Top WordPress Hosting Services For Your Website

Over the years, we have built many WordPress websites. We took what we learned and did extensive research to find the best WordPress hosting providers. Hostinger is the best WordPress hosting. It’s packed with features, such as a free domain, automatic updates, themes, WordPress-optimized servers, and WordPress pre-installed. All this for less than $5 per month.

The Best WordPress Hosting Services for Most

Hostinger

Best for the Most

Hostinger has the fastest servers of any shared host we tested. This makes Hostinger a great choice for anyone looking to launch a WordPress site. Hostinger offers a variety of affordable plans, starting at $4.99/month for a 1-year commitment and ending at $1.99/month for 4 years.

Hostinger is our top recommendation for WordPress hosting. Hostinger is our #1 recommendation for WordPress hosting. It’s not only the most affordable option we tested but also has the fastest server response times of any shared WordPress host on our list. Hostinger is the best choice if you are looking for speed and affordability.

Each plan comes with many WordPress-specific benefits and features, such as an automatic plugin and core updates, hundreds of tutorials and guides for maximizing WordPress, free themes, and a WordPress cache plugin that speeds up your website two times faster than without it. Start Hostinger today for $1.99 per Month with a 4-year contract, or $4.99 per Month with a 1-year contract.

These are the 8 Best WordPress Hosting Services Options:

Hostinger – Best WordPress hosting services for most
SiteGround- The best performance for beginners on a tight budget
Flywheel- Great for agencies and freelancers who want to build sites for clients
DreamHost is the simplest way to get started, starting at $5
WPEngine – The best pricing for multiple WordPress websites
Nexcess Best WordPress hosting for pro-level websites under $16
Bluehost is the easiest way to create your first WordPress website
Kinsta Secure managed WordPress hosting

WordPress Hosting Services: When it Makes Sense

WordPress hosting is designed exclusively for WordPress. WordPress hosting is a smart choice, no matter how many sites you have or how new you are to the platform. As long as WordPress is your primary CMS, it’s an excellent choice.

Although you can use any hosting service, WordPress hosting is optimized for WordPress websites. You should expect better performance and security right out of the box.

Before we get started, let’s briefly mention that there are two types of WordPress hosting: managed and shared.

Shared WordPress hosting is the best option if you are building a site from scratch. This is a great place for a start, and it’s more than enough to host small or new sites.

Managed hosting provides superior performance, security, and customer support. It also offers advanced features that you won’t get with shared WordPress hosting. All of these extraordinary features come at a higher cost.

This is a great choice if your website is growing faster than you can handle or if it’s experiencing performance issues.

#1 – Host – The Best WordPress Hosting Service for Most

Hostinger

Best for the Most

Overall Score: 3.7/5

Hostinger’s WordPress Hosting is our only shared WordPress host that provides WordPress-optimized servers. This makes it ideal for both beginners and more experienced users. It also offers the most affordable long-term pricing of all hosts that we tested.

To be transparent–Hostinger is cheap but it isn’t perfect. We found it lacking in some key areas, such as uptime and customer service. This is in contrast to other hosts we reviewed.

It’s enough for those just starting. It is easy to use, fast, and full of shared hosting options. It offers the ideal combination of affordability, performance, and ease of use for new WordPress websites.

Here’s a closer look at how Hostinger ranks in our six ranking categories.

4/5 Shared Hosting Features
Managed Hosting Features = 0.
Pricing = 5/5
Server speed = 5/5
Server uptime = 1/5
Customer Support = 2.6/5

Hostinger’s Entry-Level Shared Hosting Plan: 4/5 – Hostinger offers several useful features that will enhance your website ownership experience.

The entry-level plan includes one email account. This allows you to create professional business email addresses at no extra cost.

Your website will also be automatically backed up every week without you having to do anything. Your website is protected in the event of an emergency. In just a few clicks, you can easily revert to a backup.

Hostinger offers a growing collection of WordPress themes that you can use to help design your website. Hostinger themes are professionally designed and can be customized to fit your brand.

Hostinger’s WordPress hosting plans are optimized for WordPress, which is one of its greatest strengths, as we have already mentioned.

Bluehost, DreamHost, and SiteGround are the other shared hosting providers we have on our list. They only use the term WordPress hosting as a marketing strategy to attract WordPress users. These plans are not different from their shared hosting plans.

Hostinger optimizes the server for WordPress websites. Hostinger does not host any other websites, which means they do not interfere with the performance of your WordPress website.

Hostinger’s WordPress plans include LiteSpeed servers which are praised for their lightning-fast speeds. You can be sure that your WordPress sites run at their best.

The only thing missing from the entry-level plan? A free domain name. Hostinger offers one for $8.99/year, or you can purchase one through one of our top domain registrations.

Hostinger fails to meet our standards in managed hosting. They do not offer managed WordPress hosting. However, managed WordPress hosting is not available.

Pricing: Hostinger is the host with the lowest long-term pricing.

An annual contract will only cost $4.99 per month. For the first year, the total cost is $59.88. The price increases to $6.99 per month (a 40% increase), and the total cost for the second year is $83.88.

Add the two together and you will pay $143.76 per year for hosting.

This is the lowest price for WordPress-specific hosting. Hostinger’s speed and abundance of shared hosting features make it an excellent value.

Hostinger offers a four-year hosting plan for $1.99 per month and $95.52 upfront. This is for FOUR years. On renewal, the monthly rate will go up to $3.99 per month (a 100% increase). Although it can be scary to commit to four years, you can view it as a commitment for your business and a great way of keeping overhead low when you are just starting.

Server Speed: 5/5 Hostinger delivers on both.

Over 30 days, the average server response time was 480 milliseconds. This is a remarkable result for shared hosting. It’s also the fastest shared host we have.

We monitored Hostinger’s response time on our demo site for 30 consecutive days to get this data.

Hostinger’s WordPress servers respond in an average of less than half a second. Hostinger did significantly better than the average among all hosts tested.

The best part? This is all without speed optimization. We did not install any caching plugins, compress HTML or HTML or create a content delivery system (CDN). Hostinger’s performance is unaffected by any enhancements.

There’s still room for improvement if you are willing to invest the time and effort in optimizing your website.

Hostinger is a great choice if you have a tight budget and still need fast servers.

Hostinger failed to deliver on its promises regarding server uptime. Hostinger claims online that it guarantees 99.99% uptime.

Hostinger achieved 99.8% uptime during our 30-day test. This is just a little less than what they claim. Hostinger delivered the worst performance of any host on our list.

This is not good news for shared hosting.

Over the 30 days, 48 distinct incidents caused our website to go down.

They were caused by a connection error that could have lasted for a few seconds or a few minutes.

Connection timeouts are usually caused by your website trying to access more resources than the server has available. Your site was rendered inaccessible because the server took too much time to respond to your browser.

Hostinger seems to have a hard time allocating resources on servers, which reduces the value of affordable hosting.

Simply, we expected much better results.

Customer Support: 2.67/5 – A great product does not suffice to make you happy. A top-quality customer support team is essential to ensure your satisfaction, 24 hours a day.

Hostinger offers a good level of customer service overall. We found the reps to be friendly, helpful, and not pushy.

Hostinger’s customer service representatives are available 24 hours a day and can be reached via live chat. We were delighted to discover this.

They had the slowest response times of all.

It took us over 15 minutes to receive an initial response in our first interaction. Despite this, we were impressed by the detailed explanation with screenshots and directions.

The second chat took us 29 minutes to get an answer to our question about how to set up an address for our domain. This is terrible.

However, the last interaction was unacceptably slow to get help. It took us 44 minutes to get a reply. We did not get a response when we asked about improving site speed. They just casually mentioned a few support articles and that was that.

We would have liked a little more information than just a link to a support article.

Hosting reps provided helpful responses, but most providers responded within five minutes.

Hostinger is the right place to go if you want to solve your problems with friendly support staff. You’ll need to wait and be patient.

Hostinger is an excellent choice for WordPress hosting. Hostinger offers amazing site loading speeds and a great price. The customer service is a little lacking and you might need to contact them to receive compensation for any unplanned downtime.

We think that Hostinger, even though there are many options, is the best WordPress hosting provider for most.

#2 – WebsiteGround – The Best Performance For Beginners on a Limited Budget

SiteGround

Best Performance with a Budget

SiteGround is well-known for its friendly, quick, and hands-on customer service. However, it also delivers outstanding performance with lightning-fast response times, the best shared hosting uptime, and some of the fastest responses we tested… all at a very affordable price. Its pricing starts at $4.99 which makes it extremely affordable.

Overall Score: 3.6/5

SiteGround provides excellent WordPress shared hosting to those who don’t wish to pay for premium hosting. It is extremely user-friendly and provides easy-to-follow guides that will help you get started.

SiteGround’s shared WordPress hosting is easy to use and offers great performance (speed, uptime, etc.).

This is how it ranks on our scorecard.

2/5 Shared Hosting Features
Managed Hosting Features = 1.5/5
Pricing = 4/5
Website speed = 3/5
Server uptime is 4/5
Customer Support = 5/5

SiteGround Shared Hosting Features: 5/5 – SiteGround delivers in certain areas, but is lacking in others when it comes to sharing WordPress hosting features.

