WordPress Hosting – Bloggingtips.com https://bloggingtips.com Start, Grow, and Monetize a Blog Tue, 11 Oct 2022 21:03:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 9 Best Managed WordPress Hosting For 2022 https://bloggingtips.com/best-managed-wordpress-hosting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-managed-wordpress-hosting https://bloggingtips.com/best-managed-wordpress-hosting/#respond Tue, 30 Aug 2022 14:32:46 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=94675 Read more]]> WordPress has played a significant role in democratizing the web space since 2001.

Today, you can create a blog or website in minutes without worrying about confusing technicalities.

However, issues with the WordPress back end affect your site, and managing the Content Management System (CMS) can be a hassle for many.

Fortunately, the best managed WordPress hosting can take care of that responsibility for you.

We explain what it is and why you may need it.

We also feature the top nine companies in the managed WordPress industry.


Our Top Picks: Best Managed WordPress Hosting

An overview of favorite managed WordPress hosts from our full list of managed hosting options below

WP Engine
Our Pick
WP Engine
  • The #1 hosting platform for WordPress. This is the same service that powers Bloggingtips.com
  • Massive set of features, including automated backups, automated plugin updates, and highly secure, efficient, and scalable hosting
Kinsta
Runner Up
Kinsta
  • An up-and-coming managed WordPress hosting solution - growing rapidly and quickly
  • Great price point that includes standard features such as CDN, backups, support, and more
Pressable
Budget Pick
Pressable
  • Powerful features at a great price
  • Expert support from the people who built WordPress
  • Cheaper than the alternatives, but a bit lacking in user experience

How We Tested the Best Managed WordPress Hosting

Reproducible and standardized testing is a critical component of Bloggingtips.com reviews.

Here’s how we evaluate every managed WordPress hosting service we test:

Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment: Every managed host should help you launch a fresh WordPress instance and publish it on the internet quickly.Speed & Performance: Hosts must have data centers or servers in multiple locations to improve website performance in different areas.
Security: The security level is another critical consideration.Price: The hosting plans should make monetary sense.

Our Top Recommendations Explained

This section offers a better understanding of why we chose the options we did.

1. Our Pick: WP Engine 

WP Engine is a fast and reliable managed WordPress hosting provider and one of the most popular.

The provider offers features such as automated backups, disaster recovery, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, and handles all core WordPress updates.

We choose WP Engine as the winner because they also include a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve website load time.

Plus, WP Engine has a community of experienced users who love the loading speeds and security the host offers.

The provider regularly scans sites for hacking attempts and will fix the issue for free if hacking happens.

2. Runner Up: Kinsta

We pick Kinsta as the runner-up because it uses the Google Cloud Platform for service delivery.

Users also get a custom host dashboard, daily backups, fully managed services, and reactive and proactive security.

However, Kinsta is an expensive web host offering impressive security and performance.

They have staging areas where you can test, tweak, and fine-tune your site to improve performance.

The feature makes it easy to see how changes will impact your website.

3. Budget Pick: Pressable 

Pressable is the best budget managed hosting solution for WordPress sites.

Integrated CDN and caching services offer fast load times.

You get expert hosting support and use the staging site feature to improve your website.

Their daily backups offer uses a solid disaster recovery plan.

You get all these features and more at an affordable price.

The Pressable plans depend on the number of websites you’re running and the projected monthly visits level.

Purchase managed WordPress hosting plans monthly or annually, depending on your needs and budget.


An Overview of Managed WordPress Hosting

vector graphic showing an illustration of a man working on a server that has a WordPress logo on it to illustrate managed WordPress hosting

Website hosting involves making your site available on the internet and storing data.

Website hosts are third-party service providers who help make your site accessible to users.

Managed website hosting means you lease a dedicated server from the hosting provider.

The provider then handles the challenging tasks of maintaining a fast and secure server.

But how does this all work for sites running on WordPress?

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting maintains the security of your WordPress site by handling back-end tasks such as malware detection, caching, backups, and updates.

The service optimizes the WordPress CMS while solving potential and current issues to improve site performance.

The result is a reliable, secure, and fast website.

What Is the Difference Between WordPress Hosting and Managed WordPress Hosting?

The best managed WordPress hosting offers a premium-type hosting service specifically for WordPress websites.

Such services include more functionality and performance optimizations.

WordPress hosting is a way of setting up your site and running it, while managed WP hosting goes beyond the minimum by offering features your business can use to get more out of the site.

Why Is Managed WordPress Hosting Important?

Managed WordPress hosting offers more features tailored to your WP site, including site backs that reduce website downtime, early detection of plugin security issues, and automatic deactivation of plugins likely to harm your site.

The service also offers automatic updates for your WordPress website and responsive support teams ready and capable of assisting you.

Why You Should Trust Us

Bloggingtips.com is an unbiased, independent resource, so trust us to reveal everything you need to know about hosting providers.

Finding reliable and genuine web hosting information online can be a challenge.

When we review and make recommendations for the best managed WordPress hosting services, we do so based on the experience of using one such host for the past five years.

We also run a portfolio of websites, so we need things done fast and at scale.

Over the years, we’ve been researching alternatives to ensure we aren’t overpaying for hosting.

We also follow the industry closely and always try to use the latest cutting-edge technology.

Who This Is For

Managed WordPress hosting fits all types of users.

It will benefit anyone working at an agency, as a freelancer, or as an entrepreneur.

Managed hosting benefits e-commerce websites because security, performance, and speed are vital.

More importantly, managed WordPress hosting benefits WordPress website owners.

It’s especially suitable if you don’t want to deal with the technical WordPress site aspects and want to focus on the business side.

Why This Is Best for WordPress Website Owners

Some advantages of signing up for the service include:

  • Setting up or migrating a hurdle-free WordPress website
  • Regular backups ensure a functional website loaded with branded content
  • Critical support for things such as automatic plugins and core WordPress updates
  • Access to WordPress experts
  • Malware monitoring helps expose and address server issues
  • Continuous maintenance

How We Picked and Evaluated Managed WordPress Hosts

Here, we reveal the six factors of a high-quality managed WordPress host.

These factors are what we use to evaluate the options you see.

1. Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment

The best managed WordPress hosting offers 1-click WordPress installation.

Using the process helps eliminate the tedious manual steps of installing the CMS.

Plus, you can migrate your current WordPress site from one host to another quickly.

Other hosts, such as WP Engine, have WordPress pre-installed whenever you add a website to your account.

This feature helps reduce the hassles that come with creating the CMS.

Why Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment Matters

Managed WordPress hosting condenses the steps of setting up and configuring your new WordPress install into a few clicks.

The time it takes to download the latest WordPress version, upload to a server, and set up and configure databases is better used in designing your site.

Managed WordPress hosting ensures your new WP installation is ready in less than five minutes.

Quality services offer staging environments so you can test website functionality before deploying.

2. Speed & Performance

Speed is a killer, especially slow website speeds.

A well-managed WordPress host ensures their IT environment delivers fast, reliable speeds.

Why Speed & Performance Matters

Site loading time is a critical user experience component.

It’s a crucial factor in your organic SEO efforts because Google wants its users to have an excellent experience.

Web pages should load in under a second or two.

Longer load times mean your visitors look elsewhere for the information they seek.

Statistics show that 53% of online users abandon a site when load time takes over three seconds on mobile devices.

3. Security

A secure website is critical when potential customers engage with your site and helps you rank in search results.

WP Engine and Kinsta offer their customers an SSL certificate, so your users are safe while browsing the website.

Why Security Matters?

WordPress is the most popular CMS for major business websites and personal blogs.

However, the popularity makes the CMS a huge target for hackers.

A massive 73% of the most popular WordPress sites in 2013 were using software versions with security weaknesses.

Hosts that provide their WordPress hosting customers with automatic updates play a critical safety role.

Further, free and configured SSL certificates encrypt data passing between visitors and your website.

Daily backups enable you to restore your website when it goes down quickly.

4. Price

A managed WordPress hosting plan is perfect for businesses and individuals who want to get the most value from each dollar.

But spending more shouldn’t be an issue as long as you’re getting value.

However, how providers charge for resources varies considerably.

Why Price Matters

The biggest price differentiators are:

  • Bandwidth
  • Storage space
  • The number of sites you can create

The WP Engine price plan reveals that the more websites, storage, and bandwidth you require, the more costs increase.

However, Pressable is cheaper and offers higher limits.

Look for annual contracts which offer a better bargain than buying monthly.

Plus, it’s also less stressful to stick with a provider for longer than having to migrate a critical WordPress business website when your needs grow.

So, look for a platform that offers tiered plans to accommodate your growing traffic.

5. Other Features

Don’t make a purchase decision based solely on peripheral elements.

We also look out for managed WordPress hosting providers offering a few freebies.

However, we have to check whether the freebies are helpful, so you spend less money in the long term.

Why Other Features Matter

Some hosts only have discount codes for some popular services they make affiliate income from, but others are proactive by offering extra tools for the job.

Some additional features include offering free CDN to drop your website speeds further or a collection of the best WordPress themes.

As you build the website and improve the user experience, staging environments can help compare different ideas, layouts, options, and customizations.

Dedicated WordPress hosting providers, such as WP Engine and Kinsta, reduce the number of plugins you require on your site because you can do so much directly on the platforms.

Reducing the plugin number also decreases website issues, especially when scaling.

6. Support & Customer Service

24/7 support can help fix issues with your website.

The best hosting providers also make it a breeze to contact their customer service teams through various channels.

Why Support & Customer Service Matters

All providers promise top-notch service, so we dive into online reviews and see what the reality is.

An all-day, all-night live chat facility is great.

But what happens if there’s a queue?

Sifting through reviews helps us figure out companies with the best customer services.

For example, Kinsta doesn’t offer phone support, but their live chat and ticketing are impressive.

We also look at the migration assistance you get.

While we rate WordPress migration plugins highly, service providers such as WP Engine have customized plugins that simplify the process.

The Best Managed WordPress Hosting: Our Top Picks in Detail

Let’s explore some of the best managed WordPress hosting services.

1. Our Pick: WP Engine 

Our Pick
WP Engine

The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.”

So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting.

Managed WordPress hosting has been a WP Engine service since its creation.

Today, the host is one of the most popular options among businesses and offers you everything you require from a website host.

The price is high compared to other providers, but that’s because you get fast load times, secure servers, and excellent support.

Specs:

  • One-Click WordPress Deployments? Yes
  • Free SSL Certificates? Yes
  • Free Migrations? Yes
  • Price:
    • Startup: $20 per month
    • Professional: $39 per month
    • Growth: $113 per month
    • Scale: $275 per month
    • Dedicated Custom: Price on request

What We Like:

WP Engine is a popular web hosting company that offers many advantages, including:

  • Fast page load speed: WordPress-optimized servers use WP Engine’s EverCache technology to load websites fast, and CDN further boosts performance.
  • Improved security: WP Engine protects websites using many advanced security features not available from other hosts.
  • Reliable: The proprietary front-end layer system handles traffic spikes without affecting your website speed.
  • Excellent support: Over 100 representatives make it easy to contact someone when you require help.
  • Up-to-date hosting: The platform ensures WordPress sites get the latest updates and patches.

What We Don’t Like:

WP Engine, however, may not be ideal for everyone.

Some disadvantages to using the provider are:

  • No domain registration: WP Engine only offers hosting services, so you need to register your domain names with another company.
  • Disallowed plugins: You can’t install some WordPress plugins because they duplicate or conflict with WP Engine features or increase server load.
  • Only hosts WordPress: WordPress is a popular website builder but not the only CMS in the industry.
  • No email hosting: You can’t host your email through the provider, so you require a third party or choose another host.
  • Expensive: WP Engine shared hosting plans are more expensive, but the services you get are worth the cost.

Why We Chose WP Engine as Our Winner

While it’s not perfect, WP Engine meets most requirements to become the best managed WordPress hosting provider.

1. Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment

You install WordPress as you do with other web hosts.

The CMS comes pre-installed.

After signing up and choosing your plan, you get an introductory email with login credentials and how to get started without excess setup procedures.

WP Engine also makes creating pages, posts, and galleries easy.

2. Speed & Performance

WP Engine combines NGINX web extensions, CDN, and SSD technologies to boost your website to the optimal speed.

CDN helps deliver content to visitors depending on location, decreasing page load times.

The provider can differentiate between bot requests and people visiting your site.

WP Engine prioritizes human traffic to ensure your website visitors get fast and efficient performance.

You get a 99.95% uptime guarantee from WP Engine, but this may go up to 99.99% when implementing their enhanced Service Level Agreement (SLA).

A page performance tool runs tests and suggests improvements you should make to improve website performance.

3. Security

All plans from WP Engine come with a free SSL certificate.

You also get a firewall, and the host does daily malware scans to block threats.

The scans are vital if you’re running an e-commerce site that handles sensitive client information.

Enterprise-level firewalls detect threats in real-time, and experts perform free hacking remediation steps.

4. Price

WP Engine offers four hosting packages to address the needs of different customers.

Differences between packages come with the storage amount, bandwidth, and number of visitors.

For example, the startup plan is for a single site with 25,000 visitors monthly, 10 GB storage, and 50 GB bandwidth per month.

Each plan gives you access to over 30 premium themes, free automatic migrations, and daily backups.

The plans also have one-click staging, free SSL and SSH, and advanced security.

5. Other Features

The WP Engine Local Development Environment makes setting up your website simpler.

This tool lets your team use Xdebug and MailHog for debugging and testing.

Git and SFTP connections give you access to development tools they already know.

You can also choose from over 55,000 plugins to improve user experience and add custom website functions.

6. Support & Customer Service

The host boasts a dedicated team of WordPress support experts and an over 97% customer satisfaction rate.

You can contact support 24/7 through live chat.

Phone support is available all days of the week and at any time for all plans apart from Startup.

WP Engine has an extensive library of knowledge base articles, tutorials, and how-to guides.

2. Runner Up: Kinsta

Kinsta

Kinsta is a favorite of ours because it allows so much traffic. Perhaps you have a huge growth curve coming up or you’re struggling to cope with traffic spikes at the moment.

Kinsta runs on the Google Cloud Platform while implementing its proprietary LXD-managed hosts to house each website in a container.

Kinsta also fine-tunes WordPress databases automatically depending on your site’s requirements.

Access dozens of timesaving features when you sign up with Kinsta.

Specs:

  • One-Click WordPress Deployments? Yes
  • Free SSL Certificates? Yes
  • Free Migrations? Yes
  • Price:
    • Starter: $35 per month
    • Pro: $70 per month
    • Business 1: $115 per month
    • Business 2: $225 per month
    • Business 3: $340 per month
    • Business 4: $450 per month
    • Enterprise 1: $675 per month
    • Enterprise 2: $1,000 per month
    • Enterprise 3: $1,350 per month
    • Enterprise 4: $1,650 per month

What We Like:

Kinsta pricing plans offer customers access to all core features and several things we like, including:

  • Excellent performance: The Kinsta platform runs on Google Cloud, so you get fast website speed and fantastic uptime.
  • Automatic database optimization: Kinsta takes care of optimizing your website’s database without doing it manually or using a plugin.
  • Automatic and on-demand backups: The platform backs up your site automatically, and you can pull them on-demand.
  • A proprietary hosting dashboard: Customers don’t have to deal with a clunky cPanel. Instead, they get a slick and easy-to-use user interface.
  • Free CDN and firewall: Your secure WordPress site runs faster.

What We Don’t Like:

Kinsta is not without drawbacks.

Here are some cons:

  • Expensive: Users pay between $30 and $60 monthly for the basic plans.
  • No email hosting: You need to contact another platform to accommodate business emails.
  • Low PHP worker limits: PHP workers let you run multiple PHP processes simultaneously. Kinsta has a lower number of workers compared to other hosts.
  • WordPress only: While expected of WordPress-managed hosting, it can be an issue for some users.
  • Extra fees for US users: Users from the United States paying via credit card pay an additional fee if they don’t use a wire transfer.

Why We Chose Kinsta as Our Runner-Up

Here are our criteria of what makes Kinsta runner-up for the best managed WordPress hosting services.

1. Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment

Kinsta offers users a dedicated tool for setting up their websites and presets for WooCommerce and WordPress multisite.

You can choose the data center you want per site.

The feature ensures your geographic-specific site remains fast for local visitors.

Staging and deploying your final website is effortless using Kinsta’s one-click WordPress staging environments.

2. Speed & Performance

Kinsta exclusively offers Google Cloud server hosting, using virtual server space to tap into a network of physical servers.

The technology provides excellent reliability, flexibility, scalability, and speed advantages.

Kinsta uses Google’s private fiber network that can reach speeds of up to 10,000 TB per second.

Further, the platform is active on the Google Cloud Premium Tier to offer high-performance levels.

3. Security

All Kinsta websites get free one-click SSL certificate activations through Cloudflare.

The staff receives instant alerts when someone tries to hack your site or it is down, so they can get straight to solving the issue.

Daily malware and spyware scanning, blocking DDoS and code injection attacks, and free hack fixes ensure you have peace of mind.

4. Price

A few years ago, the cheapest Kinsta WordPress hosting package would set you back about $100 a month.

But things changed in 2018.

The platform now has accessible, albeit expensive, entry-level plans starting at $35 monthly.

All plans come with free SSL certificates and a quota for CDN usage.

Higher tiers get more PHP workers per site, which helps improve website speed and performance.

You can get two months free on all plans if you choose annual billing.

5. Other Features

Kinsta runs automatic backups daily and stores them for 14 days, but you can pay extra for automated backups every one or six hours.

Server-level caching means you don’t have to lift a finger.

Kinsta implements page, object, bytecode, and CDN caching.

6. Support & Customer Service

Kinsta only offers live chat support — there’s no option for phone support.

However, you can reach the support team day or night.

The live chat support widget is user-friendly.

Kinsta also offers support in multiple languages, which is excellent if you’re not a native English speaker.

Budget Option: Pressable

Pressable

This is an all-rounder as you get everything from daily backups to excellent security.

What we love about Pressable is that the brand uses some of the best servers available called Rackspace Hybrid cloud. Because they pair this with SFTP access security.

Automattic, the same company behind WooCommerce and WordPress.com, owns Pressablem meaning it gets a unique position in the WordPress sphere.

The platform offers users excellent managed WordPress hosting services at a lower cost, making it a good option if you’re on a budget.

Specs:

  • One-Click WordPress Deployments? Yes
  • Free SSL Certificates? Yes
  • Free Migrations? Yes
  • Price:
    • Entry (one site, 5,000 monthly visitors): $19 per month
    • Personal (one site, 30,000 monthly visitors): $25 per month
    • Starter (up to three sites, 50,000 monthly visitors): $45 per month
    • Pro (up to 10 sites, 150,000 monthly visitors): $90 per month
    • Premium (up to 20 sites, 400,000 monthly visitors): $155 per month
    • Business (up to 50 sites, 1,000,000 monthly visitors): $350 per month
    • Business 80 (up to 80 sites, 1,600,000 monthly visitors): $545 per month
    • Business 100 (up to 100 sites, 2,000,000 monthly visitors): $675 per month
    • Custom Plan: Contact for pricing

What We Like:

Pressable is the best budget managed WordPress hosting solution that offers several benefits:

  • Budget-friendly pricing: You get more bang for your buck with affordable pricing.
  • Admin-level tool: Collaboration with experts when designing and managing your WordPress site.
  • Personalized onboarding: Pressable assigns a staff member to every new customer to help set up the account, start a site, or manage migration.
  • Impressive performance: The platform uses server-end NVMe storage, pre-built CDN, and Automatic Failover.
  • Malware scanning and removal: Pressable runs regular malware scanning and will also fix your website in case of hacking.

What We Don’t Like:

Pressable is a competitive managed WordPress hosting provider, but with a few downsides:

  • No email hosting: You must pay an additional $3.50 for each email you add to your website.
  • No dedicated file manager: Customers must use an FTP client to manage and upload files to their website, which is confusing for beginners.
  • No free premium WordPress themes: Other competitors offer a few premium themes free with their hosting plans.
  • WordPress specific: Not all website owners use WordPress, so we can’t recommend Pressable if you’re in that group.
  • Upgrade-specific support: Customers must upgrade their accounts to get 24/7 phone support or access the dedicated Slack channel.

Why We Chose Pressable as Our Budget Pick

Pressable has affordable and flexible managed WordPress hosting plans, depending on your preference. Here’s our criteria rating for the provider.

1. Rapid WordPress Creation & Deployment

Starting a new site is as simple as tapping the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner of the Pressable dashboard and following the prompts.

The platform sends an email once the deployment is complete.

This email contains instructions for logging into the new WordPress site.

You can also select an existing website on the dashboard to get a control panel for the specific installation.

Some controls and information include an overview, stats, users, and backups.

2. Speed & Performance

Customers get a 100% uptime guarantee from Pressable.

If the platform can’t fulfill this promise, you get a 5% monthly fee refund for each 30-minute downtime you experience.

You also get CDN to enhance website speed, regardless of the website traffic.

Pressable also has Automatic Failover, a feature that switches your website server to an alternate one in case of an issue.

3. Security

Each Pressable website gets automatic protection by a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to ensure it’s unsusceptible to common cyber attacks, such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections.

The platform also has a security expert team that watches your website for malware, and free SSL certificates help keep your website visitors at ease.

4. Price

Pressable has plans suitable for individuals, small to medium-sized businesses, and enterprise plans.

You can choose the plan depending on the number of WordPress installs you want and the expected monthly visitors.

5. Other Features

The platform has free managed WordPress migration, or you can use their migration plugin if you want to make the switch yourself.

An easy-to-use dashboard makes managing your websites simpler.

And customers get a premium Jetpack Security Daily subscription free with all plans apart from the Entry level.

Use the Pressable staging environment to test your site’s functionality, design, and layout before it goes live.

6. Support & Customer Service

The platform doesn’t offer telephone support.

However, the Pressable email ticketing system is accessible between 8 and 11 CST throughout the week.

The support team responds to emails within 60 minutes, but customers report longer weekend wait times.

You also get additional support via a knowledge base section, which includes help guides, tutorials, and FAQs.

Notable Mentions: Other Great Managed WordPress Hosting

You should consider a hosting plan optimized for WordPress if you’re running a WP website.

The recommendations above are the best place to start your search.

But are some other notable mentions.

1. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a high-powered Web Hosting provider that their fine uses its SwiftServer platform to decrease the load time of your website.

They offer a wide variety of hosting options like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting.

A2 Hosting is one of the oldest web hosting providers that claim to offer fast performance.

The platform has shared hosting plans, domain names, managed WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, and Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.

A2 Hosting offers plenty of options to boost your website, so visitors always have an easy browsing experience.

Why Is A2 Hosting a Great Option?

All A2 Hosting plans come with unlimited email accounts, while the cPanel application installer offers you access to multiple CMSs, such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.

The Startup plan provides customers with a 100 GB storage limitation, and other tiers have unlimited space.

Drawbacks to A2 Hosting

Unfortunately, A2 Hosting isn’t a WordPress-specific hosting provider.

Installing WordPress in your A2 Hosting account means taking a few steps in the outdated cPanel to find Softaculous.

Further, a concurrent HTTP connections limitation is a deal breaker for websites getting more traffic.

2. Cloudways 

Our Pick
Cloudways

Cloudways is an industry leader and innovator, providing consumers with several advantages over conventional web hosting services.

These include far higher availability, more scalability, and superior performance.

With Cloudways, you can put aside the time-consuming technical details and concentrate on making your website look great.

Cloudways is another popular way to start managed WordPress hosting.

The platform strives to offer accessible cloud hosting through the traditional cPanel while making pricing predictable.

Customers get a WordPress hosting solution that’s auto-installed and configured specifically for their cloud products.

Why Is Cloudways a Great Option?

Cloudways offers a wide selection of cloud providers, so you’re not locked into a single service.

You also get fantastic pricing flexibility.

Plus, the Cloudways support team is familiar with WordPress, and customers can get help setting up, configuring, and maintaining their WP websites.

Drawbacks to Cloudways

However, Cloudways doesn’t technically offer managed WordPress hosting services.

Cloudways makes cloud hosting less confusing than getting the service directly from a cloud provider, but they use a lot of jargon and confusing terms you wouldn’t find in traditional web hosting.

3. SiteGround 

Also Great
SiteGround

SiteGround’s hosting service prioritizes the security and performance of the websites it hosts, and as a result, it provides a wide variety of tools and proprietary in-house solutions.

SiteGround provides customized in-house performance optimization and security, making it one of the officially recommended WordPress hosting providers.

SiteGround rolled out its cloud hosting service in 2010, so it’s been around for a few years.

The platform doesn’t regulate its pricing plans depending on the number of sites but on resource caps.

Why Is SiteGround a Great Option?

All plans offer you access to WordPress starter, a tool that helps you choose the best theme for a site and install essential plugins.

You can also migrate unlimited WordPress sites to the service using the WP Migrator plugin.

And the proprietary SiteGround control panel is responsive and user-friendly.

Drawbacks to SiteGround

First, their resource-based pricing is confusing for some users.

Anybody unfamiliar with cloud hosting will find judging resource use and budgeting hard.

Second, business owners and DIYers find getting help from the support team frustrating.

Lastly, SiteGround isn’t a fully managed WordPress hosting provider, but its features offer something close.

Even More Options To Check Out

Here are even more WordPress hosting options worth checking out.

