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Best WordPress Hosting Services

Advertiser Disclosure Updated: Apr 4, 2024, 10:30pm

10 Best WordPress Hosting Services Of 2024

Kimberlee LeonardSmall Business Expert Writer

Kimberlee Leonard has 22 years of experience as a freelance writer. Her work has been featured on US News and World Report, Business.com and Fit Small Business. She brings practical experience as a business owner and insurance agent to her role as a small business writer.

Kelly MainStaff Reviewer

Kelly Main is a Marketing Editor and Writer specializing in digital marketing, online advertising and web design and development. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she is a Columnist at Inc. Magazine.

Kimberlee Leonard,

Kimberlee LeonardSmall Business Expert Writer

Kelly Main

Kelly MainStaff Reviewer

Small Business Expert Writer, Staff Reviewer

Cassie Bottorffeditor

Cassie is a deputy editor collaborating with teams around the world while living in the beautiful hills of Kentucky. Focusing on bringing growth to small businesses, she is passionate about economic development and has held positions on the boards of directors of two non-profit organizations seeking to revitalize her former railroad town. Prior to joining the team at Forbes Advisor, Cassie was a content operations manager and copywriting manager.

Reviewed

Cassie Bottorff

Cassie Bottorffeditor

editor

Reviewed

Updated: Apr 4, 2024, 10:30pm

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world today. Reliable hosting is a vital part of any WordPress website, helping to ensure your site remains live and performs faster for users.

Forbes Advisor researched the best WordPress hosting services on the market today, evaluating providers based on pricing, uptime, customer support and other factors. Read our comprehensive guide to find the best hosting solution for your WordPress site.

Best Of

Show Summary

Featured Partners

Bluehost

$2.95 per month

Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage starts at 10GB

Free domain name & SSL for a year

Bluehost

On Bluehost.com's Website

HostGator

$2.75 per month (for first 36 months)

30 days

Free SSL certificate, free website transfer

HostGator

On HostGator's Website

Web.com

$2.75 per month

Yes

Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate

Web.com

On Web.com's Website

10 Best WordPress Hosting Services (May 2024)

IONOS: Best overall
HostGator: Best for security promise
Bluehost: Best dashboard
DreamHost: Best for customer support
InMotion : Best for speed optimization
MochaHost: Best for risk-free guarantee
GoDaddy: Best for database management
Hostwinds: Best for simplicity
InterServer: Best for migration
Namecheap: Best value

Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business

The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content and guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.

We reviewed more than 25 hosting services using a detailed methodology to help determine the 10 best WordPress hosting services for small businesses. Our ratings consider factors that include starting package price and the number of sites included in each plan, how many features come with each plan, what real users of these hosting services think about them and what our panel of experts think about them based on their findings. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.

Best Overall WordPress Hosting

IONOS

Starting price

$1 per month

(billed for the first six months; renews at $10 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

On IONOS' Website

$1 per month

(billed for the first six months; renews at $10 per month)

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

IONOS is a reliable web hosting service that gives you a 99.9% uptime guarantee. When you purchase hosting, you get a free domain for a year and a free SSL certificate to ensure you meet the security standards of a safe website.

There are three plans to choose from. The Grow plan is the most popular and starts with a $1 per month introductory price for six months. Then, the price jumps to $10 per month. In this plan, you get an one website, 50 GB of SSD storage and 15 GB of RAM. There is daily backup and recovery of the site to ensure that you are protected if there is a hack or problem with the site.

The Boost plan is an upgrade from the Grow plan, which is $7 per month for the first six months and then bumps up to $15 per month. This plan is limited to one website with 75 GB of SSD storage and 20 GB of RAM. It’s enough to get you started.

Learn more: Read our full IONOS review.

Who should use it:

IONOS is best for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) looking to scale their website over time with more visitors and sales.