Let’s get to the good stuff. You get unlimited email accounts. This allows you to create sub-email lists based on the functions of your website. One for support, one to pay, and one for complaints. All of this is at no additional cost.

RoundCube, a user-friendly webmail interface, allows you to access these emails. You can use the webmail interface for all your emailing, or to automatically forward emails from your domain email to your one.

Each plan comes with unlimited email autoresponders. This is something you would normally only find in marketing automation software. SpamExperts is a free service that helps to filter spam emails.

The entry-level plan includes 10,000 MB of storage per email account.

You can also have daily backups, and up to 30 backups at a time. With just a few clicks, you can restore your website to any backups. This will allow you to resolve most issues on your website.

SiteGround offers a lot of value with email accounts and backups, but you won’t get any themes free or a drag-and-drop site builder.

You can get started quickly with a professional theme that you can customize easily.

SiteGround’s WordPress hosting packages were not any different from its shared hosting plans. This is another thing that disappointed us. You can use any CMS, even WordPress hosting.

SiteGround cannot optimize its servers for WordPress sites because they allow other sites to use the same server resources.

We reached out to their sales team for confirmation. They told us that the only difference is the way they are marketed. There’s no advantage to choosing one.

SiteGround plans do not include a free domain. SiteGround makes it simple to purchase one with just a few clicks. A domain costs $15.95 per annum for a.com.

1.5/5 Managed Hosting Features – SiteGround’s GoGeek plan was tested for a managed WP web hosting package. Although it has some impressive features, it falls short in the majority of categories that we tested for managed WordPress hosting.

SiteGround’s GrowBig or GoGeek plans allow you to host unlimited websites You also get a plugin to automate migrations, earning a half-point on our scoring system.

Each plan comes with a staging environment that allows you to test any changes made to your site or clients’ sites before releasing them live.

A staged website can be made life in just one click. This is great for beginners who want to make changes to their site and not have to shut it down.

You can add your clients to your highest-tier account and grant them access to their sites through a white-labeled dashboard. This will give you a fully customized experience.

Security is all about security. Malware detection and removal are often the first-line defense.

SiteGround, however, does not have this feature.

Nevertheless, automatic WordPress plugins and core updates are available, as well as the option to schedule automated updates.

This allows you to prepare your site for an update, or even skip it altogether. Also, you can create firewall rules and automate patching for WP vulnerabilities.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that your site isn’t safe, but you will have to pay for it. If you need it, you will have to pay.

You get a content delivery network (CDN), which is completely free, but it doesn’t affect any performance.

SiteGround doesn’t require it. You get one for free and it’s plenty. Their CDN provides access to 194 locations worldwide, making it super easy to share your content.

They lose one point for not using advanced performance monitoring.

To see your site data, you can view how much storage space, bandwidth, and traffic you have used. It’s all accessible from your SiteGround dashboard. It’s only a click away.

It does not have premium features such as the ability to view site speed, uptime, and the slowest plugins, which you can do with other hosts.

This can be done via third-party software, or free and paid performance software.

SiteGround is an excellent web host that offers incredible value and amazing support for beginners. We recommend that you use another managed hosting plan if you require the premium features offered by a WordPress host.

Pricing: 4/5 SiteGround’s entry-level plan costs $3.99/month for 12 months and $47.88 for the first year.

SiteGround’s promo pricing may be comparable to other shared WordPress hosts, but renewal rates skyrocket after a one-year term. The basic plan renews for $14.99 per month. This is a 276% increase. For the second year, this is $179.88. This is something to remember, especially if your budget is tight.

Add the two together and you’ll pay $227.76 per year for hosting. It’s cheaper than managed WordPress hosting. It’s also the most expensive shared host.

SiteGround’s reliability, performance, and other benefits are worth it. It’s well worth the cost, according to our experience.

Website Speed: 3.5% – Your site’s speed is a major factor in its success.

SiteGround ranks second in average loading times, ranking second to all the other shared hosts.

SiteGround claims that its Google Cloud infrastructure, along with other features, helps keep its servers running fast. Our tests support this claim.

You get amazing results out of the box with their SuperCacher technology. It keeps a snapshot and makes your site load quicker. There is no need to wait for your site to load.

NGINX Direct Delivery is a great way to increase caching. This is automatically enabled so that you don’t have to search for ways to speed up your website. It’s easy to make your site faster right away, with no additional effort.

Cloudflare CDN integration is also free, which helps to keep your site’s speed up as much as possible.

SiteGround also offers a free SG Optimizer plugin. This plugin allows you to configure all the content tools and caching, as well as automated image optimization, PHP version control, and lazy image loading.

Optimizing websites for large images can slow down websites to a crawl if they are not optimized correctly.

SiteGround also uses Ultrafast PHP. This allows your server to process more visitors faster and takes away your worries.

Server Uptime: 4/5. We almost lost our minds when we ran our uptime tests over 30 days. SiteGround reported 100% uptime and only two seconds of total downtime.

All of this was due to a single incident.

This is the highest uptime of all shared hosts that we tested. It means that your site will always remain accessible to visitors.

SiteGround is well-known for this level of reliability. SiteGround servers are reliable and will work for you every day.

You can now keep your site online 100% of the time, and continue to reap the benefits that your site offers you and your visitors.

Customer Support: 5/5 SiteGround’s customer service is top-notch for shared hosting.

We would like to see them make it easier for us to access their live chat feature. It was difficult to find it. It is not easy to find it and you must go through various support tutorials before you can contact someone.

We finally got to the chat. With each interaction, we were connected immediately to a representative.

The longest interaction took eight minutes. SiteGround support is both efficient and accurate.

During our first conversation, we inquired about ways we could increase security on our website.

The rep was extremely helpful, quick, and simple. We were instructed to enable auto core WordPress updates as well as auto plugin updates since these are the most common methods sites can be hacked or infected with malware.

He also explained all of this to us right away. We didn’t need to ask any further questions. It seemed like he was paying attention and knew exactly what we were trying to do, which was very nice.

The chat lasted only four minutes.

During our next chat, we asked: “Can you guide us through setting up email on our domain?”

We connected again to a representative within seconds. In less than one minute, we were given step-by-step instructions about how to locate the area where we could create an email account.

After waiting a while, we asked the rep how to forward those emails to a Gmail account. In about 30 seconds, the rep replied with instructions on how to access that section of SiteGround’s dashboard. The whole chat session took seven minutes.

We were delighted that he didn’t send us support articles, but walked us through how to get there.

For a beginner, there is nothing better.

The same thing happened in our last chat. We were able to learn from the rep how to speed up our website.

That was a very friendly reply. We mentioned that they have tons of resources for speeding up WordPress sites. The first is a guide, and the second is a more detailed ebook about WordPress site speed.

In eight minutes, we were up and running with the third chat.

SiteGround representatives didn’t try and sell us anything during our chats. They were friendly and helpful and offered resources and guidance every time we entered the chat.

We were never made to feel like we were wasting our time by any of the representatives.

Overall, the service was exceptional.

SiteGround’s affordable price and server speed make it a great choice for novice site builders as well as those who are already familiar with the platform. Start with SiteGround today.

#3 – Flywheel – Best for agencies and freelancers building sites for clients

Flywheel

Ideal for Freelancers and Agencies

Flywheel makes it easy to create, manage, and transfer WordPress sites that are high-performing for clients. Flywheel offers the highest uptime reliability and the most advanced client-management tools. This allows you to let your results speak for themselves.

Overall Score: 3.6/5

Flywheel includes tons of tools and client management features. It also allows for easy billing and account setups for your clients. You can use their workflow tools to help freelancers, developers, agencies, and designers.

Flywheel is a more specialized solution that we believe can be used for these specific use cases. Other options in our list may also have these tools. This makes them a stronger choice if you are looking for WordPress hosting.

Flywheel makes it easy to send bills to clients with just a few clicks. This reduces the hassle of billing and allows you to bill them automatically every month or one year without you even having to do it.

Advanced filtering and tags can be used to organize sites that you create for others. You can then easily find them whenever you need them. This is especially useful if you manage many sites.

Flywheel offers blueprints that allow you to build a basic package of themes or plugins for your future projects.

Workflow and team management tools can be used with real-time activity feeds. This will ensure that everyone within your agency knows who has done what.

Flywheel has scored in these key areas.

Shared Hosting Features = 0.
Managed Hosting Features = 4/5
Pricing = 3/5
Website speed = 5/5
Server uptime: 5/5
Customer Support = 3.67/5

Flywheel does not offer shared WordPress hosting. Flywheel only offers fully managed-to-host plans that are beneficial to agencies and freelancers.

However, WordPress hosting is available from many hosts under shared or fully managed plans. We consider shared hosting to be a significant feature.

Flywheel was not able to offer shared hosting plans, so it received zero points.

Flywheel offers managed WordPress hosting with features that will protect your business while it grows.

The flywheel can help you repair your site, remove malware, clean it up, and give advice about how to prevent it from happening again.

You don’t have to worry about security plugins and worrying about security too much on your own.

Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA) is a security feature that many customers love to protect their accounts.