1. Flywheel

Also Great
Flywheel

Flywheel is one of a few managed WordPress hosts endorsed by WordPress.

It offers a range of options, rapid speeds, and a 30-day money back guarantee that lets you test drive the service before you buy.

Flywheel is designed for enterprise-level clients, although individual bloggers can still benefit.

Their services target creatives and designers, but also cater to individual site owners.

Nifty features that web designers love include:

  • Billing transfers to clients
  • Easy collaboration
  • Staging sites

WP Engine bought Flywheel back in 2019, but both companies still run separately and offer distinct features.

However, you’ll notice some price standardization and features, such as the local development tool.

2. WordPress VIP

WordPress VIP

Here’s your answer if your site needs help dealing with large amounts of traffic. Or rather, not large, but massive. If you expect as much traffic as the Time website then you’ve probably found your hosting solution.

This high-end hosting platform serves large-scale enterprise firms and businesses with high daily traffic.

A glance over the websites the platform hosts shows its power.

These clients include Facebook, Spotify, Quartz, and USA Today.

The website doesn’t have a public pricing page.

However, research indicates that pricing starts from $2,000 to $25,000 a month.

The price includes unlimited CDN, storage, bandwidth, and dedicated support.

The platform also has strict coding standards and processes, which makes it unsuitable for many businesses.

3. DreamPress

DreamPress is a Dreamhost-managed WordPress hosting solution.

Some platform features include on-demand and daily backups, free automatic WordPress migrations, unlimited email, and 1-click staging.

However, DreamPress doesn’t have data centers outside the US, which can be a problem if most of your traffic is from other countries.

Further, you can only install one WordPress instance on your server and don’t get access to advanced features.

Live chat support at DreamPress is infrequent, and you may have to wait a long time before you get connected.

Alternatives To Best Managed WordPress Hosting Category

If you’re on a tight budget and unhappy with the features the best managed WordPress hosting providers offer, there are other alternative categories to consider.

Cheap Website Hosting

Cheap web hosting offers you all the benefits of running your business on the internet without spending a lot.

While opinions vary regarding performance, the truth is that it’s not determined by how much you spend.

Cheap site hosting services are perfect for small businesses and blogs, making them a popular choice for startups.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting means your website shares the same server space with others.

The service is best if you’re a new website and traffic is still growing.

Shared hosting services offer a built-in cPanel to ease control over things, such as add-on domains, databases, and email setup, all for free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some questions we frequently see about the best managed WordPress hosting.

vector graphic showing an illustration of a man working on a server that has a WordPress logo on it to illustrate managed WordPress hosting

Is managed WordPress hosting worth it?

Yes, we think managed WordPress hosting is worth the cost.

WordPress hosting costs more than regular hosting but can save you considerable money and time.

The hosting solution provides convenience so you, the website owner, can take a hands-off approach.

Hosts manage the technical aspects of managing your website, and you can focus on growing your readership.

Is there such a thing as cheap managed WordPress hosting?

Yes. But the key to finding an affordable, yet quality-managed WordPress hosting service is getting it from companies of high reputations and reading online reviews before making a purchase.

Ensure the performance tests reviewers post reflect your reliability and load speed requirements.

Wrapping Up

The best managed WordPress hosting provider depends on your needs.

If you’re looking for a managed hosting provider to scale your business or agency’s WordPress site, we recommend the agency-focused WP Engine.

But if you want to host a single hobby site and not worry about backups, migration, updates, or other maintenance tasks, you’re better off with Kinsta.

Pressable is the best solution if you’re on a tight budget.

All three providers offer rapid WordPress creation and deployment, speed and performance, security, and excellent support services.

Make sure you evaluate your requirements and match them with what a hosting provider offers.

This list covers the top nine picks you can go with if you don’t have peculiar needs.

Which managed WordPress hosting provider did you pick for your site?

Is there a company we missed that deserves a spot?

Comment in the section below and let us know!

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/best-managed-wordpress-hosting/feed/ 0
WordPress Hosting for Colleges [Top 6] https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-colleges/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-hosting-for-colleges https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-colleges/#respond Tue, 16 Aug 2022 09:06:30 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=93645 Read more]]> WordPress is a ubiquitous program used by millions of websites worldwide.

This free, open-source content management system provides users uncanny flexibility regarding design, functionality, and customization.

Consequently, WordPress hosting for colleges is a popular website platform because it’s cost-effective and easy to use.

An Overview of WordPress Hosting

WordPress and its hosting providers are skilled in login capacity, speed, and cloud storage.

They ensure that your website is always accessible to anyone.

Some producers are better suited to handle educational institutions and their specialized needs.

What Is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress hosting supplies resources and uniquely optimized servers for WordPress websites.

After opting for WP hosting service, it includes features like automatic software updates, customer support knowledge about WordPress, and one-click-install.

Why Is WordPress Hosting Important?

Websites built with WordPress happen to integrate seamlessly with WP hosting, and it will serve to improve your site’s security and functioning, and it offers automatic updates.

WordPress hosting is an optimizing agent for your site by performing various administrative tasks that keep it secure and working optimally while maintaining your file caching system.

Best WordPress Hosting for Colleges

Thanks to WordPress hosting, there’s no need to install or configure any software on your computer.

You can utilize the web-based control panel and your hosting plan to manage your site from a single location.

Below you’ll find the top selections for WordPress hosting for colleges:

1. Bluehost.com

Our Pick
Bluehost.com

Bluehost improves WordPress websites’ design, speed, and optimization performance and has supported WordPress users as early as 2005.

Top-notch security: One of the best security measures out there.

Product Screenshot

Overview

Bluehost improves WordPress websites’ design, speed, and optimization performance and has supported WordPress users as early as 2005.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For: User-friendly platform

Notable Features

  • Top-notch security: One of the best security measures out there.
  • Fast sign-up: Simply name your website, choose a layout and begin building by selecting a relevant hosting package.
  • Get quick results: Reap optimization benefits through the tools to sell, scalable growth, and the freedom to design.

Pros:

  • Reputation: Reputable web hosting company that provides quality services.
  • Various hosting options: Offers many hosting options, including VPS, server, and shared plans.
  • Accessible customer support: Offers 24/7 customer support by email, live chat, or telephone.
  • Feature-rich: Offers many features, including unlimited bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a free site builder and domain name.
  • User-friendly: Advanced students will enjoy this provider.
    The platform is user-friendly, and the plans are very scalable with 50GB.

Cons:

  • Pricey: A bit more expensive than other web hosting companies.
  • Limited customer service: Doesn’t offer 24/7 customer service.
  • Limited credit: The least expensive plan only offers $50 in marketing credit.

Is Bluehost.com Hard To Use?

Bluehost will also make setting up your website simple and easy to manage.

The cPanel interface is enhanced and a breeze to use.

Pricing & Plans

Every plan features a certain number of websites, a free domain, a marketing credit, and SSD storage.

Each plan allows you to get more access to essential features.

  • Basic Plan: Costs $2.75/month for the first year, then increases to $7.99/month once you renew your plan.
  • Bluehost’s Plus Plan: Starts at $5.45/month for the first year, increasing to $10.99/month once you renew your plan.
  • Bluehost Choice Plus Plan: The first year costs $5.45/month, increasing to $14.99 once you renew.
  • WordPress Pro Plan: Costs $13.95/month, all features are unlimited, and you also have extra security and analytics add-ons.

Our Take

Bluehost is an excellent choice for beginners, as it has you need to get started with WordPress.

Features such as automatic WordPress installation, free drag-and-drop page builder, and automatic WordPress installation are readily available.

They also offer a 30-day guaranteed refund to all users.

2. SiteGround.com

Runner Up
SiteGround.com

Whether you have an established or new WordPress application, SiteGround is an excellent host for both.

SiteGround’s service is dependable and expedient.

They provide budget-friendly shared WordPress hosting options.

Product Screenshot

Overview

Whether you have an established or new WordPress application, SiteGround is an excellent host for both.

SiteGround’s service is dependable and expedient.

They provide budget-friendly shared WordPress hosting options.

Lastly, they provide free student hosting for educator sites.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: Small businesses and bloggers

Notable Features

  • Build a site: Build a website easily and swiftly using WordPress site builder.
  • Migrate a site: SiteGround allows you to expand your company’s online presence by transferring your WordPress website to SiteGround.
  • Sell Online: With e-commerce hosting, you can increase your online sales; it’s uniquely developed for online stores.

Pros:

  • Various packages: Many hosting packages, including cloud hosting, dedicated servers, and hosting.
  • Good track record: Reputable and has been operating since 2004.
  • Consistent customer support: 24/7 customer service.
  • No risk: They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Cons:

  • Expensive: Web hosting packages are more costly than some other competitors.
  • No live chat: Site doesn’t offer live chat services, which is inconvenient.
  • Only shared hosting: No managed hosting in the basic plan.

Is SiteGround.com Hard To Use?

SiteGround is very easy to manage.

They boast an award-winning technical support team that’s responsive and dedicated to getting your site established and running as swiftly as possible.

Pricing & Plans

Each plan comes with a free site transfer for a limited period.

Additionally, you’ll get a certain amount of storage, websites, visits, free domain, free email, and more.

  • The StartUp plan: $14.99/month for 10GB of storage.
  • GrowBig Plan:$24.99/month with 20 GB of storage.
  • GoGeek Plan: $39.99/month with 40 GB of storage.

Our Take

Despite the higher renewal costs, SiteGround is the perfect hosting platform for students and educators to create ePortfolios and blogs.

3. WP Engine

Also Great
WP Engine

WP Engine is the perfect scalable hosting site already managed for your convenience.

It’s an ideal solution for large agencies hosting dozens of sites at once and individual educators.

WP Engine offers a more customized experience that allows instructors to host hybrid learning practices.

Product Screenshot

Overview

WP Engine is the perfect scalable hosting site already managed for your convenience.

It’s an ideal solution for large agencies hosting dozens of sites at once and individual educators.

WP Engine offers a more customized experience that allows instructors to host hybrid learning practices.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For: Customer Service

Notable Features

  • Excellent technical service: Offers tech health assessments, a personalized onboarding experience, and business reviews.
  • Website security: Get scheduled, routine updates and a daily automated backup.
  • Mobile-friendly website: Setting up a mobile-friendly website takes just a few minutes.
    You can easily migrate it to WP using their developer tools and custom themes.

Pros:

  • Reliability: Offers fast load times for a WordPress hosting platform.
  • Enhanced security: Features malware scanning and other precautions to ensure that your site(s) is always secure and protected.
  • Large community: Numerous developers and users are always willing to help.
  • Versatile plans: Offers various plans tailored to your needs and budget.
  • User-friendly: Intuitive interface is easy to use.

Cons:

  • No free domains: Won’t get any free domains with their packages.
  • Expensive: Costly compared to other hosting platforms.
  • Not the best for smaller sites: Small sites might not feel like WP Engines plans are worth the money.

Is WP Engine Hard To Use?

WordPress Engine may not be the easiest to use for beginners unfamiliar with the program.

It is more suitable for those with multiple WordPress sites and some experience with technology.

Pricing & Plans

  • Startup Plan: $25/month
  • Professional: $49/month
  • Growth: $96/month
  • Scale: $242/month

Our Take

WP Engines is a managed hosting site that offers reliable customer service, security features, and advanced tools, making it worth the extra money you have to pay monthly.

Each plan comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

4. Kinsta

Kinsta

Kinsta functions on powerful servers, allowing you access to RAM and CPU in abundance.

Kinsta also uses Google Cloud Platform, with excellent network connections and lightning-fast loading speed.

Product Screenshot

Overview

Kinsta functions on powerful servers, allowing you access to RAM and CPU in abundance.

Kinsta also uses Google Cloud Platform, with excellent network connections and lightning-fast loading speed.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: Reliability and a Fast Hosting Solution

Notable Features

  • Almost entirely hands-free: You don’t have to worry about managing your website; you can dedicate your efforts to expanding it.
  • Monitoring: Provides a built-in tool that monitors the application’s performance.
    If your site is slow, Kinsta can pinpoint the problem quickly.
  • Worldwide content delivery: You can cache all of your assets to any of their over 200 locations to deliver content closer to users.

Pros:

  • Excellent customer service: Reliable customer service team addresses concerns promptly.
  • Speed: Faster loading equates with higher conversions, lower bounce rates, longer user interaction sessions with your site, and more.
  • User-friendly dashboard: The dashboard layout is modern, clean, and easy to navigate.
  • Multilingual support: Customers get support in various languages.
  • Flexible price plans: Offers many pricing plans to suit your budget.

Cons:

  • Big price jumps: Some users feel like there’s a big price gap between the plans, but the features are not vastly different from one level to the next.
  • No email: Have to sign up for a separate email service.
  • Limited customer service: No phone support.

Is Kinsta Hard To Use?

Kinsta is easy to use, and they’ve worked hard to make their domain modification

and the control panel layout is simple to navigate and manage.

Pricing & Plans

  • Starter Plan- $35/month
  • Pro Plan- $70/month
  • Business 1 – $115/month
  • Business 2 – $225/month
  • Business 3 – $340/month
  • Business 4 – $440/month
  • Enterprise 1 – $675/month
  • Enterprise 2 – $1000/month
  • Enterprise 3 – $1350/month
  • Enterprise 4 – $1650/month

Our Take

If you’re going for innovation with an intuitive design, Kinsta is an excellent choice.

Even without phone support, the tech staff walks you through every step, or they’ll handle it.

That aspect of their service, coupled with the speed, makes them a top contender as a WordPress hosting site.

5. DreamHost

DreamHost

Small businesses and individuals can greatly benefit from DreamHost’s shared hosting platform.

While the features they offer are the same as other hosts, their prices are more affordable.

This platform is best for course creators and bloggers who want to take their site to the next level.

Product Screenshot

Overview

Small businesses and individuals can greatly benefit from DreamHost’s shared hosting platform.

While the features they offer are the same as other hosts, their prices are more affordable.

This platform is best for course creators and bloggers who want to take their site to the next level.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: Budget-Friendly Hosting

Notable Features

  • Focus on WordPress: Gives you a pre-installed WordPress copy.
    If you already have one, freely transfer it with their automatic migration plug-in.
    You get a WP site builder as well.
  • Low monthly rates: The basic plan only costs $4.95.
  • Unlimited traffic: No limit on how many visitors can frequent your site.

Pros:

  • Zero downtime: Receive an excellent uptime percentage with outstanding server performance.
  • Unlimited domains: Allows you to host unlimited domains with plenty of extra features.
  • Domain name: Get a free domain name with sign-up
  • No risk: Offers a 97-day money-back guarantee.
  • Various plans: Choose between the three-year, yearly, or monthly plans.

Cons:

  • Limited support: No phone representative to speak to in case of problems.
  • Difficult layout: Control panel is somewhat confusing and difficult to navigate.
  • Extra fees: Too many of the dashboard options come with additional fees.

Is DreamHost Hard To Use?

While DreamHost is easy to understand and provides a good user experience overall, certain aspects of the site don’t offer the same one-click usability as others.

The control panel is particularly tricky.

Pricing & Plans

  • Starter – $2.95/month
  • DreamPress – $16.95/month
  • VPS – $13.75/month

Our Take

The best part about DreamHost is that you can use the platform for over three months before you commit.

It’s an affordable solution for small business owners that we recommend to take the next step to grow your site.

6. iPage 

iPage

Get your website ready to debut in less than ten minutes with iPage.

You get all the best features for only a small amount.

The site has a well-thought-out site.

Product Screenshot

Overview

Get your website ready to debut in less than ten minutes with iPage.

You get all the best features for only a small amount.

The site has a well-thought-out site.

Our Rating: 3/5

Best For: Personal Websites or Blogs

Notable Features:

  • iPage is one of the oldest and most established providers of affordable hosting services on the Internet.
  • 24/7 client support: Get help any time with their accessible customer service.
  • Scalable platform: Continue scaling and adding resources after launching your website.

Pros:

  • Guaranteed uptime: Excellent server performance with less time down.
  • Unlimited bandwidth: No limit to how much you can use.
  • Better security: Offers enhanced security features to keep your investment safe.
  • Free domain and SSL: You get a free domain name and an SSL certificate for encrypting online communications.
  • Website builder: Gives you a free website builder with every subscription.

Cons:

  • Slow servers: The server speed is slower than it should be, even for pricier plans.
  • Slow response times: Customer support takes too long to respond to issues.
  • Upsell: There are too many instances of upselling from when you sign up until your monthly subscription with add-ons.

Is iPage Hard To Use?

The drag and drop editor is easy to use.

However, other aspects are more challenging to use, like the dashboard.

Pricing & Plans

  • Go Plan: Starts at $1.99-$2.99/month, increasing to $7.99/month after one year when you renew your plan.

*Though the option is inexpensive, you must commit to this platform for three years.

Our Take

iPage is a comprehensive hosting provider with a committed response team that should act faster to address customer complaints.

Aside from that, the VPS hosting is perfect for small websites.

Features To Look for In WordPress Hosting for Colleges

Here are the features you should keep in mind and why they’re essential for any WordPress hosting platform for colleges:

Storage

Select a plan that offers at least 3 GB of storage with one of their plans.

You need space to expand, but even for large sites, 10 GB is more than enough.

Bandwidth

Get around 50 GB of bandwidth, as you get with Bluehost, for a faster-loading website.

A small website uses around 20 GB, and that’s pretty decent server performance.

VPS/shared hosting tends to offer cheaper bandwidth.

Starting price per month

Determine your needs, find the plan that suits you best and deliver quality tools and features for the price.

Around $4.95-$9.95 is a reasonable starting point that should fulfill your needs, as is the case for Bluehost and DreamHost.

cPanel

The control panel is where you can manage your sites, servers, and accounts.

cPanel is a trusted program known for its reliability and clean interface.

Many sites use this software to make your experience smoother.

SSL

Having SSL encryption is a huge bonus for a WordPress hosting platform, which is the case for over half the options on our list.

It’s critical to secure online transactions and communications and retain site visitors and customers.

Free backups

You need to be able to backup your website data in case something goes wrong.

The Best WordPress hosting providers have a solid backup protocol.  

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the responses to the most commonly asked questions regarding WordPress hosting for college:

Is Wix better than WordPress?

Multichannel integration and smaller stores benefit more from Wix, while WordPress is better for selling and online thanks to the scalability and powerful analytics tools.

Is WordPress free for students?

Though you’ll need to self-host or pay for shared or managed hosting, WordPress is free to download.

What is the best free WordPress theme?

With its responsive design that’s perfect for any type of site, the best free WordPress theme seems to be the OceanWP.

Conclusion

The best WordPress hosting for colleges platform seems to be Bluehost.

It offers a ton of features, offers reasonable plans, you get 50 GB of storage with their premium plan, excellent customer service, SSL encryption, and more.

WordPress Engine was the next best platform, primarily due to its versatile plans, tech support, and fast servers.  

Managed hosting is the easiest way because it frees up your time to focus on growth and expansion.

With the number of tools available to manage your site, educators can easily provide necessary services without the hassle.

Download Bluehost, WP Engine, or any of the listed WordPress hosts for a better experience.

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-colleges/feed/ 0
Fastest Australian WordPress Hosting: Top 8 To Use in 2022 https://bloggingtips.com/fastest-australian-wordpress-hosting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fastest-australian-wordpress-hosting https://bloggingtips.com/fastest-australian-wordpress-hosting/#respond Tue, 02 Aug 2022 17:10:47 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=92694 Read more]]> Do you operate a company that sells to Australian customers, or do you plan to build a website aimed at Australians?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it’s time to get the fastest WordPress hosting Australia offers.

Site performance is impacted by the location of the server hosting your files.

Your target audience’s location is an essential factor to consider when deciding where to put your server.

If your target audience is located in Australia, putting the site on a server in the United States will cause them to wait a few milliseconds each time they access the site.

In the world of website loading times, even a few milliseconds may seem like an eternity.

We sifted through all the data for you and have made a list of the fastest Australian WordPress hosting sites- the top 8 you should be using in 2022.

Fastest Australian WordPress Hosting (Overview)

  1. WP Engine: Best overall
  2. Kinsta: Runner-up
  3. Pressable: Best budget option
  4. Cloudways: Great interface at a great price
  5. Fast Comet: Packed with features
  6. SiteGround: Great price point
  7. Hostinger: Powerful hosting for enterprise users
  8. WPX Hosting: Another great price point
  9. A2 Hosting: Another great price point

WP Engine
Our Pick
WP Engine
  • The #1 hosting platform for WordPress. This is the same service that powers Bloggingtips.com
  • Massive set of features, including automated backups, automated plugin updates, and highly secure, efficient, and scalable hosting
Kinsta
Runner Up
Kinsta
  • An up-and-coming managed WordPress hosting solution - growing rapidly and quickly
  • Great price point that includes standard features such as CDN, backups, support, and more
Pressable
Budget Pick
Pressable
  • Powerful features at a great price
  • Expert support from the people who built WordPress
  • Cheaper than the alternatives, but a bit lacking in user experience

An Overview of WordPress Hosting  

At its heart, WordPress is the easiest, most popular method to build your website or blog.

Over 43.3% of all websites run on WordPress.

More than one-quarter of the sites you visit daily are most likely run on WordPress.

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

The ultimate result is that WordPress makes developing a website accessible to everybody.

What is WordPress hosting?

Specifically tailored to WordPress sites, “managed WordPress hosting” is a special kind of web hosting service.

WordPress hosting may be included in various types of web hosting depending on the web host providing the service.

Shared WordPress hosting, virtual private server WordPress hosting, and cloud-based WordPress hosting are all services that may be offered by various hosting companies.

Why is WordPress hosting Important?

It’s not hard to see the many advantages of managed hosting.

Let’s examine the advantages of managed WordPress hosting

1. Simplicity

Among the many advantages of managed WordPress hosting for businesses is an increase in efficiency.

Without a doubt, the most obvious advantage of managed hosting versus an unmanaged service is the convenience it provides.

Existing website owners can be certain that their content will be transferred to their new host with the assistance of the service’s dedicated technical support staff.

2. Speed

Slow websites are a turnoff for today’s online audience.

Users are unlikely to wait around for a page to load for more than a few seconds.

Even worse than losing their business is that Google will see their behavior as a vote of no confidence in your site and demote it accordingly.

So, you should constantly make an effort to ensure that your website loads as rapidly as possible.

If you’re responsible for keeping your website up and running, you likely have a long list of tasks.

Additional services

Managed WordPress hosting provides not only superior customer care but also a wide variety of value-added features that improve your site’s performance.

Your WordPress site will be kept up-to-date, safe, and running smoothly by a team of experts that handle software upgrades, file caching, and other administrative work on your behalf.

Top 8 Fastest Australian WordPress Hosting Sites

We’ve reviewed the top 8 fastest Australian WordPress hosting sites to take the confusion out of your hosting process.

Read on to see an overview of each site, our rating, what the site is best for, pros and cons, and information about the pricing and plans provided.

1. Cloudways

Cloudways is a hosting platform with 24/7 assistance available to those who use it.

Our Pick
Cloudways

Cloudways is an industry leader and innovator, providing consumers with several advantages over conventional web hosting services.

These include far higher availability, more scalability, and superior performance.

With Cloudways, you can put aside the time-consuming technical details and concentrate on making your website look great.

Overviews

Cloudways is an industry leader and innovator, providing consumers with several advantages over conventional web hosting services.

These include far higher availability, more scalability, and superior performance.

With Cloudways, you can put aside the time-consuming technical details and concentrate on making your website look great.

To put it another way, Cloudways will handle the technical aspects of your cloud hosting while you focus on running your business.

You may use Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, or any other infrastructure to host your site.

You can trust the simplicity and dependability of Cloudways’ managed hosting services to transport your content to the cloud with no effort.

Our Rating: 4.6/5 stars

We give Cloudways 4.6 out of 5 stars for its speed, security, and monitoring.

Best For: Speed

Vertical scaling in Cloudways lets you increase or decrease the size of your server contingent on the demands of your website or program.

If your application suddenly sees a surge in use, you may quickly scale up your server’s memory to meet the demand.

Notable Features:

  • Cloudways Security. Cloudways protects servers by only allowing connections from certain IP addresses (whitelisting) when using SFTP or SSH. Moreover, two-factor authentication procedures are in place for all accounts. In addition, all servers on the Cloudways platform are monitored by a proactive staff and secured by dedicated firewalls.
  • Cloudways Monitoring. With Cloudways, you can monitor the status of your server and applications in real-time. This is made possible by the incorporation of New Relic, a leading performance monitoring tool, into the core architecture of the Cloudways system.
  • Free SSL certificates. All users of Cloudways are provided with free SSL certificates. Having an SSL certificate installed on your website safeguards it and its visitors against eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Pros of Cloudways Hosting:

  • Designed for speed. The speed of Cloudways was a primary design consideration. Cloudways ThunderStack employs state-of-the-art methods to ensure that your site loads quickly for your visitors.
  • Features five top cloud providers. Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, Vultr, Linode, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are just some of the top cloud providers with whom the firm has formed partnerships.
  • Team Collaboration Tools. With Cloudways, you can manage accounts for several teams with only one login. Working in this manner enables you to collaborate on many projects while using the Cloudways servers of different persons. This is a great solution for developers that serve several customers.
  • Cloudway control panel. Cloudways has rethought the over 25-year-old Cpanel creating an easier-to-user, more modern alternative to the clunky Cpanel.  
  • Automatic back-ups. Stop data loss with Cloudways’ scheduled backup options. Backups can be created every hour, three hours, six hours, or twelve hours.