Pros & Cons

Excellent intro price of just $1 per month for your first six months
Free domain name
Free SSL certificate
Free business email
30-day money-back guarantee
Fully scalable

Price jumps to $10 per month upon renewal
Questionable tech support
Billing issues

Best WordPress Hosting for Security Promise

HostGator

Starting price

$2.64 per month

(three-year term, renews at $9.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

On HostGator's Website

$2.64 per month

(three-year term, renews at $9.99 per month)

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

HostGator WordPress hosting stands behind its product, offering customers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its service. There are three hosting plans to choose from, with HostGator starting with the Hatchling Plan, which has an introductory offer of $2.64 per month. This is 73.57% off the renewal price after 12 months of hosting. The Baby Plan is $3.28 per month to start with, which is 78.12% off the renewal price. The Business Plan is $5.04 per month, or 74.49% off the renewal price.

All plans come with a free domain registration for a year, a free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth and disk space. All plans also come with a one-click WordPress Install button that makes launching the site a breeze.

The Baby and Business plan supports unlimited websites. The Business plan includes a free dedicated IP and free positive SSL upgrade for the highest standard of security backed by a $10,000 warranty and a TrustLogo Site Seal to display on the website to build user confidence.

Learn more: Read our full HostGator review.

Who should use it:

HostGator’s $10,000 warranty on security makes it an easy choice for new businesses concerned about hacking and malware.

Pros & Cons

Unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans
Free domain for a year
$10,000 security warranty
30-day money-back guarantee
Free business email
One-click WordPress installation

Pricing doubles upon renewal
Poor customer service

Best WordPress Hosting Dashboard

Bluehost

Starting price

$1.99 per month

(billed annually, renews at $7.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

10 GB of SSD storage and unmetered bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

On Bluehost.com's Website

$1.99 per month

(billed annually, renews at $7.99 per month)

10 GB of SSD storage and unmetered bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

Bluehost WordPress hosting gives you lots of options to make sure you get the plan that best meets your needs. Prices start at $1.99 per month for the first 12 months, renewing at $7.99 per month. This Basic plan includes one website, custom themes and 10 GB of storage. You get the domain free for the first year as well as the SSL certificate. If you have multiple sites, you need to upgrade to the Choice Plus plan for the introductory price of $4.45 per month. It renews at $13.99 per month.

The Choice Plus plan is recommended because it offers free domain privacy and automatic backup for one year. You can also benefit from using staging sites to work on design and content before launching things live. The Online Store plan gives you 40 GB of SSD storage. It optimizes CPU resources for the best user experience (UX) experience for your visitors. The Online Store plan is $8.95 per month for the first year and renews at $18.99 per month afterward.

If you need more power and control over the websites, you can get the Cloud plan for $29.99 per month, which renews at the same price. Sites that get a lot of traffic or businesses that need multiple websites with unlimited bandwidth are ideal fits for this plan.

Learn more: Read our full Bluehost review.

Who should use it:

Bluehost’s dashboard makes managing multiple websites a breeze, making it the ideal choice for web developers with multiple projects.

Pros & Cons

Intuitive and user-friendly dashboard
Free domain name
Free SSL certificate
Free business email
Reliable performance
Top-notch plug-ins

Difficult to cancel
Unresponsive chat support
Pricing increases upon renewal

Best WordPress Hosting for Customer Service

DreamHost

Starting price

$2.59 per month

(three-year term, renews at $5.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

On DreamHost's Website

$2.59 per month

(three-year term, renews at $5.99 per month)

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

All DreamHost plans are WordPress responsive and DreamHost recruits and trains the best support technicians to help with WordPress hosting installations, themes and plug-ins. Their Shared starter plan is only $2.95 per month for one website, unlimited traffic and WordPress preinstalled. You can add email for as little as $1.67 per month.

For those looking to maximize their WordPress platform, the DreamPress plan is designed specifically for WordPress websites. This plan is $16.95 per month and offers free automated WordPress migrations, on-demand backups, one-click restoration and Jetpack preinstalled.

