If you’re thinking of launching your very own WordPress website or blog then doing some research in the realm of best WordPress hosting is something you can’t neglect.
There’s a huge difference between the so-so hosting platforms and the very best WordPress hosting available out there on the market.
Actually, there’s a whole handful of those differences … or, as I like to call them, the 7 S’s that define best WordPress hosting: speed, security, scalability, support, space, server location, SSL (learn more on what the 7 S’s stand for in detail).
Long story short, we’ve analyzed and tested some of the most popular hosting setups for WordPress and we’re making our findings available here.
Check out the table below to get a general idea of how specific hosting companies stack up against each other, and then follow through to the individual reviews if you want to find out more.
Best WordPress hosting services of 2021: SUMMARY
| Host | Price from | Uptime | Load time | Traffic | Review | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SiteGround | $4.99 | 100% | 1.25s | 10,000 visits/month | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 2. Bluehost | $2.75 | 100% | 1.99s | unmetered | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 3. WP Engine | $20 | 99.99% | 1.18s | 25,000 visits/month | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 4. Flywheel | $13.00 | 100% | 1.68s | 5,000 visits/month | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 5. Kinsta | $25.00 | 99.98% | 1.27s | 25,000 visits/month | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 6. DreamHost | $2.59 | 99.98% | 1.23s | unmetered | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 7. InMotion | $2.49 | 99.89% | 1.0s | unmetered | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 8. A2 Hosting | $2.99 | 99.91% | 2.14s | unmetered | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 9. Hostinger | $1.99 | 99.99% | 1.12s | 100 GB | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 10. HostGator | $2.75 | 100% | 1.18s | unmetered | (read) | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Best WordPress hosting services: IN DETAIL
1. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)
- From: $4.99 / month
- Traffic allowed: 10,000 visits/month
- Uptime: 99.94%
- Load time: 1.25s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
SiteGround is one of the few WordPress hosting services officially recommended by WordPress.org, making it an excellent choice for any upcoming WordPress website.
SiteGround has an environment optimized to house WordPress sites of any size and type, and also gives you easy-to-use tools when setting up your website.
The support at SiteGround has nothing but positive reviews across the board and is available 24/7 via live chat and phone.
2. Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
- From: $2.75 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 100%
- Load time: 1.25s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Another host that’s ready for WordPress – and officially recommended by WordPress.org – Bluehost is a good choice for most users.
It’s cheap and also packs a cool extra perk – a free domain name for the first year.
Recently, Bluehost introduced their revamped user panel, which makes working with your hosting setup easier, especially if you want to launch your site using WordPress, which Bluehost will install for you.
Lastly, there’s 24/7 support, good knowledge base with guides, video tutorials and more.
3. WP Engine (www.wpengine.com)
- From: $20 / month
- Traffic allowed: 25,000 visits/month
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Load time: 1.18s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
WP Engine is certainly on the more expensive side of the spectrum when it comes to our best WordPress hosting services. But this firm has one huge thing going for it – it’s the most popular WordPress-only host in the market.
For years now, WP Engine has been mastering the WordPress space to figure out what sort of parameters a server should have to offer good performance to WordPress sites and also make sure things run problem-free.
WP Engine is also known for quality support – you can get help via their helpdesk, chat, and over the phone.
4. Flywheel (getflywheel.com)
- From: $13.00 / month
- Traffic allowed: 5,000 visits/month
- Uptime: 100%
- Load time: 1.68s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Flywheel is a more boutique WordPress host that aims their services at beginners to the WordPress ecosystem. Flywheel is ideal for users who might not need much server power but would instead like for their hosting experience to be fully hands-off.
This is an excellent managed WordPress host that handles all of the heavy lifting for you, gives you an easy-to-use panel to work with, plus it all comes at an affordable price. Such a setup will be more than enough for new websites.
5. Kinsta (www.kinsta.com)
- From $25.00 / month
- Traffic allowed: 25,000 visits/month
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Load time: 1.27s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Kinsta is another slightly more expensive web host, but it’s also a more highly WordPress-optimized offering. Kinsta prides themselves on being able to deliver great performance and good scalability for growing WordPress websites.
The entry-level plan will allow you to receive up to 25,000 visitors a month. Kinsta will also be a good platform to grow with if your website starts attracting a bigger audience (the overage charges are half of what they are with WP Engine, for instance).
Kinsta also gives you access to a big number of data center locations around the globe, 24/7 support, and they have a very user-friendly user panel, so managing your server becomes really straightforward.
6. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
- From $2.59 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Load time: 1.23s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
DreamHost has been a solid option among the best hosting services for years now. They have good reviews, offer okay performance, and have been one of the few companies endorsed by WordPress.org – something that should be important to you if you’re planning to build your website on WordPress.
DreamHost gives you access to a 24/7 support that’s a US-based team of professionals. However, since the team is US-based, the live chat support is available from 5:30 am to 9:30 pm Pacific only, but you can submit online support tickets whenever you want to.
DreamHost also offers an overall friendly user panel with one-click instant WordPress installation.
7. InMotion Hosting (www.inmotionhosting.com)
- From $2.49 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 99.89%
- Load time: 1.0s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
InMotion Hosting can be as great choice for at least two reasons. First, it offers very good performance in the US. Second, it’s one of the more affordable options among the best WordPress hosting services if you’re planning to build not one but two websites.
The one downside is that InMotion doesn’t pre-install WordPress on your server. However, you can handle that yourself via a straightforward installer script later on.