Cons of Cloudways Hosting:

  • It does not include email hosting. Cloudways does not include email hosting, which is considered the norm in many hosting packages.
  • No VPS. High speed, scalability, root access, and specialized technical assistance are just a few of the benefits of using a virtual private server. Not having this service could be a big deal for some clients.

Is Cloudways hard to use?

The interface is straightforward to use.

Because everything is on one screen, finding what you need shouldn’t be too difficult.

There are three primary sections to the platform:

  • Servers: Where you set up, administer, and keep tabs on your servers.
  • Applications: A complete list of Cloudways-compatible applications (content management systems, online storefronts, etc.) is available here.
  • Account: Your Account Is The Gateway To Billing And Customer Service

Everything is intuitive, and you can access configuration files like PHP.ini without requiring an FTP account or an SSH connection.

Pricing & Plans:

Founded on a sensible usage-based pricing structure, Cloudways is a reliable option.

That way, you only pay for what you use, and you won’t have to worry about overage charges if your website suddenly becomes popular.

Customers love pay-as-you-go hosting plans since it’s convenient and efficient, particularly if you run numerous servers.

Their pricing structure is based on their partnerships with the industry’s leading cloud providers.

Servers on the standard plan cost between $0.0139 and $1.4375 per hour, or $10 to $1,035. This encompasses all aspects, such as safety and speed enhancements.

Depending on the server, the premium plan’s fees may be paid monthly or on an as-needed basis.

The Premium plan costs $12 per month to $160 per month or $0.0176 per hour to $0.2222 per hour.

Cloudways also offers free hosting for three days (no credit card required) so you may try it out risk-free.

Because of its high prices and markup based on a portion of your bill, Cloudways may not be the ideal choice if you want a high-resource server.

Our Take

If you want to boost the speed of your WordPress site(s) without breaking the bank on high-powered servers, Cloudways is the way to go.

You may always reach out to their support staff for assistance, and they provide flexible needs-based pricing.

Because of their reliable, cost-effective cloud hosting solution, they have established themselves as a frontrunner in the industry.

It’s a good fit for small business owners who want to concentrate on running their company rather than worrying about hosting.

2. Fast Comet

Fast Comet is an advanced cloud hosting platform with 24/7 service and support available.

Runner Up
Fast Comet

Fastcomet is widely recognized as a top-tier hosting service, with some of the best features and best customer support available.

After launching in 2013, FastComet has established itself as a reliable provider in the hosting industry.

Overview

Fastcomet is widely recognized as a top-tier hosting service, with some of the best features and best customer support available.

After launching in 2013, FastComet has established itself as a reliable provider in the hosting industry.

FastComet now operates in over 83 different countries and serves over 45,000 users.

The hosting business has eight data centers in major cities including Chicago, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Singapore, London, and Tokyo to accommodate its international clientele.

Our Rating: 4.2/5 stars

We rate FastComet 4.2 out of 5 stars for its reliable support, free daily backups, and data centers.

Best for: Support

FastComet’s customer service is unmatched in the industry.

It says that 83 percent of problems were fixed in under 15 minutes.

Furthermore, customer service is available at any time, day or night.

You may contact them for help through several different channels, including a live chat, phone, ticket system, and email.

Notable Features:

  • Fast & Free Transfers. FastComet provides a speedy, no-cost solution for transferring your website’s hosting and domain name from your current provider to themselves. There will supposedly be no downtime, and the whole thing will be quick and easy.
  • Data Centers. When you join up with FastComet, you may choose from among ten different data centers. Before joining up, they will advise you on the ideal data center depending on your location.
  • Backups.  Backing up a website is crucial, but many people forget about it while looking for a web host. FastComet provides free, automated backups of your data on a daily and weekly basis. Because of this, you may get your information back if anything goes wrong or if you make a mistake.

Pros of Fast Comet Hosting:

  • Variety of hosting services. Shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting, a website builder, WooCommerce, Magento, and more are all available from FastComet.
  • Excellent uptime. A 99.99 percent uptime is what FastComet promises to its customers. You may rest easy knowing that your website’s visitors will never see an “access denied” message.
  • Offers DNS security and DDoS protection. Secure your websites against DDoS attacks without slowing down your legitimate traffic using FastComet’s DDoS defense.
  • Reliable support. Have a problem? FastComet world-class support will have it resolved within minutes.
  • Free daily backups. To ensure the safety of your critical data, the platform creates a nightly backup of your website. Files, emails, and databases can be quickly restored from backups in the event of a disaster. All it takes is one click to get back any data you may have accidentally deleted.

Cons of Fast Comet Hosting:

  • Limited disk space on some plans. Not all plans are created equal. Some plans have limited disk space, which can be a major burden.
  • Limited templates. The website builder is cool but has limited templates to be useful to many

Is FastComet easy to use?

This host makes use of cPanel, a widely used control panel format praised for its user-friendliness and stability.

As a consequence, the cPanel makes it easy for even inexperienced customers to manage their website hosting.

With just a few clicks, you may access your account settings, create new sites, and get in touch with the support team.

Fast Comet gets high marks for usability since finding the appropriate buttons was a breeze.

Pricing & plans

In terms of price, FastComet isn’t the cheapest choice, but no other host offers the kind of service and support that FastComet does.

The longer your subscription is, the better the pricing is each month.

A great deal of just $2.95 per month is available for the longest contract term.

Their plans are as follows:

  • Shared Hosting, which features FastCloud ($2.95/month), FastCloud Plus ($4.45/month), and FastCloud Extra ($5.95/month)
  • VPS Hosting plan includes clouds one to four that cost $47.95, $55.95, $71.95, and $111.95 per month
  • Dedicated CPU Servers, divided into DS1 going for $111.19/month, DS 2 at $135.19/month, DS 3 at $183.19/month, and finally DS 4 for $279.19/month.

One thing to note is that all purchases are backed by a 45-day money-back guarantee, which is 50% longer than the industry average of one month.

Our Take

If you’re used to paying more for premium services elsewhere, you may be surprised by FastComet’s somewhat expensive costs.

Consider using the organization if having enough hosting power is crucial to you.

FastComet provides a fantastic array of features at a reasonable price, earning them a very high rating.

3. SiteGround

More than two million domains are hosted on SiteGround, making it the most popular independent web hosting platform in the world.

Also Great
SiteGround

SiteGround’s hosting service prioritizes the security and performance of the websites it hosts, and as a result, it provides a wide variety of tools and proprietary in-house solutions.

Overview:

SiteGround’s hosting service prioritizes the security and performance of the websites it hosts, and as a result, it provides a wide variety of tools and proprietary in-house solutions.

SiteGround is the go-to host of webmasters because of the combination of top-notch site performance and unparalleled customer support.

Managed service with specialized tools for enhanced application performance and simple maintenance is especially popular among WordPress users.

Our Rating: 4.8/5

We give SiteGround a strong 4.8 out of 5.

Its security features and unlimited traffic make this site a standout.

Best For: Security

The SG Site Scanner from SiteGround will alert you if your website is under attack, and the anti-spam tools SpamAssassin and SpamExperts, as well as hotlink prevention and IP address blocklists, are all available to you.

It checks every link on your homepage for potential problems.

Notable Features:

  • Advanced features. SiteGround has features not offered by many other web hosting services. Methods like staging, in-house caching, and Git repositories are all good examples. Or, if you need an SSL certificate, you can get one for free through Let’s Encrypt or Cloudflare.
  • Unlimited traffic. They don’t Limit your website’s traffic.
  • Collaborators. SiteGround allows you to provide access to multiple websites to your team

Pros of SiteGroundHosting:

  • Location-specific Hosting. This web host gives you the option of connecting to a server in the US, Asia, Australia, or Europe when you sign up for an account. In certain instances, you may even be able to choose your preferred city.
  • Optimized for WordPress. Website optimization for WordPress users is made simple with SiteGround’s dedicated plugin. Incredible; it replaces at least three or four other plugins. This SiteGround WordPress hosting not only allows you to manage your website’s cache settings, but it also provides you with choices for:
    • Compressing HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images
    • Lazy loading images
    • Combination of CSS files
    • Optimization of browser cache
    • GZIP Compression
  • Free CDN. Every plan comes with a free CloudFlare account that lets you set up a CDN for your website. A content delivery network (CDN) effectively boosts site performance by dispersing user connections over servers located in various geographic locations across the globe.
  • Top-notch security. All accounts on SiteGround are completely separate from one another, so even if your IP address is close to a compromised host, you won’t be impacted. Let’s Encrypt allows users of any SiteGround plan to add a free SSL certificate to their site. In addition to using the WordPress-specific security plugin that SiteGround created and maintains, you may increase your account’s security by using 2-factor authentication.
  • Automatic updates. When used, this feature automatically updates all of WordPress’s core files and, if desired, any plugins you have installed. If you’d rather handle software upgrades on your own, you can disable this feature.

Cons of SiteGroundHosting:

  • Relatively high pricing. SiteGround’s introductory prices on hosting plans are attractive, but the honeymoon period is short-lived. A significant increase in your renewal rates is to be expected. After your discounted term ends, your regular monthly premium will increase to the full amount. Ouch.
  • Plan limitations. SiteGround’s resource use restrictions are easy to understand, and you can see whether you’re approaching or over them at any moment. All accounts are subject to these limits individually. In other words, if you run many sites off of one account, the total amount of resources used will be tallied for the whole account.

Is SiteGround easy to use?

It’s simple to understand SiteGround’s backend.

You won’t get lost in the maze of pages and subpages since everything is so well labeled.

The hosting service is managed using a graphical user interface that may be tailored to each individual’s preferences (e.g. decide to show some sections or not).

Their administrative UI is cutting edge; they revamped it in 2019.

Pricing and plans

StartUp, SiteGround’s most affordable WordPress plan, costs $9.90 per month and allows you to host a single WordPress site on 10GB of storage space with 10,000 monthly visits.

The GrowBig plan (at $14.95 per month) allows you to host an infinite number of WordPress sites, as well as increase your storage space to 20GB and your monthly visitor cap to 25,000.

GoGeek, the most expensive plan at $39.99 per month, includes 30 GB of storage and 100,000 unique monthly visitors, expanding on the features of GrowBig.

Unlimited email and data transfer per month are standard across all plans.

Moreover, SiteGround provides a wide variety of no-cost WordPress themes.

SiteGround’s own WP Migrator, SG Optimizer, and SuperCacher are just a few of the excellent WordPress-specific tools at your disposal.

Our take

SiteGround has been a go-to web host for many, many years, and it’s easy to see why.

To ensure your success, the company spares no effort in providing you with state-of-the-art hosting technology, in addition to the essential support and services.

Any kind of website, from a personal blog to an e-commerce site to a business website, may benefit from SiteGround’s adaptable hosting services.

4. WP- Engine

WP Engine currently provides hosting services for over 1.5 million websites.

WP Engine

In 2010, Jason Cohen of Austin, Texas, launched WP Engine.

Cohen saw an opportunity in WordPress’s meteoric rise and developed WP Engine, a web host specifically designed for the WordPress platform.

Today, over 120,000 people in 150 different countries use it regularly.

Overview:

In 2010, Jason Cohen of Austin, Texas, launched WP Engine.

Cohen saw an opportunity in WordPress’s meteoric rise and developed WP Engine, a web host specifically designed for the WordPress platform.

Today, over 120,000 people in 150 different countries use it regularly.

With locations in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, and Poland, the firm today offers one of the top managed WordPress site hosting services in the globe.

WP Engine’s dedication to its customers has been recognized 13 times with the Stevie Award.

WP Engine is a core component of the WordPress community and serves users of all sizes.

Our Rating: 4.1/5

The page loading speed and intuitive design make this a great hosting site.

Best For: Page Loading Speed

Cloudflare’s CDN, along with SSD storage and NGINX (pronounced “engine-x”), makes for lightning-fast page loads thanks to the hosting service’s focus on performance.

Notable Features:

  • Staging environment. You may construct a replica of your site in a staging environment and try out any modifications you might want to make before they are released to the public. By doing so, you can ensure that your updated site continues to perform as intended before it is made available to the general public. The functionality of the public site will not be impacted while you make these modifications; you may publish them whenever you’re ready.
  • Simplicity. With WP Engine, creating a new website couldn’t be easier. Setting up is made easier by being presented with three distinct zones in which to work: Production, Staging, and Development. You’ll have fewer holdups in site upkeep and expansion, which is important for both. To cater to business users, WP Engine has developed a robust set of widgets for the sidebar.

Pros of WP Engine Hosting

  • EverCache Technology. This is a proprietary technology that combines caching and proxy servers to make pages load faster
  • WordPress automatic updates. Updates to the core WordPress software and any necessary security fixes are applied automatically. The upgrades to the core will be made when two separate notifications have been sent to you. Updates may be postponed for up to 60 days if desired.
  • Free data backup. A snapshot backup feature is available on WP Engine. A snapshot is a backup taken at a certain time and date from which you may later restore your website. You’ll be pleased you made those copies if anything goes wrong and you end up permanently destroying your website.
  • Free StudioPress themes . No matter whatever WP Engine plan you choose, you will get ten (10) premium StudioPress themes at no additional cost. The Genesis Framework is required to utilize any of the free themes since they all rely on it.
  • Free Global CDN. A global Content Delivery Network (CDN) plan is included in all WP Engine plans. Up to 1 terabyte of CDN use is included in the WP Engine Premium and Enterprise subscriptions.

Cons of WP Engine Hosting

  • More expensive than other hosting. Wp-Engine has numerous features. If you’re price conscious, this may not be the platform for you.

Is WP-Engine easy to use?

WP Engine streamlines the process of launching a website.

It lays out three places to configure, called Production, Staging, and Development, and provides access to more complex features and a better site without making the setup procedure more difficult.

It also helps keep your site running smoothly as you make improvements and expand your company.

WP Engine is geared for businesses because of the many widgets available in the platform’s toolbars.

It’s simple to use, even for experts.

However, it may be too much for first-time users.

It’s not too difficult to work with, however, once the learning curve is over.

Pricing and plans

The most basic plan, Startup ($20/month), allows for up to 25,000 monthly visitors on a single website and provides 10GB of storage space and 50GB of bandwidth.

In addition, you will have access to a worldwide content delivery network (CDN) and an SSL certificate.

If you choose the Professional plan ($39.33/mo), you may host up to three sites and 75,000 visitors each month.

Moreover, you get access to fifteen gigabytes of space.

Growth ($76.67/month) offers support for 100,000 monthly visitors across ten sites.

You may also import your SSL certificates and take advantage of our round-the-clock phone assistance.

This scale ($193.33/month) is almost similar to the previous one.

This plan simply offers additional features, allows you to host up to 30 sites, and can handle up to 400,000 monthly pageviews.

Our Take

The biggest criticism leveled with WP Engine is its price.

As it is, few individuals have serious complaints about what the host is selling.

Small websites and blogs may not need the full suite of capabilities and services offered by WP Engine.

A website with tens of thousands of monthly visits and quick growth should give WP Engine considerable consideration.

Focusing on your main business is much easier when your host takes care of technical details like making sure your site is up, loading quickly, being safe, and achieving high Google rankings.

5. Kinsta

Kinsta offers speed, scalability, and administrative abilities on a sharp interface.

Kinsta

Kinsta provides the speed and scalability benefits associated with a cloud host, in addition to a plethora of great WordPress administrative tools and a clear user interface.

Together with their expert WordPress developer support staff, this makes for a top-tier service that comes at a premium price.

Overview

Kinsta provides the speed and scalability benefits associated with a cloud host, in addition to a plethora of great WordPress administrative tools and a clear user interface.

Together with their expert WordPress developer support staff, this makes for a top-tier service that comes at a premium price.

Given that it is a cloud service built on top of Google Cloud Platform, you can expect lightning-fast server response times and built-in redundancy.

According to the advertising, at least, the support staff is WordPress literate and ready to assist.

Our Rating: 4.6/5

The self-repairing systems, malware removal, daily backups, and ease of use all contribute to Kinsta’s 4.6 out of 5 rating.

Best For: Ease of use

Kinsta’s dashboard is designed to be a powerful tool for WordPress users, but it doesn’t overburden you with features often seen in a server setup interface.

Notable Features:

  • Automated self-repairing systems. WordPress relies on PHP, and unfortunately, PHP has its quirks. Kinsta constantly checks on the health of its servers and makes adjustments as necessary.
  • Malware removal. WordPress is one of the most popular website systems, but it is also one of the most often targeted because of its popularity. When hosted with Kinsta, your site is guaranteed to be secure or Kinsta will repair it at no cost to you.
  • Daily backups. Daily backups are performed automatically, and data is kept for 14-30 days. Hourly backups are also provided as an extra feature. Importantly, you just need one mouse click to revert to a previous backup.

Pros of Kinsta Hosting

  • Fast speed. To begin, Kinsta is built on a performs-optimized technology stack that positions your site for success regarding getting rapid page loads. Kinsta stacks adjust for website traffic also. Kinsta has assisted businesses that have appeared on Shark Tank with the traffic spike that often follows such an appearance.
  • Easy to operate user interface. Whenever a hosting provider offers a different control panel than the tried-and-true cPanel, it’s usually a poor sign. However, some hosts have developed their control panel that is competitive with or even superior to cPanel. There are not that many, and Kinsta is one of them. The Kinsta dashboard has a familiar WordPress feel since it is built by WordPress experts.
  • Variety of locations to choose from. Kinsta offers a selection of 29+ data centers located in various regions worldwide, and the company is continually expanding its reach
  • Includes WordPress plugin. Every site hosted by Kinsta has the Kinsta MU plugin installed automatically. It manages the full-page caching technology and CDN integration.
  • Team management feature. The platform has the feature to add users to your hosting account so your team can manage sites.

Cons of Kinsta Hosting

  • Lacks email hosting. No email integration is a big missed opportunity
  • Compatible with WordPress only. WordPress compatibility is awesome, but a lot of the features that they provide would work great on other hosting types

Is Kinista easy to use?

Kinsta’s dashboard is designed to be a powerful tool for WordPress users, but it doesn’t overburden you with features often seen in a server setup interface.

Provides the precise set of tools a power user may want, but nothing more.

This is beneficial because it strikes an ideal mix between robust features and user-friendliness.

Pricing and plans:

Clients get a two-months free offer if they choose any of the available annual plans that include:

  • Starter costing ($350/year, $35/month)
  • Pro ($700/year, $70/month)
  • Business 1 ($1,150/year, $115/month)
  • Business 2 ($2,250, $225/month)
  • Business 3 ($3,400/year, $340/month)
  • Business 4 ($4,500/year, $450/month)
  • Enterprise ($6,750/year, $675/month)
  • Enterprise 2 ($10,000/year, $1,000/month)
  • Enterprise 3 ($13,500/year, $1,350/month)
  • Enterprise 4 ($16,500/year, $1,650/month)

Kinista has a 30-day money-back guarantee for all the available plans.

Our Take:

The bottom line is that with Kinsta, you get exactly what you paid for.

If you use WordPress, this is a fantastic, highly optimized server that can take everything you can throw at it. Indeed, they have the support of Google Cloud.

With Kinsta, you may move your site from another server without worrying about the technical details since getting started is so simple and premium migrations are provided at no extra cost.

6. Hostinger

Hostinger offers tons of features, making hosting a website through their servers a breeze.

Hostinger

Hostinger is a web hosting provider that strives to make life easier for its customers by offering premium management tools and other tools to increase your website’s bandwidth and speed.

Overview:

Hostinger is a web hosting provider that strives to make life easier for its customers by offering premium management tools and other tools to increase your website’s bandwidth and speed.

They host and optimize your website at a low cost.

Our Rating: 4/5

Hostinger offers 24/7 support, a high uptime rating, and a customizable dashboard.

These combined features have earned it a solid reputation and a 4/5 in our book.

Best For: Great Uptime At An Affordable Cost

The uptime rating for Kinsta is unreal- and the speed they provide will drive traffic to your website.

Notable Features:

  • It’s easy to launch a WordPress website with Hostinger because they offer features like cache integration and management.
  • Their user interface is simple enough that even complete beginners can use it to launch their website.
  • They offer 24/7 customer support.
  • You can receive feedback on any problem you have with the software at anytime

Pros of Hostinger Hosting

  • Customizable dashboard. Hostinger’s control panel is called hPanel. It allows users can effectively manage their hosting accounts using a control panel without logging into the server.
  • Unlimited features. Hostinger has a wide range of features that seem unlimited, which makes launching your webs
  • Fast loading with the cache manager. Their hPanel feature has a cache manager that supports all the frameworks your websites will use and reduces the loading time of your website.
  • Own Zyro website builder. They offer a no-code website builder called Zyro that claims to allow you to make a website in one hour.
  • Fast server speed and uptime. Hostinger’s server speed and uptime are some of the best available.

Cons of Hostinger Hosting:

  • It lacks a daily backup. Only their premium plan offers daily backups, which could lead to information being lost,
  • No free site migration. Hostinger doesn’t offer free site migration, so if you need to transfer your website you may lose information.

Is Hostinger hard to use?

Hostinger is extremely beginner friendly.

One of the company’s selling points is the fact that they make launching a website as seamless as possible.

In addition to being easy to use, they also offer a lot of online tutorials and annuals.

Pricing & Plans:

The single option costs $1.99/month.

Hostinger’s single plan offers shared website hosting at a low cost.

While this is a cost-effective option, it will make your website slower.

Their Premium plan costs $2.99/month.

The premium plan offers all the benefits of the single plan with additional features such as unlimited bandwidth, the ability to host up to a hundred websites, and free domain registration for the first year.

The business plan goes for $4.99/month.

The business plan offers daily backups, additional storage, more processing power, and several other features.

Our Take

Hostinger is an effective and affordable web hosting provider.

They’re a good option for small and medium-sized businesses.

7. WPX Hosting

WPX Cloud is a high-speed content delivery network created by WPX professionals to deliver your website to visitors at breakneck speeds.

WPX Hosting

WPX Cloud is a high-speed content delivery network created by WPX professionals to deliver your website to visitors at breakneck speeds.

Overview

WPX Cloud effectively handles user requests from over 26 worldwide edge points, so it works with the data center where your website is hosted.

Our Rating: 3.5/5

WPX offers a ton of useful features, including their DDOS protection.

However, it’s low bandwidth and limited storage make this option a little less appealing than others.

Best For: Support And Premium Features

WPX Cloud offers tons of support to those who choose to host a website on their platform.

These support services include malware removal, SSD hosting, and site migration.

Notable Features:

  • DDOS Protection And Malware Removal. WPX Hosting protects your website from being hacked and data breaches.
  • 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. If the service doesn’t work for you, you’re guaranteed your money back.
  • SSD hosting. Solid State Drive hosting increases the speed at that you can access your data.

Pros of Hostinger Hosting

  • Over 99.98% uptime. Having a 99.98% makes WPX highly reliable.
  • Free CDN and SSL. A content delivery network and secure sockets layer ensure the speed and safety of your website.
  • Three different server locations. Having multiple servers improves the speed, security, and database functions of your website.
  • Malware scanning. Prevents your website from falling victim to hackers
  • Free site migration. Allows you to transfer your website’s data to a different location without losing information.

Cons of Hostinger Hosting

  • Limited bandwidth. The unlimited bandwidth in their Elite plan comes with a restriction.
  • Low storage. Has limited storage on most plans

Is WPX Hosting hard to Use?

WPX is a very simple platform to use, so much so that it’s too oversimplified, and it lacks more complex features that some web managers would find useful,

Pricing & Plans:

The business plan will cost you $24.99/month or a discounted $20.83 for yearly subscriptions.

  • You can host 5 websites
  • You get 10 GB of storage
  • It has 100 GB bandwidth

The Professional option for $49.99/month for monthly purchases and $41.58/month billed annually

  • You can host 15 websites
  • You Get 20 GB of storage
  • It has a 200 GB bandwidth

The Elite costs are $99.00/month or $83.25/month for yearly users

  • You can host 35 websites
  • It has 40 GB of storage
  • You have unlimited storage within reasonable constraints.

Our Take

While the storage limitation may be a problem for larger businesses, WPX hosting is an effective option for small to mid-size businesses.

8. A2 Hosting

A2 offers power, speed, and unlimited storage and data to its users.

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a high-powered Web Hosting provider that their fine uses its SwiftServer platform to decrease the load time of your website.

They offer a wide variety of hosting options like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting.

Overview

A2 Hosting is a high-powered Web Hosting provider that their fine uses its SwiftServer platform to decrease the load time of your website.

They offer a wide variety of hosting options like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

A2’s unlimited storage feature, unlimited hosting abilities, and free SSL certificates earn it a 4.5 rating.

Best For: Storage and Cloud Hosting

Need storage? A2 Hosting has you covered.

They provide unlimited data storage and transfer for all of your hosting needs.

Notable Features:

  • Incredible Loading Time. Their average speed is 288 ms
  • Amazing Uptime. Their uptime is 99.99%
  • Free Site Migrations. You Can Move all your websites to their servers for free.

Pros of A2 Hosting

  • Unlimited storage and data transfer.
  • There is no limit to the amount of data your website can hold, and the amount of time that data can be transferred.
  • There is no limit to the number of websites you can host.
  • Free SSL certificates.
  • You don’t have to pay to receive key information about your website, like its public key.