Two-factor authentication protects you from brute force attacks by restricting the number of failed login attempts. A built-in intelligent IP blocking feature blocks access to your sites from potential intruders.

Flywheel handles core WordPress updates. Automated plugin updates are available, but they cost $8 per site and can be purchased regardless of your plan.

The Fastly content delivery network, or CDN, offers full-page caching and all your page’s HTML.

This is a unique feature because CDNs can only cache images. Flywheel’s CDN caches your entire page faster than static assets.

To enable the Fastly CDN on your website, you only need to click within your dashboard. The Fastly CDN covers 59 locations on six continents, with 21 additional locations being added.

Flywheel provides both a plugin for migration and premium migration. It is simple to install the plugin, give a few details, and then wait while the migration takes place.

It can be repeated as many times as necessary to move all your sites.

You can also have the Flywheel team handle it. White-glove migrations typically take between one and three days. If you require it urgently, you have the option to pay $49 for an expedited transfer that takes place in eight hours.

Flywheel was disqualified for not providing advanced performance monitoring in their entry-level plan.

This add-on is only available as an upgrade and costs $25 per site for the first site, and $2 per site for each subsequent site.

Flywheel will provide detailed reports on performance and recommendations for improving your sites.

Flywheel now offers a Google Analytics add-on, which allows you to view data from Google Analytics directly within your Flywheel dashboard. It can be used to help you plan content marketing strategies, find out about your clients’ audiences, determine where traffic is coming from, and increase your conversion rates.

This add-on is useful but not a replacement for advanced performance monitoring. It doesn’t include loading speeds, time until the first byte, and optimization advice.

Flywheel was designed for freelancers and agencies. This allows you to host multiple websites and has many features that make it easy. The free plan can host up to 10 sites. The cheapest agency plan can host up to 30 sites. Custom plans allow for more than 100 sites.

Additional sites can be added to any plan, except the custom plan, for an additional $20 per site per calendar month

Flywheel works well regardless of how many sites you manage.

Pricing: Flywheel’s Entry-Level Plan is $13 per Month for 12 Months with $156 upfront.

The best thing about Flywheel is the fact that you don’t have to pay any additional fees to renew. Flywheel will not increase its prices, so you won’t have to pay more than $13 a month.

You’ll be paying $312 for two years of hosting. This price is great for managed hosting that offers excellent uptime, speed, support, and features.

Flywheel is a managed premium web host. We couldn’t find any reason why an agency owner or freelancer wouldn’t choose Flywheel.

Website Speed: 5/5 – All Flywheel plans to use the Google Cloud Platform. They use the most advanced hardware and software available to ensure that your websites load as quickly as possible.

Flywheel received an average response time in the range of 0.0 seconds after a month of speed testing.

It was the fastest host tested at 288 milliseconds.

You won’t have to worry about the performance of your client’s websites with such quick response times. Your clients and you can rest assured that everything is optimized behind the scenes to ensure optimal performance every day.

It can also handle traffic spikes without affecting client websites’ performance or going down completely.

Flywheel’s custom caching technology (FlyCache) speeds up its response time. Flywheel is ready to use right out of the box. It works in conjunction with Fastly CDN, delivering content from the nearest point of presence to the end user, regardless of where they may be.

FlyCache is different from other caching options because it is specific to Flywheel and highly customizable. It also comes pre-configured right out of the box.

Server uptime: 5/5 – Uptime is an important factor for all websites on the internet. Clients lose faith in your brand if your sites go down at the most crucial times.

Flywheel was up 100% during our testing for 30 days.

The site was accessible every second of every day without any incidents, which is a great metric to share with your clients. You’ll be able to rest assured that you won’t be interrupted by 3 AM phone calls from clients because their site has been down.

Flywheel’s self-healing technology is what makes it so special. Flywheel’s self-healing server technology means that your site will always be up and running when it can, preventing unexpected downtime.

If your PHP problem occurs, the system will automatically fix it so that your site does not go down.

This provider is the only one that provides this type of self-maintenance.

Flywheel Customer Service: 3.67/5 – Our first contact with Flywheel’s customer support was very quick, taking just five minutes. We received assistance within 60 seconds of asking. We wanted to know how we could improve the security of our website.

The rep sent us two support documents. We were very disappointed that they couldn’t be more helpful.

The second interaction was extremely slow. It took 12 minutes to connect with someone. It was mid-day, so it could have been busy.

The rep did not do anything, but he did send us a support guide when we asked for help setting up email addresses on our domain.

Although we felt they could have done more it was not a terrible experience.

This was the best. We discovered how to speed up our website.

In two minutes, we were connected to someone and the rep performed a speed test so that we could receive personalized advice.

The flywheel could be better overall, as we pay more than average for the service. However, it wasn’t horrible.

Our experience shows that customer service is not perfect and there are areas for improvement.

We expect them to offer more customized help and not just send customers to support articles with no explanation of how to use them.

Flywheel is the best choice for agencies searching for WordPress hosting. The flywheel can help you provide the best speed and reliability for your clients.

#4 – DreamHost – The Easiest Way To Get Started For Less Than $5

DreamHost

Host for Less Than $5

WordPress hosting starts at $4.95 per Month with no long-term contract. DreamHost is not only affordable but also offers incredible uptime reliability. DreamHost is a great choice for those who want to start with minimal stress and high performance.

Overall Score: 3.4 of 5

DreamHost offers WordPress hosting plans with no commitment and the lowest price possible.

DreamHost has the best monthly plans out of all hosts that we tested. There is no long-term contract and they offer both annual and triennial plans. You can get almost everything you need to create a WordPress website for as low as $4.95

Let’s take a look at DreamHost’s performance based on our testing criteria.

Shared Hosting Features = 3/5
Managed Hosting Features = 0.5%
Pricing = 5/5
Website speed = 1/5
Server uptime is 4/5
Customer Support = 3.33/5

Shared Hosting Features 3.5% – This entry-level shared hosting plan includes a free domain for one year, daily backups, and a drag-and-drop WordPress website builder that is easy to use.

Site Builder is great for beginners. It includes a fast site creation wizard, over 200 starter templates, real-time SEO recommendations, advanced options for designers, and advanced options to help experienced designers.

However, DreamHost doesn’t include email. If you wish to send and receive emails from a professional email account, you will need to pay $1.67 per mailbox per month.

It’s also the only shared host that does not include email, which we found disappointing.

DreamHost’s WordPress servers don’t work well for WordPress. According to the sales team, this is a marketing strategy to attract more WordPress users. There is no difference between WordPress hosting plans and shared hosting plans. There is no real advantage to choosing one over another.

The name is what makes the difference between the plans.

Managed Hosting Features: 0.5% – DreamHost’s entry-level managed WordPress hosting plan, DreamPress, is missing almost every feature that we examined. It does include a plugin to automate migrations which is half the point.

The migration plugin is required to migrate to DreamHost. This plugin is great for simple migrations, but it won’t work well for sites that have a lot more content or customization.

Premium white glove migrations and the possibility of hosting multiple sites under the same plan at a higher level are not possible.

DreamHost plans do not include malware detection or removal. Your site may be vulnerable to phishing attacks and other cyber threats unless you purchase a third-party tool.

There are also no advanced performance monitoring tools.

Based on our testing criteria, DreamHost’s managed WordPress plans are average. If you are looking for premium managed WordPress hosting, we recommend that you choose a different provider.

Pricing: DreamHost is 5/5 – DreamHost’s pricing beats all the rest.

Annual plans are $2.95/month for 12 months with $35.40 upfront.

It renews for $6.99 per month, a 137% increase. You’ll need to pay $83.88 upfront for the second year.

Add the two together and you will pay $119.88 to host your website for two years. If you choose an annual plan, this is the lowest price option.

The pay-as-you-go plan costs $4.95 per month for three months if you don’t wish to commit or prefer to pay monthly. It goes up to $7.99 a month after that.

This is the best way to start right away if you want the cheapest.

DreamHost may be the right choice for you, even though it doesn’t offer some of the same features that managed WordPress hosts do. It’s easy to get started with a reliable web hosting service that is also very user-friendly.

Website Speed: 1/5. This is where DreamHost could let you down. Although it isn’t the fastest provider, it’s not slow. They do the job as well as a cheap web host.

The DreamHost response time average was 813 milliseconds in our 30-day test, which is good considering the low prices.

DreamHost responds slightly faster than the average, but that is normal for shared hosting environments.

Server Uptime: 4/5. Many web hosts have low prices and many features but terrible uptime rates which can leave you disappointed if your site crashes.

DreamHost is a cheap, reliable web host that offers exceptional uptime. According to our research, DreamHost offers a winning combination of 100% uptime as well as the lowest month-to-month prices.

DreamHost destroyed a lot of the shared WordPress hosting competition, with a tiny total downtime of just 49 seconds. This was all due to one incident.

Many providers claim 99.99% but fall short of the numbers. Our research revealed that DreamHost exceeded our expectations.

No one provider claims 100% availability. And DreamHost never did.

The screenshot shows that they rarely had to go offline when our website was down. This means that they are very good at managing their servers.

