Often overlooked, web hosting is one of the key components of any successful website. Choosing the best WordPress hosting for your needs can improve your SEO and increase your sales. Various types of WordPress hosting options are available, such as Free, Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Managed WordPress hosting. In this guide, we’re going to help you choose the best WordPress hosting for your website.
Our focus with this guide is to share our 8+ years of experience and insight into the things you need to consider when choosing a hosting company for your business.
To help you make the right decision, we’ve also made a side-by-side comparison of top WordPress hosting companies, including speed tests, uptime tests, and reliability tests (scroll to see the full comparison).
If you’re in a hurry, you can see the table below with our hand-picked list of the best WordPress hosting companies. These companies are consistently the leading WordPress hosting companies in the industry when it comes to quality and service.
What are the Hosting Specifications for WordPress?
You’ll be pleased to learn that WordPress is a very lightweight script that is compatible with almost any successful web hosting company. The basic criteria put forward by WordPress are:
- PHP version 7 or higher
- MySQL version 5.6 or higher OR MariaDB version 10.1 or higher
- Help for HTTPS (SSL)
Due to the popularity of WordPress, all the best web hosting companies come with simple 1-click WordPress installation options. All of the WordPress hosting companies mentioned in this guide provide complete support for running a WordPress site.
Pace, protection, and reliability are all important considerations you need to consider when choosing your WordPress hosting. The most critical thing you should remember, however, is “Your Needs.” Evaluating your needs before buying your WordPress hosting will save you hundreds of dollars.
Consider your WordPress Hosting needs
As mentioned above, there are different types of web hosting services available, such as Free, Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Managed. Let’s take a look at each of these solutions to see which solution is best for you.
Free Hosting
Free web hosting is open, but almost all of them have some kind of catch. Typically, you can find free WordPress hosting provided in online forums or small groups. In most instances, they are managed by a person reselling a small part of his server space to cover some revenue. Often the catch is that you’ve got to place their banner advertising on the web. Some people may ask you to put a text connection in the footer of your site. These guys are going to sell the banner ad or text connect to cover the cost of your free room along with pocketing the profits.
The greatest downside to having a free host aside from the advertising is that they’re unreliable. You never know when this individual is going to stop providing a free service. You can be left hanging at any moment.
If you’re serious about your website or business, try to avoid hosting Free WordPress hosting at all costs.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is by far the most common form of WordPress hosting that beginners use. It’s the most accessible and, quite honestly, a decent starting point for new users. Shared hosting is where you share a big server with a lot of pages. By providing several sites on the same server, hosting companies may provide services at a more reasonable rate. The biggest catch we see with shared hosting for all providers (including those we suggest below) is limitless resources. There’s no such thing as infinite. Although it says unrestricted, you do have limits on use.
Shared web hosting is the perfect option for small companies and start-up bloggers.
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtual machine. It is a method of partitioning a physical server machine to various servers with respect to the specific customer’s needs. Even if you share the server with a handful of people, this gives you almost as much power as a dedicated server. It also has the anonymity of a separate physical device and can be programmed to run complex server applications. Developers, intermediate users, and medium-sized bloggers also use VPS to scale their websites.
If you do not have any technical experience, you need to make sure that you buy a controlled VPS. This means that the WordPress hosting company handles all system updates and is available to assist you when needed.
VPS hosting is best for medium-sized companies, high-traffic websites, and aspiring designers/developers.
Dedicated Hosting Server
Dedicated server is a physical server that can be rented from the hosting provider. This allows you to have complete control of the server, including the option of operating system, hardware, etc. If you’re just starting out, you don’t need a dedicated server. Once your site receives a significant amount of traffic, you should consider upgrading to a dedicated server only. Your Blog Master will run via SiteGround on a dedicated server network.
If you do not have a system administrator or experience with servers, we recommend that you get a managed dedicated server. WordPress hosting services that provide managed dedicated servers use full-time system administrators to operate the servers. In addition to software updates, they also monitor servers, offer phone support, etc. Many of the top websites use clusters of dedicated servers.
WordPress Dedicated Servers are best suited for extremely high traffic blogs.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Owing to the large number of users using WordPress, a number of web hosting companies have opted to provide managed WordPress hosting. An account with one of these providers only helps you to host WordPress-based pages and nothing else. The advantage of controlled WordPress hosting is that you don’t have to think about something. They optimise your site for success, make sure your site is safe, and keep backups on a regular basis. On top of that, they’ll warn you if a particular plugin has a negative effect.