Cons of A2 Hosting

  • Turbo server is only available in the expensive plan. You can only access this feature Turbo plan, which is what’s 20x faster.
  • Server rewind backups require Turbo hosting plan. You only get the ability to restore old backups with their Turbo plan

Is A2 Hosting Hard to Use?

The back end may need some modernization and more user-friendly features.

On the other hand, their cPanel interface is well-organized and simple to use.

The number of available extras and payment methods on their checkout page might be bewildering.

Pricing & Plans:

A2 Hosting offers four basic plans under the shared hosting category; Startup,

Drive, Turbo Boost, and Turbo Max.

Pricing depends on the subscription duration and starts from $10.99/month to $899.64/triennially.

You get unlimited websites and storage in all plans except standard, which offers 100 GB bandwidth and one website.

The standard plan also lacks Server Resources, Automatic Backups, Site Accelerator, and Chacing Plugins.

  • The Managed WordPress hosting plan charges begin from $23.99/month to $1,511.64/triennially.
  • The Unmanaged VPS hosting plans are different and cost from $8.99/month to $3,347/triennially.

Our Take

For many years, A2 Hosting has provided the fastest service available.

The consistency of the servers’ uptime has also been greatly enhanced.

In addition, they provide free site migration and an SSL certificate with all shared subscriptions.

Problems might arise at any point in your membership, but rest assured you can always request a refund for the unused portion of your subscription.

Types Of Web Hosting

Understanding the various web hosting options is a good place to start if you’re creating a website for the first time.

You may then choose which method is ideal for your website.

  • Shared hosting: Shared hosting is a kind of Internet hosting in which several websites are stored on a single server.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting: Your website, along with the websites of other users, will continue to share the host computer when you use a virtual private server. On the other hand, the number of websites with whom you will be sharing information is going to be far less.
  • Dedicated hosting: Internet hosting services may be broken down into a few different categories, the most common of which are shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), and dedicated servers. Because the client has full control over the server, they can tailor it to satisfy all of their specific criteria, including those pertaining to performance and safety.
  • Managed hosting: Managed hosting is a type of hosting in which the client leases servers or cloud computing resources from a service provider. The service provider is responsible for monitoring the management of the client environment or certain components of the client environment.
  • Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting allows users to access programs and websites via the use of cloud resources. In contrast to more conventional methods of hosting, solutions are not installed on a single server. In its place, the website or application is hosted on a network of both virtual and real cloud servers that are linked to each other.

Features to Look for In WordPress Hosting in Australia

  • Australian Servers. The performance and latency of your website may be affected by the physical location of the data center that houses your server. If your server is located a significant distance away from its users, the distance that information and data must travel will be increased. Choosing servers in Australia is a great way to have lower latency.
  • Uptime. Uptime is a term used in the web hosting business to refer to the percentage of time that a web hosting provider ensures that their customer’s websites will be accessible to users. Reputable web hosting providers often provide uptime guarantees of at least 99 percent. The very best web hosting businesses go even farther, guaranteeing a 99.9 percent uptime and providing customers their money back if the service is ever down.
  • Security. A reputable web hosting firm will invest in effective firewalls, provide SSL certificates as part of their plans, and provide reasonably priced security software and other add-ons to further strengthen the protection of their customers’ websites. Do some research into the company’s track record on safety to ensure that you will be in excellent hands.
  • Customer service. If there is an issue with your website, you want it resolved as quickly as possible. In addition, you should be able to work on your website according to your timetable, without being required to wait for the support representatives of your web hosting provider to be available during office hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are the most frequently asked questions about the fastest Australian WordPress Hosting sites.

Is Hosting in Australia Important or Can I Host Overseas?

Hosting in Australia is very important for an Australian business.

Having faster speeds and lower latency is critical for your website.

How Do I Test Website Speed?

To provide visitors with a great user experience on your site and encourage repeat visits, you may use any number of available tools to analyze and improve your site’s loading times.

Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights, OM4, and speedtest.net are 4 of the top speed test websites.

What is the difference between web hosting and WordPress hosting?

The word “web hosting” is a catch-all phrase that may be used to refer to any form of hosting service.

This covers cloud hosting, VPS hosting, shared hosting, as well as dedicated and shared hosting.

A subset of web hosting, known as WordPress hosting, is comprised of companies that provide web servers and other resources that are tailored to the requirements of WordPress-based websites.

Wrapping Up

People can develop any kind of website with WordPress since it has an intuitive user interface and a powerful content management system.

Having an awareness of the requirements of your website, the constraints of your budget, and the features offered by some of the best hosting services on our list may, nevertheless, help you take your website to new heights.

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/fastest-australian-wordpress-hosting/feed/ 0
12+ Best WordPress Hosting Companies In 2022 https://bloggingtips.com/best-wordpress-hosting-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-wordpress-hosting-2 https://bloggingtips.com/best-wordpress-hosting-2/#respond Sat, 16 Jul 2022 10:39:37 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=91344 Read more]]> WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world.

As a result, many hosting companies offer WordPress hosting.

But what is WordPress hosting and why should you choose it?

In this article, we will discuss what WordPress hosting is.

We will also explain why it’s different from traditional web hosting.

Then, we will review the best WordPress hosting companies so that you can decide which one works best for you.

An Overview of WordPress Hosting

Before selecting the best WordPress hosting solution for your needs, it’s critical to understand the basics of the topic.

vector graphic showing an illustration of a man working on a server that has a WordPress logo on it to illustrate managed WordPress hosting

What Is WordPress-specific Hosting?

WordPress hosting is a type of web hosting designed specifically for WordPress websites.

You might use shared servers.

However, unlike traditional hosting where you would share with all types of websites, WordPress shared hosting only shares resources with other WordPress websites.

A WordPress hosting service provides WordPress-specific resources.

The resources might include the following.

A WordPress host may also give you access to other services that relate to simplifying running and managing a WordPress website.

Why Is WordPress Hosting Helpful to Bloggers?

WordPress hosting can be helpful for bloggers in a few ways.

First, you should know that WordPress is a resource-intensive platform.

It requires more resources than other types of websites.

The platform gets updated constantly with new features, security patches, plugins, and so on.

As a result, you need a host that can provide you with the resources you need to keep your WordPress site running smoothly.

Second, WordPress hosting can give you access to features that make managing a WordPress site easier.

For example, some hosts offer managed WordPress hosting.

They will take care of all the technical details of running a WordPress site for you.

It’s helpful if you’re not a technical person.

Third, WordPress hosting sometimes provides access to resources to help you improve your selling and marketing results.

As an example, some hosts offer eCommerce WordPress hosting.

These companies provide resources to assist with setting up an online store on your WordPress site.

What Separates WordPress Hosting From Traditional Hosting?

Server configuration is the main difference between WordPress hosting and traditional website hosting.

A regular website hosting service focuses on preventing security issues and keeping your site’s server in working order.

A WordPress host does the same thing, of course, with those two issues.

However, the focus with WordPress hosting is optimizing specifically for WordPress installations.

Do You Need WordPress-specific Hosting for WordPress Sites?

No, you don’t need WordPress-specific hosting for your WordPress site.

The main advantage of using WordPress hosting is that it can make your life easier when operating a WordPress site.

If you’re not interested in those advantages, then there’s no need to use WordPress hosting.

Sometimes, you can save some money by using traditional web hosting.

At the same time, using WordPress hosting often makes the most sense.

It’s like taking your Lamborghini to get serviced at the local Honda dealer.

You probably wouldn’t do that because you know the Honda technicians don’t understand how to best repair a Lamborghini.

Types of WordPress Hosting

There are different types of WordPress hosting services available.

The best one for you will depend on your budget and needs.

vector graphic showing an illustration of wordpress hosting and a handful of the best wordpress hosting companies logos on the side

1. Managed WordPress Hosting

A managed WordPress host will take care of all the technical aspects of running a WordPress site.

The host keeps your server configured properly and secure.

In essence, you can leave the technical website “stuff” to experts while you keep your attention on running your business.

Using a Managed WordPress hosting service helps you get additional services.

These benefits might include the following.

  • Automatic backups
  • High-end security
  • Excellent support services
  • Staging environments with one-click services
  • Developer-friendly

You’ll also discover that these hosting accounts place their data centers in strategic areas optimized for the highest performance.

2. Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress hosting is the most popular type of WordPress hosting.

In this scenario, your site shares a server with other WordPress sites.

The benefit is that it’s the most inexpensive way to get started with a WordPress site.

The downside of shared hosting is that you’re also sharing resources with other users on the server.

As a result, your site might not get the resources it needs if other users hog them.

Additionally, a sudden influx of traffic to another user’s website on the server could cause your site to slow down or even crash.

Shared hosting is best for small WordPress sites with lower traffic levels.

3. VPS WordPress Hosting

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is best described as a “virtual machine.”

It’s a copy of a server that you can use without having to physically purchase the server.

In WordPress hosting, a VPS provides you with more resources than shared hosting.

The result is that your site can handle more traffic and still perform well.

A VPS also gives you more control over server settings and security.

The downside is that it’s more expensive than shared hosting.

Using a VPS hosting plan, your host typically provides you with additional CPU, RAM, and storage capacity.

These features help to adapt your hosting to your website’s specific traffic spikes and overall needs.

4. Dedicated WordPress Hosting

A dedicated WordPress host provides you with an entire server for your WordPress site.

This type of hosting is best for high-traffic WordPress sites that need maximum control over server resources.

With dedicated WordPress hosting, you get more control over the server’s configuration.

It includes the ability to install custom software and applications that other types of WordPress hosting might not support.

A dedicated WordPress hosting service gives you enhanced security features not available with other types of hosting.

The downside is that it’s the most expensive type of WordPress hosting.

5. eCommerce WordPress Hosting

An eCommerce WordPress host is a type of WordPress host that’s specifically designed for online stores.

These hosting services include features such as pre-installed shopping carts, one-click installation of WooCommerce, and more.

Other features of eCommerce WordPress hosting include the following.

  • Scalability
  • High performance
  • Security features such as firewalls

The best eCommerce WordPress hosts will also offer additional security features such as PCI compliance and SSL certificates.

If you’re planning to run an online store, then you should consider using an eCommerce WordPress host.

WordPress Hosting Requirements

When choosing your WordPress hosting service, consider the requirements that help a WordPress run efficiently.

For example, you should consider the PHP programming language version.

As of this writing, WordPress recommends using PHP versions 7.4, 8.0, or 8.1.

Additionally, you need to ensure that your web host has the minimum amount of RAM and CPU required for your WordPress site.

Generally speaking, it’s simply a good idea to become familiar with features such as PHP, CPU, and RAM.

Most modern website hosts offering WordPress hosting will make sure that they provide you with the hosting requirements.

Each company also does a good job of keeping these requirements updated as WordPress changes.

Best WordPress Hosting For 2022

On an overall basis, here are the top four WordPress hosting options available.

vector graphic showing a handful of the best managed wordpress hosting company logos

1. WP Engine

Runner Up
WP Engine

The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.”

So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting.

WP Engine is one of the best WordPress hosting providers.

It’s a managed WordPress host that offers features such as daily backups, staging environments, and security features.

Additionally, WP Engine provides you with a wide variety of plans to choose from.

Its plan flexibility gives you the ability to select the option that best fits your budget and needs.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

The best option to power your creativity

Notable Features

  • Daily backups: Keep your data safe with daily backups of your WordPress site.
    WP Engine stores these backups off-site so you can rest assured knowing your data is always secure.
  • Staging environment: Test out new plugins and themes in a staging environment before making them live on your site.
    Using this feature, you can avoid breaking your live site.
  • Security features: Protect your site with WP Engine’s advanced security features.
    WP Engine also includes a firewall and malware scanning.

Pros

  • Flexible plans: Choose from a variety of plans to find the best option for your budget.
    You won’t get locked into a plan that limits your ability to expand your business.
    You can cancel your service at any time.
  • Quality support: You can reach customer support by phone, chat, or email on all days of the week.
  • Free SSL: Secure your WordPress website automatically with an SSL certificate.
    Today’s online environment requires all sites to have an SSL certificate.
    It’s vital when working to maintain trust with your website visitors.
  • Fast CDN: Deliver your content quickly with WP Engine’s fast CDN.
    A CDN will help ensure that your website loads quickly for visitors no matter where they are in the world.
  • Pre-installed caching: Speed up your WordPress site with pre-installed caching.
    Caching helps your pages load faster by storing frequently accessed data.

Cons

  • Expensive: WP Engine is one of the more expensive WordPress hosting providers.
    However, you do get what you pay for in terms of quality and features.
  • Plugins: You may find that some WP Engine plugins sit on the blacklist.
    A blacklist occurs when a plugin developer doesn’t fix security issues.
  • No email hosting: You’ll need to use a third-party service for your email hosting needs.

Is WP Engine Hard To Use?

No, WP Engine is not hard to use.

It’s quite easy to use.

The interface is clean and user-friendly.

You can easily find the features and tools you need to manage your WordPress site.

Installing WordPress on WP Engine

WP Engine offers a one-click WordPress install.

It makes it easy to get started with WordPress.

You don’t need any prior experience or knowledge to be able to use WP Engine.

Once installed, you can immediately begin your website development.

WP Engine Customer Support

Customer support is available 24/7.

Phone support is available at 877–973-6446.

You can also reach customer support via chat or email.

WP Engine agents will help with technical, account, and billing issues.

Pricing & Plans

WP Engine offers two main pricing plans.

You can choose between Managed or eCommerce WordPress hosting.

  • Managed WordPress: Starts at $20 per month.
    As you add features, it can go over $200 per month
  • eCommerce Solutions: Starts at $24 per month and can go as high as $250+ per month

Our Take

WP Engine is one of the best WordPress hosting providers.

It’s a managed WordPress host that offers features such as security, performance, and scalability.

However, it’s not the cheapest WordPress host out there.

If you’re on a budget, then you may need to look at a different option.

2. Flywheel

Our Pick
Flywheel

The cheapest Flywheel plan is $15 per month, while the most expensive one will set you back $290 per month.

It boasts an optimized dashboard, nightly backups, quality security options, automatic installations, one-click staging sites, and various other options.

Flywheel is one of the best hosting companies you can find online and they are specifically geared towards WordPress users.

The company gives you a variety of features that makes it stand out from other hosting companies.

Additionally, their customer service is top-notch and they give you a user-friendly interface.

They offer four different WordPress hosting plans, providing flexibility no matter how much revenue your business currently brings in.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Marketers and businesses looking for an all-in-one solution.

Notable Features

  • Staging area: You can test site changes in a development environment before taking your site live. This allows you to create a copy of your live site so you can play around with themes, plugins, and site designs without affecting your live site.
  • Free migration: Flywheel will help you move your site to their servers for free.
    Some hosts will charge you hundreds of dollars to do this.
  • Security: Flywheel takes website security seriously with features like two-factor authentication, IP blocking, and malware scanning.

Pros

  • User-friendly interface: Designed with simplicity in mind, you’ll discover an easy site-building experience with the Flywheel dashboard.
  • 60-day guarantee: Flywheel offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try their services with no risk.
    You get plenty of time to test out their features and see if they’re a good fit for your needs.
  • Client management reports: If you use Flywheel to build sites for customers, this feature will come in handy.
    It allows you to generate reports that show your progress and billable hours.
  • Website management: You can manage one or over 100 websites, depending on your needs.
    The flexibility offered by Flywheel’s plans lets you scale up or down as needed.
  • Managed plugin updates: You can automate the process of updating any plugins used on your website.
    Use this feature to ensure that your site always employs the latest versions of plugins.
    It helps with keeping your website more secure.

Cons

  • No email hosting: Flywheel does not offer email hosting, so you’ll need to use a third-party provider. The company decided to focus all of its efforts on delivering WordPress hosting.
    You’ll need to pay for services like Google Workspace.
  • Pricing: Flywheel is one of the more expensive WordPress hosts, though they do offer a discount for yearly plans.
  • No phpMyAdmin option: You cannot access phpMyAdmin through Flywheel, which may be an issue if you’re used to managing your databases this way.
    However, this won’t affect many people who don’t need this specialized option.

Is Flywheel Hard To Use?

No, Flywheel is not hard to use.

The company’s goal is to make WordPress hosting as simple as possible for its users.

They have a user-friendly interface.

Everything inside the Flywheel dashboard offers a design and features that make your life easier.

Installing WordPress on Flywheel

Installing WordPress on Flywheel is a simple process.

You can either use their one-click installer or follow their manual installation instructions.

As well, Flywheel offers its “Local” WordPress install method.

It keeps your website development on your machine, eliminating the need to download WordPress or edit files like wp-config.php.

Flywheel Customer Support

You’ll get 24/7 access to customer support when you use Flywheel.

The company’s WordPress experts are available to help you with any issues you may have.

Additionally, they offer a knowledge base with articles and tutorials.

You can also take advantage of their live chat feature if you need help in a hurry.

Pricing & Plans

Select from one of four Flywheel pricing plans.

  • Tiny: $15 per month
  • Starter: $30 per month
  • Freelance: $115 per month
  • Agency: $290 per month

You can call Flywheel for a custom plan.

However, that isn’t necessary unless you’re a very large business.

Our Take

We think Flywheel is a great WordPress host.

They offer everything you need to create a successful website.

Additionally, their customer support is excellent.

The only downside is their pricing, which is on the higher end.

However, you do get what you pay for with this company.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll regret a decision to power your website with Flywheel.

3. Kinsta

Kinsta

Kinsta is a favorite of ours because it allows so much traffic. Perhaps you have a huge growth curve coming up or you’re struggling to cope with traffic spikes at the moment.

Kinsta is a WordPress hosting company that provides managed WordPress hosting services.

Using Kinsta, you can get your WordPress site up and running in minutes with its easy-to-use interface.

The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can feel comfortable giving a Kinsta hosting package a fair try before making a final decision.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Best value for serious-minded business owners.

Notable Features

  • Automatic backups: Kinsta backs up your WordPress site automatically every day.
    It’s crucial to keep regular backups of your website in case something goes wrong.
  • Free site migration: Kinsta will migrate your WordPress site for free.
    All you need to do is provide them with your current hosting login details and they’ll take care of the rest.
  • Staging environment: Kinsta provides a staging environment so you can test changes to your WordPress site before making them live.
    It is an efficient way to avoid breaking your live site.

Pros

  • Fast CPUs: Kinsta uses Google Cloud Platform’s fast CPUs to give your WordPress site the speed it needs.
  • Global CDN: Kinsta uses over 200 server locations around the world.
    Using this method, you can bank on building a fast website that can handle lots of traffic.
  • Security features: Kinsta has several security features in place to protect your WordPress site from attacks.
    These include a firewall, malware scanning, and DDoS protection.
  • Free Wildcard SSL support: Kinsta offers free Wildcard SSL support with all of its plans.
    It means you can secure not only your WordPress site but also any subdomains you have.
  • User roles: Kinsta offers unlimited user roles.
    Give different people access to your WordPress site without worrying about exceeding your plan’s limits.

Cons

  • Higher prices: Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting plans are on the higher end of the price spectrum.
    However, you get what you pay for in terms of features and performance.
  • No email hosting: Like so many other managed WordPress hosts, Kinsta does not offer email hosting.
    If you need this service, you’ll need to purchase it from another provider.
  • Limits: Although the CDN and storage services work excellently, you’ll pay more to get more.
    Kinsta tacks on extra charges when you go over your plan’s limits.

Is Kinsta Hard To Use?

No, the MyKinsta dashboard is one of the easiest to use out of all the WordPress hosting companies we’ve tried.

The dashboard’s design makes it simple when you need to manage multiple WordPress sites.

You can easily see which sites are active, what plan they’re on, and how much traffic they’re getting.

You can also quickly add new WordPress sites or migrate existing ones over to Kinsta.

The process is user-friendly.

Installing WordPress on Kinsta

To install WordPress on your new Kinsta account, log in to the MyKinsta dashboard and click on the “Add Site” button.

Enter your site’s name and select the primary domain.

Then, choose the project you want to add the WordPress site to.

Next, select the WordPress installation type.

We recommend choosing “Install automatically.”

Kinsta Customer Support

Kinsta’s customer support is excellent.

The company offers 24/7 live chat and email support.

We contacted customer support via live chat to see how quickly they would respond.

The system connected us with a customer support representative in less than two minutes.

The representative was friendly and answered our questions promptly.

We also received an email follow-up after our live chat conversation.

Pricing & Plans

You can select between four Kinsta pricing plans.

  • Pro: $70 per month
  • Business 1: $115 per month
  • Business 2: $225 per month
  • Business 3: $340 per month

Our Take

Kinsta is an excellent choice for managed WordPress hosting.

It offers fast, reliable, and secure hosting.

The customer support team gives you access to help when you need it and you get to play with the user-friendly MyKinsta dashboard.

If you’re looking for a high-quality managed WordPress host and can afford to pay more, Kinsta is a nice option.

4. SiteGround

Runner Up
SiteGround

You may be deterred by the $7-mark, but this monthly price is still pretty cheap (cheaper than your Spotify subscription).

SiteGround offers managed plans, but more on that later.

Managed prices rarely come at rates that are this low.

SiteGround is one of the most popular WordPress hosting companies.

They offer a wide range of services, including shared hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers.

They also have a managed WordPress service that includes security and performance enhancements.

SiteGround uses data centers around the world, including Europe, Asia, and the United States.

They offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee and 24/7 support.

Our Rating

Four

Best For

Best value for both eCommerce and blogging businesses.

Notable Features

  • Free SSL and CDN: SiteGround offers a free SSL certificate and Cloudflare CDN with every WordPress plan.
    Use these features to speed up your website and improve security.
  • Automatic Updates: SiteGround will automatically update your WordPress site to the latest version, so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself.
  • Staging Environment: SiteGround’s staging environment lets you test changes to your WordPress site before making them live.
    It’s important to use this feature when making major changes to your site.

Pros

  • Smooth site transfers: If you’re coming from another host, SiteGround will transfer your website for free.
    It’s a simple one-click site migration process.
  • Affordable prices: SiteGround’s WordPress plans are reasonably priced when compared to other WordPress hosting companies.
    You can get started with SiteGround no matter your overall budget.
  • Email service: SiteGround offers a free email service with every hosting plan.
    You can save money here because there’s no need to pay more money for services like Google Workspace.
  • Collaboration tools: SiteGround’s collaboration tools make it easy to work with others on your WordPress site.
    You can give users different levels of access and permissions.
    Using this feature also helps when you’re working with third-party developers.
  • Dev toolkit: If you’re an advanced WordPress developer, use the toolkit with tools like PHP version control, SSH access, and WP-CLI.
    These tools will help improve the speed and efficiency of your developer workflows.

Cons

  • Limited resources: Similar to Kinsta, you’ll need to pay out more money when you reach your selected plan’s limits.
    It applies to features such as available SSD space, for instance.
  • Higher renewals: You’ll pay a lesser amount to get started than other options.
    However, you need to budget for higher hosting fees after the first year.
    SiteGround will charge you more in year two and beyond than it does for the first year.
  • Site speed: While you’ll achieve a fast-loading website when using SiteGround, you can find hosts that offer faster out-of-the-box websites.

Is SiteGround Hard To Use?

No, SiteGround is not hard to use. It’s one of the simplest WordPress hosting companies to use.

The company offers a simple-to-use dashboard.

No matter your website building experience, you shouldn’t find SiteGround difficult to navigate.

Installing WordPress on SiteGround

SiteGround offers a one-click WordPress installer.

You can use this feature to install WordPress automatically without having to go through the manual installation process.

Once you’ve logged into your account, select the “My Accounts” tab, and then click on the “Go to cPanel” button.

In the cPanel dashboard, scroll down to the WordPress Installer.

Select the “Install Now” button.

SiteGround Customer Support

You’ll get 24/7 customer support when using SiteGround.

The best way to get in touch with SiteGround is through the live chat feature.

The company’s customer support agents are responsive and knowledgeable.

You can also get help by telephone or email if you need assistance outside of live chat hours.

Pricing & Plans

Choose between SiteGround’s three WordPress hosting plans.

  • Startup: $2.99 per month ($14.99 per month after renewal)
  • GrowBig: $4.99 per month ($24.99 per month after renewal)
  • GoGeek: $7.99 per month ($39.99 per month after renewal)

Our Take

With SiteGround, you can make use of feature-rich plans, a simple-to-use dashboard, and excellent customer support.

You can also take advantage of the company’s free website transfer service.

However, it’s important to note that you’ll need to pay more after the first year of service.

Best WordPress Cloud Hosting

If you’re looking for WordPress cloud hosting, choose from one of the following two options.

1. Pressable

Pressable

This is an all-rounder as you get everything from daily backups to excellent security.

What we love about Pressable is that the brand uses some of the best servers available called Rackspace Hybrid cloud. Because they pair this with SFTP access security.

Pressable is a cloud WordPress hosting company that offers managed WordPress hosting plans.

Over the years, the company gained a positive reputation for its high-speed hosting and excellent customer support.

As well, Pressable makes it easy to scale your hosting plan as your website grows.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

The best cloud-based option for WordPress professionals.