For those looking for a VPS, DreamHost has you covered. The plan is only $13.75 per month and has unlimited websites, traffic and bandwidth. All plans come with one-click WordPress installation to make getting started as straightforward as possible.

Learn more: Read our full DreamHost review.

Who should use it:

Non tech-savvy developers who need to reach out to tech support will appreciate the responsiveness of DreamHost’s service team.

Pros & Cons

Low introductory rates, starting at $2.59 per month
Contract-free plans at $4.95 per month
Free domain name (with domain name privacy)
Free SSL certificate
One-click WordPress installation
Great customer service

Pricing increases upon renewal
Limited weekend support
Trouble going live in some cases

Best WordPress Hosting for Speed Optimization

InMotion

Starting price

$4.49 per month

(one-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

100 GB of NVMe SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

On InMotion Hosting's Website

$4.49 per month

(one-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)

100 GB of NVMe SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

InMotion WordPress hosting focuses its plans based on speed and performance. It starts with the WP Core plan with a one-year introductory price of $4.49 per month for one year, bumping up to $12.99 per month after that. This plan comes with a free SSL, is available for two websites and comes with 100 GB of storage. This plan is 2x speed and performance while the WP Launch plan has 6x speed and performance, significantly impacting the efficiency of your site for visitors. The WP Launch plan is $8.99 per month to start with and moves to $17.99 per month after the promotion ends.

There are two other plans to pick from that come with free domains, SSL certificates, unlimited websites and unlimited bandwidth. The WP Power plan starts at $8.99 per month and moves to $22.99 when the trial ends. The WP Power plan has 12x the speed and performance on the site while the WP Pro plan has 20x the speed and performance. The WP Pro plan runs $16.99 per month as an introduction and moves to $37.99 per month after that.

Learn more: Read our full InMotion review.

Who should use it:

Website owners seeking the fastest speeds will appreciate the Pro plan offered by InMotion, which provides up to 20x standard speed and performance.

Pros & Cons

Hyper-fast speeds
Free SSL certificate
Includes 10 business email address
Automatic backups available
DDoS Protection
Website builder

Difficulty setting up emails
Some poor customer service issues
Pricing increases upon renewal

Best WordPress Hosting for Risk-Free Guarantee

MochaHost

Starting price

$3.18 per month

Free domain name

Yes

Read Forbes' Review

$3.18 per month

Yes

Editor's Take

MochaHost WordPress hosting provides fast hosting services with a 100% Network Uptime Guarantee. All plans come with a free SSL certificate for as long as you have the hosting. We particularly like the 180 Days Risk-Free Guarantee the site boasts, showing its confidence in keeping you up and running at lightning speeds.

There are four WordPress plans starting at $3.18 per month. The difference between the Starter and Premium plan is the server power and the RAM. You get a better-optimized experience with super server power in the Premium plan with 2 GB of RAM compared to one. The Premium also offers a staging tool and is WooCommerce optimized. There is also an Advanced plan and Professional plan that provide more guaranteed RAM, additional CPU cores and increased server power.

Learn more: Read our full MochaHost review.

Who should use it:

MochaHost is the best WordPress hosting service for those that want a low-cost, zero-risk web host between its competitively-priced plans and its 180-day guarantee.

Pros & Cons

Plans start at $2.29 and pricing does not increase upon renewal
100% uptime guarantee
180-days risk-free guarantee
Free SSL certificate
Automatic backups
Responsive customer support

Deceptive sales practices
Some clients experience charges after cancellation
Entry-level plan does not include a free domain name

Best WordPress Hosting for Database Management

GoDaddy

Starting price

$10.99 per month

(one-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

10 GB of NVMe storage

Free domain name

Yes

On GoDaddy's Website

$10.99 per month

(one-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)

10 GB of NVMe storage

Yes

Editor's Take

GoDaddy plans all use new optimized hardware to make sure the servers are as fast and reliable as possible. All plans come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, free SSL certificate, automated daily backups and an easy-to-use cPanel dashboard. There are a number of prototype WordPress themes that make launching a new site fast and easy.

