Web hosting is an important service because it powers the website and determines its speed and performance. This sphere has many WordPress hosting providers and some of them claim to be fast. This makes it challenging to select the best because other factors are involved including costs and features.
Researching and comparing different types of WordPress hosts can be tedious. We have made your work easier by providing you with a list of top WordPress hosts for a fast and optimized website. You will find features, pricing, and available plans to help you make a fast and wise decision.
What is WordPress Hosting?
This is basically a type of web hosting optimized for WordPress websites. These web hosting companies provide a set of tools and services specifically for WordPress sites.
The journey to creating WordPress started in 2003. It began as an offshoot of b2, a blogging application, then was developed as a blogging platform but overtook its predecessor. With time the company scaled it to a full-featured web content system for different websites providing dynamic WordPress options.
There are over 68 million WordPress websites. It’s free and open-source software and developers can contribute widgets and plug-in modules and unique themes to customize websites. WordPress offers powerful, easy-to-use administrative tools.
Best WordPress Web Hosting Companies
1. Bluehost
The WordPress hosting provider is popular, reliable, and offers affordable plans. Bluehost is optimized for speed and performance as well as easy WordPress installation. The provider leverages robust hardware and scaling is quick and easy. It also provides users with a custom control panel to help them manage their WordPress site.
It has other excellent features such as:
- Free CDN and SSL certificates
- Advanced security features
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor virtualization technology
Bluehost’s Basic plan starts at $2.75 a month and offers 50 GB of storage and one WordPress installation. The Plus plan is $5.45 a month, while the Pro plan is $13.95 a month. These plans have a CDN, an SSL certificate, and a free domain for one year. However, you have to make 12 months and above commitment because this web host doesn’t offer monthly plans.
It has an impressive and consistent uptime of 100% and a good response time of less than 2 seconds.
2. Hostinger
The professional website hosting provider has the right features. Hostinger’s limited basic plan targets small or single-employee businesses. It offers 24/7 customer support when problems arise. The platform is optimized for WordPress and offers top-quality shared hosting and unlimited websites and MySQL databases.
Some of its handful of WordPress-specific features include:
- Guided installation and site-building wizard to make things easy and fast
- Automatic core and plugin updates
- Uses LiteSpeed Cache
- One-click installation
- 24/7 customer support
The Single WordPress plan goes for $1.99 a month for a single website with up to 10,000 monthly visitors, 30 GB of storage, a free SSL, and an email account. The WordPress Starter is $3.99, Business WordPress is $6.99, and WordPress Pro at $11.59.
Hostinger’s uptime is 99.9% and has a speedy loading time.
3. HostGator
The popular gator offers the most prevalent service. It has several tools and plans for users to choose from and a.
Its key features include:
- Has built-in cPanel WordPress installer translating to a painless installation
- Free SSL certificate
- 45-day money-back guarantee
- free domain for a year
- 24/7 customer support via live chat
The Starter plan starts at $2.75 a month, the shared hosting is $2.75 a month, the website builder at $3.84 a month, etc.
The provider has a solid uptime guarantee of 99.9%
4. DreamHost
The budget-friendly shared WordPress hosting provider is reliable and offers managed web hosting plans. Some of its notable features apart from being affordable and fast include:
- Has WordPress pre-installed
- Free subscription to its jetpack premium
- Dual WordPress-optimized web application firewalls (WAF) to enhance security
DreamPress is its basic plan starting at $16.95 a month for a single site with less than 100,000 visitors in a month as well as 30GB of disk space. The Plus plan is at $24.95 a month, while the Pro plan goes for $71.95 a month.
The provider offers 99.88% uptime, 0.26-sec minimum response, and 1.26-sec maximum time.
5. Cloudways
For the last 11 years, Cloudways has provided managed WordPress hosting and as a result, has hosted more than 600,000 WordPress websites and has access to over 120,000 active servers. The provider offers flexibility including unlimited WordPress websites, adding more server space with a single click, pay-as-you-go pricing, unlimited staging URLs, etc.