Bottom line, managed WordPress hosting is hassle free easy WordPress hosting with high-quality support from staff with a lot of WordPress experience. Although all of this sounds fantastic, the proposals for controlled WordPress hosting are typically at the higher end of the scale. For eg, a personal account with a common controlled WordPress hosting company is $29/month because you can only host 1 site (getting maximum of 25,000 visitors per month). The next higher level where multiple domains are allowed will cost you $99 per month. This cannot be afforded by a person starting a blog.
Controlled WordPress hosting is perfect for proven bloggers who can justify their revenue costs. It’s up to people who don’t have the skills/time to deal with the technical side of things. WP Engine is recommended for managed WordPress hosting.
Now that you know all your WordPress hosting choices, it’s time for you to make a decision. We run a variety of sites that have millions of page views each month. We reviewed and collaborated with all of the industry’s top web hosting companies.
After supporting 100,000+ users and years of experience, our founder, Tobi Oluwatoyin, has personally handpicked some of the best-known WordPress hosting providers for you. Each of these WordPress hosting companies offers excellent service and support. We give each of them the perfect 5 out of 5 star ratings. Check out the best web hosting provider list.
Top WordPress Web Hosting Providers
Bluehost
One of the oldest web hosts began in 1996, when it came to hosting WordPress, Bluehost became the biggest brand name. They are the official ‘WordPress’ hosting service recommended. With Bluehost, you don’t have to think about your website being sluggish even though there’s a lot of traffic. Their 24/7 expert support is always available to assist you when you need it by phone, email, or live chat. They are ranked #1 in small business web hosting. In addition, Your Blog Master users are given an exclusive 63 percent discount, a Free Domain, a Free SSL, and a free Site Builder with templates.
Siteground
SiteGround is one of the most common and rated hosting providers in the WordPress community. They have exclusive WordPress in-house speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and safe as possible. They are known for the best 24/7 service in the industry, which is why they are the official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting company. This is also why we use SiteGround to host the Your Blog Master’s website. SiteGround features include automatic updates, built-in WP caching, CDN, one click staging, and GIT version control. They are also one of the few companies providing location-specific hosting with 6 data centres in the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia. On top of all this, they have a special 63 percent discount on Your Blog Master readers.
HostGator
HostGator hosts more than 8 million domains and is one of the most common web hosts in the industry. With 1-click WordPress download, 99.9 percent uptime warranty and 24/7 support, it’s a good option for any website owner. We consider them to be one of the best web hosting sites for companies. They give our readers an exclusive 62 percent discount, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate.
DreamHost
DreamHost has been around for 18 years and is renowned for making web hosting simpler. You get custom dashboard, 1-click WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth and free SSDs, making your site 200 percent faster. DreamHost has over 600,000 WordPress blogs and websites. There are no setup costs, and you will also get a free domain.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks has become a well-known brand in the WordPress hosting industry with fast website results, 24/7 U.S.-based support, and an environmentally friendly platform. They offer automated 1-click WordPress download, controlled updates, enhanced security, free CDN, free site migration, and a choice of over 5 different data centre locations. GreenGeeks has control over 500,000 websites and customers love them. On top of all this, they have a special 60 percent discount on Your Blog Master readers combined with free SSL and a free domain name.
Hosting Comparison
Now, after browsing the top WordPress hosting companies mentioned above, you may still be wondering which one is best for your business?
To help you choose the best WordPress hosting, we’ve created a few additional resources for you:
Our goal is to help you make the right decision because choosing the wrong provider can have a negative impact on your SEO website, speed and sales.
Hosting Quiz for WordPress
It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed with all the information overload. Users often read this guide and email us asking for personalised advice on which WordPress hosting is best suited to their needs.
To help speed this up, we’ve built a WordPress recommendation hosting engine that will help you determine which WordPress hosting is best for you based on your needs.
All you need to do is precisely answer the questions in the widget below:
Detailed WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison
One of the reasons why Your Blog Master is the most trusted Blogging resource site is that our reviews are based on actual data and experience.
Unlike other hosting review sites that only steal words directly from the press releases of the respective hosting companies, we actually sign up with each individual hosting company and thoroughly test their services.
We use independent third-party tools like Pingdom, LoadImpact, and Bitcatch to test the efficiency and reliability of each company, so we can help you choose the best WordPress hosting for your business.
To assess output reliably across all WordPress hosting companies, we create a sample WordPress site on each hosting provider and install the default Twenty Seventeen theme. First, we import dummy content, like photos and media, so that our test looks like the typical user website.
