WordPress hosting can be rather intimidating when you start developing websites. If you don’t have a developer background your first setup might not be the best solution for you in the long term.
There are several things that you need to take into consideration when choosing a WordPress hosting provider, but the top items are fast & helpful customer support, good pricing, easy backups, easy staging, easy SSL installation, easy site migration, easy site setup, free dev URLs, fast site speed and large storage.
With these main options in mind, we have put together some of our top options for you to consider.
Our Top WordPress Hosting Options
Site Ground has unmatched security and is trusted by more than 2000000 domains.
They offer top website performance with a custom database setup, caching, etc.
Empowering websites to grow with a hassle-free service & easy yet powerful site tools.
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7 fast and expert support. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $4.99/month, but their GoGeek plan allocates you unlimited websites for $14.99/month. |
| Easy backups | They back up your account daily and keep up to 30 copies. You also have the option to create instant on-demand backups with the click of a button. |
| Easy staging | Make a copy of your site in a click, work on it, and then push the changes live with their staging tool. |
| Easy ssl installation | All hosting plans include free Let’s Encrypt Standard and Wildcard SSL certificates. For your convenience, the Standard SSL comes preinstalled on your site. |
| Easy site migration | They have their own migration plugin that allows for one click easy transfers for any WordPress site, hosted by them or not. |
| Easy site setup | One click setup for a normal WordPress site or one with WooCommerce. |
| Free dev urls | They give you an unlimited amount of free SiteGround dev URLs for when your websites are in development and not connected to a domain yet. Once you want to connect it to the domain it’s a one-click change to the URL. |
| Fast site speed | It is built on top of the Google Cloud Platform and includes a free CDN and the free SG Optimizer plugin for powerful caching, front-end and image optimizations, PHP version control & more! Distributed storage running on SSD disks for an optimal speed and a high level of redundancy. |
| Large storage | Distributed storage running on SSD disks for an optimal speed and a high-level of redundancy. |
2. Bluehost
Powering over 2 million websites, Bluehost offers the ultimate WordPress platform.
They’re confident that once you try them, you’ll love them. If not, let them know within 30 days to receive a full refund. Their Bluehost Marketplace is stacked with fully customizable themes and easy-to-install plugins that let you control your site’s appearance and functionality.
| Fast & helpful customer support | Legendary 24/7 support by in-house WordPress experts. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $2.95/month, but their Choice Plus plan allocates you unlimited websites for $4.95/month, but auto-renews at $16.95/month. |
| Easy backups | Multi-tiered security and backups |
| Easy staging | WP staging environment |
| Easy ssl installation | Free SSL Certificate |
| Easy site migration | Free WordPress site migration upon signing up for a hosting account! |
| Easy site setup | 1-click installation |
| Free dev urls | Your account includes a free domain registration |
| Fast site speed | Lightning-fast website speed |
| Large storage | Starting at 20 GB Web Storage to 80 GB Web Storage |
3. DreamHost
A reliable, lightning-fast hosting solution specifically optimized for WordPress. Optimized for performance and preconfigured for easy maintenance.
DreamHost’s services can help you get your site up and running fast and are specially designed for ideal WordPress operations
| Fast & helpful customer support | Their in-house and U.S-based experts are on standby for friendly, pro-level support 24/7, 365. No question is too simple or too complex. 2017 Best Support by PCMag.com. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $2.59/month, but their VPS for WordPress plan allocates you 5 websites for $27.50/month. |
| Easy backups | DreamHost creates automatic backups of your WordPress website daily. |
| Easy staging | Make a copy of your site in a click, work on it, and then push the changes live with their staging tool. |
| Easy ssl installation | They provide a free ‘Let’s Encrypt’ SSL certificate to protect your site with HTTPS — encrypting traffic and instantly boosting SEO with Google. |
| Easy site migration | Migrate for free on WordPress Basic and DreamPress plans. |
| Easy site setup | 1-click WordPress install |
| Free dev urls | Claim your very own piece of internet real estate and give your site a home with a domain name from DreamHost for free. |
| Fast site speed | It’s designed with optimum WordPress performance in mind. Their server and database software is built to be compatible with WordPress, ensuring seamless and fluid integration. Your site is guaranteed to run at peak performance. |
| Large storage | Unlimited space. With SSDs electronic storage at lightning-fast speeds means neither you or your visitors get caught up in the waiting game |
4. Hostinger
Speed-Optimized Web Hosting. Launch your website in 1 click. Hostinger prides itself on great customer service, uptime, and being a well-rounded solution.
Features:
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7 fast and expert support. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $1.99/month, but their WordPress Starter plan allocates you 100 websites for $2.99/month. |
| Easy backups | Daily backups are included in most of the plans, but the lower tiers only have weekly backups. |
| Easy staging | They have staging options available via subdomains, but the creation process is rather technical. |
| Easy ssl installation | Free SSL |
| Easy site migration | ✗ |
| Easy site setup | 1 click installer |
| Free dev urls | ✗ |
| Fast site speed | Multiple data centers with 99.9% uptime guarantee |
| Large storage | Starting at 30 GB Web Storage to 200 GB Web Storage |
Power your digital experience on the fastest, most reliable hosting platform for businesses of all sizes.