Customer Support: 2/5 – The first and second interactions took around 17 minutes, which is slower than other providers.

The first was too salesy and didn’t provide any useful information. They recommend DreamShield as an additional security feature. It acts as a malware detector.

We were told to upgrade to a premium security plan. They also gave us limited advice about what actions we could take free of charge. We were disappointed by the sales-oriented nature of their interaction.

The second interaction was extremely helpful and detailed. We asked them how to set up email accounts. They explained how to do that and also how to create one.

This interaction was much quicker and more helpful than the previous one. They directed us to a WordPress optimization support article and encouraged us to contact them again if there were slow loading times. The whole interaction took six minutes.

We appreciated that they did not immediately ask us to upgrade to a higher level of service. We would have preferred it if they took the time to give us specific advice, rather than just sending us to a support article. Overall, the interaction was quick and allowed us to get started on site speed/optimization.

It was great that they responded within five minutes. The reps also seemed knowledgeable. These are the two criteria DreamHost used to test customer service.

DreamHost has some shortcomings in key areas. DreamHost is a strong choice for users looking to get started at a low price and without any commitment. Their incredible uptime reliability is another great benefit.

#5 -WP Engine- Best Pricing for Multiple WordPress Sites Hosting

WP Engine

Best price for multiple sites

WP Engine’s fully managed WordPress hosting packages allow you to manage multiple WordPress websites from one place, while also saving money. WP Engine offers exceptional uptime, speed, and support. As you add more sites, WP Engine will offer better per-site rates.

Overall Score: 3.1 of 5

WP engine is the best choice if you are looking to host multiple websites using one platform. It offers top-of-the-line features and benefits.

WP Engine offers better pricing than any other provider.

The better deal is the more sites you have. This review also includes information about pricing.

Let’s look at WP Engine’s scores in six main categories of WordPress hosting.

Shared Hosting Features = 0.
Managed Hosting Features = 5/5
Pricing = 1/5
Website speed = 5/5
Server uptime: 5/5
Customer Support = 5/5

Shared Hosting Features: 0/5 WP Engine does not offer shared WordPress hosting.

Fully managed hosting plans are available for all sizes of businesses. We have to rate shared hosting because many hosts offer WordPress hosting under fully managed and shared plans.

WP Engine does not offer shared hosting plans. This means they do not have shared hosting features. They have a zero score on our grading scale.

Managed Hosting Features: 5/5 – WP Engine’s entry-level plan includes malware detection and removal. This is another way to protect your website at its highest level.

Advanced performance monitoring is also available so that you can monitor trends and see what your page visitors are asking for.

Your hosting plan also includes a premium content delivery network, which makes your data accessible to anyone around the globe based on your requirements.

Surprisingly you get only a plugin to automate migrations and no white-glove services.

As a small- to medium-sized business owner or agency, you will find that hosting multiple websites from the same hosting account is better than having separate accounts. This feature is truly a standout in WP Engine.

This is great if you manage an agency and need to organize everything. WP Engine has a dashboard that isn’t too cluttered. It’s easy to bounce back and forth between websites and data. This allows you to answer any questions clients may have about specific metrics on their websites.

This managed WordPress hosting service will give you unlimited access to resources that will allow your websites to perform at their best 24/7/365, without any downtime or software issues.

Pricing: 1/5 – When you visit WP Engine, all you need is a premium WordPress web hosting service.

$25 per month for 12 Months for an entry-level website plan. This is equivalent to $300 upfront. Managed hosting is a stable, secure, and fast solution.

You don’t have to worry about high renewal rates because the price remains the same for the first year.

You’ll be paying $300 each year.

Let’s discuss multiple sites.

It costs $75 per month for three websites with WP Engine. This includes all the features of WP Engine such as advanced security, automatic plugin administration, and advanced performance monitoring.

WP Engine offers $8 savings per month compared to its closest competitor. WP Engine’s top tier is $125/month for 10 sites, while their competitor’s is $42 per month.

WP Engine’s pricing is great for hosting multiple sites.

Website Speed: 5/5 – After 30 days, WP Engine had an average response time of 428 milliseconds. This makes it the second-fastest host in our database.

This is the best way to get lightning-fast speeds across your high-performance websites. The server was responsive in under half a second, with very few spikes during our testing period. This resulted in stable and fast site speed.

WP Engine is the only provider on this list that is considered to be the best in managed WordPress hosting.

WP Engine was faster than the other in terms of speed.

WP Engine has created a highly advanced WordPress platform. It includes features such as SuperCacher, which caches all content and delivers it super-fast. HTP/2 support allows for faster page loads by parallelizing multiple downloads on a single connection. Server-side compression reduces bandwidth usage by up to 90%.

WP Engine’s WordPress platform is highly optimized and will help you rank higher on Google. This will make your website convert better and rank higher.

Server uptime: 5/5 – Every second matters when you run an online business. Your website should be exactly what you claim it to be. WP Engine makes it easy to ensure that your website is always up and running.

Our demo site was up and running within 30 days. It had never experienced any downtime. This is one of three hosts that we tested for reliability.

You get 100% uptime and excellent server response times to ensure that your high-performance websites run smoothly.

WP Engine is the best WordPress hosting service available. It’s free from technical problems, slow speeds, or unplanned downtime.

Customer Support: 5/5 – WP Engine’s customer support team is always available. Their award-winning customer support team is available 24/7 and has been consistent in our daily testing.

The connection was made immediately, with virtually no wait time, even at night or early morning.

The rep was very honest in our first conversation when we asked him about security for our website. The rep said that there is a security upgrade, but it doesn’t matter if you follow all the other steps.

It felt like we were being treated personally and that the interaction was tailored to our needs right from the beginning. This was refreshing.

Each interaction was very fast. The first interaction took only 13 minutes.

A bot answered our question 100% when we asked for a walkthrough of how to set up an address on our domain.

It was very convenient and cool that all of our questions were answered immediately without us having to wait for someone.

Apart from directing us to an article, the reps offered additional advice and even personalized recommendations for plugins.

WP Engine is fast, efficient, thorough, helpful, and knowledgeable. Even though the questions were not complicated and readily available, we felt valued.

This, combined with WP Engine’s speedy uptime and value makes it worth every penny. Sign up for WP Engine today to manage all your WordPress sites.

#6 – Nexcess – The Best Pro-Level WordPress Hosting under $16

Nexcess

Best WP Hosting for Professionals Under $16

You get the performance, speed, and support that you need, without having to worry about regular WordPress maintenance or the addition of beginner-friendly features. It’s a steal at just $16 per month.

Overall Score: 2.9 of 5

Nexcess provides a dramatic improvement over shared hosting performance.

It’s lacking a lot of useful features for beginners, and it’s not the easiest platform you can use if this is your first time.

It’s great for those who know what they’re doing but don’t want to spend $25-$30 on premium WordPress hosting.

You’ll find a clean interface that allows you to get straight to the point, even if you are a seasoned WordPress user.

There is no need to go through hundreds of tutorials or set up wizards. It’s easy to get on with what you love, which is creating and managing WordPress websites.

Here’s how Nexcess ranks on our scorecard.

Shared Hosting Features = 0.
Managed Hosting Features = 4/5
Pricing = 2/5
Website speed = 4/5
Server uptime: 5/5
Customer Support = 3.33/5

Shared Hosting Features: 5/5 – Nexcess does not offer shared WordPress hosting. They offer only fully managed to-host plans that can be used for commerce and content platforms. WordPress is one of these.

However, WordPress hosting is available from many hosts under shared or fully managed plans. We recommend shared hosting.

Nexcess does not offer shared hosting plans. This means they do not have shared hosting features. They are therefore rated zero on our scale.

Managed Hosting Features: 5/5 – Nexcess offers managed WordPress hosting which is scalable and provides better one-to-one support.

We love all the premium features they provide.

The entry-level plan includes malware detection and removal. This protects your site from malicious cyberattacks and hackers. iThemes Security Pro also offers a variety of security features.

The partnership between Verizon Digital Media Services in Miami and Nexcess allows Nexcess to operate its content delivery network.

This allows you to modify the location of your content network so that you can change where your content is located and ensures it loads quickly for all users.

Premium migrations that will not let you down are available for free. The Nexcess migration specialists will make your transition smooth.

Nexcess has one major flaw. They don’t offer advanced performance analytics with their basic plan. This feature is available if you upgrade to a higher tier.

Pricing: Nexcess offers pro-level features at affordable prices. The entry-level plan costs $15.83 per month, which is $190 for the first calendar year.

The renewal rate remains the same at $15.83 per month, so there is no price increase after the first year.

There is no need to be concerned about price hikes year after year. This is refreshing in light of the cheaper options.

A 14-day trial is also available, without the need for a credit card.

Nexcess offers a free trial, unlike most providers that offer a money-back guarantee.

Website Speed: 5/5 – Nexcess’ site loading speed was tested over 30 days by us. Their average response time was 565 milliseconds. This makes them the fourth fastest provider that we tested.

You can slide in less than half a second and rest assured that you are getting the stability you pay extra for.

A managed WordPress host is the best because it automatically optimizes your website for speed, security, and other important aspects.

