This list of the best WordPress hosting companies is handpicked and updated regularly. It features only a few providers, which have proven themselves and continue to improve their services every year.
I’ve compiled this article from over 15 years of experience with WordPress, and the struggle to find the best speed at an affordable price.
Before we start
You can see below I have not listed tons of hosting companies.
I can change some companies and add others because I’m always looking for the best value and quality.
Control Panels
Note that Hostinger uses a custom hPanel, and Scala hosting uses the SPanel. Both of these are free alternatives to the popular cPanel.
What hosting I’ve been using lately?
- For my top-tier website – Rocket.net
- For wpctrl.com – CooliceHost
- For my side projects – NameCheap hosting (For $2/month I can’t complain). You can host up to 3 websites, with cPanel and emails. Their domain prices are okay as well.
- Hostinger for… (I won’t say it) you know other “personal web projects”.
Of course, as always I blasted this list with affiliate links, so just you know.
Why WordPress Hosting?
The companies are emphasizing WordPress hosting-focused plans more than ever. And this looks normal if we look at the website trends today – WordPress takes the lion’s share of the CMS market.
In 2022 every third site uses WordPress and when it comes to CMS-built sites, more than 60% are WordPress-powered.
So it makes sense to look for a WordPress-optimized hosting plan.
Share this Image On Your Site
<a href='https://wpctrl.com/wordpress-hosting-guide/'><img src='https://wpctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/websites-using-wordpress-infographic-2022.jpg' alt='WordPress CMS Market Share 2019' width='540' border='0' /></a>My best hosting advice? Don’t sweat it too much
See I’ve been using a $5 shared hosting plan for years for wpctrl.com. The site was born on that plan and was thriving for a very long time.
Then I decided I needed to upgrade things, so I could finally outrank those annoying Colorlibs and IsitWPs, Themeisles, and Kinstas blogs and I could finally grab what I deserve – the top spot in SERPS for “Best WordPress themes”. (But has this happened? You’ll see below)
So I’ve started the great research on hosting plans.
I’ve read the top results on Google on “Best hosting for WordPress”, I’ve read the forum opinions on the topic, and I decided to try “The World’s Fastest WordPress Hosting” (they claim this on their homepage) and yeah, they were pretty fast.
Image with affiliate link below:
What changed after I switched from $5 to $30 / month hosting?
Nothing.
Same rankings, same traffic, better speed – yeah, but who cares?
I won’t get into the twisted world of doing SEO for the “WordPress” niche. That’s topic for another article.
What I’m trying to say with all this is, don’t overthink it, and don’t blindly put any hopes that faster loading site will magically put you on top of the SERPs, just because you’ve read some fool’s blog post (or worse – some company own promotional post of their service). It won’t!
Let’s continue with some beginner clarifications about hosting types.
Shared Hosting Explained
If an inexperienced newbie researches the available hosting options, if he never used this service before, he’ll most likely notice the big difference in prices of the different hosting types.
And fairly enough he’ll get his hands on the budget shared hosting plan that looks amazing on paper. To be honest, who can blame him?
Almost every shared hosting plan’s details look something like this:
- Unlimited Traffic
- 20 GB SSD Storage
- cPanel
- Unlimited Sites
- Unlimited e-mails
- Unlimited Databases
- Free SSL Certificate
- 1-Click App Installer
For just $3/month.
…and many more. The list goes on.
If I was just starting, I’d say – Great, that’s everything I’d need for now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying shared hosting is not a good option or that the companies are lying to you and trying to sell you something that won’t work as described.
I still use many shared hosting plans and I find shared hosting to be the way to go for all who start their WordPress website journey.
What Shared Hosting means is basically that your website will share the resources of one physical server with a bunch of other websites. This means you are sharing all the servers’ resources like RAM, CPU, and storage with hundreds if not thousands of other websites.
WordPress on Shared Hosting
A Fresh WordPress install will seem to load fast, but as time goes on your site will start adding some ‘weight’ – some plugins, some images, new pages, and posts, and a bigger database.
…and WordPress becomes slow. 🙀
From my 15 years of experience with WordPress and different hosts, I can state that shared hosting is best suited for:
- Starting websites, mostly article-orientated (blogs)
- No e-Commerce (shoppers hate to wait)
- No heavy page builders
- No more than 10-15 extra plugins
- ~10 000 monthly visits
What happens in case of resource overuse?
Let’s look at the different scenarios available.
- If you consume too much disk space than the allowed quota, some hosts might warn you first, while others will suspend your account. Your pages won’t load and it will probably return (Bandwidth Limit Exceeded or Error 509).
- If you consume too much memory your website(s) temporarily become unavailable until the issue is resolved.
- You consume too many processes (I/O units) – Your website might display a 503 error, based on your server.
- Your site attempts too many database connections at the same time – It probably stuck and won’t load for some time.
What are the Implications of a Slow Site?
If you have any kind of goal for your website – it will suffer dramatically.
