TOP WORDPRESS HOSTING PROVIDERS
Best Web Host For WordPress Hosting (In 2021)
Comparison Of Uptime, Speed, Features, and Cost
Choosing the right hosting for your WordPress website is very important. Your WordPress site’s health will depend on the hosting provider you use.
But how do you know which one is the best WordPress host?
There’s so many to choose from: Bluehost, Dreamhost, HostGator… etc.
Whichever host you’re going to choose, keep in mind the 3 most important factors of WordPress hosting:
Speed – also known as “load time”.
Uptime – needs to be at least 99.94%.
Customer Support – they should help you with WordPress-related questions.
We can’t guarantee you will have similar uptime or speed results to your website as this varies on several different factors, such as your chosen hosting plan, your website size, and the number of visitors your website gets.
4 Best WordPress Hosting Providers
Let’s jump to the best hosting providers first, then move down the list to help you decide which one should be the winner. Without further ado, here are the 4 best web hosts for WordPress:
1. Bluehost
- Uptime: 99.95%
- Load time: 249 ms
- Support: 24/7 live chat, knowledge base, phone
- Features: One-click install for WordPress, free SSL, free domain for 1 year
- Visit: Bluehost
In fact, we found Bluehost to have the best cost/value ratio. Our uptime and speed monitoring tool Pingdom showed us an average uptime of 99.95% with only 38 outages (all less than an hour in time) and an average page loading speed of 249 ms for the last 12-months.
They’re also one of the few web hosts that are officially recommended by the WordPress.org community. All of their plans come with free SSL (https://), WordPress staging environment, and an easy WordPress install feature.
Bluehost does not offer free site migration with its cheapest plan and it would cost you $150 for transferring one site. If you sign up with their Plus plan or above, then you’ll also get a free migration for one website.
Bluehost also has a large database of WordPress tutorials and all plans come with 24/7 live customer support that is fast and reliable.
Bluehost’s prices start at $2.95/month (with a 36-month plan) and they throw in a free domain name with SSL for a year. Their renewal price is $8.99/month. Bluehost comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- PROS: Strong uptime and load time, free domain name, recommended by WordPress.org.
- CONS: No option to pay monthly, no free site migration with the cheapest plan.
2. HostGator Managed WordPress
- Uptime: 99.97%
- Load time: 267 ms
- Support: 24/7 live chat, phone, knowledge base
- Features: Free site transfer and backups. WordPress optimized servers, unlimited bandwidth
- Visit: HostGator
HostGator hosts more than 10 million domains making them one of the most popular web hosting providers on the market.
Similar to Bluehost, HostGator also offers specialized WordPress hosting solutions, such as “WordPress Hosting.”
They are the best option for high-traffic websites that need faster loading times. HostGator WordPress plan should make your site faster across different regions, especially for mobile users.
Their last 12-month average load time is an amazing 267 ms and uptime 99.97%. Their total yearly downtime was just shy of 3 hours, with 18 total outages.
All of their plans come with unlimited bandwidth, storage, email accounts, and free site migration.
You can reach HostGator’s support by phone or even better via live chat. Their customer support is helpful and fast and available 24/7.
Although their introductory prices are one of the cheapest, starting from $5.95/month (if you sign up with a 36-month plan), their renewal fees are higher at $9.95/month.
HostGator also includes a 45-day money-back guarantee.
- PROS: Good load time, reliable, one-click install for WordPress, 1 free site transfer.
- CONS: Higher renewal fee.
3. DreamHost
- Uptime: 99.62%
- Load time: 1190 ms
- Support: knowledge base, limited live chat
- Features: WordPress is pre-installed, drag and drop builder, unlimited bandwidth/storage
- Visit: DreamHost
DreamHost is a popular, well-established hosting service from the USA with over 340,000 customers. Just like Bluehost and SiteGround, they are also listed as a recommended WordPress host by the WordPress.org website.
DreamHost’s goal is simple – to be fast, reliable, and optimized for WordPress users.
All of their WordPress plans (Shared, Managed, and VPS) offer a WordPress website builder, free SSL, and SSD storage with unlimited bandwidth.
Site transfers are not free (cost $99, but are free with their DreamPress plan which is $16.95/mo) and there’s no 24/7 support option. They have live support chat, but it’s only available at 5:30 AM–9:30 PM Pacific time but at least it’s 7 days a week.
They don’t seem like an ideal host for a website that serves visitors outside the USA or Asia, and with our international server testing their uptime has been only 99.62% with an average page loading speed of 1190 ms. There’s also no option to choose server locations outside the USA.
Their cheapest plan starts at $2.59/month (3-year commitment) or $4.95/monthly. DreamHost has “high performance” managed WordPress plans which are more expensive, priced at $16.95/month. Email accounts cost $19.99/year extra and the free domain for a year renews $15.99/year.
Unlike others, DreamHost gives out a 97-days money-back guarantee.
- PROS: You can pay monthly, ability to scale.
- CONS: Uptime and speed could be better, limited live chat option.