Nexcess ensures that your website is always up-to-date with the most recent software patches. This will prevent your site from being slowed down due to outdated plugins.

The Nexcess Cloud Accelerator comes as a default feature and offers better page-loading technology for WordPress websites. You can enable it by clicking a button.

Nexcess offers even greater speed benefits, including the instant auto-scaling function. This means that your website won’t slow down due to traffic spikes. You can attract as much traffic as your heart desires without worrying.

Server Uptime: 5/5 Server downtime can cause a huge impact on your business if it isn’t managed by a reliable host.

Customers are online 24/7. If they cannot access your website or mobile app, it can mean lost sales. It will also cost you more in the long term than just dollars and cents.

Our Nexcess demo site was up and running after 30 days of monitoring. It had no downtime, which is one of the three hosts that we tested.

Nexcess’s server reliability is unquestionable. There has been no downtime or incidents. The data speak for themselves.

This is the right choice if you are looking for a reliable hosting environment that will not let you down, delivers above-average response time, and comes at a reasonable price.

Customer Support: 3.33/5. Nexcess provided slightly better customer service than other managed WordPress hosting providers.

We never waited longer than 30 seconds to connect with a rep.

The rep did not seem to have any knowledge about security in the initial interaction. It took us a while to get an answer, and we were eventually sent to a support article.

This article discusses all features of iThemes Security Pro. It also includes articles on how to get started in managed WordPress hosting and how to protect WordPress sites. The iThemes article was not very helpful.

We would have preferred that the rep had explained more than just sent us support articles.

The second interaction was much better regarding setting up our email. However, the rep was not very helpful in explaining things to us. We were confused several times, so we had to ask more questions. They kept repeating the same thing over and over.

We agreed and everything worked out. It took 17 minutes.

Although the rep was quick to make our website faster, he sent us a support article.

Except for the second interaction, there was no advice the reps could offer that wasn’t already available elsewhere. Given the fact that we pay more for their services, we felt that support could have been improved.

Another great option for high uptime and reliable speed is Nexcess. It’s a great choice for WordPress pros who don’t need a lot of help when setting up new sites. Going with Nexcess will help you find a great provider who’s right for you.

#7 – Bluehost – The Easiest Method to Launch Your First WordPress Website

Bluehost

Best for Launching Your First WordPress Site

Bluehost offers one of the most straightforward onboarding and site-building experiences available from a WordPress hosting provider. This is the perfect choice for anyone starting. Bluehost offers many shared hosting benefits that allow you to quickly go from nothing to a fully-launched WordPress site.

Overall Score: 2.8/5

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable when building a website for the first time. It can seem daunting to build a website from scratch.

Bluehost’s WordPress website builder is a remarkable combination of simplicity and customization.

This is a great place for beginners and can help you get over the intimidating WordPress learning curve. It was easy to use, we tested it and created a professional website in just five minutes.

You’ll quickly get the hang of it if you take ten minutes to play with it.

You can also use a variety of templates to jumpstart your site’s design without needing to create it from scratch.

Here’s how Bluehost compares to the other ones we tested:

3/5 Shared Hosting Features
Managed Hosting Features = 2.5/5
Pricing = 4/5
Website speed = 1/5
Server uptime = 2/5
Customer Support = 3/5

Shared Hosting Features: 5/5 – We narrowed down a huge list of shared WordPress hosting options to just five.

Bluehost checked three of the five boxes.

The entry-level WordPress plan includes five email accounts, a first-year free domain (savings of $18), and a user-friendly website builder.

Automated backups were another thing we wanted to see.

You could lose all of your hard work and website design if you don’t keep it safe.

It’s like trying to play with fire without having your website backed up.

Bluehost does not include this feature in its entry-level plan. You can either purchase an add-on for a fee or use a third-party service to back up your data.

We also discovered that there is no difference in the WordPress hosting and shared hosting plans after digging deeper into Bluehost’s offerings.

They are identical in every aspect. We called the sales team to ask about any differences. They confirmed that they didn’t have any. There is no advantage to choosing WordPress hosting over shared hosting. The only difference between the two is how Bluehost markets them.

Although we think this is misleading, Bluehost isn’t the only host to do it.

Bluehost is a great place for anyone new to website building and who wants to have an easy onboarding process.

Managed Hosting Features: 2.5/5- The entry-level managed plan includes malware detection and removal. This helps to protect your website against hackers and other malicious attacks.

We love the fact that you get a premium content distribution network (CDN), which you can customize to meet your needs, including the location of data centers.

A plugin is also included for migrations. Bluehost’s limited offering of a plugin for migrations, and the lack of a premium option for migrations were a bit disappointing.

Although the plugin can be used to transfer simple websites, it does not provide white-glove support like premium WordPress hosting plans.

Although it’s better than nothing, it is not very useful for complex site migrations.

Also, you won’t be able to host multiple websites or receive performance analytics like other providers.

Bluehost offers managed WordPress plans, but we recommend that you look at other options if managed WordPress hosting is something you are interested in.

Learn more about managed and shared WordPress hosting by visiting our methodology section.

Pricing: 4/5 – The biggest problem for beginners is paying too much for a host that they don’t know how will work. Bluehost offers affordable web hosting with peace of mind that will allow you to get started.

The entry-level plan costs $4.95 per month and $59.40 upfront for the first 12 months.

You’ll be charged $9.99 per month upon renewal (a 102% increase). You’ll be paying $119.88 for the entire second year of hosting.

Add the two together and you will pay $179.28 per year.

You can still get better pricing by signing up for a 3-year contract. This brings down the monthly cost to $2.95 per Month, and $194.70 upfront for three years.

Website Speed: 1/5 Bluehost was the worst site speed test. The load time took a meager 1107 milliseconds over 30 days.

We saw a maximum response time of 29 seconds at one point, which is quite shocking. This is one of the two providers that we tested for website speed.

Site speed in a shared hosting environment is affected by server resources and the number of sites using those resources. However, speed is a major factor in search engine ranking and visitor experience. A slow site can damage your reputation and lead to lower rankings.

It’s an important factor to consider when selecting a host.

Server Uptime: 5/5 – While many companies claim to have perfect uptime, we prefer to use real data.

Bluehost’s uptime was 99.95% after 30 days of testing. This is a respectable, but not great, performance compared to other hosts.

Bluehost was down for 20 minutes, and 28 seconds in 30 days. 10 minutes and 4 seconds was the longest sustained downtime.

This is the time that no one was able to visit our website. This is not only a negative experience for the end-user but can also make it appear that your website doesn’t exist.

Seven incidents rendered our site unreachable. The majority of these were connection timeouts, where the server took too long to respond.

We also experienced two SSL errors. The browser couldn’t verify the SSL certificate and warned visitors that the page was not safe to visit. This is a serious problem that can scare visitors.

Keep in mind that uptime can be different each month. The results of shared hosting are not unusual and should not be taken as a sign that you are looking for a simple, beginner-friendly WordPress option.

Customer Support: 2/5 We were shocked at the results Bluehost received in this category.

The live chat option is not as obvious as other providers. You will need to look for it to initiate a chat. It is located under the knowledge base tab.

This is a significant difference from other providers, where it’s visible all the time.

After the browser opened, we filled in a few questions about our question and it brought up a list with knowledge base articles. This is what we don’t like to see. We would have searched Google for the answer if we were to search it ourselves.

We felt like they wanted to dump us. That was very frustrating.

If none of the articles have answered your question, you can start a conversation at the bottom.

They responded very quickly. We were connected in 30 seconds.

We asked about website security in our first conversation. The rep seemed pushy and salesy. He tried to sell us more than answer the question. We didn’t like the fact that the rep copied and pasted the rep’s response directly into the chat without any explanation.

The second interaction was much more pleasant when we asked them how to set up our email. The rep quickly explained how to set up a new email account. The representative was very friendly and efficient. She handled the request in just five minutes.

Our last interaction was about speeding up our website’s loading times. We were frustrated by the amount of information we received and how it didn’t help us answer our question.

We received a great response, with both specific steps and more detailed guides.

The chat lasted 17 minutes. We felt the answer was not necessary, and it took us longer to complete the question.

Bluehost customer service was sporadic. While you might receive a quick response, they may not be able to answer all your questions. This can sometimes prove frustrating.

Bluehost is a popular choice for WordPress beginners because of its ease of use, pricing, and shared hosting features.

#8 – Kinsta – The Most Secure Managed WordPress Hosting

Kinsta

Secure WordPress Hosting

Are you worried about managing popular sites or securing customer data? Kinsta offers robust security features that will protect your site from hackers and malware. All the features of managed hosting are included, plus you get rock-solid support in case you have any issues.

Overall Score: 2.2 of 5

Kinsta has more security features than any other choice on this list. Kinsta is the best choice if security is your priority.

Kinsta is the best WordPress hosting solution today. It automatically handles all security updates for you and keeps track of any modifications made by anyone with administrative privileges on your server. This helps keep hackers away.

It monitors all activity on our servers 24/7 with artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms so that you don’t have to.

They are packed with security features and offer many other benefits for your managed WordPress website, including superior customer support and the best features for managed hosting of any provider we tested.