There are three plans that GoDaddy offers for WordPress hosting starting with the Managed WordPress Basic plan. This plan costs $10.99 per month for a one-year plan, which then renews at $12.99 per month. Then, there is the Managed Deluxe WordPress plan, which is $15.99 per month for one year before moving up to $16.99 per month on renewal. This is for one website that has 20 GB of NVMe storage, enhanced security with DDoS protection and one-click staging site. The Managed Ultimate WordPress plan offers 100 GB of NVMe storage space with WordPress code optimizer, smart WordPress plugin manager and one-click staging site. It starts at $17.99 per month for one year and goes up to $22.99 upon renewal.

Learn more: Read our full GoDaddy review.

Who should use it:

Website owners looking to maximize their databases will appreciate the multiple databases allowed on GoDaddy WordPress hosting plans.

Pros & Cons

Free domain
Daily backups
Reliable service
One-click WordPress installation
Free Microsoft 365 email (for your first year)
Beginner-friendly website builder

Expensive with price increases
Inconsistently trained support staff

Best WordPress Hosting for Simplicity

Hostwinds

Plan Price Range

$5.24 per month

(first billing cycle-only, renews at $6.99 per month)

Storage and bandwidth

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Free domain name

Yes

Read Forbes' Review

$5.24 per month

(first billing cycle-only, renews at $6.99 per month)

Unmetered storage and bandwidth

Yes

Editor's Take

Hostwinds WordPress hosting gives you a lot of bang for your buck with a lot of features in all three of its plans. All plans use solid state drives, come with free SSL certificates and have a modern cPanel to admin from. You can have unlimited subdomains, making expansion easy. Plans include unlimited emails, instant setup and a free dedicated IP address.

The Basic plan starts at $5.24 per month and moves to $6.99 per month after the promotion period. This plan is focused on one domain but offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The Advanced plan starts at $6.74 per month, with costs increasing to $8.99 per month after the promotional period. You can have four domains in the Advanced plan. The Ultimate plan allows unlimited domains for $8.24 per month as an introductory offer. The plan then goes to $10.99 per month after that.

Learn more: Read our full Hostwinds review.

Who should use it:

WordPress hosting website owners looking to choose a robust basic plan will get a lot of features included with Hostwinds Basic plan.

Pros & Cons

Unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans
Intuitive set-up process
Unlimited business email
Free dedicated IP
Free SSL certificates
Weebly site builder

Issues launching website
Poor customer service

Best WordPress Hosting for Migration

InterServer

Starting price

$2.50 per month

Storage and bandwidth

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

Free domain name

Add-on for $7.99 per year

Read Forbes' Review

$2.50 per month

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

Add-on for $7.99 per year

Editor's Take

InterServer has three plans, one of which is optimized for WordPress hosting. You can migrate a site into the Standard plan with pricing starting at $2.50 per month. In all plans, you get unlimited storage space, unlimited data transfer, weekly backups, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) accounts and optimized speed. While SSL certificates are free, domains are discounted at $7.99 per year.

The Standard plan allows for unlimited websites while the Windows plan allows for 25 and the WordPress plan only allows one. Both the Standard and Windows plan offer unlimited subdomains while the WordPress plan doesn’t.

All plans come with unlimited email accounts, guaranteed mail delivery, mobile devices supported and spam filtering. Additionally, plans come with visitor statistics so you can easily view analytics.

Learn more: Read our full InterServer review.

Who should use it:

WordPress hosting site owners seeking to migrate to a new plan will benefit from the unlimited data transfer ability of InterServer’s plans.

