Choosing the best WordPress hosting for your website is extremely important. In fact, it is one of the most important components of a successful website. Before you jump in and choose a hosting provider, you should have an idea of what type of WordPress website hosting your website will need.
Do you need a dedicated server for your site, or is shared hosting enough? Can you handle all of the technical aspects of a WordPress website or should you go with managed WordPress hosting?
If you want to learn more about the various levels of WP Hosting and see what type of plan you should use for your website, see our hosting descriptions below. Otherwise, let’s get started with the list of the best WordPress hosting providers.
Best WordPress Hosting 2019
With so many WP hosting providers to choose from, the choice can become overwhelming. Let’s take a good look at a small list of the best-rated WordPress hosting providers.
BlueHost
Bluehost is a very popular hosting provider among bloggers and small business owners. They have hosting plans starting as low as $3.95 per month for shared hosting. Bluehost also offers a very wide range of hosting plan types such as VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting, and managed WordPress website hosting. Every Bluehost hosting plan includes one free domain and free SSL.
As far as performance goes, Bluehost is rated among the top hosting providers. Their uptime is greater than 99.99% with an average page load time as low as 500ms.
Bluehost also has great 24/7 customer support. They were the first hosting provider recommended by WordPress.org.
SiteGround
SiteGround is another one of the few hosting providers recommended by the WordPress community. They tend to be slightly more pricey than Bluehost, but not by much. Shared hosting plans start at $3.95 per month. SiteGround only offers shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting, but SiteGround is known for consistently keeping page load times low. This is an important factor in your sites SEO.
SiteGround is also listed as one of the top performing WP hosting platforms. Their uptime is greater than 99.99% and load times as low as 700ms. This is a little higher than Bluehost, but Siteground stays consistent under heavier traffic loads were Bluehost load time start to increase.
SiteGround also provides excellent 24/7 customer support. They are also officially recommended by WordPress.
DreamHost
Dreamhost has been around for 18 years and also highly recommended by WordPress. Like Bluehost, Dreamhost offers the complete line of WP hosting options. The Dreamhost shared hosting plan is a great place to start and will cost you $2.75 per month if you pay the whole year in advance. They also offer VPS hosting, Dedicated server hosting, and managed WordPress hosting.
As with all of the WordPress website hosting providers on this list, Dreamhost gives you greater than 99.99% uptime. The load times tend to be around 300-400ms, which is impressive.
Along with providing stellar 24/7 customer support, Dreamhost also claims to be a ‘green hosting company’. They have a list of environmentally friendly practices they use in their offices and data centers.
WP Engine
If you are willing to spend the extra money to get the VIP treatment with your WordPress host, WP Engine is the platform to go with. They only offer managed WordPress hosting, but do have top of the line service. Personal plans start at $35 per month, but they are the provider to go with if you want 5-star, hassle-free WP hosting.
They guarantee 99.99% uptime and loads times of under 600ms. WP Engine customer support is excellent and 24/7. They even have a proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system to block any DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks and more. WP Engine guarantees your site’s security and will fix any issues for free if you get hacked.
Who uses WP Engine? Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, and PBS to name a few.
WP Engine also has a nice affiliate program is you’re looking to earn some extra money.
Different Types of WordPress Hosting
Free WordPress Website Hosting
If you search you will be able to find companies offering free WP hosting. Free plans are fine for anyone who is just getting started with blogging or testing the waters. These plans do come with a few downsides.
They will usually run banner ads on your website. This is out of your control because the hosting company is trying to earn money from your site traffic to cover operating expenses.
They can also be very unreliable with the hosting service they provide.
Free hosting plans can also do away with the free service at any time. This could leave you looking for another WordPress website hosting provider at the wrong time.
If you are even slightly serious about your website, do not choose a free WP hosting provider.
Shared WordPress Hosting
The most popular type of WP hosting is shared hosting. This is the most affordable type of hosting and a great place to start for beginners. Shared hosting means that you are sharing one server with many other sites. This is great for cost efficiency. Most of these WordPress website hosting plans will claim to offer unlimited resources. However, if your website starts to consume too much of the server load you might be asked to upgrade your plan. Shared hosting is great for small businesses and beginning bloggers.
WordPress VPS Hosting
A Virtual Private server is known as a VPS and refers to a virtual machine. It is a way of dividing an actual server into separate private servers. The effect is similar to hosting your website in a dedicated WordPress hosting environment. This type of hosting plan is perfect for medium-sized business and blogs with higher traffic. If managing your own server, and all the technical things that go with it, you may want to look for a managed VPS hosting plan.
Dedicated Server WP Hosting
Dedicated server hosting is when you lease your own private server from the hosting provider. This gives you complete control over every configurable aspect of your website and hosting environment. If you are just starting out you should not need a dedicated server for hosting your WordPress site. This level is for blogs with extremely high traffic. Just like with the VPS plans described above, you may want to look for a managed dedicated server hosting plan if you do not have server administration experience.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Since such a large percentage of the internet is now powered by WordPress, many hosting providers are now offering fully managed WordPress hosting. The plans for managed WordPress hosting tend to be on the higher end of the cost spectrum. A personal account for hosting WordPress site with a managed WordPress hosting provider starts at $29/mo. and can go up to $99/mo. or more. The benefit you get from paying this premium is the hosting provider takes care of just about everything. Performance optimizations, routine site backups, and making sure your site is secure are all taken care of by the hosting provider. This type of plan is for experienced bloggers who can justify the expense with their site’s revenue. WP Engine one of the highest rated managed WordPress website hosting providers.
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