Features:
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7/365 Support |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $25/month, but their Managed Hosting Scal plan allocates you 30 websites for $241.67/month. |
| Easy backups | Daily backups on your digital experience to give you peace of mind in case you run into any site issues. |
| Easy staging | One-Click Staging: Use our tools to simplify and shorten development cycles through rapid testing of changes so you’re never surprised. |
| Easy ssl installation | Free CDN and SSL Certificates Keep your transactions safe with SSL—just add them with a single click. |
| Easy site migration | Your move to WP Engine is as simple as a couple of clicks using their auto migration plugin. |
| Easy site setup | Easily move data between your cloud development environments on WP Engine |
| Free dev urls | Dev, Stage, Prod Environments: Every WP Engine site comes with three environments to help you quickly set up an efficient development workflow. Build Local: A free, easy way to spin up local WordPress sites, test your latest site updates, and speed up your development workflow. |
| Fast site speed | They partner with Google, AWS, and New Relic, and optimize their technology specifically for WordPress. |
| Large storage | Starting at 20 GB Web Storage to 80 GB Web Storage |
6. Kinsta
Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that helps take care of all your needs regarding your website. They run their services on cutting-edge technology and take support seriously.
MyKinsta was built from the get-go as a companion to our services. It allows you to manage your sites with ease and precision.
Features:
| Fast & helpful customer support | Support is their number one priority. Pro-active WordPress experts at your service. They reach out when your attention is needed. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $39/month, but their Agency plan allocates you up to 150+ websites for $200/month. |
| Easy backups | Daily backups |
| Easy staging | Staging area for development, testing or tweaking and tuning – all in a single click. |
| Easy ssl installation | Free SSL |
| Easy site migration | Unlimited free basic migrations from other hosts, but all plans from Starter to Enterprise include one or more free premium migrations. They also have bulk migration pricing available. |
| Easy site setup | ✓ |
| Free dev urls | ✗ |
| Fast site speed | Nginx, LXD containers, PHP 8.0, and MariaDB on Google Cloud Platform for lightning speed. |
| Large storage | Starting at 10 GB Web Storage to 200 GB Web Storage |
7. Pressable
Get the performance, reliability, and support you need from the people behind WordPress.com
Why Choose Pressable?
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7 Online Support |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $17.50/month, but their Premium plan allocates you 20 websites for $108.50month. |
| Easy backups | Backups of your site every 24 hours. |
| Easy staging | Each WordPress or WooCommerce install on Pressable comes with a staging environment that can be pushed to production with a few clicks. |
| Easy ssl installation | Complimentary secure socket layer (SSL) certificates powered by Let’s Encrypt. |
| Easy site migration | Free Managed Migrations. Just contact support and let them know you’d like them to migrate your site for you. |
| Easy site setup | ✓ |
| Free dev urls | ✗ |
| Fast site speed | Tuned and optimized to deliver the best possible level of speed and reliability. Most subscribers see a significant improvement in performance after migrating to the platform. |
| Large storage | Starting at 20 GB Web Storage to 80 GB Web Storage |
8. Flywheel
Delightful managed WordPress hosting. Thoughtfully built for busy creatives.
They offer free malware cleanup so If hackers do get ahold of your site, we won’t make you upgrade plans or pay a fee. They’ll just fix it, because that’s what a great host should do.
Why Choose Flywheel?
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7 Chat Support |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $13/month, but their Agency plan allocates you 30 websites for $242/month. |
| Easy backups | Automated nightly backups |
| Easy staging | ✓ |
| Easy ssl installation | Simple SSL Certificates & Third-Party SSL Certificates |
| Easy site migration | Site cloning with free migrations |
| Easy site setup | One-click WordPress installations |
| Free dev urls | ✗ |
| Fast site speed | Our container technology powered by the Google Cloud Platform enables us to ramp up instantly to meet traffic spikes, surges, and everything in between. A CDN (powered by Fastly) with performance insights |
| Large storage | Starting at 20 GB Web Storage to 500 GB Web Storage |
| Fast & helpful customer support | 24/7 fast and expert support. |
| Good pricing | Plans starting at $5.95/month, but their Business plan allocates you 3 websites for $9.95/month. |
| Easy backups | Starting at 1 GB backups to 3 GB of backups |
| Easy staging | With a 3rd party service in their cpanel, Softaculous offers you the ability to create a duplicate of your existing website so that you can test out changes before you commit to making them to your live site. |
| Easy ssl installation | Free SSLs are available, in some form, for every domain that hosts with HostGator. On the shared, cloud, and optimized WordPress servers, every domain pointed to a HostGator server is eligible for the free SSL |
| Easy site migration | 100% free migration by their web pros |
| Easy site setup | One-click WordPress installs |
| Free dev urls | In order to qualify for (1) one free domain name registration, you must sign up for a 12, 24 or 36 month HostGator Shared, WordPress or Cloud hosting plan. |
| Fast site speed | Unmetered bandwidth and 99.9% uptime guarantee |
| Large storage | Starting at 20 GB Web Storage to 80 GB Web Storage |
There are a lot of options out there, but we hope that the summary above helps shine a light on the features vs pricing for when you decide to choose a WordPress hosting provider.
If you’d like to see how we host our WordPress sites, here is an article with the full setup process. It is a bit more technical if you prefer to go that route!
If you have any questions about hosting, or have another option you think we should consider, please drop us a message in the comments section below, or contact us in our support center.
This content was originally published here.