Pros & Cons

Month-to-month plans available
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Works on multiple operating systems
Free site migration
Free unlimited email
30-day money-back guarantee

Slow response to support tickets
Does not include a free domain
Lacks full pricing transparency

Best WordPress Hosting Value

Namecheap

Starting price

$6.88 per month (available at 58% off during current promotion)

(billed annually)

Storage and bandwidth

10 GB

Free domain name

Yes

On Namecheap's Website

$6.88 per month (available at 58% off during current promotion)

(billed annually)

10 GB

Yes

Editor's Take

Namecheap provides reliable, fast and secure hosting plans for WordPress hosting website developers. They have three plans available to choose from.

The first plan is the EasyWP Starter plan, which has a price of 6.88 per month (available at 58% off during current promotion). This plan supports one domain name, three websites and 10 GB of SSD storage. If you need something more robust, you can upgrade to the EasyWP Turbo plan for $12.88 per month (available at 62% off during current promotion). In the EasyWP Turbo, you get 50 GB of SSD storage and a free SSL

An upgrade to the EasyWP SuperSonic plan. It offers 100 GB of SSD storage and has an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. This plan is available for the first 12 months at $19.98 per month (available at 70% off during current promotion).

Learn more: Read our full Namecheap review.

Who should use it:

Namecheap is one of the best WordPress hosting services for businesses that are on a budget as it is a very good value between its low price and large feature set.

Pros & Cons

Low-cost WordPress hosting plans
Free SSL on high-priced plans
Privacy protection

Users say support isn’t good
Could use more security features
Does not include multiple site options

Forbes Advisor Ratings

Company	Forbes Advisor Rating	Starting price	Storage and bandwidth	Free domain name	Learn More CTA text	Learn more CTA below text
Ionos	4.7	$1 per month (billed for the first six months; renews at $10 per month)	Unlimited storage and bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On IONOS' Website
HostGator	4.3	$2.64 per month (three-year term, renews at $9.99 per month)	Unmetered storage and bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On HostGator's Website
Bluehost	4.2	$1.99 per month (billed annually, renews at $7.99 per month)	10 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On Bluehost.com's Website
DreamHost	4.2	$2.59 per month (three-year term, renews at $5.99 per month)	Unmetered storage and bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On DreamHost's Website
InMotion	4.1	$4.49 per month (one-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)	10 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On InMotion Hosting's Website
MochaHost	3.9	$3.18 per month		Yes	Learn More	Read Forbes' Review
GoDaddy	3.7	$10.99 per month (three-year term, renews at $12.99 per month)	25 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On GoDaddy's Website
Hostwinds	3.7	$5.24 per month (first billing cycle-only, renews at $6.99 per month)	Unmetered storage and bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	Read Forbes' Review
Interserver	3.7	$2.50 per month	Unlimited storage and bandwidth	Add-on for $7.99 per year	Learn More	Read Forbes' Review
Namecheap	3.6	$6.88 per month (billed annually)	20 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth	Yes	Learn More	On Namecheap's Website

What Is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress is an open-source CMS used to build and maintain websites. WordPress hosting is a type of hosting that provides resources that are specifically optimized for WordPress websites. While there are specific hosting plans for WordPress websites, site owners can use any hosting provider to host their websites since regular hosting plans are suitable for WordPress as well.

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a service that provides website owners hosting with the most advanced technologies to ensure that the website is both fast and secure. Managed hosting will take care of issues such as backups, security checks and updates for plug-ins.

How To Choose the Best WordPress Host for Your Site

When choosing a hosting provider, there are many things to consider. Look at the following areas before making a final decision about a provider and a plan.

