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.
We 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.
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.
10 Best WordPress Hosting Services (April 2023)
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
What Is WordPress Hosting?
WordPress is an open-source content management system (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.
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.
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.