Other key features include:
- Free SSL, CDN add-on
- Free migration
- Unlimited application installation
- 24/7 real-time monitoring
- Advanced caches
- Automated backups
- Auto-healing
- 24/7 expert support
- Extensive knowledge base
The lowest package is the DigitalOcean plan which starts at $12 a month and has 25 GB of storage. The highest is the AWS hosting package at $3569.98 a month and 20 GB of storage. Other options include Linode, Vultr, and Google Cloud.
6. HostPapa
The Canadian-based offers web hosting solutions to small businesses with WordPress websites. Its hosting plans have pre-installed WordPress and jetpack plugins so you don’t have to waste your time and effort performing this task.
Its key features include:
- Unlimited SSD
- Free SSL certificate
- Advanced firewall
- Jetpack security features
- Free migration
- WordPress Super Cache
- Reliable customer support
HostPapa has 3 plans. WP starter is ideal for basic websites and blogs at $2.95 a month for 2 websites and 100 GB of SSD storage. WP Business is perfect for small business owners at $4.95 a month for unlimited websites and SSD storage. WP Business Pro has enhanced security, performance, and speed. It’s priced at $11.95 a month for unlimited websites and SSD storage.
HostPapa promises 99.9% uptime.
7. AccuWeb Hosting
This is a free WordPress hosting service provider. However, users must agree to promote its services on social media and forums in exchange for free hosting for life. So budget-conscious businesses and those who desire to renew their hosting plans at the introductory price can consider this Website web hosting company.
Key features include:
- Multi-layer DDoS protection
- SSD storage
- cPanel control panel, HTTP/2 PHP7 support
- Custom domain names
- Superpower of Redis
- Email accounts
- Ticket support
The free WordPress plan is free for a lifetime for a single website for up to 5,000 monthly visitors and offers 2 GB of storage.
8. WPXHosting
The WordPress web hosting provider offers good page loading time and great support.
Some of its outstanding features include:
- Unlimited site transfers to WPX
- 1-click WordPress installs
- Free malware detection and removal
- Free CDN
- Unlimited SSL certificates
- Superfast SSD storage
- DDoS protection
- Staging area
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Fast expert support
WPXHosting has 3 plans: The Business package starts at $20.83 a month for up to 5 websites and 10 GB of storage. The Professional package is $41.58 a month for up to 15 websites and 20 GB of storage. The Elite package is $83.25 a month for up to 35 websites and 40 GB of storage.
This WordPress web host guarantees 99.95% uptime and a 30-sec average support response.
9. GreenGeeks
The eco-friendly WordPress web hosting provider offers a shared hosting plan. You can easily launch your professional WordPress website with GreenGeeks using its hundreds of tutorials and information. The provider doesn’t charge you extra fees for fast performance, WordPress security, or their 300% renewable energy match.
Other key features are:
- Free SSL certificate
- Free CDN
- Free backups
- Free domain for one year
- Built-in caching
- Free WordPress installation, and migration
- WP-CLI and SSH access
- Automatic updates
GreenGeeks has different plans including the Lite plan at $2.95 a month, Pro at $5.95 a month, and Premium at $10.95 a month. These prices are subject to a three-year commitment. These plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
10. Pagely
The WordPress web hosting provider offers premium features to cater to enterprise-level projects and developers. In fact, this is a developer-centered solution due to its advanced and complicated features. These include:
- Developer-oriented tools like SSH, staging, and Git
- PRESSCDN and varnish caching
- Free reign on plugins
- Real-time malware scanning
- Automatic WordPress Core and plugin updates
- Automated daily backups
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Pagely is pricey. Its plans include Developer 1 at $199 a month for 5 websites and 30 GB of storage. Developer 2 at $299 a month for 15 websites and 30 GB of storage. Performance at $499 a month for 35 websites and 50 GB of storage as well as Performance 2 at $999 a month for 60 websites and 50 GB of storage.
11. Pressable
Vid Luther founded this managed WordPress hosting company in 2010 with the goal to transform the web host market and give website owners time to generate high-quality content. Pressable is a well-established managed web host company for WordPress websites. Its highly satisfied clients rate the site highly.
