Great hardware specs with several CPU cores and at least 2Gb Ram for every site.
A bit pricey and the basic plan is noticeably weaker than the Premium one.
Despite the higher-than-average price, this is probably the best WordPress hosting service for inexperienced users. Making a website and sustaining it is easy with the Bluehost since the company does most of the work for you and provides excellent customer support for any problems you might have. As long as you're willing to spare the cost, the Bluehost is a step above the competition.
30Gb to 240Gb
1TB to Unlimited
Free
Email, live chat, phone
SiteLock Security, Advanced CDN, SiteLock WAF, SSL Certificate
3
Bandwidth, storage space, databases, and emails are completely unlimited here, great if you plan on your site getting some heavy traffic.
Domain names have to be purchased separately, each of them around $10-15.
A website hosting service absolutely loaded with free bonus content. You get unlimited bandwidth and storage space as well as a $100 credit for advertising your newly created site. It's going to be a great find for those looking to jumpstart their new online store or news site. However, you do have to pay extra for a few things and the basic tier on this one still lags far behind the Premium so be ready to shell out the money for the highest tier.
Unlimited
Unlimited
Paid
Email, live chat, phone
SiteLock Security, Advanced CDN, SiteLock WAF, SSL Certificate
3
You get a free domain with the purchase and the security measures offered by the service are some of the most comprehensive we've seen.
The basic plan is only suitable for very simple sites like personal blogs and such, anything more serious requires the Unlimited tier.
This service is quite reliable, offering many of the things its competitors don't but only as long as you're willing to spring for the Unlimited pricing plan. But once you've paid up you get a free domain with unlimited bandwidth and storage space with excellent 24/7 support. The security measures are also quite reliable with DDOS protection keeping you safe from the competitors trying to ruin your business. A worthy purchase for professional projects.
50Gb to Unlimited
Unlimited
Free
Email, live chat, phone
SSL Wildcard Certificate, Geo-redundancy, DDoS protection, Data recovery, Pre-live staging, 1&1 SiteLock Basic
3
Truly excellent customer support that guarantees your website's security and timely solutions to all problems.
Strangely low storage cap even on the highest price tier.
While the low cap on storage space and bandwidth is a bit puzzling, especially from a service that's this good otherwise, we have to commend the SiteGround for great customer support and very accessible website creation tools. It's a solid choice for first-time users as well as those that want less hassle with their projects. The SiteGround is also quite affordable compared to many other services. As long as you're not planning to create an ultra-popular website hosting terabytes of data, the SiteGround is a solid pick.
10Gb to 30Gb
100,000 visits
Paid
Email, live chat, phone
SSL certificate, DDoS protection
3
You get unlimited email accounts and bandwidth regardless of how cheap your pricing plan is, a big bonus for those working on a budget but still wanting quality.
The upper tier is one of the most expensive out there, though it does come with many benefits.
Although we found a few points of contention in the InMotion Hosting service, it's a very convenient service that lured us in with flexible pricing and convinced us to stay with easy setup and an intuitive dashboard. It helps to advertise your site by offering credit with Google ads and unlimited bandwidth to support any influx of visitors you might get. As long as you take your time to choose the pricing plan that's right for you, you can't go wrong with the InMotion Hosting service.
40Gb to 240Gb
Unlimited
Free
Email, live chat, phone
SSL certificate, DDoS protection, additional SLA protection on the Pro tier
6
A Letter of Recommendation
Want to go for a professional host that comes highly recommended, maybe even by the WordPress creators themselves? Look no further than the Bluehost WordPress hosting. This service has been partnered with WordPress since 2005, improving their quality every year and never seeming to back down.
But let’s see how the Bluehost earned that coveted WordPress endorsement and whether it’s actually worth your money. It’s definitely no slouch in terms of security as you get a free SSL certificate on any of the three pricing plans to keep the connection safe. Plus, the company has 24/7 customer support available to all clients regarding absolutely any issues or questions. You can use email, live chat, or even call in on the phone if you feel more comfortable doing so.
We have to admit that the customization options, while relatively broad, could certainly use some improvement. WordPress is one of the most flexible platforms to build your site upon and it’s all the weirder that the Bluehost toolset works best only for stuff like personal blogs. Of course, that kind of simplicity means that the Bluehost is a perfect choice as a starter kit of sorts. It’s a good choice for a newcomer that still wants a professional-looking website without having the know-how for building one from scratch.