After that, we use Pingdom, an industry-leading website speed test service, to calculate the speed of our sample website through several hosting companies.
We often use Load Impact to send virtual users (VUs) to each website to see how the hosting server manages increased requests from multiple connections at once. This lets us see how each WordPress hosting company will do during peak traffic times.
Last but not least, we use the Bitcatch service to monitor server response times across a wide variety of geographic locations, including the United States, London, Singapore, Sao Paulo, India, Sydney and Japan. This helps us determine which hosting company is best fit for which geographical location.
Now that you know our test process, let’s compare the performance of the best WordPress hosting companies to see which WordPress hosting company is the fastest on the market.
Bluehost Hosting
Bluehost is one of the world’s largest hosting companies and an official WordPress recommended hosting company. By default, their hosting services come pre-installed with WordPress.
Here are the results of our Bluehost efficiency tests:
As you can see, our test site has been loaded in less than two seconds. That’s quicker than 85 percent of all websites checked. Considering that our sample website did not use any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this is a really good performance.
After the speed test, the Load Effect test was run on Bluehost servers. We have steadily built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server manages increased requests from multiple connections at once.
Here’s the screenshot of the result:
The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the web, and the green line is the server loading time. As you can see, the server load remained steady even at peak traffic through the test.
After the load effect test, Bitcatcha was used to test more reliable server response time from different geographical locations.
The Bluehost server was particularly good at loading less than a fraction of a second in the United States. At other sites, the response was a little higher, but still less than a second.
If your target audience is in the United States, it will greatly help your website.
In our thorough analysis of Bluehost, we also assessed their customer service team, functionality and pricing. After our study, Bluehost is ranked as the #1 WordPress hosting service for small businesses to make a website.
- PROS: 63% off hosting + Free Domain + Free SSL (https://) included
- PROS: Officially recommended to WordPress
- PROS: Free Stage Site
- CONS: Assistance can be sluggish at times
SiteGround Hosting
SiteGround is one of the most common and rated hosting providers in the WordPress community. They deliver premium hosting plans specifically tailored for WordPress with exclusive in-house speed and security solutions. That’s why they’re suggested to the official WordPress hosting provider.
Note: Your Blog Master’s website is also hosted on SiteGround Enterprise servers, and we appreciate their support.
Here are the results of our SiteGround efficiency tests:
As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (649 ms to be precise) to a server in Dallas, Texas. This means that our platform is quicker than 95 percent of the sites checked.
First, we ran the Load Effect test on SiteGround servers, where we gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how their server can manage multiple link requests at once.
The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the web, and the green line is the server loading time. SiteGround worked almost consistently except for a peak when there were 50 users on the site. It recovered quickly and the page load time stayed steadily low even with more users.
After the load effect test, Bitcatcha was used to test more reliable server response time from different geographical locations.
Our SiteGround Test Site Server has been doing well in the United States and all other locations except Japan.
If your audience is in Asia, you can ask SiteGround to switch you to their Asia-Pacific servers to fix this.
In our comprehensive SiteGround analysis, we also assessed their customer service, features and pricing. After our research, we think that SiteGround is a great opportunity for beginners because their assistance is extremely helpful.
- PROS: Best support for WordPress, decent uptime, fast speed and free SSL.
- PROS: Various data centres around the world (USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia)
- PROS: Free migration of the web
- CONS: No free domain and pricing is a little higher because it’s premium hosting.
HostGator Hosting
HostGator is a popular web hosting company that hosts more than 8 million domains. Similar to Bluehost, they provide unique WordPress hosting services.
Here are the results of the HostGator efficiency tests:
As you can see, our test site was loaded in just under a second for a server in Dallas, Texas. That’s quicker than 94 percent of all sites checked. Considering that our sample website did not use any caching plugins or performance optimization tips, loading speed is amazing.
But how does HostGator work when you’ve got a lot of traffic?
We ran the Load Effect test on HostGator servers where we progressively built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server can manage multiple link requests at once.
The green line represents the loading time of the website and the blue line represents the number of users on the web. As you can see, up to 80 users have done very well on our test platform, after which it began to slow down.
These findings are common for shared hosting accounts, since you share server resources with other sites hosted on the same server. As your site expands, you need to step up to VPS hosting or even handle WordPress hosting.
After the load effect test, Bitcatcha was used to test more reliable server response time from different geographical locations.
The HostGator site review server was running very well. The server’s response time remained less than a second. It was just 37 ms in the United States.