Our society, especially the younger generations has attention spans lower than ever. This combined with the abundance of choice in almost every market will result in your slow site being closed if it can’t meet the speed expectations.
A study shows that 40% of users abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
On the other side, Google takes speed as a ranking factor in search results, so if you are planning organic traffic as the main source you’ll need a fast-loading website.
Is a WordPress Hosting plan different from Standard shared hosting?
In its essence – no.
It’s still shared hosting in a different package.
It may come with a few more WordPress-related features, but again, in reality, it’s the same service.
So what type of hosting should you choose?
Let’s look at some common cases that website owners will face in choosing the right hosting plan.
We can separate the main types of hosting into 3 categories.
Shared hosting – lowest price / worst performance
What to look for
It’s 2022 and some things in the hosting industry now come standard, so don’t fall for the so-called bonuses and premium features that companies bring as something exceptional.
Things like – free domain, free SSL, free back-ups, SSD, and free WordPress migration are standard now and should be included in your plan by default and are not something premium.
Note: This post includes affiliate links, which means we receive compensation if you purchase a product through this link. Visit our disclosure page for more information.
I have worked with the companies above, so I can state the services they provide are of top quality. That’s why I chose to promote them and not others.
This is an unpopular opinion, but I highly suggest looking for a good local hosting company first, especially if you don’t speak English very well. This will make communication much easier and believe me you will ask the support a bunch of questions in the beginning.
VPS Hosting – medium price / good performance
VPS hosting is more pricey and also faster than shared hosting.
A VPS is a Virtual Private Server is a single physical server, usually with multiple virtual servers running on it. This is done by dividing the server’s resources among multiple users.
Unlike shared web hosting, VPS hosting gives each website its own virtual server, which means that each website is isolated from the others on the same server. This provides a number of benefits, including improved security and performance.
What you should expect from a managed VPS hosting plan is a load time of under 2 seconds.
Managed Cloud Hosting – expensive / lightning-fast
This hosting journey comes to an end with the fastest hosting available on the planet right now – Managed Cloud Hosting.
Cloud hosting uses cloud computing technologies. Cloud hosting services are scalable and provide users with the ability to pay for only the resources they use.
Why managed?
Because if it’s not, you have to be the world’s top geek to work with the thing. With managed hosting, you get an easy-to-use control panel and everything you need comes pre-installed for you.
The Unmanaged server comes with nothing but the operating system, you are on your own, and you have to install even the basic stuff like PHP.
That’s why you should know your technical abilities and don’t try something you are clueless about.
What do I recommend from my experience?
There are so many hosting companies today, and they all have amazing reviews on many websites. So how to pick one and be sure you are not making a mistake or paying more for something that can be found for less?
That’s a great question and your best move is to do your research and just pick one and go with it.
I recently found ScalaHosting and already tried it with a client’s project.
I’ll write a more detailed review soon as I’m still getting used to the SPanel and setting up the websites.
But there is no doubt that Scala hosting provides the most affordable Managed VPS plans all over the web now. Not only this, but they have their own cloud infrastructure in NY and Dallas.
On top of that, they have free remote backups, something that can be a lifesaver for your business in such tragic cases as the recent OVH fire fallout.
Overall the value you can squeeze from a $29.95/ month hosting plan is unmatched.
Cloudways
Cloudways is another hosting provider with lots of WordPress features.
With Cloudways you choose your preferred server provider (DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, Google Cloud) and Cloudways will do the rest for you.
Maybe you’re thinking why I don’t register directly with these hosting companies?
With Cloudways you pay for the support and their control panel, which has an easy-to-use user interface. Without this support, you will hardly make it on your own, unless you are very technical.
Would Cloudflare Help Speed Up My Site?
When I first heard about Cloudflare, the big selling points were that it could speed up loading times and block common attacks like DDoS that can sometimes overwhelm small sites. As someone running a hobby blog on a tight budget, faster speeds and better protection definitely piqued my interest. Their free plan also meant I wouldn’t have to pay anything to give it a shot.
Running some tests with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool has shown modest improvements to things like text compression and rendering speed. Nothing drastic, but shaving even just milliseconds off load times can make the experience feel smoother overall. Cloudflare’s analytics also show traffic spikes are now handled very well without any outages.
So in summary, while I don’t think Cloudflare is essential for every website, it’s been a set-it-and-forget-it solution for just basic site protection and optimization. If you run a small site and want that extra layer of speed and security without hassle or cost, I’d say give their free plan a try. It definitely can’t hurt to test it out yourself.
The Bottom Line
Hosting is something necessary to get your website online.
The question of whether you need to pay less or more depends only on your project goals and specifics. In most cases shared hosting is the way to go if you are just starting with WordPress.
Disclosure: Some of the links on the page may contain a ref code (affiliate links), that tells the other side that we have sent you. If you liked what we suggest and you make a purchase, we may receive a commission.