These are the details about how they did in each of our six core categories.

Shared Hosting Features = 0.
Managed Hosting Features = 5/5
Pricing = 1/5
Website speed = 2/5
Server uptime = 3/5
Customer Support = 4.67/5

Shared Hosting Features: 0/5 Kinsta does not offer shared WordPress hosting.

They provide fully managed to-host plans that are available to both businesses and users who value speed and security.

However, WordPress hosting is available from many hosts under shared or fully managed plans. We recommend shared hosting.

Kinsta received zero points out of five for not offering shared hosting features.

Managed Hosting Features: 5/5 Kinsta is the only host with a perfect score on managed hosting features.

The entry-level plan offers malware detection and removal, advanced performance monitors, a premium content delivery system (KeyCDN), one premium migrating, and the option of hosting multiple sites on a higher level.

These meet all our criteria for a premium host of the gold standard.

Kinsta’s malware detection features include active and passive measures that prevent malicious attacks from happening. If something does happen, an assigned team will immediately fix the problem.

Automated backups are performed every day. You can also choose to manually back up before making major changes.

If something happens, you can easily go back to an older version of your website.

Kinsta offers additional security protection with a Cloudflare firewall and built-in monitoring.

A software restriction could be the source code for a WordPress plugin that doesn’t meet Kin sta’s standards.

They’re always looking into server security and will fix your site immediately if it gets hacked. Before you consider the issue resolved, make sure to restore your site to its original condition.

Kinsta plans include a custom-built tool for monitoring application performance. APM is short for Application Performance Monitoring.

Kinsta can distinguish itself from the rest of the hosts on this list by doing this.

Advanced performance monitoring allows for the tracking and analysis of slow transactions, database queries, and external requests.

You can, for example, instantly pinpoint slow pages and determine why they are slow.

It is best to activate it only when you are using it to troubleshoot or check something. Running it in the background could cause page performance problems.

An analytics dashboard covers all site metrics.

Monitoring total visits, resource usage and CDN usage, desktop and mobile users, page response times, and data about where users live (including country and IP addresses) can be done.

This type of data is usually obtained through a third party. This information is available with every plan.

KeyCDN, a premium CDN, is located in 40+ edge servers across 30 countries. It also has six continents.

It is as easy as a click from your dashboard to enable it.

It includes real-time image optimization and next-gen formatting. You can also reduce file video optimizations. Granular cache control is available. There are hundreds of other advanced features that you can customize to your heart’s content.

It can also be used out of the box if you don’t want to get into all the details.

CDN usage limits are set by each plan. They start at 50 GB in the cheapest plan and go up to 1,000 GB in the highest enterprise plan. Overage fees of $0.10 per gigabyte will be assessed if you exceed these limits.

Next is Kinsta’s free premium Migration.

The entry-level plan comes with one premium done for your migration. All you need to do is complete a form, and Kinsta’s engineers will take care of everything.

Kinsta migrations don’t usually cause any downtime. The team will inspect the property for you and ensure everything is in tip-top condition before deciding whether or not to proceed.

If you are looking to host multiple websites in the future, it is a good idea to ask your provider about this option.

Kinsta’s unique web hosting infrastructure allows you to host multiple WordPress sites without losing performance.

In just a few clicks, you can launch new installations or move existing sites.

For a quick setup of new sites, you can also clone existing settings.

Pricing: 1/5 – Kinsta scored a low price score because it is one of the two premium hosts on our List.

Kinsta’s entry-level plan costs $25.00 per month and $300 upfront for the year. This plan is tied with WP Engine as the most expensive on our list.

The good news is that the price of renewals will not increase.

Kinsta will not raise prices and you will continue to pay $25 per month. You don’t need to be concerned about price hikes when you pay your next bill.

You get WordPress hosting with the highest quality service and features, as well as the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure.

Website Speed: 5/5 – Slow websites can drive customers away. Kinsta claims it is one of the most reliable and fast hosting solutions available today. We wanted to be sure that it wasn’t hype.

Our demo site had a response time average of 746 milliseconds. Unfortunately, this was not the best result.

We expected better performance given the high price. Our demo sites all had an average of 630 milliseconds. This includes shared hosting performance.

Kinsta performed slower than the other shared hosts that we tested.

Kinsta has many features that will keep your site’s speed down, even if it produces less-than-stellar results. There are also numerous site-side guides and tools such as a premium CDN or weekly database optimizations you can use to speed up your site.

Kinsta invests heavily in state-of-the-art technology and software to ensure that its servers are as responsive as possible.

NGINX servers, PHP 8.2, and LXD containers are all part of their speed enhancement software. These containers encapsulate your site to protect it from other users. This is not only faster, but also provides additional security.

These features, combined with the site-side tools, should pack a punch. Maybe they were caught in a bad month.

This performance isn’t bad, but it’s worse than many of the other providers that we tested. If server security is your top concern, Kinsta is a reliable and safe choice.

Server Uptime: 3.5% – Kinsta was the only premium-managed provider to not get an excellent score for uptime. It had worse uptime problems than the other shared hosts.

After 30 days of testing, 99.99% of the servers were up, and only four minutes and 17 seconds of downtime. The longest time was 2 minutes and 56 seconds. It’s not bad in the grand scheme of things. There is still room for improvement.

Kinsta, despite its slow performance, is the only host that actively monitors your site’s availability. Kinsta checks your site every 2 minutes, for a total daily of 720 checks.

Kinsta has in-house monitoring that allows them to respond quickly to any downtime and ensures your site is accessible to as many people as possible. We may have had even more downtime without this.

This not only helps reduce unexpected downtime but also provides an extra pair of eyes to your site even when you aren’t there.

Customer Support: 4.67/5. Every interaction with Kinsta was exceptional.

They didn’t get 5/5 because they took too much time in their last interaction.

The rep did not return our call for a response within 19 minutes. We weren’t sure why.

The rep did a speed test, which usually takes only a few seconds.

We were pleasantly surprised when the rep returned to explain the results and how we can improve them.

We appreciate the fact that they provided specific advice to our site and not just general advice that applies to all.

It felt personal and the rep took time to explain everything.

Overall, every rep we spoke to was kind and patient. They took the time to explain everything to us rather than sending us a link to a product or naming a product to look at on our own.

They went out of their way to ensure we understood everything and answered all our questions before we disconnected.

Kinsta is a company that takes responsibility for solving problems. Each support ticket has a 100% silver rate. This means that everyone leaves support interactions with their problems resolved.

There is no room for error.

Kinsta is also one of the few companies that actively monitor downtime and will return to work as soon as they find out.

Kinsta provides rock-solid security for your WordPress hosting.

Methodology to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting Service

The data was collected by our team over four weeks.

We did extensive research to make sure you aren’t making the wrong decision when choosing your WordPress web host.

We went through a thorough process for each host we tested:

We created a new account using a WP hosting plan.
Signed up for each host with a different domain name and completed the signup process
A new site was created with no pages, images, or plugins. It is a blank WordPress installation.
Each site used the same WordPress theme settings and themes
We then monitored site speed, uptime, and availability for a whole month
To gauge customer support, we submitted three support tickets.

After running all the tests, we gave them a rating on a scale of one to five for six categories. Then, we combined all the ratings and weighted them according to their importance. These are the rating categories and their weights.

Features of shared hosting (10%)
Managed Hosting Features (5%)
Pricing (35%)
Website Speed (20%)
Server uptime (15%)
Customer Support (15%)

There is a lot of overlap between managed and shared WordPress hosting. While some plans may be one or the other; others might fall somewhere in between. Even worse, hosts may be using the terms interchangeably.

It can be difficult to remember.

We separated them to make it clear that managed and shared hosting are distinct.

We’ll be discussing the differences between them, which features are most important, and why.

Shared hosting allows hundreds (or even thousands) of websites to share server resources at once. Your site can experience a drop in performance if one site experiences a significant surge of traffic, such as a big promotion, a news appearance, or a viral Instagram post. You are responsible for maintaining the security and performance of your site.

You will enjoy extremely affordable pricing that helps you keep your costs down.

Managed hosting costs more and allows for lower usage limits such as storage space and visits per month. This ensures that your site runs at peak performance every time. The benefit is that you can have far fewer sites per server, and you don’t need to worry about security or software updates, performance monitoring, optimization, or optimization.

You’ll also get priority support to help you do the things you need, rather than you having to do them yourself.

Shared Hosting (Features – 10%)

You may be asking yourself why shared hosting is important if you are looking for WordPress hosting.

Answer: WordPress hosting is mostly shared hosting. Some people find this a great thing. It is affordable, has all the resources needed, and works beautifully with WordPress.

The goal of shared WordPress hosting is to keep costs low, with most plans starting at $10 per month.

Shared hosting is the best option for those who have a limited budget or are just starting.

This is a great option for new websites with low traffic. It is also great for those who are starting a simple business website and don’t require high performance or a lot of resources.

The features that you don’t get with shared WordPress hosting are what make it different from managed WordPress hosting.

Advanced security features: malware protection, DDoS protection, and brute force protection; proactive monitoring by an expert team, automated backups, and custom firewalls

Server-level cache – Most WordPress plugins temporarily store your site’s content on their side. Server-level caching stores content on the server side, meaning that it requires fewer requests and doesn’t require any user involvement.