Go for the Premium
No matter which pricing plan you choose, the Bluehost guarantees its clients care and high-quality service. In addition to excellent customer support, the company provides all users with 30Gb storage, a 1TB bandwidth for visitors to gain access to the site comfortably. Plus, you get 2Gb of RAM and two CPU cores, which means that your site isn’t going to lag or crash just because of reasonably high loads.
Even if something does go awry, you can rest assured that your data is completely safe since the hosting offers automated backups. That way even if you make it big and an excessively large audience brings the site offline, your information will be preserved and the website will be brought back online in a cinch.
All of the above is available when you sign up for the cheapest Standard plan but, if you’re willing to drop some more money on the hosting service, you can get that much more in return. You’ll also be prioritized during the company’s regular hardware upgrades so you’ll have more RAM and CPU cores at your disposal. Thanks to that, your site’s speed will always be top notch which, in turn, helps improve your standings with Google and other search engines.
Spare the Cost
If you’re an inexperienced user looking to make an excellent WordPress site that’s never going to go down or end up with a bunch of errors all over it, the Bluehost service should be a no-brainer. It’s easy to use and completely secure. However, while the price is not exorbitantly high we certainly wouldn’t call the Bluehost cheap. If you want a budget-friendly hosting service, you’d best look elsewhere because every ounce of quality from this company comes at a cost. In the end, it depends on whether or not you’re ready to spend money to ensure that the company does most of the work for you, deterring malware, keeping the connection secure, and so on.
No Limits on Creativity
Tired of sifting through dozens of managed WordPress hosting services trying to find one that’s competent and offers good quality at a reasonable price? You could keep digging for details or, instead, go for the well-rounded choice of the HostGator Premium.
This service has everything a new user could want, starting with simple 1-click installation of the WordPress system. If you’re feeling ready to do some in-depth customization, you can simply access the cPanel dashboard to add new elements or change the already present ones to fit the style you want for your site. And the augmentation is restricted solely by how many changes you have the time and will to make since the storage space is unlimited on all plans. This makes the HostGator viable both for basic personal blogs as well as more hefty forums and online marketplaces. You won’t have to worry about the number of visitors your site gets since the bandwidth is unlimited as well. No chances of your website crashing just because of a sudden surge in popularity.
You do, however, have to pay this WordPress hosting extra for domain names with a single one going for about $10. Many of the competitors offer this service for free so it’s strange that the usually generous HostGator doesn’t.
Take a Step Up
While there’s no shame in going for the cheaper tier and not too many downsides either, since the storage and bandwidth are unlimited either way, we still recommend trying the Premium plan. That way you get your site optimized for working with cloud-based resources, which is close to essential nowadays. Plus, backups will be more frequent and the caching tools broader. This may not be too important for a personal blog or something similar but any big project would certainly benefit from this data protection.
To top it off, Premium users have faster load speeds since their websites are prioritized with more hardware dedicated to them. If you plan on having a lot of traffic, this is a must-have even considering the higher cost.
Last but not least, we have to commend the fact that HostGator offers you a bit of credit for advertisement. Not everybody will have a use for that but, if you plan on creating an online store, those ads can really help drum up some business. That initial bit of advertisement is free, of course, further cementing our opinion on HostGator being the best hosting service to choose if you want some free bonuses.
Zero Risk Involved
If it’s not your first go at website creation, you might prefer the HostGator over others simply because it makes the process quite streamlined. You can make a pleasant-looking site in a matter of hours with a functional security system and no limits on bandwidth and storage space. This, in particular, makes the service great for large-scale projects that may get a lot of traffic and end up costing a lot of money on hosting services that force you to pay more for storage space. Besides, you won’t lose anything by giving HostGator a try since the company has a money-back guarantee if you file a complaint in 45 days after starting your subscription. You simply can’t lose with the HostGator.
Impenetrable Fortress
Planning to launch a large-scale project in a competitive environment and worry about how secure your site will really be? You don’t have to bear that burden as the 1&1 WordPress hosting services will take care of safety for you.