Notable Features

  • Uptime guarantee: Pressable offers a 100% uptime guarantee.
    Uptime is one of the most critical factors when it comes to choosing a WordPress hosting company.
  • Free migration: Pressable offers free migrations from your current host.
    This is a valuable feature, especially if you’re not familiar with migrating a WordPress site.
  • Staging sites: Pressable offers staging sites, so you can test out changes to your website before making them live.

Pros

  • Security: The company includes security features such as malware removal and automatic updates in all of its plans.
    Use this option to keep your WordPress site from getting hacked.
  • Speed: The company designed its servers specifically for WordPress websites, so they’re extremely fast.
    Its cloud-based global network helps with not only speed control, but also your overall SEO experience.
  • Automatic backups and updates: Pressable automatically backs up your WordPress site and updates it to the latest version of WordPress, so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself.
  • NVMe server infrastructure: Pressable built its server infrastructure on NVMe drives, which are the fastest type of SSDs available.
    The infrastructure helps improve response times and also helps with better search engine rankings.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee: Pressable offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try out the service with no risk.

Cons

  • No free plan: The company doesn’t offer a free plan, so you’ll have to pay for its services.
    However, the guarantee makes this more palpable.
  • Staging sites: Although this is an excellent feature, it’s relatively newer to the Pressable platform. Some users report that the migration features need a little bit of work.
    Pressable should get these issues solved soon.
  • No phone support: You can only get email or chat support.
    It’s best if you have some hosting experience so you don’t get stuck without having the ability to talk to an agent or tech support person.

Is Pressable Hard To Use?

The dashboard is quite intuitive.

You shouldn’t run into any trouble navigating it as you build your website.

The company also offers a wide range of tutorials and how-tos in its support center.

Installing WordPress on Pressable

Installing WordPress on Pressable is a breeze.

The company offers a one-click installation process that takes care of everything for you.

Get your account started, log into it, and click on the WordPress install button.

Pressable Customer Support

Pressable offers customer support through email and live chat.

Don’t let the lack of phone support deter you.

The company’s agents are knowledgeable and helpful.

Response times are fast.

You’ll typically get a chat agent online within seconds of opening your new ticket.

Pricing & Plans

Pressable offers 10 different plan options.

  • Entry: $19 per month
  • Personal: $25 per month
  • Starter: $45 per month
  • Pro: $90 per month
  • Premium: $155 per month
  • Business: $350 per month
  • Business 80: $545 per month
  • Business 100: $675 per month
  • Business 120: $805 per month
  • Business 150: $1000 per month

Our Take

Pressable’s servers help specifically with WordPress websites.

The company also offers a wide range of features, including free migration, automatic backups and updates, staging sites, and more.

While the bigger plans become expensive, we recommend Pressable for your WordPress hosting needs.

2. Google Cloud

With Google Cloud, you can host your WordPress site on the same infrastructure that Google uses for its products.

For example, you’ll use hosting services Google uses to power Gmail and Google Drive.

Our Rating

Three

Best For

Budget option for more experienced webmasters.

Notable Features

  • Guaranteed 99.99% uptime: Your site will remain up and running at all times.
    Otherwise, the guarantee gives you credits toward your hosting fees.
  • Customize your plan: Unlike most hosts that make you fit your needs into their specific pricing plans, Google Cloud lets you create a more customized plan.
    For example, you can choose your machine type, server location, and virtual machine series.
  • Global network: Google Cloud has data centers all over the world, so you can choose which one is closest to your target audience.

Pros

  • Security: Google takes security seriously, so you can rest assured that your site will be well-protected. Google Cloud offers ongoing verification, advanced encryption, and vulnerability management.
  • Performance: Google Cloud provides quality when it comes to speed and uptime.
    Your site will load quickly and stay up, even if there’s a lot of traffic.
  • Error notifications: Google will notify you if there’s an error on your site so you can fix it right away.
  • CDN with every plan: A content delivery network (CDN) speeds up the delivery of your site’s content to visitors.
    Google Cloud includes a CDN with every plan, so you don’t have to pay extra for this service.
  • Daily backups: Your site’s data gets backed up every day.
    You’ll never need to worry about losing any information.

Cons

  • Dashboard: You won’t see a typical WordPress dashboard with Google Cloud.
    It isn’t an intuitive view and will take getting used to.
  • Limited tech support: While Google Cloud does offer 24/7 customer support, it’s not always easy to get in touch with a human.
    You will need to pay for this level of service.
  • More advanced options: If you’re not comfortable with server administration, then Google Cloud is probably not the best option for you.
    This platform is best suited for those who are familiar with hosting and managing a website.

Is Google Cloud Hard To Use?

Compared to most other website hosting accounts you’re used to, Google Cloud offers a different view.

Although it’s not hard to use, it looks more like a Google Analytics dashboard than a WordPress website dashboard.

Give yourself some time to get used to using it.

Installing WordPress on Google Cloud

Similar to other options on our list, you can install WordPress with Google Cloud’s simple click-to-deploy installation process.

Google Cloud Customer Support

Google Cloud offers a customer support hub.

In the hub, you can choose between submitting a support ticket, reading the community forum, or reading through the knowledge base.

Unfortunately, you will need to pay $29 per month for premium support.

The paid version gives you lesser response times and 1:1 support.

Pricing & Plans

You’ll get charged for resources consumed with Google Cloud.

  • Infrastructure fee: $12.23 per month (you’ll start here and then pay more as you add services to your plan)

Our Take

While Google Cloud works well for WordPress hosting, we rated it a “three” because it’s not the best option for non-techie people.

If you’re not comfortable with a confusing dashboard and the unknown around the pricing options, then we recommend choosing another host on our list.

Middle-Ground WordPress Hosting

Take a look at the following four WordPress hosting options if you need something a little less advanced than the companies we’ve reviewed so far.

1. Hostinger

Hostinger

Hostinger got its start as a free web host but has since morphed into a shared and cloud-based host with quite a few features.

Almost anyone can use Hostinger.

It’s great for people who are looking for quality service at an affordable price.

Hostinger is one of the most affordable WordPress hosting providers on the market.

While the company offers the normal features you’d expect with any other WordPress hosting plan, it’s hard to beat its prices.

Our Rating

Three

Best For

Quality budget option for all-in-one web hosting.

Notable Features

  • Unmetered bandwidth: You won’t have to worry about hitting any limits with Hostinger.
    Finding unlimited options here makes it a great value for your money.
  • Free SSL certificate: Hostinger serves your site over a secure connection, ensuring your visitors’ information stays safe.
  • Domain privacy: Your contact information remains private, protecting you from spam and unwanted solicitations.

Pros

  • Free domain name for one year: You can save even more by getting a free domain name when you sign up for Hostinger.
  • Caching plugin: The company offers a caching plugin to help your site load faster.
    Website speed is a big part of search engine optimization, so this can be a big help if you’re trying to improve your ranking.
  • Automated backups: Hostinger takes care of backing up your site for you, so you don’t have to worry about it yourself.
  • WordPress Pro tools: Hostinger offers WordPress developers a nice WordPress toolbox.
    The tools include SSH access, PHP version control, Git integration, WP-CLI, and MySQL database management.
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee: Hostinger guarantees that your site will be up and running almost all of the time.

Cons

  • Some items aren’t refundable: You can’t get your money back for privacy protection, domain name renewals, or redemption fees.
  • Non-traditional cPanel: You may or may not like the cPanel Hostinger customized for its customers.
  • Limited cheap plan: If you go for Hostinger’s cheapest plan, you don’t get the free domain.
    You also only receive 30 GB of storage.

Is Hostinger Hard To Use?

No, Hostinger is not hard to use.

The company’s custom cPanel is easy to navigate, and all of the features are clearly labeled.

Just be aware that its cPanel isn’t what you’re used to seeing with other hosts.

Installing WordPress on Hostinger

Hostinger uses a one-click installer for WordPress, so getting started with your site is quick and easy.

It’s a matter of logging in, clicking one button, and starting to work on your website without requiring any technical knowledge about WordPress installs.

Hostinger Customer Support

Hostinger offers 24/7 customer support through live chat and email.

The company also has a pretty thorough knowledge base, so you can find answers to most of your questions without having to contact customer support.

We’ve found that Hostinger’s customer support is speedy.

The company also responds to questions asked on its social media accounts.

Pricing & Plans

Hostinger offers four different WordPress hosting plans.

  • Single WordPress: $1.99 per month
  • WordPress Starter: $3.99 per month
  • Business WordPress: $6.99 per month
  • WordPress Pro: $11.59 per month

Our Take

Hostinger is a quality option if you’re looking for WordPress hosting at an affordable price.

The company offers all of the features you need to get started with your WordPress site.

It provides good customer support.

2. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks provides solid web hosting while also being eco-friendly.

GreenGeeks is great for small businesses that are concerned with helping the environment.

Using GreenGeeks WordPress hosting, you can rest assured that your website will receive hosting on eco-friendly servers.

The company also offers excellent customer service and a wide range of features to choose from.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Most resistant option to the way the Internet pollutes the environment.

Notable Features

  • Fast websites: GreenGeeks use solid-state drives (SSDs), which are up to 20 times faster than regular hard drives.
    With short attention spans from website visitors and Google’s focus on using speed as a ranking factor, you’ll find GreenGeeks delivers in this area.
  • Developer-friendly: Developers built the GreenGeeks company.
    If you need high-level development features, you’ll find phpMyAdmin, Git, and SSH access inside your account.
  • Staging area: A staging area is a developer tool that allows you to make changes to your WordPress site before making those same changes live.
    It’s an excellent way to test new plugins or themes without risking taking your live site offline.

Pros

  • Generous storage and bandwidth limits: GreenGeeks WordPress hosting provides unmetered storage and bandwidth.
  • Exceptional security: The company offers robust security features, including malware scanning, a firewall, and DDoS protection.
    If you’re switching from a host that didn’t take security as seriously as it should, you’ll enjoy GreenGeeks.
  • Affordable entry-level plan: The company’s “Lite” plan is one of the most affordable WordPress hosting plans we’ve seen.
  • Free SSL certificate: You’ll get a free SSL certificate with every GreenGeeks WordPress hosting plan.
  • One Tree Planted: GreenGeeks partners with the One Tree Planted program.
    The company will plant a tree for every hosting account you open up with it.

Cons

  • Not truly “unlimited”: If you choose one of the plans offering unlimited space or bandwidth, you should know that the company does sometimes restrict resources.
    It does this when a website uses 100% of all allocated resources on its plan.
  • No 24/7 phone support: Although you can get phone support, you can’t access it 24 hours per day. It runs from 9 AM to midnight EST.
    It could turn into a problem if you need overnight support.
  • Non Refundable items: You can’t get a refund on items such as domain fees or setup costs.

Is GreenGeeks Hard To Use?

No, it’s not.

The company offers a user-friendly cPanel that makes it easy to manage your hosting account and website.

You’ll find everything you need in one place.

Installing WordPress on GreenGeeks

To install WordPress on GreenGeeks, you can use the company’s one-click installer.

It makes it easy to set up your website in minutes.

Log in to your GreenGeeks account and go to the “My Accounts” tab.

Then, click on the “hosting” link.

Find the domain you want to install WordPress on and click the “Install Now” button.

GreenGeeks Customer Support

You’ll get 24/7 live chat customer support and phone support during the hours we mentioned above.

Each customer support staff member can answer any question you have, no matter how technical it is.

We contacted customer support via live chat to test it.

We received a response within seconds.

Pricing & Plans

You can choose from three GreenGeeks pricing plans.

  • Lite: $2.95 per month
  • Pro: $5.95 per month
  • Premium: $10.95 per month

Our Take

GreenGeeks is one of the best WordPress hosting companies because it’s eco-friendly, developer-friendly, and offers an affordable entry-level plan.

The company also offers exceptional security features and a free SSL certificate.

The only downsides are that it’s not truly “unlimited” and there’s no 24/7 phone support.

Overall, we think it’s a fantastic option for WordPress hosting.

3. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers web hosting, WordPress hosting, a site builder, domain registration, and more, along with a claim to be 20 times faster than the competition.

A2 Hosting is best for businesses and individuals who put speed as their top priority.

A2 Hosting is a WordPress hosting company that offers a variety of hosting plans specifically designed for WordPress websites.

Their plans come with pre-installed WordPress, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate.

A key feature of their plans is that they offer unlimited storage space and bandwidth.

Our Rating

Four

Best For

Best value when looking for an excellent uptime.

Notable Features

  • Stability: The company claims a 99.9% uptime rate.
    You can feel comfortable knowing that your website will remain “live” most of the time.
  • Security: They offer security features such as malware scanning and removal, a firewall, and DDoS protection.
    Use these tools to avoid common WordPress security risks.
  • Speed: A fast website is a must in today’s age.
    Your customers will not wait around for a slow website to load.
    A2 Hosting focuses on keeping your website’s loading time to a minimum.

Pros

  • Simplicity: A2 Hosting keeps the management of your WordPress site simple.
    You’ll find plenty of built-in tools that easily manage your plugins and themes.
  • A2 optimized plugin: The company provides a built-in speed plugin.
    It’s one of several factors that play into the speed mentioned above.
  • Global server locations: With A2 Hosting, you can place your website’s server closer to your target audience with data centers around the world.
  • Free SSL certificate: Use this option to add an extra layer of security to your website.
    It also helps visitors feel faith in our brand.
  • Page-builder options: You can choose from several builders.
    The options include BoldGrid, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, Divi Builder, and Elementor.

Cons

  • Feature restrictions: If you select the cheapest plan, you’ll most likely need to upgrade soon.
    You don’t get much storage space and it only comes with one website.
  • Paid domain: Surprisingly, A2 Hosting’s plans don’t include a free domain.
    You’ll need to purchase one separately or use a domain you already own.
  • Renewal rates: While you do get a big break on your hosting fees the first year, you’ll need to pay higher rates in the second year and beyond.
    The rates go up by about three times when you hit year two.
    As well, you can’t get a refund on the renewal if you don’t submit a cancellation request 15 days before renewal.

Is A2 Hosting Hard To Use?

No, it’s not hard to use an A2 Hosting account.

As we mentioned above, you can decide on several website builders.

You’re sure to find one that makes you comfortable.

Installing WordPress on A2 Hosting

Using the one-click WordPress option makes the installation a breeze.

If you go with one of their managed WordPress plans, it’s even easier.

The company takes care of updates and security for you.

All you need to do is focus on creating content.

A2 Hosting Customer Support

The customer support staff is available 24/7 to help with whatever you need.

You can contact them via phone, live chat, or email.

Pricing & Plans

A2 Hosting offers three pricing plans.

  • Run: $11.99 per month
  • Jump: $18.99 per month
  • Fly: $28.99 per month

Our Take

A WordPress hosting company should offer a variety of features.

These include security, speed, page-builder options, and customer support.

A2 Hosting offers these and more.

Renewal time is the only thing to watch out for.

Make sure you can afford the renewal in year two.

4. IONOS

Using WordPress hosting with IONOS gives you plenty of advantages.

As your site grows, so does the need for more powerful hosting.

WordPress hosting with IONOS is scalable so you can increase storage space and bandwidth as needed.

You can also add more domains and subdomains, as well as email accounts, giving you the flexibility to grow your website as you see fit.

Our Rating

Three

Best For

Best mid-tier hosting for a “no-fuss” approach to building a website.

Notable Features

  • Automatic WordPress updates and backups: IONOS takes care of all the technical aspects of running WordPress so you can focus on creating great content.
    Run your business while IONOS keeps everything updated
  • Staging environment: Use this feature to test out new themes or plugins before making them live on your website.
    It’s a quality option because it helps avoid any potential downtime or broken functionality on your live site.
  • Security: IONOS WordPress hosting comes with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to help keep your site safe and secure.
    The hosting company also uses DDoS protection and malware scans.

Pros

  • User-friendly: IONOS is a great option for those who are not as familiar with WordPress or hosting in general.
    The company takes care of all the technical aspects of running WordPress so you can focus on creating content.
  • Flexible scalability: As your website grows, you can easily scale up your IONOS WordPress hosting plan to accommodate the increase in traffic.
  • Additional control: Your IONOS hosting account comes equipped with unlimited SFTP.
    As well, you’ll see SSH and WP-CLI show up inside your account.
    Use these features to more effectively develop the site.
  • Focus on website speed: Using a CDN, a caching plugin, and 100% SSD storage, IONOS WordPress hosting can help your website load faster.
  • Local data centers: IONOS offers its WordPress hosting services from data centers around the world, including in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
    Overall, you can choose from 10 different data centers.

Cons

  • Customer support: Some users report that their customer service experience left them wanting more. These issues stemmed more from extremely technical issues.
    Overall, you should find the IONOS support staff quite knowledgeable.
  • No free trial: Unlike some of the other best WordPress hosting companies, IONOS does not offer a free trial.
    However, they do offer a big price break on one of their hosting plans.
  • Paid site migration: Unlike other hosts on our list, you’ll need to pay for migrating your website from another host.
    You can pay as much as $70 per hour for this service.

Is IONOS Hard To Use?

The interface is quite intuitive.

You shouldn’t have any trouble understanding how to use the IONOS WordPress hosting dashboard.

Installing WordPress on IONOS

Inside your IONOS account, select your website from the domains area.

Click on the “Create Website” button.

IONOS will install WordPress immediately via its one-click WordPress option.

IONOS Customer Support

The company offers live chat, phone, and email customer service options.

While we reported the issue above regarding technical issues causing some support problems, you will find that the IONOS support staff responds quickly to all customer service options.

Pricing & Plans

You can select from three WordPress hosting plans when going with IONOS.

  • Essential: $3 per month
  • Business: $0.50 per month
  • Unlimited: $8 per month

The above prices are for the first year.

After that, you’ll pay $4 per month for the Essential plan, $8 per month for the Business plan, and $16 per month for the Unlimited plan.

Our Take

IONOS works well if you’re looking for an all-inclusive WordPress hosting solution.

The customer support and site migration disadvantages knocked our score down to three.

However, if you’re more focused on website speed and security, then you won’t go wrong selecting IONOS as your WordPress hosting company.

Low-Cost WordPress Hosting

For the last section of our best WordPress hosting options, let’s look at hosting companies that won’t break your budget.

1. Bluehost

Our Pick
Bluehost

With Bluehost, the basic plan is at less than $3 per month.

You only get one website, but you get 50GB of SSD storage, which is quite something.

Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth, which means that you can transfer unlimited amounts of data.

When you choose Bluehost as our WordPress hosting company, you’ll receive a free domain name, fast and secure hosting, and easy WordPress installation.

Bluehost plans start at reasonable rates that fit almost any budget.

Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try their services without worry.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Best budget option for both small and larger businesses.

Notable Features

  • Free domain name: Each Bluehost hosting account comes with a free domain.
    After the first year, you’ll pay a renewal.
    The free domain in the first year lets you start building on a lesser budget.
  • Custom themes: All Bluehost WordPress plans offer custom themes.
    Use this feature to give your WordPress site a professional look.
  • Unlimited email accounts: You can create as many email accounts as you need with Bluehost, which is great for businesses that need to communicate with multiple people.

Pros

  • Automatic WordPress updates: Bluehost will automatically update your WordPress installation, keeping it secure.
  • Free SSL certificate: With every Bluehost account, you’ll get a free SSL certificate to add an extra layer of security to your website.
  • Other security measures: Security is a key part of building a website in today’s online environment. Bluehost takes security seriously and offers DDoS protection, malware scanning, and a firewall.
  • Google My Business: If you’re a local business, Bluehost will help you with the Google My Business verification process.
    It can sometimes seem confusing to become verified with GMB. Let Bluehost handle it for you.
  • Secure WordPress login: By default, WordPress doesn’t offer much username protection.
    It sets your login username as a generic term that most hackers can figure out.
    Bluehost helps you adjust the login credentials for even greater security.

Cons

  • Renewal increase: Like most hosts, you’ll need to pay a higher fee to renew after the first year.
  • No free trial: You can’t take Bluehost for a free spin.
    You’ll need to provide your credit card information and pay to get the account started.
  • Continuous upsell messaging: Bluehost is aggressive with trying to get you to pay more for additional services.
    Some people can easily reject these messages.
    Or, you might find it annoying.

Is Bluehost Hard To Use?

Bluehost offers one of the easiest dashboards.

It’s easy to navigate and find what you’re looking for, whether it’s your account information or adjusting WordPress settings.

Installing WordPress on Bluehost

The WordPress installation process is also a breeze with Bluehost.

You can do it yourself in less than five minutes with their one-click installer.

You click the button to install WordPress and instantly go into the dashboard to begin building your website.

Bluehost Customer Support

Bluehost provides 24/7 support in the form of chat and phone agents.

At any time of day, you can get help with your WordPress site.

They also have a vast library of articles and tutorials to help you troubleshoot different aspects of your WordPress website.

Pricing & Plans

Get started with one of the four pricing plans offered by Bluehost.

  • Basic: $2.95 per month
  • Plus: $5.45  per month
  • Choice Plus: $5.45  per month
  • Pro: $13.95  per month

Our Take

We recommend Bluehost for businesses of all sizes.

They offer great features, especially for security and ease of use.

And, their prices are reasonable.

You can’t go wrong with Bluehost.

2. DreamHost

Also Great
DreamHost

The cool thing about DreamHost is that it’s a very pragmatic hosting service.

Whether you like it or not,

DreamHost allows you to choose between two options that have obvious differences.

If you choose to use DreamHost as your WordPress hosting solution, you’ll get a lot for your money.

DreamHost boasts an impressive set of features, including unlimited storage space and bandwidth, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate.

One of the best things about DreamHost is their 97-day money-back guarantee, which gives you plenty of time to

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Best low-budget WordPress host with extra features.

Notable Features

  • Automatic WordPress updates: You can rest assured that your WordPress site will always remain up to date.
    Automatically, DreamHost makes sure you’re working with the latest version.
  • Free SSL certificate: You don’t have to worry about setting up an SSL certificate.
    DreamHost includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate with every WordPress site.
  • Unlimited everything: For the most part, WordPress hosts offer some version of limitation on storage space, bandwidth, or both.
    DreamHost gives you unlimited everything.

Pros

  • Free privacy protection: Most hosts make you pay for privacy protection.
    They dangle it in front of you at checkout time. DreamHost, on the other hand, gives you this feature for free.
  • Automated backups: DreamHost takes snapshots of your site every day and stores them for 30 days. So, if you ever need to restore your site, it’s as easy as a few clicks.
    You can also set up daily backups if needed.
  • Free email hosting: You won’t pay any additional money for email. Instead, you can create unlimited email addresses using DreamHost’s servers.
    By the way, if you don’t have a domain yet, don’t worry.
    DreamHost will also give you a free one when you sign up.
  • WordPress-optimized servers: DreamHost designs its servers specifically for WordPress, so you can expect fast loading times and optimal performance.
  • 100% uptime guarantee: DreamHost guarantees that your site will never go down.
    If it does, you’ll get a credit on your account.

Cons

  • Control panel: It takes a while to become familiar with the control panel offered by DreamHost.
    It doesn’t look like the same cPanel presented by most hosts.
  • Limited support: Located in the United States, DreamHost offers customer support times that match living in America.
    The live chat only runs from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM Pacific Time.
    You might look at that as a negative if you live outside the United States.
  • Data centers: DreamHost situated its data centers in the United States.
    You may potentially see slight website slowdowns when targeting visitors in other countries.

Is DreamHost Hard To Use?

No, DreamHost isn’t hard to use.

It just takes a little getting used to the different control panel that we mentioned above.

The best way to familiarize yourself is by taking some time to poke around and explore.

Also, feel free to contact customer support if you have any questions.

Installing WordPress on DreamHost

Installing WordPress on DreamHost is simple.

It’s one of the best hosting solutions for WordPress.

The entire process takes less than five minutes, and you don’t need any technical skills.

DreamHost does all the work for you as soon as you open your hosting account.

Some WordPress installs take only a few seconds to complete.

DreamHost Customer Support

DreamHost offers only chat support during the hours mentioned previously.

If you want to get a technician to call you back, it’s the one feature that DreamHost does make you pay for.

The call-back feature costs $9.95 per occurrence.

On the other hand, chat support typically solves most website hosting challenges.

Pricing & Plans

You can select from one of three DreamHost pricing plans.

  • WordPress Basic: $1.99 per month
  • DreamPress: $12 per month
  • VPS for WordPress: $30 per month

Our Take

We highly recommend DreamHost.

It’s one of the best hosting providers that we’ve come across.

Not only does it give you everything you need to run a WordPress website, but it also throws in some features for free.

For example, privacy protection typically costs an extra fee with other hosts.

Additionally, the company offers a 100% uptime guarantee.

So, if your site ever does go down, you’ll receive account credits.

3. GoDaddy

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers a lot of hosting stability and is fairly fast, at a 554ms average.

You get 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth with their base plan.

What you also get are more than 125 services that you can install simply.

Selecting GoDaddy as your WordPress hosting provider is a good choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution.

GoDaddy offers several tiers of WordPress hosting, including managed WordPress hosting.

The managed WordPress hosting plan includes features like daily backups, security scanning, malware removal, and more.

In addition, GoDaddy offers a free domain name and SSL certificate with their WordPress hosting plans.

Let’s discuss GoDaddy’s features in more detail.

Our Rating

Four

Best For

A quality option for all-in-one features.