Website staging allows you to work on your website, and modify or test settings without the need to make it unavailable to anyone. Once you are done, you can press a button to push your changes to your website.

Advanced performance metrics – To diagnose poor site performance you must be able to see the root cause. Managed hosting allows you to track, analyze, and improve your site’s performance in many ways.

This level of control and security is not available in shared hosting plans. Instead, you are responsible for configuring it all.

A shared WordPress hosting account comes with a basic dashboard or control panel, which is often not user-friendly.

Four of the four hosts that we have included on our list offer shared WordPress hosting plans. This is based on our definition. We analyzed dozens of features to help you choose between them and narrowed them down to five essential ones.

We then gave each host one point per feature.

Not all hosts offer shared hosting plans. They all received zero points for sharing hosting features.

Several email accounts: This can vary greatly from one host to another.

It’s important to remember that most people need at least one email address for professional purposes. Depending on your website’s function, you might need more than one email address. An email address is required for support, complaints, and payment questions.

You’ll have to pay more if your web hosting package doesn’t include the number of email addresses you require. This problem can be solved by obtaining unlimited email accounts from one of our providers.

One host will give you one account; another will give you five. And one host even gives you unlimited accounts, so you can have as many of your favorite hosts as you like. This feature was awarded to all hosts.

However, one host does not offer email accounts free of charge and receives zero points.

A free domain name for the initial year: This is a great way to save money.

It will also save you time as you don’t have to set up DNS settings manually.

This special offer is offered by two hosts on our list. You can either pay a fee or buy one through a domain registry.

Automated backups: These backups can protect your website and you from any potential disasters. You make a mistake and your website crashes to the ground.

You can easily reverse your website to an older version with just one click, no matter what happens.

It’s unnecessary to worry about backups when your host does it automatically.

First, not all web hosts offer automatic backup. There are also big differences in the frequency with that each host performs backups.

Weekly backups allow for more time between backups. If you need to make changes, you might have to undo some of the changes that you had intended to keep.

Daily backups are stored closer together, so you have more control over when you want to revert.

Two hosts offer weekly backups. One host offers daily backups. The other host doesn’t offer any automated backups.

You can download free themes for WordPress or build your site. WordPress is a complex subject that can be overwhelming.

Many hosts offer a drag-and-drop page creator or professionally designed themes that you can install on your website in seconds.

Even if you are just starting to use the platform, these options will help you save time and reduce your learning curve.

Both hosts offer beginner-friendly drag-and-drop site builders. One host offers a collection of themes for free, while the other doesn’t.

Servers optimized to WordPress: We were shocked to discover that many shared WordPress hosting providers don’t limit WordPress plans to WordPress websites when we began to investigate them.

Why is this important? It means that the provider cannot optimize their servers for WordPress sites because they must keep everyone happy.

Even if they use a completely different CMS like Joomla or Drupal.

There is no difference between shared and WordPress hosting plans.

Although they claim that WordPress hosting has an additional benefit, it is a marketing strategy to get WordPress users. We asked their sales team to confirm this.

Three providers confirmed that the only difference is in how the plans were marketed.

One explained, however, that it limits WordPress hosting plans to WordPress websites so they can fine-tune the servers for better performance.

Managed WordPress Hosting (Features), – 5%

Managed WordPress hosting is vastly different from shared hosting. Managed hosting offers better security, performance, customer support, site monitoring, and more. These advanced features are more expensive.

Managed plans can be too expensive for many people.

We recommend shared hosting for those who are just starting or have a very small website.

Managed features make up only 5% of the overall score.

Similar to shared hosting, we began with a list listing dozens of features that we would like to see in managed WordPress hosting providers.

There are some differences that we pay close attention to. We removed all the features that are standard for every host on our list. We then narrowed down the list to five of the most important features.

We then gave each provider one point for every feature they offer.

Malware detection and removal: This is the first line of defense that protects your website against malicious activity or hackers trying to inflict havoc. Managed WordPress hosting should offer greater security. It should include automated malware detection and removal to ensure your site is protected without you having any involvement.

This is something providers do without you asking.

You can also get more advanced security features such as DDoS protection and brute force protection, firewalls, or bot detection.

These advanced security measures are usually extra expensive.

Advanced performance monitoring: You can see page times, load times, total requests, and performance issues without having to purchase another tool. Numerous reviews confirm that this feature is very popular and appreciated by many users.

The image displays help icons and suggestions on how you can improve your score and overall experience. It also displays how long visitors will wait. Our caching score is the measure of how well our site date has been stored so that visitors can easily access it.

This is what we expected from other hosts on our server list.

It is possible to identify and troubleshoot performance problems. You can monitor and control speed based on the number of visitors to your site.

This is the type of freedom you desire when looking at managed WordPress hosting plans.

It is also possible to identify the slowest WordPress plugins that are most likely to cause site slowdowns.

If your site isn’t getting as many visitors as it should, you can check if it’s slow loading or causing visitors to leave.

This is not an option for shared web hosting or some of our managed services. It’s important to look into it.

Premium CDN free: Not all CDNs are the same

You usually get the standard version of a CDN with shared hosting. It doesn’t allow customization and is not high-performance.

Premium CDNs allow you to choose the data centers where your content is available. You can quickly make your content easier to find from hundreds of data centers around the globe. These CDNs often include security features that work with the premium speed features. Premium CDNs allow you to optimize images and view detailed reports for full visibility. This allows you to spot security and performance issues immediately.

White-glove Migrations: If you make one mistake, it can cause a major disruption to your site.

The more complex a migration is, the larger your site will be. When website migration fails, you could lose your contact lists or your blog posts.

A premium migration service provider will move your data around in a systematic manner. They will back up your data to ensure that everything is transferred over without any problems.

It used to be difficult to know how to find a team that is trustworthy and can perform well without limits.

Imagine if all the migration was automated.

It was part of the managed hosting price?

Several of the companies on our list offer this service. You are completely in control of the process, you’re kept informed of every step of it, and the whole thing is done with a white glove.

Many hosts offer migration plugins instead of white-glove service. This is a good option, but not the best. This is especially true if your site has a lot of content, customizations, and complexity.

If your migration is straightforward, the plugin will work well for you. The plugin is easy to use and takes only a few clicks. It doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will go smoothly. You don’t have the assurance that everything is done correctly or that an expert will be available to help you with any problems that may arise.

It’s better than nothing so we awarded hosts who offer an automated migration plug-in half of a point.

Hosting multiple websites: Managed hosting can be expensive. It is even more costly if you manage multiple websites.

It only makes sense that you have the option to host multiple sites with the same subscription. This will allow you to get the most out of your money.

This is usually not available on the entry-level plan, but it is available at higher levels. You can host 10 sites and pay $100 per month instead of paying $30 for each site and managing them individually.

This makes it far more costly than it should be and is a nightmare to manage.

If you manage sites for individuals or businesses, this feature is crucial.

Even if it’s not necessary right now, it should be available in case they do.

Pricing that won’t confuse you – 35%

We understand that cheaper hosting doesn’t always mean better. You don’t have to spend more than you should, whether you’re new to hosting or an experienced user.

Price plays an important role in the overall score of each provider.

We compared pricing for each WordPress hosting plan since this is where most people will start.

The total cost of an annual contract with each host was calculated upfront. We also considered the cost of hosting for a second year without any promo pricing, as these rates are very expensive.

We then calculated the total cost of hosting for two years and gave each host a score based on the scale below.

Five points for $175 and less
Four points from $176 to $275
Three points from $276 to $375
Two points from $375 to $475
For more than $476, one point is worth more than 476

For two years, the average price for all providers is $321.75

At $119.28 for hosting for two years, two providers lead the pack. We also have two other providers that fall between $176-$275 on the low end of the average.

One host was right in the middle. One host scored in the middle with a slightly higher price point than average. Two other cars were more expensive than our $476 maximum, and they are the most expensive.

This covers most hosting costs, but there are still other factors to consider.

Your website may be affected by unexpected events, such as traffic surges or other unanticipated events, which can cause bandwidth issues that could result in your website being unavailable or shut down.

You can also pay for overages if Managed WordPress hosting is used. This will prevent you from losing access to your site.

The bottom line is that you must be aware of overages and how to manage them when you have more visitors and more resource consumption as a result of your website’s growth.

Advanced performance metrics can be used on the dashboard of your provider to show you all available analytics.

This will help you to be prepared for overage fees and to recognize when it is economically sensible to upgrade to higher tiers of resources.

You can be sure your website will never be interrupted – 99.97% guarantee

Is it possible for every provider to offer 99.97% website availability?

Not quite. This is the average uptime for all hosts that we tested. Six hosts did better than the other two.

We monitored demo websites for 30 days to get these numbers. Our goal was to determine once and for all whether hosts deliver on uptime promises.

Want to know how we tested each provider? Here’s how we tested each provider’s uptime.

We first signed up for the WP hosting plan at an entry level with each host. This was just like any other new customer.

Each host was assigned a domain name and we went through each step of the signup process. We then created a new site without images, pages, or plugins.