Despite being pretty close in price to many of its competitors, this service offers almost double the number of protection measures, which will be of the utmost importance if you plan on getting your site big and popular. For example, nobody is safe from a random or targeted DDoS attack that could bring down the whole site and take you out of the game for hours, dooming an online store to lost revenue that could be tough to recover from. But the 1&1 company offers protection from such attacks in addition to data recovery, should the pesky attackers manage to get through.
The 1&1 will help even if you’re facing the problem of data leaks or admin hijacks, as the company’s SiteLock feature protects sensitive data and user information. Couple that with SSL certificates for a secure connection and regular malware sweeps and you’ve got a real fortress that requires no input from you to stay secure.
Don't Get Lost
Though it differs from its peers in many aspects, there’s one particular facet in which the 1&1 WordPress hosting is similar to the competition. Once again, we’d advise going for the Ultimate tier unless you’re really just looking for the simplest host base to put your personal blog on. With the upper tier you get unlimited, well, everything, from storage space to bandwidth to WordPress projects. Top that off with a year of free domain and we’d say that’s a pretty lucrative offer.
We do have to admit that the price is a bit steep but it’s not that far above most competitors. However, unlike many other hosting services, the 1&1 company offers actual 24/7 support via all means, not just email. This can be essential since you can’t really close down your site for the night and rest soundly, who knows when a problem might arise? Thankfully, the support team is vigilant and ready to help.
One of our few complaints would have to be the unintuitive interface, which seems surprising considering the overall quality of the service. It may just be a matter of personal preference but we found the dashboard a bit hard to navigate and a few of the pages actually didn’t work on the initial load, requiring a refresh. If there’s any part of the 1&1 that requires improvement, it’s their actual site and UX.
Fit for All, Best for Select Few
The 1&1 service will be suitable both for personal sites that serve more as a passion project and serious marketplaces and forums. However, the latter would require paying the admittedly steep price for the Unlimited plan but you do get quite a lot in return. Should you choose the highest tier, there won’t be any restrictions on storage, bandwidth, or projects, which means you could host several sister sites on the 1&1 servers at no additional cost. Plus, this service has probably the tightest security measures we’ve seen period so you won’t have to worry about DDOS attacks or data leaks, both of which are a big problem for large-scale business projects. So, in the end, it’s only a matter of what you’re planning to create and how much you’re willing to spend to keep it operational. We’d say the 1&1 works best as a WordPress hosting service for online stores rather than blogs and other small-scale sites.
Help is on the Way
Don’t have much experience with making websites and hosting them but want to dip your toes into that world? Turn to the SiteGround WordPress host as your guide and helper, a reliable shoulder to lean on.
This hosting service is highly focused on ease of use and customer support, offering 24/7 customer support to all clients regardless of the pricing plan. So if you have any problems or questions, you could call in or chat with the customer reps and find a solution for the issue. If you’re apprehensive about the quality of the support, consider the following. The official WordPress site currently has just 3 hosting services in its recommendation list and SiteGround is among them. The site specifically cites the excellent customer support, easy site setup, and calls SiteGround pretty much the fastest WordPress hosting out there.
Speaking of speed, the SiteGround hosting achieves excellent loading times by using the CloudFlare CDN, available to all clients right away. Customers also get unlimited emails, databases, and advanced WordPress security measures. However, we’re not exactly on board with calling the security “advanced” since we’ve seen quite a few hosting services that offer a bit more for the same price. The SiteGround projects are still safe enough but we wouldn’t label it the most secure hosting service out of the ones we’ve seen.
Follow the Limits
In addition to great support and ease of use, we have to commend the SiteGround service for pretty affordable prices, especially the ones offered for the first year of use. While we wouldn’t call it outright cheap, it’s certainly more budget-friendly than some of its biggest competitors. Also, if you want to run several websites at once, you won’t have to spring for the highest tier as even Grow Big, the service’s middle level, doesn’t put any restrictions on how many projects you get access to.
One of the few points that we were genuinely disappointed in regarding this service is the bandwidth and storage cap. No matter which plan you choose, there will always be a limit on how many visitors per month your site will be able to support and how much data can be stored on the site’s servers. And while the bandwidth cap is high enough that you don’t have to worry about it, the storage limit is a bit punishing and may end up being a problem if you plan on hosting several websites or running a large-scale project.