Notable Features

  • CDN Boost: The CDN feature speeds up your website by caching your pages and files on GoDaddy’s global network of servers.
    As a result, your visitors will experience faster loading times.
  • Staging Environment: The staging environment allows you to create a copy of your live site.
    This is useful for testing purposes.
    You can make changes and make everything look good before you go “live” with the new version of the website.
  • Pre-built websites: If you’re a beginner, this represents a nice feature.
    GoDaddy gives you a drag-and-drop editor.
    You can even load in pre-built templates for a great design out of the box.

Pros

  • Free Domain: You get a free domain name when you sign up for an annual plan.
  • Free SSL Certificate: You also get a free SSL certificate with your hosting plan.
    It is important for security and SEO purposes.
  • Automatic WordPress updates: The GoDaddy updates include core security and software updates. With this advantage, you can focus on your content and leave the technical stuff to them.
  • Plenty of plugins and themes: The GoDaddy theme and plugin areas provide over 1,000 options. You’re bound to find what you need for your website.
  • Business email: You’ll get a free email account for one year. It saves you from needing to pay for a business email account with services like Google Workspace. Of course, you’ll need to pay after the first year.

Cons

  • Transfers can be slow: While site transfers are free, they can take a while.
    In some cases, you might wait a few days to get everything transferred over to GoDaddy.
    Other WordPress hosts, such as SiteGround, typically get things transferred in a matter of hours.
  • Upsells: GoDaddy will send you many messages about buying additional services and add-ons. While some can turn out useful, such as their security features, you might not need everything they try to sell you.
  • Restoration fees: If your website ever backs up incorrectly, GoDaddy will charge you to restore it. Most hosting companies do this for free.
    You might need to pay GoDaddy as much as $300 in this situation.

Is GoDaddy Hard To Use?

Yes and no.

If you’re a beginner, then their cPanel interface might seem confusing.

However, if you’re familiar with hosting, then you shouldn’t run into any issues using GoDaddy.

Installing WordPress on GoDaddy

Although not quite the “one-step” install process you get from other website hosts on our list, installing WordPress on GoDaddy isn’t difficult.

Select the domain you want to use inside your account.

Choose your data center.

Then, select “Let’s do it” under the “Create a WordPress website” tab.

GoDaddy Customer Support

One downside of using GoDaddy is their customer service.

Although they offer 24/7 support, they are not the most responsive.

The “live” chat option isn’t quick and easy like with other hosts.

You’ll need to wait longer to get help with GoDaddy.

Pricing & Plans

GoDaddy offers four WordPress plans.

  • Basic: $8.99 per month
  • Deluxe: $11.99 per month
  • Ultimate: $18.99 per month
  • eCommerce: $20.99 per month

Our Take

GoDaddy is a decent option for those who want an all-in-one website host.

You get a free domain and email account with your hosting plan.

They also offer a staging environment and plenty of themes and plugins.

However, customer service could work better and site transfers can become frustrating.

4. HostGator

HostGator

HostGator has been around for quite some time now, but make no mistake, it’s still very much in the game.

It boasts a 99.98% uptime (time the servers are live and working, as opposed to being down) within the past two years. This is quite a feat that not many servers boast.

Selecting HostGator as your WordPress hosting provider gives you a variety of benefits.

For starters, you can take advantage of the user-friendly platform.

You also have the option to select from a variety of hosting plans, which is perfect if you’re just starting your website-building journey.

Our Rating

Three

Best For

A good fit for beginners to WordPress.

Notable Features

  • Simplified control panel: You don’t need to be a tech expert to use HostGator’s hosting services.
    The company offers a simplified control panel that makes it easy to get started with your website.
  • Free website transfer: If you’re switching from another hosting provider, HostGator makes it easy to transfer your existing website to their platform.
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee: Your website will always stay up and running with HostGator.
    The company offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee, so you can rest assured that visitors won’t become frustrated.

Pros

  • Affordable plans: HostGator offers a variety of affordable hosting plans, which makes it a nice fit for small businesses and budget-conscious individuals.
  • Flexible terms: You can choose plans that lock in long-term price savings.
    HostGator offers plans for one, three, six, 12, 24, or even 36-month terms.
  • Storage: Every plan offered by HostGator provides unlimited storage.
    You won’t need to worry about running out of space as your website grows.
  • Unmetered bandwidth. Each plan also gives you all the bandwidth you need.
    Unlimited bandwidth means you won’t experience overage fees.
  • Security: HostGator uses what it calls SiteLock Fix to protect your website from viruses, malware, and other online threats.
    You can use daily scans to keep your website running smoothly.

Cons

  • Sales chat can be pushy: Some customers complain that HostGator’s sales team focuses more on upselling than on answering questions.
    You’ll also get plenty of emails about buying new services.
    As well, you’ll see messages about upsells inside your account.
  • Backup restores: You’ll need to pay an additional fee to restore your website to a previously-saved backup.
    You also don’t get any staging areas with HostGator, so be careful with making changes and your backup processes.
  • Speed: While you shouldn’t worry about extremely slow website speeds, you can get superior results in this area with other website hosting companies.

Is HostGator Hard To Use?

No, HostGator is not hard to use.

The company offers a simplified control panel that makes it easy to get started with your website.

The drag-and-drop editor also makes it a simple process.

Beginners can navigate HostGator well.

Installing WordPress on HostGator

If you want to install WordPress on HostGator, you can do so easily.

The company offers a one-click installation process that makes it quick and easy to get started.

HostGator Customer Support

HostGator’s customer service team doesn’t have the best reputation.

You will probably experience slower response times when compared to other WordPress hosts.

However, the company does offer support in the form of phone, chat, Tweets, and its knowledge base.

Pricing & Plans

HostGator provides three pricing plans to choose from.

  • Starter: $5.95 per month
  • $7.95 per month
  • $9.95 per month

Our Take

While HostGator does have some drawbacks, the company’s affordable plans and unlimited storage make it a good choice for those just starting with WordPress.

Don’t be afraid to start cheaply with HostGator.

You can always upgrade to a different host after your traffic builds.

5. HostPapa

HostPapa

HostPapa is a small but full-service web hosting provider based out of Canada.

HostPapa markets itself to small businesses and most of its plans are designed with small businesses in mind.

With HostPapa, you’re choosing a WordPress host that’s committed to keeping your website online and accessible to your visitors.

That’s why they offer 24/7 support, a 99.99% uptime guarantee, and free domain transfers.

HostPapa offers six different WordPress plans. You can choose one of the Optimized WordPress hosting plans or one of the fully-managed WordPress hosting options.

If you select one of the managed WordPress plans, you can leave all the technical details to the HostPapa team.

Our Rating

Five

Best For

Quality value for Optimized WP hosting or Managed WP plans.

Notable Features

  • 100 GB to unlimited storage: Depending on the plan you choose, HostPapa will give you plenty of storage space.
    You won’t have any issues in this area when using any of the WordPress plans offered by the hosting company.
  • Speed: HostPapa uses WordPress caching and a free Cloudflare Content Delivery Network to provide fast WP hosting.
    Google wants to rank fast sites, and your visitors will appreciate that they can load your pages quickly.
  • Free SSL certificate: Security is a must-have for any WordPress site.
    It encrypts the information that travels between your website and visitors’ browsers, so you can rest assured that their data remains safe.

Pros

  • Free domain name: Your first year’s domain name is free when you sign up for one of the WordPress hosting plans.
  • Free website transfer: If you’re coming from another host, HostPapa will move your site for free.
    The company makes the process simple, too.
    It’s a matter of clicking one button and letting HostPapa handle the technical aspects for you.
  • Auto-detect malware: HostPapa’s systems will scan your site for malware and remove it if they find any.
    You don’t have to worry about the security of your site with this host.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee: If you’re not satisfied with your HostPapa plan, you can cancel within the first 30 days and get a refund.
  • 99.9% uptime guarantee: HostPapa wants to keep your site up and running, so they offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
    If your site ever goes down, you’ll receive a credit on your account.

Cons

  • Higher-than-average prices: The managed WordPress hosting plans are a bit more expensive than some of the other options on our list.
    However, you’re paying for the convenience of having someone else handle the technical details for you.
  • Checkout issues: Be careful when you go to the checkout page.
    Rather than ask if you want to add additional features to your order, HostPapa checks them off automatically for you.
    You’ll need to uncheck the boxes next to optional services you don’t want to pay for.
  • Paid automatic backups: If you choose the Starter or Business plans, you’ll need to pay for the automatic backup feature.
    Other competitors give this service away for free on all plans.

Is HostPapa Hard To Use?

HostPapa is one of the easier WordPress hosts to use.

The company offers a simple dashboard that gives you access to all the features you need to manage your WordPress site.

If you choose one of the managed WordPress plans, HostPapa will take care of the technical aspects.

You won’t have to worry about anything except creating content for your site.

Installing WordPress on HostPapa

Installing WordPress on HostPapa is a simple process.

The company uses the popular Softaculous installer, so you can have your site up and running in just a few clicks.

Once you’ve logged into your HostPapa account, click on the WordPress icon under the Softaculous Apps Installer section.

From there, you’ll need to select the version of WordPress you want to install, choose your domain name, and set a few other options.

After that, all you need to do is click the Install button, and you’ll have WordPress installed on your site.

HostPapa Customer Support

HostPapa offers 24/7 customer support via live chat, phone, and email.

The company also has a robust knowledge base with articles and tutorials on various topics.

The HostPapa customer support team is more than happy to assist you if you need help with your WordPress site.

Pricing & Plans

You can select one of the three WordPress hosting plans.

  • WP Starter: $3.95 per month
  • WP Business: $5.95 per month
  • WP Business Pro: $12.95 per month

If you want a managed WordPress hosting account, choose one of these plans.

  • Launch: $19.95 per month
  • Launch Plus: $39.95 per month
  • Launch Pro: $69.95 per month

Our Take

HostPapa is a great WordPress host.

The company offers a free domain name and free website transfer, making it easy to switch to HostPapa.

You also get a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try the service risk-free.

The managed WordPress plans cost more, of course.

However, you’re paying for the convenience of someone else helping with managing your website from a technical standpoint.

Free WordPress Hosting

Free WordPress hosting is generally used for those learning about WordPress and for various website tests.

Naturally, you don’t pay anything for it, but, in turn, you can’t expect impeccable service.

Below, we’ve outlined a few free WordPress hosting options.

vector graphic showing three of the best free blog sites in an image arranged one next to the other

WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the official WordPress website.

This is not to be confused with WordPress.com, which is a for-profit website dedicated to the implementation of the software found at the WordPress official website.

Our Pick
WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the official WordPress website.

This is not to be confused with WordPress.com, which is a for-profit website dedicated to the implementation of the software found at the WordPress official website.

WordPress.com offers you a simple way to create a WordPress site and launch it.

WordPress.com offers you a simple way to create a WordPress site and launch it.

All you need to do is make a WordPress.com account.

Yes, WordPress.com is free.

But you don’t get to experience its actual values and benefits until you pay for full access.

Still, this service is very user-friendly.

It features an easy-to-use custom dashboard for WordPress.

You get 3GB of storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and access to hundreds of WordPress themes that are open to the public.

On top of that, you get a free SSL certificate.

Pros

  • Straightforward setup
  • Quick website load times
  • Custom WordPress dashboard

Cons

  • Can’t install personal themes and plugins with a free plan
  • Have to pay if you want to use your custom domain
  • No option to manage your database or connect using FTP

AccuWeb Hosting

AccuWeb is a WordPress hosting option that has free as well as premium hosting plans.

It’s been around for quite some time (more than 15 years), so they know what they’re doing.

AccuWeb has one of the best free plans when it comes to bandwidth, storage, and email limits.

Runner Up
AccuWeb Hosting

AccuWeb is a WordPress hosting option that has free as well as premium hosting plans.

It’s been around for quite some time (more than 15 years), so they know what they’re doing.

AccuWeb has one of the best free plans when it comes to bandwidth, storage, and email limits.

There’s also the cPanel, new PHP versions, and there are no ads involved.

You get up to 2GB of SSD storage and a bandwidth of 30GB.

The platform offers a full database and server access on its free plan, and you get a one-click installer for WordPress.

AccuWeb also supports custom domain names on its free plan and offers basic backup support.

Overall, they do bundle up a lot for their free plan.

Pros

  • Solid bandwidth limit on free plan – as many as 5,000 monthly visitors
  • 25 free email accounts
  • Database and cPanel access
  • Custom domain names on the free plan

Cons

  • Can host more than one website per account
  • The only server is located in Montreal
  • You can’t get a free subdomain

AwardSpace

This WordPress web hosting service comes from Germany and is suitable for as many as 5,000 monthly visits.

But what’s truly special about AwardSpace, is that it offers a unique upgrade path.

Also Great
AwardSpace

This WordPress web hosting service comes from Germany and is suitable for as many as 5,000 monthly visits.

But what’s truly special about AwardSpace, is that it offers a unique upgrade path.

As your site grows, you can make gradual upgrades as the needs arise.

As your site grows, you can make gradual upgrades as the needs arise.

These won’t set you to back too much.

On a free account, you get to host a maximum of four websites.

You don’t need to bother with WordPress installation – there’s a one-click installer integrated into the platform.

AwardSpace is also widely renowned for its full MySQL database support on its free plan.

Apart from that, you get 1GB of free storage and a 5GB bandwidth.

Oh, and you don’t have to worry about ads.

Pros

  • Four websites on the free plan
  • Allows you to use your personalized email account
  • Complete server file and database access

Cons

  • Bandwidth isn’t exactly great
  • Only one of the four websites on the free plan is the top-level domain

Features To Look For in WordPress Website Hosting

Before making your final decision about buying one of the hosting packages from the hosts we’ve reviewed above, let’s make sure you understand the most important features to pay attention to.

Ease of Use

Consider your experience level when it comes to using hosting control panels and managing server settings.

You should also pay attention to the user interface of the host’s Dashboard.

It should be easy to find the features you need and navigate the various menus.

Some website hosts complicate matters by putting all the tools under one tab called “Website” or “Site.”

This makes it difficult to find what you’re looking for, especially if you’re new to hosting.

A more effective way to organize things is to have separate tabs for each type of tool.

That way, you can easily find what you need without getting lost in a sea of menus.

The confusing dashboard is one reason we down-rated Google Cloud a bit.

We love hosts like Bluehost, SiteGround, and Kinsta because they provide simple dashboards to customers.

Uptime

The best WordPress hosting providers will guarantee at least 99.95% uptime.

It means your site will be accessible to visitors at all times.

A few minutes of downtime can cost you dearly in terms of lost traffic and revenue.

Make sure the host you’re considering can provide the uptime you need.

Otherwise, your site will become inaccessible when people try to visit it.

In the end, you’ll frustrate website visitors and lose potential customers.

Seeing your website go down can also affect your Google SEO rankings.

After all, one of the main ranking factors is site availability.

If Google can’t access your website for long periods, it will eventually lower your rankings as it looks for more reliable websites to rank instead.

Website loading times are a close second to uptime.

If your site takes too long to load, you’ll lose visitors.

Google also considers page loading times when ranking websites in its search engine results pages.

Make sure your chosen host provides adequate page-loading time.

Automation & Efficiency Features

WordPress hosting providers will offer a variety of features to make your life easier.

These can include staging environments, automatic security features, and more.

Some hosts will even offer features specifically for WordPress, such as the ability to install WordPress with a single click.

It is a handy feature if you’re new to hosting and don’t want to go through the hassle of manually installing WordPress.

Most of the hosts on our list give you a simple one-click WordPress install.

However, some hosts don’t offer free automatic backups.

HostPapa makes you pay for the backup process while Kinsta backs up your site every day for free.

Pay the most attention to the automation of backups, updates, and security.

These are essential features that will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

You need a quality backup feature so that you can quickly restore your website in case something goes wrong.

Updates are also crucial as they patch security vulnerabilities and fix bugs.

A good update feature will automatically install the latest WordPress updates as they become available.

Security is another key concern when it comes to hosting your WordPress website.

The best WordPress hosting providers will offer features such as malware scanning and removal, firewalls, and more.

These features will help keep your website safe from hackers and other online threats.

Pricing and Fees

The price you pay for WordPress hosting will vary depending on the hosting provider you choose.

In general, shared WordPress hosting is the most affordable option, while managed WordPress hosting is more expensive.

Overall Cost

When you’re comparing hosting providers, it’s important to look at the overall cost of ownership.

The best WordPress hosting providers will offer a variety of features at a price that’s affordable for your specific needs.

If you have a limited budget, you will need to prioritize the features that you deem most important to you.

For example, if you need a faster website, you may be willing to pay more for a managed WordPress host that can offer you a faster page-loading time.

On the other hand, if you’re on a tight budget, you may need to choose a less expensive shared WordPress host that doesn’t offer as many features.

In the end, it’s important to choose a provider that offers the best combination of features and prices for your specific needs.

Overage Charges

Some WordPress hosting providers will charge you for any overages on your hosting plan.

Overage is the number of resources you use that exceeds the limits of your hosting plan.

For example, if you have a shared WordPress hosting plan that allows for up to 100,000 monthly visitors and you get 120,000 visitors in a month, some hosting companies will charge extra for the 20,000 overage visitors.

Be sure to find out if your WordPress hosting provider charges for overage before you sign up for a hosting plan.

You can look at hosts such as HostGator and DreamHost without worrying in this area.

Endless Fees for Add-ons

Some WordPress hosting providers will try to nickel-and-dime you with endless fees for add-ons.

These can include fees for things like SSL certificates, security services, email accounts, and more.

You can find hosts that include all of the above services for free.

For instance, you’ll get a free SSL certificate, email, and security from hosts such as Bluehost, SiteGround, and Dreamhost.

Before you sign up for a hosting plan, be sure to find out if there are any hidden fees.

The last thing you want is the surprise of a fee you didn’t know about when it’s time to renew your hosting plan.

Customer Service and Support

The best WordPress hosting providers will offer excellent customer service and support.

It is a crucial consideration because you never know when you’ll need to contact your host for help.

When you’re comparing hosting providers, look into the kind of customer service and support they offer.

The last thing you want is to get stuck with a hosting provider that doesn’t offer the kind of support you need.

Find out what kind of customer service and support options are available before you sign up for a hosting plan.

For example, as a newer business owner, you might want to go with a company like WP Engine that gives you chat, email, and phone support.

If you’re more experienced and you don’t value phone support as much, you might not care that Pressable only offers chat and email support.

Frequently Asked Questions

You might still have a few questions about WordPress hosting.

Here are the answers to three commonly asked questions.

vector graphic showing an image that illustrates the best wordpress hosting for education

How hard is it to switch web hosts?

Switching web hosts is not as hard as it might seem.

Most hosts make it simple to export your site data and import it into your new host.

SiteGround, for instance, makes the process seamless.

It boils down to clicking one button inside your hosting account.

You’ll see your entire website migrated over to their servers in a matter of hours.

Which is better: HostGator or Bluehost?

Both HostGator and Bluehost are excellent choices for WordPress hosting.

They’re both affordable and offer similar features.

Bluehost wins out based on slightly faster website speeds, no need to pay for website backups, and a slightly less pushy approach to upsells.

Indeed, both HostGator and Bluehost will aggressively try to get you to pay for more services.

However, Bluehost’s customer service team pays more attention to your pending issues than HostGator’s support team does.

The Hostgator support team will try to upsell while fixing your technical challenges.

What to do after picking a web host for WordPress

After you’ve selected a WordPress host, it’s time to place an order and set up your new account.

The process is slightly different for each host.

However, most hosts make it simple to install WordPress and start building your website.

Follow the instructions provided by your chosen host.

If you get into any trouble, contact their customer service team.

Wrapping Up

Which host comes out as the clear winner on our list?

We choose Kinsta.

While a bit pricey in comparison to other hosts, Kinsta wins in the most important hosting categories.

You’ll get a fast website, superior security features, a simple WordPress dashboard, and a friendly customer support staff.

Due to its guarantee, you get to use Kinsta for a full 30 days.

Use that time to get familiar with the dashboard.

Find reasons to contact support so you can gauge their response times.

Set up the automatic backups and test the staging area.

HostPapa and GreenGeeks come in as two lesser-known, but interesting, runner-ups.

HostPapa fits any budget.

It also gives you plenty of storage space and offers a fast site.

GreenGeeks will also help if you’re budget-minded while providing you with fast-loading times.

You also won’t run out of space with GreenGeeks.

Now it’s your turn.

Choose two or three of our best WordPress hosting companies, compare their features against one another, and select the one that first you need most effectively.

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/best-wordpress-hosting-2/feed/ 0
Managed WordPress Hosting: Definition, Pros, Cons and Providers 2022 https://bloggingtips.com/managed-wordpress-hosting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=managed-wordpress-hosting https://bloggingtips.com/managed-wordpress-hosting/#respond Sat, 16 Jul 2022 10:39:34 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=91348 Read more]]> As a new WordPress website owner, you’ve probably begun to realize how much work goes into managing your website.

Your site’s daily management, including updates, security bug fixes, and standard site maintenance, can occupy a lot of time.

When you’re just getting your business off the ground, you’d rather spend that time focusing on other areas of growth.

Fortunately, that desire for growth is where managed WordPress web hosting comes in handy.

When you choose to have your site managed through a WordPress-enabled host, you can focus more energy on expanding your business and less on the minutiae.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about managed WordPress hosting.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

When you chose WordPress to create your website, you might’ve planned to build it on your own.

You’d select the themes and plugins, add your content, then dedicate time to keep your site running smoothly.

However, it takes a lot of work to keep a site up and running.

The back end of site maintenance is far more time-consuming than many novices realize.

So, it’s understandable if you’ve decided it’s time to switch to a managed WordPress site instead of your current self-managed site.  

Managed WordPress hosting is a type of site host that takes regular maintenance off your shoulders.

Your WordPress site will occupy space on your host’s server.

The host will take care of standard maintenance, including WordPress updates, backups, and bug fixes.

In addition, all your themes, plugins, and customer support will be on one secure server.

How Does Managed WordPress Hosting Work?

To get your WordPress website managed by a web host, you’ll need to choose a host that offers site management.

Examples include GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Pressable.

Once you choose your host, you’ll pick a plan that suits your needs.

After you sign up for your first month, your host will take care of the backend site maintenance.

You’ll still be responsible for content, of course.

However, your host’s technicians and experts will ensure your site is up to date in every other way.

This includes updating and backing up your site, keeping your data secure, and maintaining security protocols.

Is Managed WordPress Hosting Necessary?

Many WordPress website owners struggle to determine whether they should choose managed or unmanaged hosting.

Managed hosting has a long list of benefits, but unmanaged is far less expensive.

The simple answer is no; managed hosting isn’t necessary.

Most site owners choose it due to a lack of time, skill, knowledge, or desire to self-manage.

Web host platforms that are optimized specifically for WordPress will be able to give your site everything it needs to appeal to your users.

If managed web hosting is in your budget, base the decision on your knowledge and how much you want to take on yourself.

If you opt to pay for managed WordPress hosting, you’ll be able to dedicate attention to other business areas.

However, if you prefer total control, managed hosting might not be for you.

A Breakdown of Managed WordPress Hosting

When you start looking for web hosts for your website, you’ll come across a few different types.

Specifically, you’ll find information on shared and traditional hosts.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the differences between them.

vector graphic showing an illustration of a man working on a server that has a WordPress logo on it to illustrate managed WordPress hosting

How Managed WordPress Hosting is Different Than Traditional Hosting

Traditional web hosts consist of a dedicated server from multiple hosting providers for their clients.

Depending on the host and client, that server might be shared or private.

Regardless, each site owner is tethered to a specific server where all their resources are located.

On the other hand, WordPress hosting is explicitly dedicated to WordPress sites.

The server contains resources designed for WordPress users.

Since only WordPress users can purchase server space, you’ll get experts who know all the ins and outs of the WordPress platform.

How Managed WordPress Hosting is Different From Shared WordPress Hosting

When you purchase space on a host’s server, you’ll opt for either your own server space or shared space.

Shared hosting simply means you’re sharing your host with other clients instead of having your own server space.

When you choose shared hosting, your website can be managed or unmanaged.

Shared hosts’ plans are often much cheaper than their private alternatives.

For that reason, shared hosts are pretty popular with new users.

However, they can also have a lot of hidden fees.

And, when it comes to content management, managed WordPress hosts cater specifically to WordPress sites.

Meaning, your WordPress site will be managed by the people who know it best.

Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress is an excellent option for creating and building a user-friendly website.

It comes with themes, plugins, branding options, and templates that help design a site that’s perfect for your niche and users.

Choosing to have your WordPress site managed will help ensure an even better user experience.

A few of the advantages of a managed WordPress site include:

  • Faster load times than self-managed
  • Minimal downtime
  • Timely fixes to bugs
  • Regular updates and backups
  • Regular scans for security threats
  • Hosting provider has a thorough knowledge of WordPress
  • Customer support included

As you can see, the advantages of having a managed WordPress site are pretty extensive.

For many users, the advantages make the added cost of a managed host worthwhile.

If you’re still on the fence, keep reading for a few disadvantages of a managed WordPress site.

Disadvantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

Although managed hosting offers many benefits for WordPress site owners, it still has some disadvantages.

To cover all your bases, you should consider the following disadvantages when choosing between managed and unmanaged sites.

