Best WordPress Hosting Services

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.