Best WordPress Hosting

Posted by Laura Wiess on December 14th, 2020

Choosing the right hosting for your WordPress website is very important. Your WordPress site’s health will rely 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, SiteGround, HostGator… etc.

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.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Web Hosting For You

Before you can find the best WordPress hosting plan for your site, you must know what to look for as you’re shopping around. Use the following considerations as a buying guide. This will make it much easier for you to narrow down your options.

Traffic Volume

How much traffic does your website get? For new sites, how much traffic are you expecting?

The answer to this question will definitely have an impact on the type of WordPress hosting solution that’s right for you. A site that has 5,000 visitors per month should be on a different plan than sites with 50,000 visitors per month. Plans that can accommodate 100,000 visitors per month won’t necessarily be suitable for sites with millions of monthly visitors.

New websites and smaller sites will be fine with shared WordPress hosting (more on this shortly). But as your site grows, you might want to consider a VPS (virtual private server) or dedicated WordPress hosting solution. 

Support

Most people don’t think to consider the customer service offered by their WordPress hosting provider. But this factor should definitely rank high on your list.

In an ideal scenario, your site will run smoothly 24/7, and you’ll never have any problems. Unfortunately, we live in reality—not a perfect world. So one day or another, you’re going to run into an issue and need some assistance.

The best WordPress hosting providers will have your back. They are available around the clock via phone, live chat, and email support. Agents will work diligently to quickly resolve your problems. 

For those of you who currently have an active website on another hosting service, make sure the provider you’re considering switching to will help you with the site migration. The best customer support teams will do this for free.  

Managed vs. Unmanaged

Your technical experience will help you determine if you want a managed WordPress hosting plan or an unmanaged WordPress plan. 

Traditional WordPress hosting is more cost-effective. The host will make the WordPress installation pretty easy for you, usually with just a single click (assuming WordPress isn’t already pre-installed). 

Managed plans are a bit pricier, but you’ll benefit from enhanced services. The best managed WordPress hosting plans will come with features like automatic backups, automatic updates, maintenance, and other perks for those of you who prefer to be hands-off. 

Site Metrics and Performance

All web hosting plans branded as “WordPress hosting” should already be optimized for WordPress. So right away, your site performance would be better than a non-optimized service.

But beyond that, there are other factors that affect the two most important site metrics you should be monitoring—uptime and speed.

The type of hosting you choose will have the biggest impact on these. For example, shared hosting will be slower than VPS hosting. Your traffic levels will also play a factor in your performance metrics. 

Some providers are just better than others when it comes to speed and performance. The best way to get more information on this is by reading recent customer reviews. If people are constantly complaining about unexpected outages and downtime, you should probably stay away. All of the providers on my list below are reputable and pretty comparable in terms of speed and uptime.

The Different Types of Web Hosting For WordPress

WordPress web hosting can be segmented into a handful of different categories. Here’s a deeper explanation of each one:

Shared WordPress 

As previously mentioned, shared WordPress hosting is the cheapest option. It’s the best choice for new websites, small websites, small blogs, and sites that aren’t expecting a ton of traffic. Most hosts make it really easy for you to get started with a shared plan, and the maintenance is pretty low as well. 

The downside of shared hosting is the performance. As the name implies, you’ll be sharing server resources with other websites on the same server. So your site could potentially crash or slow down as other sites on that server get traffic spikes. 

Shared hosting isn’t great for business websites. As you start to get 10,000 to 25,000+ visitors per month, you might want to consider upgrading to another tier.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

VPS WordPress hosting is a step above shared hosting. 

You’re still technically sharing a physical server with other websites, but the number of sites on that server will be much lower. Furthermore, the server gets split into several virtual servers (hence the name), so each site has its own dedicated resources.

The anatomy of VPS hosting helps prevent the traffic on other sites from slowing your site down. VPS WordPress hosting has improved performance and can accommodate higher volumes of traffic than shared plans. 

Dedicated WordPress Hosting

With a dedicated WordPress hosting plan, you’ll have your own server for your website. This results in the highest possible performance, the ability to accommodate large volumes of traffic, and ultimate customization options at the server level.

It’s worth noting that most sites won’t need a dedicated server (it can also be really expensive). 

This type of WordPress hosting is reserved for huge companies, sites with millions of visitors per month, and developers that want to customize the hosting environment for multiple websites on a single server. 

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is typically offered at the shared or VPS level. It’s definitely an upgrade from traditional hosting, and you’ll get tons of benefits.

The speed, performance, and customer support is better. Behind the scenes, everything will be more secure (which means the site will also be more stable). You won’t have to worry about updates, installations, or security—all of this will be handled by your host. 

Prices for managed WordPress plans are higher than basic shared or VPS hosting solutions. But for the service and extras you’re getting, the cost is definitely justifiable.

To know which hosting providers provide the above solution visit our the complete article on wordpress hosting.