  • Managed sites cost more
  • Managed sites aren’t as flexible as many digitally inclined users might like
  • Some plugins might be blocked or limited
  • Often only host WordPress sites

If you’re a diehard WordPress user, have the budget, and aren’t up for daily site management, a managed hosted site might be for you.

However, you should carefully evaluate all your options before making a choice.

What Does Managed WordPress Hosting Cost?

As you explore different WordPress hosting options, you’ll get an idea of how much of your budget will have to go toward your website.

Of course, the more services your host provider offers, the higher the cost.

Ultimately, you should expect to find rates from $3 to $30 per month.

Your final monthly cost will depend on the individual plans you choose for your site.

Specific options that will add to your price could include:

  • Number of hosted WordPress sites
  • Number of site visitors
  • White-label or branding options
  • Server space
  • Expanded email capabilities

There are also free WordPress hosting options.

Similar to the low-cost plans, free hosting services typically have fewer features and minimal options for branding.

Customer support will be more limited than with paid services, and you won’t have as much space on the host’s server.

However, a free option might be best if you just want to learn or explore a specific host.

What Kind of Site Support Comes With Managed WordPress Hosting?

Whether you choose a free, cheap, or full-service WordPress host, you’ll get some level of customer support with your plan.

The type of support you get might vary from one host to the next and depend on the plan you choose.

This list provides an overview of some of the main support features you’ll get with managed WordPress hosting plans.

24/7 Support

Most WordPress hosts provide 24/7 customer support to their clients.

You’ll be able to contact someone via chat, phone, or email to get your site’s problem’s rectified as soon as you need help.

In some cases, higher tier customers will receive priority support.

Security Fixes

All WordPress hosts will regularly update your site’s security.

This includes preventing hacks or malware that could cause you or your users to lose their data.

Site security is essential to a good user experience, so you’ll want a host that offers rapid security fixes.

Daily Site Backups

After working hard to create a user-friendly, professional website, the last thing you want is to lose your data.

Your host provider will ensure you always have a site backup to keep you up and running.

Caching will also help ensure security breaches don’t cause you to lose your site.

Uptime Monitoring

A good host will ensure your website has minimal downtime.

Downtime is when your site is unavailable for your users.

The best managed WordPress hosts will ensure your uptime is as close to 100% as possible.

Speed

In addition to making your site secure, a WordPress host will also ensure your site is fast.

Nothing annoys users more than a sluggish site.

The best way to ensure a good user experience is by using a host that keeps your site moving.

When Should You Move From Cheap Hosting to Managed WordPress Hosting?

Finding a cheap WordPress hosting provider is a great way to save money in your early days.

When site traffic is low and you don’t need to update your site often, a cheaper service that provides minimal options will be enough.

However, over time, a few things might indicate it’s time to upgrade.

Too Much Upkeep

Websites require a lot of maintenance.

From content updates to security fixes and backups, a lot of leg work goes into maintaining a site.

When you first start out, those updates might not occupy much time.

But, eventually, ensuring your site is up to date might become too much of a time commitment.

At that point, a hosting provider will be a helpful way to free up time to focus on other business aspects.  

You Feel Out of Your Depth

Some site creators feel out of their depth from day one, while others might not feel overwhelmed for months or years.

Regardless of when you begin to feel like you’re in over your head, a comprehensive WordPress host can take the reins and free up time on your end.

Your provider will be able to handle all the complexities of your site, including security, updates, and backups.

You Have a Bigger Budget

A managed WordPress host provides significant convenience for site owners.

Your host will remove a lot of stress and work from your shoulders.

Unfortunately, the cost is one of the biggest reasons site owners avoid getting a managed host.

However, once your site revenue, and in turn, your budget, increases, a WordPress host will become easier to manage financially.

The Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

When you start researching managed hosting providers, you’ll find many options.

As you read through the factors listed in this article, keep your needs and priorities in mind.

Then, start exploring your options. Here are a few hosts that are worthy of a second look.

WP Engine

When you choose WordPress to build your site, WP Engine is an excellent option for a host.

It’s one of the most popular WordPress hosting providers and ideal for small businesses or companies.

Our Pick
WP Engine

When you choose WordPress to build your site, WP Engine is an excellent option for a host.

It’s one of the most popular WordPress hosting providers and ideal for small businesses or companies.

Pros

  • 24/7 dedicated WordPress support
  • Daily website backups
  • Fast servers
  • Regular software testing

Cons

  • Only available for WordPress users
  • Ideal for businesses, not individuals
  • Costlier than other options

Kinsta

Another WordPress hosting provider that offers managed hosting is Kinsta.

Kinsta is an enterprise-level host that provides performance monitoring, speed, and security.

Runner Up
Kinsta

Another WordPress hosting provider that offers managed hosting is Kinsta.

Kinsta is an enterprise-level host that provides performance monitoring, speed, and security.

Kinsta also offers a user-friendly platform for managing all of your web content as well as free migrations. It’s geared toward high-volume sites rather than individual bloggers.

Kinsta also offers a user-friendly platform for managing all of your web content as well as free migrations. It’s geared toward high-volume sites rather than individual bloggers.

Pros

  • 24/7 customer support
  • Custom plans
  • Free migrations on all plans

Cons

  • Pricier plans that start at $35
  • Limited storage
  • Specific WordPress plugins are banned

Flywheel

Flywheel is one of a few managed WordPress hosts endorsed by WordPress.

It offers a range of options, rapid speeds, and a 30-day money back guarantee that lets you test drive the service before you buy.

Also Great
Flywheel

Flywheel is one of a few managed WordPress hosts endorsed by WordPress.

It offers a range of options, rapid speeds, and a 30-day money back guarantee that lets you test drive the service before you buy.

Flywheel is designed for enterprise-level clients, although individual bloggers can still benefit.

Flywheel is designed for enterprise-level clients, although individual bloggers can still benefit.

Pros

  • Endorsed by WordPress
  • Free migrations
  • One-click staging
  • Built-in caching

Cons

  • Might be too robust for bloggers
  • Designed only for WordPress users

Pressable

Pressable offers managed WordPress hosting services through its WordPress-optimized cloud platform.

You’ll get scalability, security, and speed, not to mention no downtime.

Pressable

Pressable offers managed WordPress hosting services through its WordPress-optimized cloud platform.

You’ll get scalability, security, and speed, not to mention no downtime.

In addition, each plan comes with a robust selection of tools to ensure your site is always running smoothly.

Pros

  • WordPress optimized platform
  • Free migration help
  • 24/7 support
  • 100% uptime

Cons

  • No built-in email hosting
  • Customer support is a bit lacking

Defining Other Managed WordPress Hosts

A managed WordPress host is the best way to ensure your site is always running at peak performance.

However, your host options don’t end with platforms that only host WordPress sites.

There are a few popular hosts that offer services for WordPress and other clients.

Here’s a quick look at a few.

Is Bluehost a Managed WordPress Host?

Bluehost is a host that offers managed and self-managed WordPress options.

Bluehost offers four managed hosting plans and three self-managed plans to pick from.

Plans include a free domain, SSL certificate, Google verification, and automatic WordPress installation.

Managed plans include the basic features along with added tools and options to further enhance your site.

Is GoDaddy a Managed WordPress Host?

GoDaddy offers managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting options.

Managed WordPress is GoDaddy’s hosting platform designed specifically for WordPress websites.

Experts will handle things like updates, installations, and caching that’ll keep your WordPress site running smoothly.

GoDaddy also offers several self-managed hosting options if that’s what you’d prefer.

Is SiteGround Managed or Shared WordPress Hosting?

Siteground is a WordPress-recommended managed host.

It offers web, WordPress, cloud, reseller, and Woocommerece hosting under several different plans.

Managed hosting plans include automatic updates, free installation and migration, and daily backups.

The Cheapest Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

Are you looking for the best of the cheapest managed WordPress hosts?

Fortunately, with the array of hosts available, finding one that isn’t out of your budget is simple.

GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Siteground and three highly respected managed WordPress hosts that won’t obliterate your hosting budget.

Note: As of July 2022, each site is offering a deep discount for its hosting plans.

If you happen to miss out, keep checking back because they tend to run deals throughout the year.

GoDaddy WordPress Hosting

GoDaddy is a well-known company for domain names and web hosting services.

It’s an ideal option if you want to get all your website needs in one place.

GoDaddy has four WordPress hosting plans, each of which offers a discount for an annual plan.

All of GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting plans include a free domain, free business email, one-click backup restore, and automatic security scans.

More comprehensive plans provide more storage, site testing, and eCommerce options.

GoDaddy is an excellent option if you’re looking for flexibility.

WordPress hosting plans start at $8.99 per month.

Bluehost WordPress Hosting

One of WordPress’s most popular managed web host services is Bluehost, and for a good reason.

Not only does Bluehost offer a wide selection of plans, but its user-friendly interface and array of features cater to site owners of all skill levels.

You can either build your site using Bluehost’s Website Builder or migrate your existing site over.

If you’re just looking for hosting, you’ll be happy to find several plans to choose from.

So, whether you’re a brand new blogger or a thriving company, Bluehost will have a plan for you.

Bluehost’s plans start at $9.99 per month.

SiteGround WordPress Hosting

SiteGround has become popular due to its fast servers, quality customer service, and top-notch security.

It offers three WordPress hosting plans that start at $14.99 per month.

All plans provide daily backups, eCommerce functionality, enhanced security options, and unlimited databases.

If you want white-label options to boost your branding, Siteground’s GoGeek plan should work well.

You’ll have more storage, a private DNS, and priority support.

It’s an excellent choice for clients with large platforms or high-traffic websites.

Is Managed WordPress Hosting Worth It?

Since so many factors go into choosing a web host, whether managed hosting is worth it comes down to your needs.

Some site owners find a lot of benefits in managed WordPress hosting, while others don’t.

For many users, managed hosting is a want, not a need.

It’s a convenient feature that allows you to free up time for other pursuits.

However, in that respect, it could also be a need for larger site owners.

In addition, managed WordPress hosting can mean the difference between a well-run site and a frustrating user experience.

The bottom line is that a managed WordPress site provides many benefits if it’s within your budget.

You’ll have time to create more content, develop other sites, and tap into the expertise of others.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you still have questions about how managed WordPress hosting works?

Then, keep reading to check out the answers to a few common concerns.

Does managed WordPress have cPanel?

cPanel is a web-based site manager.

It makes managing a website easier because you don’t need to have much technical know-how.

However, you won’t be able to access cPanel if you have a managed WordPress account because you won’t be responsible for maintenance.

Is migrating to a managed WordPress host simple or hard?

You can migrate your WordPress site to a managed platform manually, automatically, or with a plugin.

Whichever method you choose will be pretty straightforward, although manually migrating might take a bit longer.

Most hosts provide free WordPress site migrations.

Managed WordPress Hosting: Wrapping Up

If you’re considering managed WordPress hosting, you have lots of options to choose from.

Take some time to explore all available plans to find one that suits your wants and needs.

Managed WordPress plans can make maintaining your site easier and allow you more time to focus on other areas of your business.

Do you have experience working with a managed WordPress site?

Leave a note about your experience in the comments to share your story.

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/managed-wordpress-hosting/feed/ 0 Shared Hosting vs Managed WordPress Hosting ✅ The Key Differences and How to Make Your Decision nonadult
Best WordPress Hosting For Education: 6 Best Options For 2022 https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-education/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-hosting-for-education https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-education/#respond Mon, 02 May 2022 20:08:49 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?post_type=build&p=85673 Read more]]> WordPress is one of the leading website creation platforms and content management systems.

While there are two separate versions of WordPress (WordPress.com vs WordPress.org), many larger sites and educational institutions nearly always prefer their own instance on WordPress.org.

Regardless of which version is chosen, this CMS is a powerful solution for educational institutions, yet still required hosting.

Today we’re talking about the best WordPress hosting for education – how it works, what option to choose, and how to get your site online.

Best WordPress Hosting For Education – Shortlist

  1. WP Engine
  2. CampusPress
  3. Kinsta
  4. Materiell
  5. SiteGround
  6. DreamHost

Our Top Picks

An overview of favorite WordPress hosting for education options from our comprehensive list below.

WP Engine
Our Pick
WP Engine
  • The #1 hosting platform for WordPress. This is the same service that powers Bloggingtips.com
  • Massive set of features, including automated backups, automated plugin updates, and highly secure, efficient, and scalable hosting
CampusPress
Runner Up
CampusPress
  • This hosting company's main focus is educational sites - they only work on these, so they know the space well
  • Services include accessibility, security, hosting, and support for education-related blogs and websites
Kinsta
Also Great
Kinsta
  • An up-and-coming managed WordPress hosting solution - growing rapidly and quickly
  • Great price point that includes standard features such as CDN, backups, support, and more

An Overview of WordPress Hosting for Education

WordPress hosting providers specialize in cloud storage, speed, and login capacity.

These providers ensure your website is accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

However, some are more suited to handle the specialized needs of educational institutions.

What is WordPress Hosting for Education?

WordPress hosting for education is amazingly flexible.

WordPress handles anything from simple classroom blogs to entire district or university websites.

Having a managed hosting account entails the ability to manage large numbers of logins simultaneously.

When deciding which hosting provider best fits your purposes, server capacity and speed are just as important as the price.

Can I Make Education Sites in WordPress?

Yes, you can make education sites in WordPress.

WordPress is among the top go-to platforms for creating educational websites.

With almost 41% of the U.S. higher education market, WordPress outranks and outperforms every other website builder of its kind by a significant margin.

Its recommendation process ensures hosts are compatible with free WordPress themes and plugins.

Many hosting providers have sites created with WordPress in mind.

Is WordPress Free for Educators?

The WordPress website does have free hosting and great customer support.

Any costs would be for a domain name and/or a managed hosting service.

These additions come at no outrageous cost.

There are many affordable and scalable options, and we will look at six excellent options.

Can Students Get Free Domains and Hosting?

Another YES! Students can have free domain names and receive free hosting.

Some hosting providers will include up to 40 student accounts with the purchase of a teacher account.

Students can create their own free account not in conjunction with a teacher should they desire one.

They need to register for a student developer package, and then they can get their own domain.

Who Provides WordPress Hosting for Education?

Plenty of WordPress hosting sites are available.

With well over 300,000 hosting websites in existence, it can be somewhat overwhelming to know which hosting site would be the best choice for your purposes.

Most hosting platforms offer fast speeds, easy accessibility, strong security, and customer service.

But not all are equal to the special attention education sites need.

We chose these six amazing hosts to help you locate one that matches your needs and budget.

1. WP Engine

Our Pick
WP Engine

WP Engine is a completely scalable managed hosting site for a single educator site to a larger agency with 30 or more sites to host together.

WP Engine is a completely scalable managed hosting site for a single educator site to a larger agency with 30 or more sites to host together.

Best For:

WP Engine is ideal for a smarter, more personalized educational experience.

It’s capable of hosting both online and blended learning practices.

Notable Features:

  • Free migration for your site to integrate with WP Engine.
  • Friendly for single-site users to a multisite network
  • Beginner-friendly resources with fee and free WordPress theme and plugin choices.

Pros:

  • 60-day free trial and no long-term commitment
  • Test and try plugins in a staging area before they go live on your site.
  • Responsive staff and technical support
  • Scalable
  • Free data backup and restoration

Cons:

  • WordPress only platform
  • Increased traffic-increased fees
  • More expensive for startups than other platforms

Is WP Engine Hard to Use?

WP Engine web hosting is not hard to use if you already have a domain name, email account, and use one or more WordPress sites.

They are solely a managed hosting site with expert support and stress-free data backup and restoration as a part of all of their plans.

WP Engine Pricing & Plans:

  • The Startup: $23 USD monthly
  • The Professional: $56 monthly
  • Advanced Solutions: contact for a quote

Our Take on WP Engine

WP Engine is solely a managed host site with customer service, security, and features that are worth the additional expense.

2. CampusPress

Runner Up
CampusPress

CampusPress is an Australian-based company with a global staff.

In business since 2005, CampusPress hosts around one in every three education blogging networks, student and educator portfolios, and agency websites.

CampusPress is an Australian-based company with a global staff.

In business since 2005, CampusPress hosts around one in every three education blogging networks, student and educator portfolios, and agency websites.

Best For:

CampusPress is widely used by higher education organizations with a multisite network, although they can easily handle K-12 agencies as well.

Notable Features:

  • Nightly security sweeps have strong firewalls with solutions presented within 24 hours.
  • Accessible WordPress themes are readily available, and you can customize new themes.
  • Whether CampusPress plugins or from a third party, you will have plenty of options to create the user experience you desire.

Pros:

  • Global presence
  • 24/7 accessible
  • Responsive staff
  • Top-notch security
  • Multisite web applications

Cons:

  • The pricing of CampusPress may be too expensive for smaller schools or educator groups.
  • Usability issues with keyboards and contrasting colors with some themes and plugins.
  • Limitations with compatibility between plugins. Sometimes you don’t even know there is an issue until you play with it.

Is CampusPress Hard to Use?

CampusPress is not hard to use.

Their customer service staff and WordPress experts will work with you to set up and maintain your university websites.

CampusPress Pricing & Plans:

CampusPress has plans starting at $2,000 annually.

Complete a simple “Request a Quote” form and a staff member will contact you to determine the needs of your school or education site.

Our Take on CampusPress:

With its extensive experience with global education agencies, CampusPress is a great option for larger school districts or higher education agencies.

3. Kinsta

Also Great
Kinsta

If Google Cloud and WordPress had a baby, Kinsta would be it.

The combination of the two make this managed hosting site amazingly fast, flexible, and user-friendly.

If Google Cloud and WordPress had a baby, Kinsta would be it.

The combination of the two make this managed hosting site amazingly fast, flexible, and user-friendly.

Best For:

Non-technical users love the features and services Kinsta offers.

Their knowledgeable staff is experts who can make the complex understandable.

It is not an all-in-one hosting site.

Medium to large websites that experience traffic spikes will find Kinsta more than suitable to their needs.

Notable Features:

  • The best of Google Cloud and WordPress
  • MyKinsta dashboard
  • Guaranteed 99.9% uptime

Pros:

  • Super-fast speeds
  • Google Cloud infrastructure
  • Astounding technical support
  • Elevated for e-commerce
  • Almost hands-off

Cons:

  • No email hosting
  • Nonexistent phone support
  • Hefty price point

Is Kinsta Hard to Use?

Kinsta is both intuitive and innovative.

Their expert technical staff will either walk you through features and processes or do it for you.

Kinsta Pricing & Plans:

  • Starter: $30 monthly
  • Pro: $60 monthly
  • Business 1: $100 monthly
  • Business 2: $200 monthly
  • Business 3: $300 monthly
  • Business 4: $400 monthly
  • Enterprise 1: $600 monthly
  • Enterprise 2: $900 monthly
  • Enterprise 3: $1200 monthly
  • Enterprise 4: $1,500 monthly
  • All plans include SSL, CDN, Staging, and free migration
  • Special Pricing Options for Non-Profit Organizations are also available

Our Take on Kinsta:

Even though it is not a one-stop-shop, the outstanding features and services it provides are mostly worth it.

4. Materiell

Materiell

Built specifically for schools, Materiell has the reliability and security education sites need.

This US-based company focuses on supporting K-12 and higher education, large or small.

Built specifically for schools, Materiell has the reliability and security education sites need.

This US-based company focuses on supporting K-12 and higher education, large or small.

Best For:

Materiell is a partner with Canvas Learning Management System.

It is one of the fastest-growing managed hosting account providers for WordPress.

This goes for K-12 and higher education institutes alike.

Notable Features:

  • Certified Woman-Owned Company
  • Partner with Canvas LMS
  • Understands the needs of districts without experienced webmasters

Pros:

  • Designed to be mobile-friendly
  • Analytics reports
  • Uptime/downtime reporting
  • Functionality customized for education
  • Able to define advanced permission and user groups

Cons:

  • Finding their pricing and plan menu was a challenge.
  • Limited information and details about several products and features.
  • Blog not consistently updated with relevant information or ideas for the constantly changing educational landscape.

Is Materiell Hard to Use?

Materiell boasts to be able to work with schools that do not have access to experienced webmasters or developers.

Materiell Pricing & Plans:

Services start at $395 a month.

Our Take on Materiell:

Materiell commits to collaborating with clients to develop, maintain, and support WordPress educators and their hosting needs.

For districts and agencies familiar with Canvas, Materiell would be a good fit.

5. SiteGround

SiteGround

SiteGround provides less expensive shared WordPress hosting options.

If offers free student hosting with educator sites.

SiteGround provides less expensive shared WordPress hosting options.

If offers free student hosting with educator sites.

Best For:

SiteGround is amazing for student blogging and portfolio creation.

It’s also very good at supporting educators with course creation.

Notable Features:

  • Comparative pricing to blogging platforms such as BlueHost
  • 24/7 support via chat, phone, and knowledge base
  • Supports more than 500 apps

Pros:

  • Free domain names
  • One of a kind anti-bot AI system
  • Improved daily backup and restore features
  • Automatic WordPress updates
  • Consistently early adopters of the latest technology

Cons:

  • Limited web space
  • The basic plan does not include managed hosting
  • Renewal pricing is higher than initial and some competitors

Is SiteGround Hard to Use?

SiteGround’s award-winning and very responsive technical support team makes every effort to get your site up and run as quickly as possible.

SiteGround Pricing & Plans:

  • StartUp: Current discounted rate of $3.99 monthly for a limited time
  • GrowBig: $6.69
  • GoGeek: $10.69
  • All plans include

Our Take on SiteGround:

Even with the higher renewal costs, SiteGround is an ideal hosting platform for individual educators and students to create blogs and ePortfolios.

6. DreamHost

DreamHost

DreamHost offers shared hosting account options ideal for individuals and small businesses.

They offer many of the same features but at a more affordable price point.

DreamHost offers shared hosting account options ideal for individuals and small businesses.

They offer many of the same features but at a more affordable price point.

Best For:

DreamHost is best for WordPress bloggers and course creators desiring an upgrade.

Notable Features:

  • Fast load times
  • WordPress optimized Servers
  • Resource protection

Pros:

  • Lots of unlimited features
  • Unlimited websites
  • 100% guaranteed uptime
  • 97-day money-back guarantee
  • Install WordPress with a single click
  • Monthly, yearly, or three-year plan options

Cons:

  • Many dashboard options are additional fees
  • Live chat support times vary
  • Shared hosting

Is DreamHost Hard to Use?

DreamHost seems to be the easiest of all the hosting providers with its one-click options.

It’s like a Done-For-You feature with a Do-It-Yourself price tag.

DreamHost Pricing & Plans:

  • Shared Starter: $2.59 monthly with the 3-year plan
  • Shared Unlimited

Our Take on DreamHost:

DreamHost is ideal for individual bloggers and course creators.

It is affordable with features suitable to small business needs.

Why Use WordPress Hosting for Education?

Are you wondering what the special hosting is for and if it is worth the cost?

If so, here are a few reasons why we suggest this type of hosting:

Ease of Use

WordPress is one of the most popular open-source platforms in the world.

The extremely users friendly features and applications along with its consistency to be on the cutting edge of the latest technology make WordPress agile and accommodating for the rapidly changing educational climate.

Student ePortfolios

Students need ePortfolios to showcase their academic skills.

They are crucial in the high-competitive world of higher education and to land that impressive dream job.

WordPress EPortfolios allow students to have ownership transferred to them to keep accessible for their professional goals.

Course Pages

Well-organized and easily accessible online course pages allow educators to ensure student success.

Used in conjunction with Tutor LMS, WordPress plugin sections have unparalleled functionality.

Choose a modern WordPress theme and at least one WordPress plugin on the page builder.

This will create a unique learning experience for your students.

How WordPress is Used in Education

The trend of digital learning is only growing.

More and more educational institutions seek easy ways to share information.

Even as a supplemental option, online learning is on the rise.

Education WP makes it easier than ever to create an educational website.

It has an intuitive page builder, an education academy theme, and plugin choice.

It also has a WordPress tutorial.

vector graphic showing an image that illustrates the best wordpress hosting for education

1. School Websites

The WordPress site can create a captivating school website.

The organization and navigation of these sites uncomplicate communication with families and communities.

Simply choose a WordPress theme and add a plugin or two to manage enrollment and communication for a simple web design.

Academy Pro is a top-rated theme that works well with WordPress plugin options.

Another great option for whole educational institutions is Academica Pro.

2. Class Websites

Teachers want a fast, reliable way to communicate with their students and families.

Creating a class website accomplishes that and gives a place to showcase student work.

With security features such as single-user sign-on, the people who can access specific web pages have login credentials.

This way, you can arrange the whole site or portions of it for privacy purposes.

3. Teacher Blogs

Blogging is an excellent way for teachers to earn extra money and build their professional portfolios.

Teachers love to connect with other educators and share ideas.

WordPress has some of the easiest and fastest ways to post blogs and receive feedback from others with comment features.

4. Virtual Classrooms

The rise of the virtual classroom and online courses is unmistakable.

WordPress websites can hold all resources and virtual materials students need for units and assignments with a user-friendly organization.

With the availability of changing active status, teachers can have specific pages open or close assignments as needed in their online course.

Easily create quizzes and track student progress and assignments with a Learning Management System.

WordPress has several LMS plugins, such as LearnDash, that streamlines student assessment and feedback.

5. Share Lesson Plans

Educators do not have time to reinvent the wheel for each unit or lesson.

You can share lesson plans with teachers in the same school, another district, or across the world.