On the customer support side, you get access to a whole support center with a number of articles and tutorials, and there’s also live 24/7 support – available by live chat, phone, and email.
8. A2 Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)
- From $2.99 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 99.91%
- Load time: 2.14s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
What sets A2 Hosting apart is mainly their approach towards pricing. While most companies will force you into paying for the whole year up front, A2 lets you pay monthly, as you go. And you can also cancel at any time.
A2 also gives you a working WordPress installation out the box, so there’s no need to install anything by hand.
As for the customer support department, A2 Hosting offers what they call 24/7 Guru Crew Support. They will help you figure out any website related issue you might have.
9. Hostinger (www.hostinger.com)
- From $1.99 / month
- Traffic allowed: 100 GB of bandwidth
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Load time: 1.12s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Hostinger, albeit a newer company in the WordPress hosting space, has been making a name for itself in the industry rather quickly. The main reason is their more than attractive pricing. To get started with Hostinger it’s just $1.99 / month, which is a price that’s hard to beat.
Hostinger also has a range of hosting options available, including shared, cloud, virtual private server (VPS), and even dedicated plans. Apart from that, you also get a free domain name and one-click WordPress installation, which will speed up your website launch considerably.
Then, if you ever need any assistance, the support team is available 24/7 and you can get help in 20+ languages.
10. HostGator (www.hostgator.com)
- From $2.75 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 100%
- Load time: 1.18s
- Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
HostGator is one of the biggest web hosting companies of them all. They’ve been in this market for a number of years, and have won their customers over mainly thanks to their affordable prices and good uptime records.
Though HostGator doesn’t offer much WordPress-specific features on their entry-level plans, you can still configure WordPress pretty easily using single-click installers and then do the rest of your setup in the WordPress dashboard.
HostGator support is available 24/7 via live chat. Though the wait times can get long because of the size of HostGator’s user base. Still, a good alternative to consider when looking for the best hosting services.
The 7 S’s of best WordPress hosting
Here are the most important traits to look for in best WordPress hosting:
- Speed
- Did you know that it only takes 2 seconds of loading time for your visitor to decide that they don’t want to wait any longer? Or, to put it in other terms, if your site takes more than 2 seconds to load, people will leave. Bad WordPress hosting won’t give you good results in this realm. They actually hope you’ll never find out that their platform is slow. Luckily, things like speed are easy to test, and we do just that to point you only in the direction of the best performing hosting platforms.
- Security
- Every year, literally millions of WordPress sites get hacked (example). If your WordPress host doesn’t care, your site can be the next victim. Good hosts have sufficient precautions and procedures set in place to avoid this kind of risk.
- Scalability
- What happens if one of your articles or posts goes viral and all of a sudden thousands of people go to your site to see it at the same time? Most likely your site will crash. But if your WordPress hosting setup is scalable, it will be able to handle the influx. This we’ve tested as well.
- Support
- In case you ever need help with anything regarding your WordPress hosting setup or even your website in general, you should be able to reach out to your hosting firm. Though, that’s not always possible in the real world. We’ve tested the support departments of many hosting companies, and simply not all of them stand up to the task. Let us show you who does.
- Space
- Can you have more than one website on your single hosting setup? Can you host high-quality image or video files? Well, depends on how lucky you were picking a good hosting firm.
- Server location
- In a nutshell, you want to be able to choose a server that’s near your target audience’s geographical location. Catering to an audience in Germany? You want a server in Germany, simple! However, not all WordPress hosting companies give you a choice.
- SSL
- Aka. Secure Sockets Layer or HTTPS, is a web protocol. It’s used to make sure that whatever content you’re reading on the web hasn’t been interfered with. In other words, if your site doesn’t have SSL enabled, your visitors might have second thoughts about interacting with it. What’s more, Google now actively discourages people from even visiting websites without SSL. A good host will let you enable SSL on your WordPress website.
Who’s the best WordPress host?
Here’s the main comparison table again, just to show you a short summary of the best WordPress hosting services featured above:
| Host | Price from | Uptime | Load time | Traffic | Rating | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SiteGround | $4.99 | 99.94% | 1.25s | 10,000 visits/month | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 2. Bluehost | $2.75 | 100% | 1.99s | unmetered | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 3. WP Engine | $20 | 99.99% | 1.18s | 25,000 visits/month | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 4. Flywheel | $13.00 | 100% | 1.68s | 5,000 visits/month | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 5. Kinsta | $25.00 | 99.98% | 1.27s | 25,000 visits/month | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 6. DreamHost | $2.59 | 99.98% | 1.23s | unmetered | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 7. InMotion | $2.49 | 99.89% | 1.0s | unmetered | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 8. A2 Hosting | $2.99 | 99.91% | 2.14s | unmetered | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 9. Hostinger | $1.99 | 99.99% | 1.12s | 100 GB | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 10. HostGator | $2.75 | 100% | 1.18s | unmetered | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Here are some final recommendations:
- 💸 If you just want to get started quickly and you’re on a budget, go with Bluehost. The $2.75 entry-level price is more than enticing, you get a free domain name for the first year, and you can get WordPress installed with a couple of clicks.
- ⭐ For a cheap managed WordPress hosting solution, you can give SiteGround a go. It’s still very affordable yet it comes with some tailor-made optimizations to make your WordPress website run more efficiently.
- 💪 If you want the advanced managed WordPress hosting experience with all its perks and server power, go with Kinsta. This one will cost you $25.00 a month on the entry level, but it’s well worth it!
What to do once you pick a host?
Already have your best WordPress hosting platform set up and ready to house your website? Good! Here’s what to do next:
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