Some of its key features include:
- SSL support
- SFTP access
- In-house CDN
- Rackspace Hybrid cloud servers
- Free website migration
- Brute force attack protection and automatic malware scan
- Automatic daily backups
Pressable has three tiers; basic use, moderate use, and high volume use. The personal package starts at $25 a month for a single website and 20 GB of storage. The Starter package at $45 a month for 3 websites and 20 GB of storage. The Pro package at $90 a month for 10 websites and 30 GB of storage. The Premium package at $155 a month for 20 websites, and 50 GB of storage.
12. Nexcess
The Liquid Web-owned WordPress web hosting provider is a powerhouse that targets enterprise customers or those manning multiple WordPress sites such as freelancers and agencies. It’s easy to stage a website using Nexcess because it provides a one-click staging tool.
Nexcess outstanding features are
- Access to MySQL, SFTP, and SSH
- Free SSL included
- Beaver Builder Lite
- Automatic WordPress backups, updates
- Free migration
- Git version control
- Good security speed, and heroic customer support
Some of its great plans include the Spark plan at $19 a month for a single website and 15 GB of storage. Maker plan at $79 a month for 5 websites, and 40 GB of storage. Designer plan at $109 a month for 10 sites and 60 GB of storage. Builder plan at $149 a month for 25 sites and 100 GB of storage.
Nexcess promises you 100% uptime
13. Scala Hosting
The WordPress web hosting provider ensures that their servers support your site to perform better and each of its plans has several useful features. They include:
- Free website migration
- Dedicated firewall, brute force attack blocker
- Custom security rules
- Automatic updates
- Free domain for WP Advanced
Some of its plans include the WP Mini package at $3.95 – $4.95 a month for one website and 20 GB of storage. The WP Star package at $5.95 – $7.95 for unlimited websites, double the CPU power of the entry-level package, and 50 GB of storage. The WP Advanced at $9.95 – $10.95 for unlimited websites, quadruple the CPU power of WP Mini, and 100 GB of storage. The lower prices are for those who opt for a three-year commitment while the upper price is for two years.
14. Kinsta
This is a WordPress-specific hosting provider with a wide list of fully-managed plans. Google Cloud exclusively powers its cloud WordPress thus optimizing it for speed and performance.
Some of its key features include:
- Highly customized MyKInsta dashboard
- KeyCDN powered free CDN
- Server-level caching using Nginx Fast-CGI cache
- Free SSL certificates
- SSH access
- Free migrations
- One-click staging environments
- Automated daily backups
Each Kinsta hosting plan provides these features, has no tiered support levels but has premium 24/t support. The Starter Plan starts at $29.17 a month, Pro at $60, Business at $100, and Enterprise at $600 a month.
In terms of performance, Kinsta provides 99.99% uptime, 0.12-sec minimum Load Impact response time, and a maximum response time of 0.13 sec.
15. Flywheel
As a WordPress-specific web host, Flywheel targets all businesses with its features and plans. The provider is equally as fast as Kinsta.
Some of its features include:
- Powered by Google Cloud
- Includes a free CDN
- Customized dashboard for WordPress site management
- Uses a custom caching engine
- Provides nightly backups
- Multiple data centers spread across the world
A website that receives under 5,000 visitors a month can use its Tiny plan starting at $13 a month. The owner can upgrade to a Starter plan when its visitors grow to below 25,000, pay $25 a month, and get 10 GB of disk space. The Freelance plan goes for $96 a month and the Agency plan at $242 per month.
Its uptime is 100%, load Impact minimum response is 0.15 sec and maximum response time is 1.19 sec.
16. WP Engine
The host is specifically designed for WordPress websites. It offers different fully managed plans which are powered by a reliable architecture. They are built for scalability and speed.
The following features describe its WordPress plans:
- Built-in CDN
- Built-in caching with Memcached and Varnish
- Performance tracking and diagnostic options
- Offers two separate staging environments
- Free SSL certificates
- Quick site installation
- 24/7 support
WP Engine has a Startup Plan at $20 per month for a single WordPress site with 25,000 monthly visits and offers 10GB of local storage. The Professional plan is at $63 a month, the Growth plan at $115 a month as well as Scale plan at $290 a month. The web host offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.
