When you build your WordPress site, you will need a place for it to live. This is a place that stores the files and database that make up your WordPress site. The technical name for this service is a host. There are many options out there. Some great..some not. Let’s spend a few minutes on some of the best hosting for WordPress and why we consider them as the best hosts.
What Make a WordPress Host Good
Many WordPress hosts, including the ones we will present here, do a lot of advertising. This means that you will hear a lot of names pushed. We don’t want to disparage anyone (and especially don’t want to get in trouble with anyone) but unfortunately, some of these hosting companies spend more money on advertising than on providing robust hosting. That’s why we consider them among the best hosting for WordPress.
That means that it’s harder to use them. It also means your site is often slower than it needs to be. This has an impact on the user experience and on your search engine optimization. The speed you can often improve but it’s hard to improve an overtasked server, which is the computer where you site lives. This is common with many of these hosts. They want to get as much as they can out of every server. The performance between these hosts and the ones we recommend is noticeable.
Shared Hosting
We are going to discuss something called shared hosting here. This is when multiple sites live on one server. Think of it as dividing the server up into little slices, one for each client. This is very common for a new site. It’s a great way to save money on alternatives for a site that isn’t getting a ton of traffic yet.
Of course, there are alternatives. We aren’t going to spend a lot of time on them. With these, you’re often talking different types of hosts and services.
- Virtual Private Server – Similar in concept to a shared host with this you are getting a piece of another computer. The difference here is that you have dedicated resources, like processor time, storage and memory that another customer can’t use up. You won’t notice that it’s part of a computer, to you it will feel like an entire computer. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to add resources (once you pay for it.)
- Dedicated Server – Generally only for very large sites or very complex sites, in this case, the whole thing is yours.
Both of these are often for bigger sites and not for a new site. Hopefully, later on you’ll need to consider one of these options. For now, we’ll limit the discussion to shared hosting. As your site grows, you may need to move to something called a VPS which is like having your own server. A VPS is a Virtual Private Server. When you get big enough, you might even need your own server, or your own computer. You’d usually have to be really big by that point but that is truly the best hosting for WordPress but it is expensive and more difficult to maintain. Both of those are important when you’re getting started, so that’s our focus now.
Ease of Use
This isn’t required but knowing that a lot of our audience isn’t technical, you’ll see that one of our recommendations is very easy to use. There are two ways to do this. Some hosting companies limit your options and so it’s easier to use. That’s no good.
We like easy to use and powerful. That’s the sweet spot we are looking for.
Fast and Powerful
We like hosts that give you enough resources to run a sizeable WordPress site quickly. It should be able to handle a fair amount of traffic and a reasonable blog or small store.
Great Support
Sometimes, things go wrong, or you need to know how to do something that isn’t obvious. We have tested the support and are looking for something that is easy to access, clear, patient and fast. We also expect a good host to have good documentation for good self service.
Affordable
We are looking for hosting that doesn’t cost a fortune. Our recommendations may not always be the cheapest but they need to be competitive on pricing.
These are the things that we are looking for in the best hosting for WordPress. Here’s what we have come up with.
Our Recommendations
There are our recommendations for the best hosting for WordPress. There are a lot of options out there. We’ve really enjoyed working with these.
Siteground
Sitegound is our top recommendation. It’s why we carry their ads. We’ve used dozens of hosting and this is the one that we have found ranks highest in our criteria above.
They have an easy to use interface without removing functionality. They offer a variety of plans for different needs (e.g. one site versus multiple). Their support and documentation are outstanding.
We have happily suggested many users to Siteground and they have been happy. Their sites stay up and running and they are faster than on other hosts. Siteground offers its own caching solution which is robust so you don’t need to use other speed improvement plugins.
Overall, we think Siteground is a wonderful home for your new WordPress site.
WPEngine
Another great host, we really like WPEngine. Depending on the plan, they often have more resources than Siteground (can handle bigger sites). They are a bit more expensive. Overall, the reason we rank it a touch lower is that it is a bit more technically complex to use than other hosts. We like the simplicity of the Siteground interface for new WordPress users.
That said, their support is outstanding. One nice feature we like is that if you are working with a developer they allow you to share your hosting account with a developer (who has to setup a free account of their own) so that you don’t have to give away your password or expose billing information. Not critical but very nice.
A2 Hosting
Our last recommendation is A2 Hosting. It’s a bit of the goldilocks recommendation. Not as simple to use as Siteground. Less complex than WPEngine (which isn’t bad). A2 Hosting uses a standard C-Panel interface which is a very common interface in hosting.
Their support is excellent and responsive, as is their documentation.
Pricing is pretty good, especially for their basic plan. What we really like about them is their turbo plans. These are a bit more money but are very fast. Well documented and fairly easy to set up. If you have a site that is bogged down, this might be a great option to explore.
Best Hosting for WordPress Sites
These are certainly not the only hosts out there. These also not the only good ones. They are the ones that we have worked with that we really enjoy using and find that website owners are happy with. They’re definitely worth trying. We’ve tried to find a good balance of price, reliability, support, and functionality for new webmasters. In our mind, that’s part of what makes the best hosting for WordPress when you’re getting started.