Sharing helps overworked professionals find quality materials to meet their students’ needs.

What Do You Need in an Educational Website?

All educational websites have a few things in common.

Although you could add more than these, a home page, about page, and multiple course pages will get you started.

1. Home Page

Your Home Page should be eye-catching and neatly organized since it is the first page visitors see.

On this page, visitors and users should see a title or header, maybe a subheader, some sort of graphics like a logo or photo, and a navigation bar with hyperlinks to the other pages on your site.

Be careful to not make it look cluttered.

Using broader yet specific categories, your navigation bar should have no more than six options.

2. About Page

The About Page is where you will wow your audience.

Evoke emotions, tell a story, and share candid photos.

This is the page to show who you are or the personalities in your classroom.

Adding contact information, including social media accounts, will encourage your visitors to follow and connect.

A well-crafted About Me page is an important page to have on your blog.

Before you build yours, we recommend you look through best-in-class industry examples.

3. Course Pages

The bulk of your pages would probably be in this category.

You can have a link to a directory or create subcategories with links to specific subjects.

Each online course page should have a similar format and organization to avoid confusion between subjects.

WordPress Tutor LMS helps streamline formatting and works well with eCommerce plugins like Woocommerce hosting.

Wrapping Up

WordPress for education has quality hosting options.

You get your pick of sites with incredible speeds, user-friendly software, and all the security features needed.

Determining if you need a dedicated or a shared provider is the hardest decision in the process.

Online education solutions are accessible and manageable to agencies of all sizes.

]]>
https://bloggingtips.com/wordpress-hosting-for-education/feed/ 0
Best WordPress Hosting: Which One Should You Choose For Your Blog? https://bloggingtips.com/best-wordpress-hosting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-wordpress-hosting Sun, 11 Oct 2020 07:25:50 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=2843 Read more]]> Building a fantastic website is essential, no one’s denying that. But people tend to neglect the importance of choosing the right hosting. The thing is, the health of your website relies on the hosting provider that you opt for.
Now there are three unofficial “tiers” of website hosting for WordPress: free, cheap, and paid hosting. Depending on which category you go with, you’ll get different hosting quality. So, it all depends on your needs.
With this in mind, let’s dig deeper into the best WordPress hosting options.

Free WordPress Hosting

Free WordPress hosting is generally used for those learning about WordPress and for various website tests. Naturally, you don’t pay anything for it, but, in turn, you can’t expect impeccable service. Below, we’ve outlined a few free WordPress hosting options.

WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the official WordPress website. This is not to be confused with WordPress.com, which is a for-profit website dedicated to the implementation of the software found at the WordPress official website.
WordPress.com offers you a simple way to create a WordPress site and launch it. All you need to do is make a WordPress.com account.
Yes, WordPress.com is free. But you don’t get to experience its actual values and benefits until you pay for full access.
Still, this service is very user-friendly. It features an easy-to-use custom dashboard for WordPress. You get 3GB of storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and access to hundreds of WordPress themes that are open to the public. On top of that, you get a free SSL certificate.

Pros

  • Straightforward setup
  • Quick website load times
  • Custom WordPress dashboard

Cons

  • Can’t install personal themes and plugins with a free plan
  • Have to pay if you want to use your custom domain
  • No option to manage your database or connect using FTP

AccuWeb Hosting

AccuWeb is a WordPress hosting option that has free as well as premium hosting plans. It’s been around for quite some time (more than 15 years), so they know what they’re doing.
AccuWeb has one of the best free plans when it comes to bandwidth, storage, and email limits. There’s also the cPanel, new PHP versions, and there are no ads involved.
You get up to 2GB of SSD storage and a bandwidth of 30GB. The platform offers a full database and server access on its free plan, and you get a one-click installer for WordPress. AccuWeb also supports custom domain names on its free plan and offers basic backup support. Overall, they do bundle up a lot for their free plan.

Pros

  • Solid bandwidth limit on free plan – as many as 5,000 monthly visitors
  • 25 free email accounts
  • Database and cPanel access
  • Custom domain names on the free plan

Cons

  • Can host more than one website per account
  • The only server is located in Montreal
  • You can’t get a free subdomain

AwardSpace

This WordPress web hosting service comes from Germany and is suitable for as many as 5,000 monthly visits. But what’s truly special about AwardSpace, is that it offers a unique upgrade path. As your site grows, you can make gradual upgrades as the needs arise. These won’t set you to back too much.
On a free account, you get to host a maximum of four websites. You don’t need to bother with WordPress installation – there’s a one-click installer integrated into the platform. AwardSpace is also widely renowned for its full MySQL database support on its free plan. Apart from that, you get 1GB of free storage and a 5GB bandwidth. Oh, and you don’t have to worry about ads.

Pros

  • Four websites on the free plan
  • Allows you to use your personalized email account
  • Complete server file and database access

Cons

  • Bandwidth isn’t exactly great
  • Only one of the four websites on the free plan is the top-level domain

Cheap WordPress Hosting

“Cheap” often has negative connotations. In terms of web hosting, though, cheap is often the best option. This is because you don’t get a whole lot from an expensive plan. Generally, a cheap WordPress hosting option means a shared plan with solid max storage and bandwidth.
The vast majority of people don’t need more than an affordable WordPress hosting option. The prices are also dirt-cheap because there’s a lot of competition in this market. The overall standard at present is that you’ll have to pay yearly for cheaper plans. If you want to pay monthly, you’re going to have to upgrade. There are exceptions, of course.
Here are some of the best WordPress hosting options that are very affordable.

Shared WordPraess Hosting

There are two types of hosting – shared and dedicated. In both cases, the data is held on a single server. However, with shared hosting, your website is on a server with several others, which makes you open to potential cyberattacks. Shared hosting is, of course, cheaper than dedicated hosting.

Bluehos

With Bluehost, the basic plan is at less than $3 per month. You only get one website, but you get 50GB of SSD storage, which is quite something. Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth, which means that you can transfer unlimited amounts of data. However, the maximum server speed is still limited.
You also get a free SSL certificate, as well as free domain registration.
Although Bluehost’s more expensive plans aren’t the best on the market, they’re still solid, in case you want to upgrade at some point. However, when we’re talking about cheap plans, there’s no better WordPress hosting around.

Pros
  • Unmetered bandwidth
  • Free SSL certificate and free domain registration
  • Less than $3 per month
Cons

More expensive plans mean less upgrading wiggle room
No free plan

SiteGround

You may be deterred by the $7-mark, but this monthly price is still pretty cheap (cheaper than your Spotify subscription). SiteGround offers managed plans, but more on that later. Managed prices rarely come at rates that are this low.
You also get daily backups, automatic WordPress updates, as well as integration to Cloudflare CDN, one of the most popular free content delivery networks around.

Pros
  • Free SSL certificate
  • 10,000 visits per month
  • Automatic updates
  • Management tools
Cons
  • After the first contract, it’s $14.99 per month.

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
Learn More:
Read Our SiteGround Review
[/su_note]

DreamHost

The cool thing about DreamHost is that it’s a very pragmatic hosting service. Whether you like it or not, DreamHost allows you to choose between two options that have obvious differences.
The WordPress Starter plan is $2.59 per month if you pay for it on a tri-yearly basis. The WordPress Unlimited plan is $4.95 per month, paid every three years.
There’s a one-year option that goes for $3.95 per month for the Starter pack and $4.95/month for the Unlimited option.
Finally, the monthly plans are $4.95 and $10.95, respectively.
What DreamHost brings to the table, however, is a relatively low price for an Unlimited plan, if you pay on a 3-year basis.

Pros
  • Free domain registration for the cheapest plan
  • Unmetered bandwidth and SSD storage
  • Free SSL certification and domain registration
Cons
  • Have to bind yourself to a three-year contract
  • Monthly payments don’t have the most affordable options

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
Learn More:
Read Our DreamHost Review
[/su_note]

HostGator Review

HostGator has been around for quite some time now, but make no mistake, it’s still very much in the game. It boasts a 99.98% uptime (time the servers are live and working, as opposed to being down) within the past two years. This is quite a feat that not many servers boast.
With their most basic plans, you get unmetered bandwidth and storage, free domain during the first year, and many other benefits.

Pros

  • 99.98% uptime
  • Unmetered bandwidth and storage
  • A free SSL certificate and a free domain within the first year

Cons

  • Slow page loading speed.
  • Extra fees for various features such as Gmail

GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy offers a lot of hosting stability and is fairly fast, at a 554ms average. You get 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth with their base plan. What you also get are more than 125 services that you can install simply. A lot of these services, however, will cost you. Migrations cost $99 per site, backups are $2.99 per month, while the SSL certificates cost $63.99 per year.

Pros
  • Impressive uptime of 99.97%
  • 554ms average page loading time
  • There are many app options included
Cons
  • You have to pay for advanced options and apps
  • Customer support isn’t ideal
  • Paid WordPress Hosting

Let’s talk about top-tier hosting for WordPress. We’re talking expensive WordPress hosting options with base plans that are still pricey.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed hosting means that you get various convenient features that make securing, managing, and boosting your site much easier. This is, of course, a feature reserved for top hosting plans and providers.

Flywheel

The cheapest Flywheel plan is $15 per month, while the most expensive one will set you back $290 per month. It boasts an optimized dashboard, nightly backups, quality security options, automatic installations, one-click staging sites, and various other options.
Support-wise, you get their full attention. You can contact the support via email, phone, social media, even a live chat.

Pros
  • A wide variety of brilliant features
  • Fantastic support options
  • Powerful infrastructure
Cons
  • Top-tier plans are very expensive

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
Learn More:
Read Our Flywheel Review
[/su_note]

WP Engine

The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.” So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting. The cheapest plan is $25 per month, which isn’t ideal for a single user. But that’s okay since WP Engine is aimed at companies. Its cheapest plan is even called “Startup.”

Pros
  • A wide variety of premium features
  • Excellent support
  • Automated plugin imports
Cons
  • Pricey for single users
  • A bit intimidating for newbies

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
Learn More:
Read Our WP Engine Review
[/su_note]

Various WordPress Hosting Options

Every mentioned WordPress hosting service could be a great fit for you. However, your choice shouldn’t boil down to getting the cheapest or the most expensive option. There’s a lot more to it, as you can see. Choose your WordPress hosting service carefully – do thorough research before diving in.

]]>
Best WordPress Hosting: Which One Should You Choose For Your Blog? https://bloggingtips.com/best-wordpress-hosting-2-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-wordpress-hosting-2-2 Sun, 11 Oct 2020 07:25:50 +0000 https://bloggingtips.com/?p=2843 Read more]]> Building a fantastic website is essential, no one’s denying that.

But people tend to neglect the importance of choosing the right hosting.

The thing is, the health of your website relies on the hosting provider that you opt for.

Now there are three unofficial “tiers” of website hosting for WordPress: free, cheap, and paid hosting.

On top of that, there are also specialized needs such as WordPress hosting for education.

Depending on which category you go with, you’ll get different hosting quality. So, it all depends on your needs.

With this in mind, let’s dig deeper into the best WordPress hosting options.

Free WordPress Hosting

Free WordPress hosting is generally used for those learning about WordPress and for various website tests.

Naturally, you don’t pay anything for it, but, in turn, you can’t expect impeccable service.

Below, we’ve outlined a few free WordPress hosting options.

vector graphic showing three of the best free blog sites in an image arranged one next to the other

WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the official WordPress website.

This is not to be confused with WordPress.com, which is a for-profit website dedicated to the implementation of the software found at the WordPress official website.

Our Pick
WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the official WordPress website.

This is not to be confused with WordPress.com, which is a for-profit website dedicated to the implementation of the software found at the WordPress official website.

WordPress.com offers you a simple way to create a WordPress site and launch it.

WordPress.com offers you a simple way to create a WordPress site and launch it.

All you need to do is make a WordPress.com account.

Yes, WordPress.com is free.

But you don’t get to experience its actual values and benefits until you pay for full access.

Still, this service is very user-friendly.

It features an easy-to-use custom dashboard for WordPress.

You get 3GB of storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and access to hundreds of WordPress themes that are open to the public.

On top of that, you get a free SSL certificate.

Pros

  • Straightforward setup
  • Quick website load times
  • Custom WordPress dashboard

Cons

  • Can’t install personal themes and plugins with a free plan
  • Have to pay if you want to use your custom domain
  • No option to manage your database or connect using FTP

AccuWeb Hosting

AccuWeb is a WordPress hosting option that has free as well as premium hosting plans.

It’s been around for quite some time (more than 15 years), so they know what they’re doing.

AccuWeb has one of the best free plans when it comes to bandwidth, storage, and email limits.

Runner Up
AccuWeb Hosting

AccuWeb is a WordPress hosting option that has free as well as premium hosting plans.

It’s been around for quite some time (more than 15 years), so they know what they’re doing.

AccuWeb has one of the best free plans when it comes to bandwidth, storage, and email limits.

There’s also the cPanel, new PHP versions, and there are no ads involved.

You get up to 2GB of SSD storage and a bandwidth of 30GB.

The platform offers a full database and server access on its free plan, and you get a one-click installer for WordPress.

AccuWeb also supports custom domain names on its free plan and offers basic backup support.

Overall, they do bundle up a lot for their free plan.

Pros

  • Solid bandwidth limit on free plan – as many as 5,000 monthly visitors
  • 25 free email accounts
  • Database and cPanel access
  • Custom domain names on the free plan

Cons

  • Can host more than one website per account
  • The only server is located in Montreal
  • You can’t get a free subdomain

AwardSpace

This WordPress web hosting service comes from Germany and is suitable for as many as 5,000 monthly visits.

But what’s truly special about AwardSpace, is that it offers a unique upgrade path.

Also Great
AwardSpace

This WordPress web hosting service comes from Germany and is suitable for as many as 5,000 monthly visits.

But what’s truly special about AwardSpace, is that it offers a unique upgrade path.

As your site grows, you can make gradual upgrades as the needs arise.

As your site grows, you can make gradual upgrades as the needs arise.

These won’t set you to back too much.

On a free account, you get to host a maximum of four websites.

You don’t need to bother with WordPress installation – there’s a one-click installer integrated into the platform.

AwardSpace is also widely renowned for its full MySQL database support on its free plan.

Apart from that, you get 1GB of free storage and a 5GB bandwidth.

Oh, and you don’t have to worry about ads.

Pros

  • Four websites on the free plan
  • Allows you to use your personalized email account
  • Complete server file and database access

Cons

  • Bandwidth isn’t exactly great
  • Only one of the four websites on the free plan is the top-level domain

Cheap WordPress Hosting

“Cheap” often has negative connotations.

In terms of web hosting, though, cheap is often the best option.

This is because you don’t get a whole lot from an expensive plan.

Generally, a cheap WordPress hosting option means a shared plan with solid max storage and bandwidth.

The vast majority of people don’t need more than an affordable WordPress hosting option.

The prices are also dirt-cheap because there’s a lot of competition in this market.

The overall standard at present is that you’ll have to pay yearly for cheaper plans.

If you want to pay monthly, you’re going to have to upgrade.

There are exceptions, of course.

Here are some of the best WordPress hosting options that are very affordable.

vector graphic showing an illustration of wordpress hosting and a handful of the best wordpress hosting companies logos on the side

Shared WordPress Hosting

There are two types of hosting – shared and dedicated.

In both cases, the data is held on a single server.

However, with shared hosting, your website is on a server with several others, which makes you open to potential cyberattacks.

Shared hosting is, of course, cheaper than dedicated hosting.

Bluehost

With Bluehost, the basic plan is at less than $3 per month.

You only get one website, but you get 50GB of SSD storage, which is quite something.

Our Pick
Bluehost

With Bluehost, the basic plan is at less than $3 per month.

You only get one website, but you get 50GB of SSD storage, which is quite something.

Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth, which means that you can transfer unlimited amounts of data.

Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth, which means that you can transfer unlimited amounts of data.

However, the maximum server speed is still limited.

You also get a free SSL certificate, as well as free domain registration.

Although Bluehost’s more expensive plans aren’t the best on the market, they’re still solid, in case you want to upgrade at some point.

However, when we’re talking about cheap plans, there’s no better

WordPress hosting around.

Pros
  • Unmetered bandwidth
  • Free SSL certificate and free domain registration
  • Less than $3 per month
Cons

More expensive plans mean less upgrading wiggle room
No free plan

SiteGround

You may be deterred by the $7-mark, but this monthly price is still pretty cheap (cheaper than your Spotify subscription).

SiteGround offers managed plans, but more on that later.

Runner Up
SiteGround

You may be deterred by the $7-mark, but this monthly price is still pretty cheap (cheaper than your Spotify subscription).

SiteGround offers managed plans, but more on that later.

Managed prices rarely come at rates that are this low.

Managed prices rarely come at rates that are this low.

You also get daily backups, automatic WordPress updates, as well as integration to Cloudflare CDN, one of the most popular free content delivery networks around.

Pros
  • Free SSL certificate
  • 10,000 visits per month
  • Automatic updates
  • Management tools
Cons
  • After the first contract, it’s $14.99 per month.

DreamHost

The cool thing about DreamHost is that it’s a very pragmatic hosting service.

Whether you like it or not.

DreamHost allows you to choose between two options that have obvious differences.

Also Great
DreamHost

The cool thing about DreamHost is that it’s a very pragmatic hosting service.

Whether you like it or not,

DreamHost allows you to choose between two options that have obvious differences.

The WordPress Starter plan is $2.59 per month if you pay for it on a tri-yearly basis.

The WordPress Unlimited plan is $4.95 per month, paid every three years.

There’s a one-year option that goes for $3.95 per month for the Starter pack and $4.95/month for the Unlimited option.

Finally, the monthly plans are $4.95 and $10.95, respectively.

What DreamHost brings to the table, however, is a relatively low price for an Unlimited plan, if you pay on a 3-year basis.

Pros
  • Free domain registration for the cheapest plan
  • Unmetered bandwidth and SSD storage
  • Free SSL certification and domain registration
Cons
  • Have to bind yourself to a three-year contract
  • Monthly payments don’t have the most affordable options

HostGator Review

HostGator has been around for quite some time now, but make no mistake, it’s still very much in the game.

HostGator

HostGator has been around for quite some time now, but make no mistake, it’s still very much in the game.

It boasts a 99.98% uptime (time the servers are live and working, as opposed to being down) within the past two years. This is quite a feat that not many servers boast.

It boasts a 99.98% uptime (time the servers are live and working, as opposed to being down) within the past two years. This is quite a feat that not many servers boast.

With their most basic plans, you get unmetered bandwidth and storage, free domain during the first year, and many other benefits.

Pros

  • 99.98% uptime
  • Unmetered bandwidth and storage
  • A free SSL certificate and a free domain within the first year

Cons

  • Slow page loading speed.
  • Extra fees for various features such as Gmail

GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy offers a lot of hosting stability and is fairly fast, at a 554ms average.

You get 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth with their base plan.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers a lot of hosting stability and is fairly fast, at a 554ms average.

You get 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth with their base plan.

What you also get are more than 125 services that you can install simply.

What you also get are more than 125 services that you can install simply.

A lot of these services, however, will cost you.

Migrations cost $99 per site, backups are $2.99 per month, while the SSL certificates cost $63.99 per year.

Pros
  • Impressive uptime of 99.97%
  • 554ms average page loading time
  • There are many app options included
Cons
  • You have to pay for advanced options and apps
  • Customer support isn’t ideal
  • Paid WordPress Hosting

Let’s talk about top-tier hosting for WordPress.

We’re talking expensive WordPress hosting options with base plans that are still pricey.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed hosting means that you get various convenient features that make securing, managing, and boosting your site much easier.

This is, of course, a feature reserved for top hosting plans and providers.

Flywheel

The cheapest Flywheel plan is $15 per month, while the most expensive one will set you back $290 per month.

Our Pick
Flywheel

The cheapest Flywheel plan is $15 per month, while the most expensive one will set you back $290 per month.

It boasts an optimized dashboard, nightly backups, quality security options, automatic installations, one-click staging sites, and various other options.

It boasts an optimized dashboard, nightly backups, quality security options, automatic installations, one-click staging sites, and various other options.

Support-wise, you get their full attention.

You can contact the support via email, phone, social media, even a live chat.

Pros
  • A wide variety of brilliant features
  • Fantastic support options
  • Powerful infrastructure
Cons
  • Top-tier plans are very expensive

WP Engine

The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.”

Runner Up
WP Engine

The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.”

So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting.

So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting.

The cheapest plan is $25 per month, which isn’t ideal for a single user.

But that’s okay since WP Engine is aimed at companies.

Its cheapest plan is even called “Startup.”

Pros
  • A wide variety of premium features
  • Excellent support
  • Automated plugin imports
Cons
  • Pricey for single users
  • A bit intimidating for newbies

How to Choose a Web Host: 8 Factors

1. Reliability And Availability

Unreliable or dated hardware and weak connections can cause your website to be offline more often.

Not only does the loss of access mean inevitable loss of readership and/or sales, but it also leads to a decline in search engine ratings.

A great way to gauge a company’s ability to keep your website indefinitely up and running is by looking at its historical uptime scores.

Companies that have reported annual scores of 99.5% or more are often worth considering. It’s always recommended to avoid companies with scores below 99%.

2. Price

Even though price is high up on our list, try hard to not make it a deciding factor, or a deal-breaker. It’s highly likely that you will observe huge differences in prices offered by various vendors.

Going for the cheapest solution isn’t always the best idea, especially not for the long-term. When reviewing potential choices, just remember that maintaining a skilled and resourceful workforce, state-of-the-art hardware and a stable network connection costs a significant amount of money; thus, a company offering you a $1.59 subscription might not have any of these.

It’s vital to search for the greatest bang for the buck while remembering the age-old proverb you get what you pay for.

3. Security

A sometimes-overlooked factor while choosing a web hosting provider is the server security.

Symantec reports that 1 out of every 13 web requests lead to malware and that’s why it’s imperative that you choose a solution that protects your website from cyber attacks.

Even though website security has a lot to do with the way you build and develop your website, a secure web hosting can also go a long way in keeping potential hackers at bay.

Modern hosting service providers like Hostinger implement firewall rules and network monitoring processes which ensure that no harmful traffic makes its way to your web application.

Besides this, make sure that the vendor keeps their machines updated at all times and that antivirus and anti-malware scanning also takes place periodically.

Lastly, user access control should also be provided by your hosting provider; it should allow only authorized people to access the administrative features of your website.

4. Competitive Advantage/Features Offered

This part deals with figuring out the list of features or the competitive advantage that a shortlisted company has, over its counterparts.

A majority of the service providers offer sufficient disk storage and a sustainable network connection, but only a handful offer supplementary features that can come in handy later on.

One such feature is an email service which allows you to set up email accounts using your domain name.

A drag-and-drop website builder is another excellent feature provided by some top hosting providers.

These easy-to-use applications allow you to design and develop your own website, without having to hire a technical professional

Other features include providing access to website tools like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Moodle, and shopping carts, etc.

Some companies also provide you direct access to ecommerce tools like OpenCart and Magento, etc.

5. Customer Service

As a novice website owner, you are likely to hit a brick wall, especially during the early days of managing a hosted website.

So having access to a high response, friendly and well-trained customer service team is of primary importance.

It’s recommended to look for a company that provides 24/7 customer service, and that too, of a high quality.

That said, a lot of companies advertise 24/7 support, but their agents take hours (sometimes even days) to get back to you, regarding a query.

A good way to filter out providers that are likely to keep their word is by searching for any customer reviews or testimonials available online.

Lastly, ensure that technical support is offered via multiple channels e.g. live chat, email, and landline, etc.

6. Backups

Cyber attacks like ransomware are no longer restricted to financial websites as reported by Symantec.

An unprecedented number of general websites are being targeted every day since they are often easier targets.

These attacks are notorious for leaving irreversible damage on the files of a website, making it virtually impossible to restore it to its original form, in the absence of a backup.

Owing to these circumstances, it’s necessary you choose a web hosting provider that creates multiple backups of your website’s files on its server.

A backup can also come in handy in case a hard disk fails or becomes corrupted.  

7. Control Panel

As you start your life as a website owner, you should be ready to learn and perform tasks (like installing a new content management system, creating a new email account and installing a new plugin) yourself, regardless of how little you may know about technology.

To do this without having to pull your hair out, you would need access to a control panel like Plesk or cPanel.

These well-designed web applications give you access to some of the most important website management features, via a simplistic interface.

Don’t choose a service provider that doesn’t offer you a user-friendly control panel.  

8. Scalability

Last on our list of the most important factors to consider whilst choosing a web hosting provider is scalability.

As your traffic increases, or as your sales rise, your initially chosen hosting plan might no longer sustain your needs.

So, if a hosting provider cannot accommodate you as you grow, then this can be a serious problem.

  • Do they provide you with the flexibility to upgrade your subscription whenever you want?
  • Do they allow you to shift from a VPS hosting to a completely dedicated one easily?

Remember that changing your hosting service is a costly and time-consuming ordeal, so to avoid doing that in the future, only join hands with a company that enables you to grow as you please.

Various WordPress Hosting Options

Every mentioned WordPress hosting service could be a great fit for you.

However, your choice shouldn’t boil down to getting the cheapest or the most expensive option.

There’s a lot more to it, as you can see.

Choose your WordPress hosting service carefully – do thorough research before diving in.

]]>