It has a 99.99% uptime, 0.51-sec minimum, and 0.59-sec maximum load Impact response time.
17. SiteGround
WordPress.org has officially recommended SiteGround which has increased its popularity as a WordPress host. The provider offers multiple managed WordPress plans and outstanding features. They include:
- WordPress SuperCacher
- Free WordPress site transfers
- One-click installations
- Automatic updates
The startup plan goes for $3.99 a month for a single WordPress site with 10,000 and below monthly visitors and offers 10GB of local storage. Its GrowBig plan starts at $6.69 a month, while the GoGeek plan is at $10.69 a month. You can save a lot of money when you pick and pay a package annually or 3 years since these are promotional prices.
SiteGround downtime is 99.95%, 0.74-sec minimum, and 1.48 sec maximum response time.
18. InMotion Hosting
The WordPress hosting provider offers shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed web hosting services. In-Motion Hosting is both affordable and fast.
Some of its features include:
- WordPress-optimized Stack
- Free CDN
- Preinstalled WordPress
- Drag-and-drop WordPress page builder (BoldGrid)
- Automatic WordPress plugin
- Theme updates
The entry-level plan starts at $2.29 a month for a single website with below 20,000 monthly visitors and offers 50 GB of disk space. The Small Business plan is $7.99 a month while the Developer plan is $15.99 a month.
InMotion downtime is 100%, 0.27-sec minimum, and 0.84 sec maximum response time.
19. WPMU DEV
The provider’s business model targets WordPress developers who intend to grow their business more profitably and quickly. Users have access to The HUB which enables them to manage unlimited WordPress sites from one space.
Its key features include:
- One-click staging
- Supports SSH/SFTP, WP-CLI, phpMyAdmin, Git, NPM, etc
- Free SSL
- 45 points CDN
- The Hub site management tool
- Free valet migration & DIY migration tools
- Latest technologies like HTTP/2, PHP 8.1 and NGINX
- Automated daily backups and regular updates
- 24/7 expert customer support
- WordPress tutorials
WPMU DEV has 9 managed WordPress hosting plans. The lowest package is the Bronze plan at $12 a month and 25 GB of storage while the highest is the Iridium plan at $1,500 a month and 640 GB of storage.
20. BarkWeb
BarkWeb and 20i came together to provide a shared hosting plan. Its interface resembles the popular control panel so ideal for users accustomed to cPanel. Actually, you can have several domain accounts within a single interface and switch seamlessly between them without any challenge.
Key features include:
- Up to 10 hosted websites
- Free Wildcard SSL certificate
- Fully-featured CDN
- 100 GB of SSD storage
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Website optimization suite
BarkWeb is affordable and its starting price is $7 a month.
How do I choose the best WordPress Hosting provider for you?
Choosing the best WordPress web hosting provider is not easy. Websites rely on web host’s servers and services. These are key features that you should consider when choosing a host.
Uptime: The host should guarantee not less than 99.9% website uptime. Pages should quickly load on different browsers. Otherwise, no one will visit your site if it’s constantly down.
Server speed: The server should be fast enough and meet the Core Web Vitals requirements. They are measured using metrics like First Input Delay (FID), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). The first two metrics highly depend on the loading speed.
WordPress optimization: You should check whether your preferred web host service provider is optimized for WordPress. Check whether the company has features like pre-installed or one-click installation versions of WordPress, custom-built WordPress accelerators, or caching technology.
Hosting packages/price: The web host should provide packages that match your budget and specific requirements including free domain name, SSL, SSD storage, CDN, and daily backups.
Ease of Use: You should be able to access your website remotely through a major control panel application.
Different hosting plans: Shared hosting – the lowest tier available; VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, etc.
Ecommerce hosting: A special package for businesses that intend to conduct sales via a WordPress website. These are credit card processing and electronic shopping.
Customer Support: A good web host should be available to answer questions via multiple channels including phone, online chat, and email 24 hours a day.
WordPress knowledge base: Check whether the host provides guides, tutorials, and anything else about WordPress.