Types of Web Hosting Services

The type of hosting you choose is important to how the website will function, especially if it gets a ton of traffic. The types of web hosting services are:

Shared hosting: Keeps your domain on the same server as other websites, sharing resources. Because resources are shared, this plan is less expensive than other hosting types.
VPS: Though a shared server is used, the VPS dedicates a space on the server specifically for your website. While this type of server performs better than shared hosting, it may still not be enough to handle high-traffic websites.
Dedicated server: The website gets its own dedicated server, offering the most control to the website owner. Control comes by way of admin access to manage things, such as security and operating systems. These are expensive types of hosting.
Cloud hosting: Uses a network of computers that allows the website to engage as many resources as needed without having to build a computing infrastructure. Because work is distributed across several servers, there is a lower chance of the website going down.
Managed hosting: This is a hosting plan that offers technical assistance as part of your subscription. Assistance includes configuration, maintenance, hardware replacement, patching, updating and monitoring. Many hosting plans are managed.
Colocation: This is where you rent space in racks and cabinets to take care of your own server needs. The space provides the power, bandwidth, IP address and cooling system while you provide all the hardware and software to make it work.

Speed

You want to find a hosting plan that dedicates resources to making your site load and operate quickly. This is important because research shows that sites taking longer than two seconds to load have visitors leave before viewing the content.

Uptime

When your website is down, visitors can’t view the content. This can cost a business owner money, as visitors might not return when the site is up and live. This is why you need to have a hosting plan that ensures sites remain up and live. Many hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. Look for one that is 99.99% of the time or more.

Security

Hosting platforms should have the tools in place to help keep your website from being hacked. This is an added layer of security on top of the tools you employ on your specific website to maintain security protocols.

Server Number & Location

Ideally, you are able to get a server that is near your target audience to help ensure speed of delivery. While not all WordPress hosting companies offer a choice of where the server is located, if you have the option, choose one in the same geographical area as your audience.

Customer Support

Most website owners are not professional web developers. You’ll likely have a ton of questions when launching and maintaining your website. Having a hosting provider that offers 24/7 support is critical to handling issues as they arise.

Featured Partners

Bluehost

$2.95 per month

Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage starts at 10GB

Free domain name & SSL for a year

Bluehost

On Bluehost.com's Website

HostGator

$2.75 per month (for first 36 months)

30 days

Free SSL certificate, free website transfer

HostGator

On HostGator's Website

Web.com

$2.75 per month

Yes

Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate

Web.com

On Web.com's Website

What Does WordPress Hosting Cost?

Most WordPress hosting plans have a price range that falls between $1 and $40 per month, depending on the type of hosting you choose. Plans that dedicate more resources to your website will cost more. This includes being on your own server or having higher speeds. You can keep your costs down by having a shared hosting plan.

Hosting Plans	Domains	Emails	WordPress Themes
Starting at $1 per month	Average $10 to $20 per year	Up to $7.95 per month	Free to $200

The main cost of WordPress hosting is the subscription plan itself, but there may be other costs associated with having a functional website hosted.

Of course, web hosting is only one factor that plays into the total cost of building and maintaining a website. For a more detailed look at average costs, check out our article on how much websites cost.

Questions To Assess Your WordPress Hosting Needs

Consider the following questions when assessing your WordPress hosting needs:

What type of site do you manage? Determine if your website will be an ecommerce store, blog or basic business website.
What is your technical skill level? Do you need more technical help from the support team or are you capable of handling the implementation and management of the website? Find a hosting plan that meets your needs.
How much traffic do you expect to have to your site each month? The more traffic you get, the more bandwidth and CPU usage you need. Select a plan that gives you plenty of both, so your website doesn’t slow down.
Do you need to migrate your site from an existing host? There may be processes and costs involved that you need to address. Make sure you understand what’s entailed before you commit to a new hosting plan.
What’s your budget? Make sure that the hosting plan meets your budget needs. Remember that most hosting plans offer a promotional price for the first 12 months. Make sure you can afford the costs after the promotional period.

Methodology

Forbes Advisor creates a rubric to rate and score each company in the list. We rated more than 25 hosting providers to impartially determine which ones are the best. The rubric considers four main areas of information when scoring the data, looking at 24 key criteria that were weighted to favor features that small business owners find valuable in a provider.

