer tools are terrific. They have been extremely reliable.
Thanks for the nod to Pagely.
Quick note: Page.ly is now Pagely, for future reference.
Bad news, Pagely fans–they’ve quit offering their $99 plan. Looks like they decided to totally focus on Big Business.
It’s a pity, as I’ve used Pagely for my site and loved it. I am grandfathered in at $69, and they’ve taken good care of me. I hope I don’t wind up having to move because they choose to orphan smaller businesses.
I am not tech savvy and I am searching for a WordPress server in order to be an Affiliate. My main concern is, if I want to relocate, I don’t want the host to take over my site. I was with Hostgator a couple years ago, and decided to move due to the poor customer service. They declared that they were the owner, even though I was paying separately for the domain name. (I checked back later and found that they had taken over my site, domain and all!)
I am making sure I read their ‘Terms of Service’ first. You’ve turned me onto to Siteground. Can you say for sure that I will own my website if I join?
This type of review where you have a comparison is more reputable than individual reviews where you know the Reviewer is bias to one particular host.
Thanks.
Hey Helen,
Not sure, how HostGator can just take the ownership of your site. I think you may have registered the domain name with them, as well. If yes, then you should still be able to get the access to domain, if it is not lapsed. Reach out to them and see if they can let you transfer out the domain.
If that doesn’t work, hit them on the social media (twitter / facebook).
Also, in future, make sure to register the domain with different provider (such as Namecheap, Hover, or Godaddy) and hosting with different site (i.e. SiteGround). That way, you can easily change hosts in future and your domain will be safe with the domain provider.
Yes, your website will be safe and SiteGround or not, you should always register the domain separately.
Hope that helps.
I confirm about Bluehost.
I ve been using Bluehost since 2011 first with a basic account – time loading disaster, but I was not enough experienced user to notice that and I loved their Cpanel, chat support was friendly and helping at that time. Starting Jan 2017 a new Pro account with them I found some tech problem which they apparently don’t want to solve and don’t care if I remain their client.
Chat become a disaster … People who are answering they apparently have less tech knowledge then me !
And you are waiting for their response, and “please, be on hold”, and “thank you for your patience “, and “I am still checking” – It takes more then 1 hour just to make them understand where is the problem ! But then they start to convince you that this is ok. How it’s ok ? I still have my old (basic) account which is not expired and where everything works fine !
I never had any malware problem with them. One time I have purchased a service which I didn’t use after and I was refunded immediately after request. So, Bluehost is still not completely down, but they are going there. I think there were some company’s internal decisions which led to quality fail.
Thank you for the article. I think I will go with Siteground or Inmotion.
Hi Irina,
Bluehost used to be a good company, but they are not anymore. Their support time takes hours and is super lazy. You can easily find more negative reviews than positive ones.
I appreciate you taking time to share your experience, it help other users choose the right hosting provider. If / when you decide to switch, please consider leaving an honest review about your new hosting service :).
Thanks!
Thank you Dev !
I am in the mood of moving away ( and test SiteGround, which looks fresh and pretty :)), but they (BH) told me they will fix everything. I put a condition that it should be done by Saturday, for my opinion it can be done in less then 24 hours, so, 2 months pending issue is unbelievable. Will see.
Hey Dev,
I just found your site again! Right after I wrote you I signed up with Siteground. I had purchased a domain with Shopiand and was planning to transfer it to Siteground after the 60 day wait period. Now I will let Shopify keep it as long as I don’t have to host with them.
As far as Hostgater goes, it happened about 3 years ago. I did buy and register my domain, and host with them. It was a lesson I learned the hard way. It took me all this time to venture out into the world of website scouting. I appreciate you finally clearing things up for me.
So far I am doing good with Siteground. They really seem to have a 24×7 Customer Service, phone and chat!
Helen
I’m so disappointed with godaddy’s hosting. Arrg..
Hey Dev,
What are the duties of the host? Do you call them if you are having problems relating to WordPress?
Helen
Hey Helen,
Yes, if you are having any WordPress related problems, but not for customizations. They also provide regular backups, cdn (either their own or via 3rd-party), site caching (without having to use any third-part plugins), etc.
Thank you for all of your insight here, I am just getting started and this really helps. My main question is this
If I am going to use WordPress to host my blog why do I need a hosting site. I am considering Siteground after reading this article.
cheers
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
No problem, glad to be of help. There are two version of WordPress – WordPress.org & WordPress.com!
WordPress.org is a self-hosted version, for which you will need hosting, and hosting is where you data is stored. WordPress.com is hosted version, which doesn’t require hosting or anything, because that part is managed by them.
Here’s a quick explanation on difference between WordPress.com & .org!
I hope this helps, let me know if there is anything else.
How is Pantheon not on this list. Not only is their workflow a lifesaver for development, but the platform itself is lightning fast and their support is good. I can use wp-cli, they include New Relic, and I get a nice report of any errors on the dashboard. Do it.
I’ve used SiteGround for 3 Years. The support is still out of country and the language barrier is very frustrating at times, with my technical issues not being resolved at times.
My real cause of finally leaving them however is their deceptive charging tactics. They’ve charged me a week in advance for a service I did not want renewed, numerous times. I’ve turned off the renewals, but did not know of the hidden switches nested under a small link: billing -> billing settings. BTW, they have a renewal section under account where they have most services renewal status, just not the big costs… To resolve the issue, they offered me 30% off at the cost of double their competitive rate. ($15.95 instead of advertised $5.95). Sorry for being a long time customer, you should pay more.
I did like their exclusive caching and somewhat optimized for WP, but I’m seeing much better results with other competitors as of late for lower costs. The language barrier would also be a non-issue if they gave more privileges to users. Even on a cloud hosting account, they limit SSH to be useless.