In our thorough analysis of HostGator, we also analysed their customer service, features and pricing. After our study, HostGator is a great choice for growing companies, since they offer plans to expand with your business.
- PROS: Fast and secure hosting with 24/7 support.
- PROS: Cheap intro rates and free site migration
- CONS: Renewal charges are higher
DreamHost Hosting
DreamHost has been operating for 18 years and is renowned for its reliable web hosting. They offer a single click installation for WordPress, and are also recommended by official WordPress.org hosting providers.
Here are the results of our DreamHost efficiency tests:
As you can see, our test site is loaded for a server in New York City in just under a second. That’s quicker than 93% of all sites tested.
After the speed test, we ran the Load Effect test on DreamHost servers to see how it would work during peak traffic time. We have steadily built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server manages increased requests from multiple connections at once.
Here’s the screenshot of the result:
The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the web, and the green line is the server loading time. As you can see, the server load remained steady even at peak traffic through the test.
After the load effect test, Bitcatcha was used to test more reliable server response time from different geographical locations.
The DreamHost server worked well under a fraction of a second in the U.S. loading, but was slightly slower in other locations.
Overall, DreamHost is a perfect host for websites located in any geographical area.
In our comprehensive analysis of DreamHost, we also assessed their customer service, features and pricing. After our study, we find that DreamHost is a great choice for businesses that respect privacy. They provide free domain privacy to each of their domains. They have also recently clashed with the U.S. Department of Justice to protect the privacy of one of their customers’ websites.
- PROS: Good speed free SSL, free domain with privacy protection, and 1-click WordPress download.
- PROS: Officially recommended to WordPress
- PROS: Free Web Firewall Program Included
- CONS: The hosting control panel is a little out of date.
GreenGeek’s Hosting
GreenGeeks has become a well-known brand in the WordPress hosting industry with a high-performance and environmentally friendly site. They provide award-winning 24/7 support through live chat, e-mail or phone.
Here are the results of our GreenGeeks success tests:
Our test site loaded in less than a second for a server located in San Jose, California, and was faster than 94 per cent of all the websites tested. This is a really positive result.
Since the above test only tests the load time with a single user on the web, Load Impact was used to test how GreenGeeks hosting servers would work during peak traffic hours.
We have steadily built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how their server manages increased requests from multiple connections at once.
As you can see, our test site did a pretty good job through the whole test. The pace of the website has remained steady as traffic continues to rise, which is excellent because it shows you that GreenGeeks can scale as your website grows.
After the load effect test, Bitcatcha was used to test more reliable server response time from different geographical locations.
GreenGeeks Hosting replied to all locations in less than a second. The response time for locations in India and Asia Pacific was marginally higher.
This makes sense because GreenGeeks provides five different data centres to choose from located in different parts of the United States and Europe.
If the majority of your target audience is located in North America, Europe and South America, then GreenGeeks is extremely fast and secure. If your target audience is located outside these regions, you can benefit from finding a server location near those regions.
In our comprehensive analysis of GreenGeeks Hosting, we also assessed their customer service, features and pricing. After our study, GreenGeeks Hosting is a great choice for companies that appreciate high-quality service and choose a company that is environmentally friendly. Their plans are rising as the company expands.
- PROS: Good pace, great price, free domain, free SSL.
- PROS: 30-day money back guarantee
- PROS: Free migration of the web
- CONS: Renewal charges are higher.
Best Hosting WordPress (Quick Recap)
Now that you’ve seen a performance comparison of the top WordPress hosting companies, it’s time to determine which one is better for your company.
For your convenience, we’ve built a table with a side-by-side list of features, so you can easily compare the best WordPress hosting companies.
| Hosting | Cost | Free Domain | Free SSL | 1—Click WP |
| Bluehost | $2.75/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SiteGround | $6.99/mo | No | Yes | Yes |
| HostGator | $2.64/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DreamHost | $2.59/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GreenGeeks | $2.95/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
In our in-depth analysis of WordPress hosting, we came to the conclusion that if you’re looking to start a blog, you can’t go wrong with Bluehost. It’s really hard to beat the fact that they’re giving you a free domain and free SSL for $2.75 per month.
But really, you can’t go wrong with any of the top WordPress hosting companies we’ve listed above. They all offer great uptime, fast servers, high-quality service and incredibly low prices.
We hope this guide will help you choose the best WordPress hosting for your website. If you have a WordPress hosting issue that we haven’t covered, please send us a message using our contact form. One of our support team members will respond within 24 hours.
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