Top 5 WordPress Hosting Solutions: A Comparison
Web hosting is one of the most important parts of a successful website, which is why it’s incredibly important to choose the best WordPress hosting for your site. Doing so can give your SEO a boost, while simultaneously increasing sales. There’s a variety of WordPress hosting solutions available. We’ve taken what we believe to be the top five and compared them to make your decision easier.
What to Consider When Choosing a Hosting Solution
For those who are just starting with their website, a shared hosting plan should be able to take care of your needs. Additionally, those who are just beginning should pay close attention to the allowable bandwidth, whether the hosting solution allows multiple domains on a single plan, and the pricing, including how cheap it gets if you decide to commit to a longer hosting plan (such as 36 months).
Bluehost
Bluehost can cost as much as $49.99 a month depending on the plan you choose, but they provide generous discounts for new customers, such as $2.95/mo for WordPress hosting.
The main features of Bluehost include:
- 30 GB of disk space
- 2 GB of RAM
- 30 GB of backup space
- Up to 5 WordPress sites
- Free IP address
- Free domain name
- 24/7 support
- Free SiteLock Pro security
- Free SiteLock CDN
- Free SSL
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Even the most basic Bluehost plan is suitable for sites getting about 100 million monthly visits. Bluehost plans are built on VPS and typically provide good site speed. Plans with Bluehost include advertising offers from Yahoo, Google, Bing, and more which can help you grow your business. However, Bluehost can be a bit expensive for those without coupon codes and there have been some frequent issues with support.
Cloudways
Cloudways is a user-friendly hosting platform offering essential features for seamless website management. With industry-best performance, exceptional 24/7 support, and enterprise-grade security, Cloudways ensures hassle-free hosting starting from $11/month.
Key Features of Cloudways:
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Advanced Security Measures (DDoS Mitigation, Vulnerability Scanner, Automated Protection with Fail2Ban)
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Performance Optimization (Built-in Caching Mechanisms, Up-to-Date PHP Versions, Dedicated Environments)
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Enterprise-Grade CDN Integration (Cloudflare with Edge Caching, Smart Routing, Image Optimization)
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Application-Level Support (In-Depth Assistance, Proactive Application Monitoring, Private Slack Channel)
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Flexible Scaling and Choice (Seamless Vertical Scaling, Renowned Cloud Providers, 1-Click App Deployment)
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Streamlined Workflows (Git Integration, Teams, and Projects, Server & App Cloning)
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Easy Control and Management (User-Friendly UI, 1-Click Backup & Restore, Custom Varnish Settings)
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24/7 Real-Time Server Monitoring (Constant Surveillance, New Relic Integration, Cloudways Bot Notifications)
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SafeUpdates (Automated WordPress core, theme, and plugin update detection and deployment)
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Cloudflare Enterprise Add-On (Enterprise-grade performance and security)
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Cloudways Autonomous (Platform for high-availability cloud management with advanced load balancing and autoscaling)
Cloudways caters to diverse customer needs, offering a range of options from high-performance servers to mid-range affordable hosting platforms. This flexibility accommodates various budgets and allows hosting websites to run custom PHP software. If you seek an ideal managed hosting provider that aligns with your requirements while providing room for growth, Cloudways is an excellent choice.
WP Engine
WP Engine plans start at $29 a month and their most basic plan is suitable for sites getting about 25,000 visits per month. The main features of a WordPress hosting solution plan with WP Engine include:
- 60-day money-back guarantee
- Free automated migration
- Free SSL certificate
- 10 GB local storage
- 24/7 support
- Fast site speed
- Transferrable installs
- Curated plugins
Perhaps the biggest advantage to using WP Engine is site speed, which just might make up for the fact that it’s not the cheapest hosting solution. Additionally, you get daily backups and there don’t seem to be any issues with downtime, which is certainly a plus. Perhaps most notable is their expert support, given that WP Engine support is a three-time Stevie Award Winner for best customer service.
SiteGround
SiteGround plans start at $3.95 a month and are most suitable for sites that average about 10,000 visits per month. Its main features include:
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Free setup and transfer
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Free daily backups
- Unlimited emails and databases
- Free CloudFlare CDN
- 10 GB web space
- 24/7 support
- Free app installs
- cPanel and SSH access
One of the biggest advantages Siteground has is its response times, considering it’s one of the fastest hosting plans. Additionally, Siteground’s sign-up process is quick and easy to follow. It includes a WordPress built-in installer, which saves you time and effort. One disadvantage to using Siteground is that once you start to bring in more than 10,000 visitors a month, you have to upgrade your plan. For some, only 10 GB of space can be a problem.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting plans start at $3.92 a month, which is certainly exciting compared to other WordPress hosting solutions we’ve mentioned. The main features of their most basic plan include:
- 1 website
- 5 databases
- Unlimited transfer
- Unlimited storage
- Anytime money-back guarantee
- Free SSL and SSD
- cPanel control panel
- 99% uptime guarantee
Quite obviously, A2 Hosting is one of the more affordable WordPress hosting solutions. Additionally, it’s incredibly easy to get started to take advantage of their low prices. They also offer incredibly fast hosting services and dependable customer support. The A2 Optimized WordPress comes with WordPress already installed which saves you time and effort.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion offers three different plans, ranging from $3.49 to $7.99 a month. Its main features include:
- Unlimited disk space
- 2 websites on one account
- Unlimited monthly transfer
- Free domain registration or transfer
- Free data backups
- Free no-downtime website transfers
- WordPress pre-installed
- 24/7 US-based support
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- As many as 6 parked domains and 25 subdomains
- Shared SSL included
- Unlimited email accounts with IMAP
InMotion works incredibly fast because it runs on SSD drives and the setup is super easy since it comes with WordPress already installed. Also, it should be known that if you want to pay as little as $3.49 a month, you have to sign up for a two-year plan. Plus, there’s no mention of the kind of traffic the hosting plan can handle, which may be a concern for some.
Kinsta
Kinsta provides premium hosting solutions for a wide variety of users from starters and SMBs to bigger enterprises with high-traffic sites. Their plans start from $30/ month including free CDN, Letsencrypt SSL, and 20 000 monthly visitors.
Kinsta’s fully managed WordPress hosting features include:
- Free SSL and CDN
- 24/7 support by WordPress developers
- 13 global data centers
- Free white glove site migrations
- Automatic scaling to handle traffic spikes
- 1440 daily uptime checks per site
- Daily backups
- One-click staging area
- SSH, WP-CLI, and Git support
- Custom-designed site management dashboard
- Full page caching at the server-level
- Free hack fix
Kinsta’s premium managed-to-host is powered by Google Cloud Platform and Google’s premium tier network. They guarantee blazing-fast site speed, and your site is handled and monitored by a group of WordPress experts. With the custom-designed dashboard, you can create staging sites, choose your data center, and track resource usage, visitor analytics, and billing information.
Conclusion
It can be quite the intimidating task to try to select the best WordPress hosting to serve for your site. With so many web hosting companies claiming to be the best, it’s hard to narrow down your options and decide on one. That’s why it’s most important to pay close attention to your specific needs and wants, including the type of website you have, the number of visitors you get each month, and your budget.
By carefully comparing the different hosting solutions, you can better understand which would best suit your needs. Keep in mind both your current needs and your future needs, in order to make the best decision for you. That being said, rest assured that although one may work better for you individually, each of the five hosting solutions mentioned above were included because they are quality companies providing quality services, so we highly doubt you would be extremely disappointed with any of them. To each their own, so good luck on finding which is yours.