Install only a blank WordPress default theme 2021 so every site looks the same. The host is the only thing that differs.

After all, sites had been created, we connected the domains to FreshPing and monitored uptime for 30 days at 1-minute intervals. We pulled the data after 30 days and gave each host a score based on our scale.

5 points for no downtime
4 points for less than one minute of downtime
Three points for up to 20 minutes of downtime
2 points for the downtime of 20-40 minutes
1 point for every 40 minutes of downtime

We had hoped that WP hosting providers would provide reliable servers. The uptime of one server was very poor at 99.8%, but all other servers met or exceeded our expectations.

Consider that shared WordPress hosting plans will result in less uptime. Some shared hosting plans may experience month-to-month fluctuations. It’s well worth it for the many benefits you receive at such a low price.

These are some key points to keep in mind and some questions to ask about downtime.

A host that has a high uptime rate is important to you

You can find out the reasons behind downtime at your provider (security issues, browser-side effects, and errors, or server-side errors).

What length of downtime can a single instance last?

Is there compensation offered by the provider for uncontrollable downtime

These questions and critical insights about downtime will allow you to easily choose the right provider. You should not allow any downtime, especially if you cannot afford it.

It can take a lot of time and effort to create a website. All that hard work will be wasted if your website goes down due to server problems or timeout errors.

It is a sad fact that almost everyone has to deal with it at some point.

Ecommerce businesses can suffer even more from this. A five-minute delay in accessing your website can lead to thousands of dollars in lost sales.

Many providers offer uptime guarantees to help reduce the impact of insufficient performance.

It’s important to remember that uptime warranties don’t cover unexpected downtime or other circumstances beyond their control. This covers almost every scenario in which your site might be offline. They can be misleading and it may not be worth your time to pursue compensation for poor uptime.

Speed is important for any plan (shared or managed) – 20%

Visitors will return to your WordPress site if they can access it quickly.

It makes up 20% of the overall weighted score.

We sunk our teeth into research. After weeks of meticulous research and planning, we finally discovered the truth. We also have concrete data that will prove who is fast and who isn’t.

We created and tested our websites to do this.

Only the host is different from them all. We took extra care to ensure that our testing environment was as objective and accurate as possible.

We made sure that every site had the same theme, with no plugins, images, or pages, to give a clear view of the raw speed data. We can then provide an estimate of the expected response time by doing this.

Speed testing a bare website allows you to assess the reliability and consistency of each provider’s speed.

Site speed can drop as server resources are used more. Your site speed may differ from the one we have shown.

After all, sites were up and running, we connected each domain to FreshPing to monitor server response times for one month.

We pulled the data after 30 days and gave each host a score based on our scale.

5 points for 500ms or less
4 points for 501 ms-600 ms
3 points for 601 to 700 ms
2 points for 701 to 800 ms
1 point for 801 or more ms

All hosts tested had an average response time of 630 milliseconds. Five providers performed better than the average, while three others did worse.

With an average response time of 1107 milliseconds, the provider above had one of the slowest responses of all hosts that we tested. This means that it takes more than a second for the browser of your end-users to load your site’s content.

It’s almost impossible to load your entire webpage in less than 2 seconds, as Google recommends.

Traffic spikes, speed, and traffic will vary depending on whether you have shared hosting or managed WP.

You can share space on a shared plan with other websites. Because you share space with everyone, other websites can slow down your website’s speed. This is why shared hosting is usually so affordable.

Hosts can load as many websites as possible on one server. Although it reduces costs, most hosts don’t consider speed to be a priority. Some do.

It is common for traffic spikes to delay response times. Keep that in mind. It’s not how many spikes you see and how long they last that you want to understand.

The servers of this provider respond in less than half a second and are twice as fast as the shared host we reviewed above.

Depending on the provider, managed hosting will allow you to access your server. Your website is protected from all other websites and does not have to share any information. Your website is completely unaffected by traffic from other websites or resource usage. This makes it blazing fast.

Some providers also allow only approved software and plugins to be installed on their sites. This improves speed. They prohibit the installation of bloated or error-ridden software on your WordPress site.

This helps to keep bad user experiences out of your site and improves its performance organically.

Websites must have speed as a main benefit.

It doesn’t matter if it’s managed or shared hosting. It doesn’t matter what type of hosting plan you choose, what budget you have, and what you can do now to make it work for you.

Shared and managed WordPress hosting both offer adequate speed for your site. This guide has all the answers.

Remember. Your website will be viewed slowly by visitors, which will affect your ranking. It’s that simple.

Premium Customer Support without exception

Ever wonder how customer support works?

What if I don’t get any value for my money?

Are they able to deliver on their promise of solving problems that impede my revenue stream?

Is there a problem with my website? Does it slow down, and affect my email? Get hacked? Or are things just not working the way you want them to?

All valid questions and well worth answering. This is why it’s 25% of our overall score.

Next, we set the standard for reviews. We spent hours contacting customer service to get answers to the top 3 questions that real users need answers to.

We went one step further because your hard-earned money is at stake. We tested consistency by reaching out to support via live chat at three different times throughout the day.

We can confidently inform you if they offer customer support that you can rely on or if it is intermittent and inconsistent. We also wanted to see how they respond at different times throughout the day. Because not everyone can chat at 8 AM.

In one day, we reached out to each host three times.

Mornings, between 8 and 9 a.m. PST
Afternoon, between noon and 1 p.m. CST
Evenings, between 7 and 8 p.m. PST

Live chat support was the only option to keep things consistent. Some providers don’t offer phone support, so the live chat was our best option.

These were the questions we asked (in this order)

What security measures/features do you offer for keeping my site safe?
Could you please show me how to set up an account for my domain email?
How can I speed up my website’s loading?

The entire process was then captured, including screenshots. We then took note of how each interaction went and rated each provider based on customer service criteria that you can measure and benefit from.

Here’s an example:

The chat started at 11:48 PST
A bot replied immediately and said they would get in touch with the team. I can also leave the chat if necessary since I will receive an email response.
At 12:17 PM PST, I received a reply (29 minutes response time).
Thank you for your prompt and friendly assistance. I was given a support document that provided step-by-step instructions on how to set up an email account. They were also willing to assist me if needed.
After a while, we acted as if we were creating an account. We were then asked how to forward these emails to our Gmail accounts.
We received a quick response with two support articles. They gave us two ways to access our Gmail emails. It was very simple.
The chat ended at 12:27 PST. The entire interaction took 39 minutes.

As you can see, the rep was attentive. She offered us documentation to help us follow her instructions.

We loved that they were open to answering our questions and stayed with us until the end. They solved our problem.

It was difficult to find an answer.

We assign one point to each interaction with the provider’s customer service team.

Recommendations that weren’t pushy about paying more
Advice is given beyond being sent immediately to a support article
The entire interaction was completed in under 15 minutes
In less than five minutes, you will get your initial response
The rep was friendly, knowledgeable and eager to help

We averaged all three interactions to calculate an overall customer service rating.

The scale was not chosen based on our personal opinions. Each point was selected to address common issues and complaints with web hosting customer service.

Many providers will try to sell you more than they can help you solve your problem. They’re just trying to make money, and any extra they can get to you is a plus.

We know this is not quality service, and it’s a sign that you’re not getting the support you require.

We also discovered that support representatives are often in a rush. Instead of providing personalized assistance, they send you a support article that will help you figure it out. Most likely, you have already read through all of the support articles before reaching out for assistance from customer service.

We paid attention to this in all interactions and took points away from reps who did nothing but paste a link into the chat.

These two points concern time. It is common to have to wait for hours, or even days, to be able to contact a human being who can help. We only awarded points to providers that responded within five minutes.

Some reps might be trying to assist multiple customers simultaneously. They may not be able to answer your question and have to look for it. These are often the reasons for long chats that seem endless. We took points off if an interaction lasted more than 15 minutes.

We also paid attention to whether the rep was friendly, knowledgeable about our questions, and eager to solve our problem.

Despite all this, customer support may not be a problem for you. It is best to test the product within the first 30 days. It doesn’t matter whether you have a problem. Follow up with your provider on any questions. This will let you know if they can help you.

Most hosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Register and complete the onboarding process. You can pay your fees and then test them. This is the best way to test if our research matches your expectations.

This is crucial to your satisfaction with a WP Hosting provider, even though you may think that you won’t ever need them.

It doesn’t matter if your plan is managed or shared. You deserve exceptional customer support and detailed feedback about any problem.

Hostinger

Best for the Most

Hostinger has the fastest servers of any shared host we tested. This makes Hostinger a great choice for anyone looking to launch a WordPress site. Hostinger offers a variety of affordable plans, starting at $4.99 per month for a 1-year commitment and ending at $1.99 per month for four years.

Summary

You should consider a WordPress hosting provider like Hostinger if you use WordPress to build and manage your website.

Bluehost and DreamHost are all listed “officially” as hosting providers by WordPress. WP engine and installation are exceptional options if you’re looking to manage WordPress hosting.

We recommend Flywheel for agencies and freelancers who build websites for clients.

This guide can be a great resource to help you choose the right WordPress hosting service.

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