- Uptime: 99.97%
- Load time: 267 ms
- Support: 24/7 live chat, phone, knowledge base
- Features: Free site transfer and backups. WordPress optimized servers, unlimited bandwidth
- Visit: HostGator
HostGator hosts more than 10 million domains making them one of the most popular web hosting providers on the market.
Similar to Bluehost, HostGator also offers specialized WordPress hosting solutions, such as “WordPress Hosting.”
They are the best option for high-traffic websites that need faster loading times. HostGator WordPress plan should make your site faster across different regions, especially for mobile users.
Their last 12-month average load time is an amazing 267 ms and uptime 99.97%. Their total yearly downtime was just shy of 3 hours, with 18 total outages.
All of their plans come with unlimited bandwidth, storage, email accounts, and free site migration.
You can reach HostGator’s support by phone or even better via live chat. Their customer support is helpful and fast and available 24/7.
Although their introductory prices are one of the cheapest, starting from $5.95/month (if you sign up with a 36-month plan), their renewal fees are higher at $9.95/month.
HostGator also includes a 45-day money-back guarantee.
- PROS: Good load time, reliable, one-click install for WordPress, 1 free site transfer.
- CONS: Higher renewal fee.
3. DreamHost
- Uptime: 99.62%
- Load time: 1190 ms
- Support: knowledge base, limited live chat
- Features: WordPress is pre-installed, drag and drop builder, unlimited bandwidth/storage
- Visit: DreamHost
DreamHost is a popular, well-established hosting service from the USA with over 340,000 customers. Just like Bluehost and SiteGround, they are also listed as a recommended WordPress host by the WordPress.org website.
DreamHost’s goal is simple – to be fast, reliable, and optimized for WordPress users.
All of their WordPress plans (Shared, Managed, and VPS) offer a WordPress website builder, free SSL, and SSD storage with unlimited bandwidth.
Site transfers are not free (cost $99, but are free with their DreamPress plan which is $16.95/mo) and there’s no 24/7 support option. They have live support chat, but it’s only available at 5:30 AM–9:30 PM Pacific time but at least it’s 7 days a week.
They don’t seem like an ideal host for a website that serves visitors outside the USA or Asia, and with our international server testing their uptime has been only 99.62% with an average page loading speed of 1190 ms. There’s also no option to choose server locations outside the USA.
Their cheapest plan starts at $2.59/month (3-year commitment) or $4.95/monthly. DreamHost has “high performance” managed WordPress plans which are more expensive, priced at $16.95/month. Email accounts cost $19.99/year extra and the free domain for a year renews $15.99/year.
Unlike others, DreamHost gives out a 97-days money-back guarantee.
- PROS: You can pay monthly, ability to scale.
- CONS: Uptime and speed could be better, limited live chat option.
4. InMotion Hosting
- Uptime: 99.93%
- Load time: 460 ms
- Support: 24/7 live chat, phone, knowledge base
- Features: WordPress is pre-installed, has unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts
- Visit: InMotionHosting
InMotion Hosting is another US-based WordPress host with more than 1.2 million domains hosted on its infrastructure.
Many reasons make InMotion Hosting a good fit for WordPress users. Each plan comes with free SSL, CDN, unlimited bandwidth and email accounts, and 200 free WordPress themes. The only thing that they limit is the number of sites you can have and disk space.
They have fast and reliable 24/7 live chat and US phone support. In addition to that, site transfers are free (a nice perk), and you can try their BoldGrid pre-installed website builder.
One of the drawbacks of InMotion Hosting is that there’s no instant account access. That means if you’re an international customer, outside North America for example, there might be a delay and a hassle when attempting to verify your new account.
Their uptime and speed numbers are average, but reliable enough. Coming in at 99.93% uptime and an average speed of 460 ms during the last 12-months.
InMotion Hosting has multiple WordPress plans starting from $4.99/month with a 3-year contract (renews $7.99/month) to $17.99 that vary from max websites, storage size, and bandwidth (max visitors). They are also one of the few hosts that offer dedicated WordPress solutions.
One thing that makes InMotion Hosting stand out is that they offer a 90-day money-back guarantee.
- PROS: Reliable, fast, good customer support.
- CONS: No instant activation for people outside the US, uptime could be better.
WordPress Hosting Summary:
A detailed review of our top 4 WordPress hosting providers.
Each review was based on our test site’s speed, uptime, and cost. Third-party sources, like Pingdom, were used to monitor and analyze performance.
In short, we recommend using a web hosting provider that provides a decent uptime of 99.94% and up, while keeping their load time less than 700 ms.
We came to the conclusion that you can’t go wrong with Bluehost or HostGator WP Managed. They both offer strong uptime, fast page loading times, great customer support, and low introductory prices.
If you already have a web host but want to switch hosts after reading this post, see this guide here. However, be sure that some of the listed web hosts offer free site migrations.
Disclaimer: The post above contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on any link and subscribe, we will receive an affiliate commission at no cost to you. All opinions are our own, and we only recommend products or services that we have used personally and believe will benefit our readers. we are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials In Advertising.”
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