Your Guide to WordPress
While there are a few gaps in SiteGround’s features that could be filled in (and hopefully will be!), we can’t deny that the customer support is excellent and the load speeds are some of the fastest we’ve seen. If you’re not that well-versed in website creation and hosting, there are no significant reasons to avoid SiteGround as your first hosting service. The company will help you along and make the actual setup of the site much easier even compared to what you get from other services. Its interface and dashboard are easy to navigate and the actual site-building tools are broad enough to create a project that feels personal and looks appealing to the user’s eye. In the end, we can safely say that the SiteGround is now recommended both by the official WordPress site and us as well.
Flexibility is Key
Want a hosting service that offers not just high speed, broad bandwidth, and ample storage but some flexibility in the pricing plans as well as their services? We recommend the InMotion WordPress Hosting. This service gets ahead of the competition by offering six different tiers of hosting, each with its own pros and cons.
You’ll have to choose what’s more important to you - a highly affordable price or excellent bandwidth or the number of websites you can host at once. The higher tiers all offer unlimited bandwidth to support extremely popular websites and dedicated IP to make sure your project is always accessible. However, no matter how much you’re willing to pay, your storage space will always be limited with 240Gb as the highest available level. That’s certainly a shame, especially since you can create up to 20 websites on the WP-6000S, all of which will certainly require their own chunk of storage. We’d have expected more for that price.
Still, we have to commend the InMotion Hosting for offering a really simple setup process. Your site can be created and established in less than an hour with easy drag-and-drop mechanics for adding new elements and deleting unnecessary ones. Also, you get a domain for free no matter which tier you pay for, a big bonus in our eyes. And the number of email accounts available to you is unlimited on each paid level from the cheapest to the most expensive, a small but important feature.
Something for the Pros
If your website is struggling to find a solid footing and get a constant user base, you can turn to the InMotion’s offer of $250 in credit, provided specifically for advertising your website on various search engines. It’s a bit more than some similar services offer and every ad matters when your site is just starting out, be it a newssite or an online store.
Most hosting services cater specifically to inexperienced users that might not be able to do much but drag and drop elements to create a rudimentary website. However, if you wish to make something more creative, the InMotion Hosting supports Python, Ruby, PHP, and more, giving more freedom for imagination. We obviously don’t advise playing around with those without proper knowledge but, as long as you know what you’re doing, this is a big bonus.
Also, if you’ve got a pre-made site on another hosting service but have been looking to transfer to something more reliable, the InMotion team will help you get your site to their servers in a jiffy. This makes the transition easier to bear and keeps things as smooth as possible.
Worth a Deeper Look
Though the annoying storage cap might a problem for large-scale projects, we can’t find too many other faults in the InMotion Hosting. Its flexible pricing scheme is convenient for those who don’t want to spend too much money on a potentially small site and the fast creation mode means you don’t have to know that much about WordPress to create something. The unlimited emails and (on upper tiers) unlimited bandwidth are a big plus if you’re looking to create a popular forum that’s going to attract a lot of users over time. If the storage space limit doesn’t deter you, you can rest assured that the rest of InMotion Hosting will be a pleasant surprise.
What Is a WordPress Hosting Service?
WordPress is one of the most popular content managing systems out there, all thanks to its accessible toolset and a highly adjustable range of options. This system is optimized for making sleek and functional websites that will attract the user’s eye and get you some good conversion rates. It is, however, also suitable for hosting image galleries, online stores, and forums for discussion. But if you want your site to stay working and online, you need to choose a secure WordPress hosting service that’s going to keep your data safe. You could try hosting everything on your own computer instead but that’s a risky idea that might end up with your whole website crashing and burning (metaphorically, of course).
When you’re looking at the 5 host services we’ve picked, consider which parameters matter most to you. Perhaps you want stellar customer support in case something goes wrong or maybe you’re banking on security and ample storage to make sure that it’s smooth sailing since the start. Either way, we hope the review will help you choose a host that’s right for you.
And if you are planning to use WordPress to launch your own blog, don’t forget to get a grammar checker since there’s nothing more embarrassing than making a typo in your headline.