Pricing

We wanted to know several things when it came to pricing, such as if the hosting plan offers a free service, if the plans it offers are priced competitively and offer a good value for the features provided and if there is a money-back guarantee. We also looked at how much a WordPress host charged users for renewal after the initial contract ends and the number of sites that are covered by each plan. This accounted for 10% of our weighted scoring.

Features

This category includes a range of features that matter most to businesses when choosing a web hosting provider, such as the storage and bandwidth limits, one-click Word-Press installation, free site transfer, free domain name, free SSL certificates and uptime guarantees.

In addition to the key features, we also considered whether or not the providers offer extras that save businesses time and money, such as free business email, website builders, free domain privacy, enhanced security features, and automatic backups. We weighted features at 50% of our total score.

Third-party reviews

To gain a broader understanding of how others find the web hosting provider, we looked at third-party review sites to find out what actual users of the web hosts felt about the service they received. Turning to Trustpilot, we looked at the number of positive reviews each WordPress web host received and how many of them were quality reviews that were 3.5 or higher out of 5. These accounted for 10% of the total score.

Expert analysis

Continuing with customer reviews, our experts looked at users’ opinions on several key metrics to determine the final ratings of each WordPress web hosting service. These criteria included ease of use, value for the money, stand-out features and popularity. This analysis made up 30% of the total score.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best web hosting service for WordPress?

IONOS, HostGator and Bluehost are the three best WordPress hosting providers that our research yielded.

Does WordPress host websites?

WordPress offers both free and paid hosting services on WordPress.com.

Does WordPress Premium include hosting?

No, not all. While that may have been the case some years ago, WordPress Premium is a hosting plan that provides up to 13 GB of storage, premium themes and monetization features.

Can I build a WordPress site without hosting?

You can build a WordPress site without buying a hosting plan. You would do this on WordPress.org, where the site is hosted for free.

Can I host a WordPress site on my own server?

You can host a WordPress site on your own server. Keep in mind that if you are migrating from a WordPress.org or WordPress.com server, you may need to rebuild the site on a new domain managed on the server.

How do I transfer my WordPress site to a new host?

Take the following steps to transfer your WordPress site to a new host:

Back up your website.
Back up the WordPress structured query language (SQL) database.
Export the database.
Create a new SQL database on the new host plan.
Import the database files to the new SQL database.
Upload your backed-up site files to the new host.
Configure your domain name server (DNS) to reflect the new host.

How do I find out where my WordPress site is hosted?

To find out where your WordPress site is hosted, search for the domain name in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) website. Use the nameserver you find in the details to ping the server and find out if the hosting is operational.

Can you host multiple WordPress sites on one server?

You can host multiple WordPress sites on one server. This is a shared server configuration that may slow down some site functions because resources are used by all websites hosted on the server.

What is a self-hosted WordPress site?

A self-hosted WordPress website is one that is hosted on a third-party hosting site rather than on WordPress.org or WordPress.com.

What's the difference between shared and managed hosting?

With shared hosting, the key thing is that your WordPress website shares a single server and other resources with several other websites. Additionally, with this hosting, you are responsible for maintaining your own website. When it comes to managed hosting, everything is taken care of for you, including the implementation of features, standard website maintenance, automatic backups and updates.

How can I keep my WordPress site secure?

One of the best ways to keep your WordPress site secure is to use a hosting service. These sites offer a number of security measures, such as providing a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate for your site, which establishes an encrypted link between site visitors and your website. Most sites also offer free backup of your data so that if there is an issue, a copy of everything you supply to them is available in a backup form. These sites also monitor their servers around the clock, so if there are issues, they can address them immediately.

Other ways that you can help keep your WordPress site secure are to make sure that you install all recommended updates from WordPress promptly, choose strong passwords, back your site up yourself frequently and delete any unused or outdated files, themes and plug-ins.

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Kimberlee Leonard

Small Business Expert Writer

Kelly Main

Staff Reviewer

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