If you are looking for the best place to host your blog, it’s time to find this out. We have tested several different WordPress hosting companies, to see which ones perform best and offer the most reasonable pricing. It took us some time to study and compare some of the best hosting providers. We have sought to rely on objective elements and hard data such as loading time and storage space. Let’s find out how to choose a hosting for a blog.
The purpose of this article is to help you in your work, to save you time but also to draw your attention to the important elements to study in your work of comparison.
Why should you use WordPress for building a blog?
If you haven’t built a web-site before, you might get confused with all the variety of technologies available for web-site builders these days.
One would decide to use a web-site builder to run their blog, others build the HTML and PHP powered blogs from scratch. While both methods have their pros and cons, there is also a technology called WordPress.
WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) that includes all of the core features you would need for building a blog. WordPress is a web-site engine which is actually meant for blogging. Isn’t this alone a good reason to choose WordPress for your blog?
If that is not enough, let’s add up hundreds of thousands of WordPress community members and developers that work to keep this platform constantly improving, and evolving.
This also makes it easier for anyone using a WordPress, to solve any sort of issues, as most questions are already sorted. WordPress has gained so huge popularity on it’s lifespan, so it is hardly beatable in terms of blogging functionality.
In addition to all mentioned above, WordPress comes with a lot of plugins available for download and install. This makes it easy to extend and customize your blog. There is also a lot of custom themes available for WordPress that can be installed in no time.
To conclude – WordPress is a recommended CMS for those who wants to successfully start and run a blog.
Why is it important to choose the best hosting for a blog?
When opting to create a site with a WordPress, the choice of a hosting is the first important step. You cannot reliably use WordPress without finding the best blog hosting.
Bad hosting can ruin the performance of your site. Hence, we must not underestimate the importance of taking some time and testing a few different hosting solutions.
Fortunately for you, we have already walked through this tedious path ourselves, and are willing to share our findings so far.
For those of you who wants a quick recommendation here is a list of our favorite WordPress hosting companies for blogging:
- HostGator
- GreenGeeks
- BlueHost (*Wordpress.org recommended)
- A2 Hosting
- DreamHost (*Wordpress.org recommended)
- WPEngine (*Best premium hosting, but pricing is high)
- SiteGround (*Wordpress.org recommended)
- InMotion
- GoDaddy
What are the key criteria when comparing WordPress hosting solutions?
This comparison goes from the general to the particular. We will begin with the common features and measurements that must be taken into consideration. Later on, we’ll provide a more detailed insight for some of the most reliable hosting providers.
But before going to the magnifying glass for a specific hosting, let us remind you what are the key criteria to compare WordPress hosting solutions.
On publishers’ sites, you’ll find a huge amount of information and cryptic words. Their goal is simple: you put your eyes on those marketing texts and proceed with buying. This makes it easier for hosting company to acquire a new customer. But, it doesn’t make a process of choosing the best blog hosting any easier for you.
In order to make this article legit and unbiased, we have focused on the 9 most important criteria that really matter when looking for a blog hosting provider:
- Rates – Publishers are used to considering themselves the cheapest on the market. Some of the hosting companies are offered for a very cheap, but can suffer with severe response time lags. Others might offer great speed, but can be way too expensive for a blogger.
- Disk space – That is, the physical storage space available on the server. This can be very important if you plan to host a lot of media files.
- Uptime – How long the server has been running without interruptions. It’s not that important when you first start your blog, but becomes a crucial factor, once you scale up.
- CDN (Content Delivery Network) integration – Does a web-host of your choice support any CDN? Some of the best hosting providers do offer a free CDN. This helps a lot when you are just starting with your blog.
- Free Domain Name – It is important to have this offer for your first year. This makes it possible for you to save some extra money.
- Support – What kind of technical support is offered by your hosting provider. Especially important when you need a help with WordPress technical issues.
- Money Back Guarantee – Most hosts would offer a 30-days refund policy. But, it is important to be aware of your favorite provider’s refund policy beforehand.
- Bandwidth – This is the amount of site traffic that the server can handle per month. In some cases, the bandwidth is “unlimited”. Beware, often the “unlimited” actually means “unlimited under certain conditions”. Some companies are transparent on this point, like DreamHost for example. Some, are not.
- Multiple site installations – The number of sites you can host with one account. Important if you are planning on having multiple blogs and want to save some funds.
What to look for in a web host?
With all the most important aspects for choosing a good blog hosting listed above, let’s try and find out some more info to get more clear understanding on what to look for.
Rates or pricing
When it comes to creating a blog web-site, most of the time you won’t be looking for an expensive provider. After all, you are not building an e-commerce store or a social network. All you need is a reliable hosting for a reasonable price.
With that said, you shouldn’t be trying to save too much, otherwise you are risking of having an unstable hosting service, with bad uptime and mediocre page loading speeds. Later in this article, you will find the average cost for the best WordPress hosting providers that are not overpriced.
Disk or storage space
These days many good hosts offer a lot of disk space. While some providers still limit you with as much as 10 GB of space, others went so far to provide you with 50 GB of space with just a basic plan.
More on that, you should avoid hosting with a provider that offers an outdated, HDD storage. Most of respected providers currently offer a SSD storage for every client.
Uptime
When starting a blog, you won’t be having too many visitors. In this case uptime doesn’t matter much for you. Later on, when your site grows, so you are getting more and more people visiting your pages every day, your visitors might get affected by bad uptimes.
Think of uptime as the amount of time passed since web-server start till it is stopped because of some issue. While the server is down, your visitors won’t be able to access your blog. Fortunately, most of the reliable hosting providers listed in this article offer great uptime of 98%-99%.
CDN Integration
As long as you plan your site to be only accessible from a limited geographical area, you shouldn’t be bothering with Content Delivery Networks. However, if you wish your site to be accessed from several areas (e.g: US, Canada, Australia, UK, e.t.c.) – you’d better make sure your hosting provider supports a CDN integration.
CDN makes it so your blog’s files are copied among multiple servers that are physically located in those different regions mentioned. So, when you create your blog from the US, it gets replicated to Australia, resulting in Aussie visitors would get your blog loading fast, since they are accessing the exact copy, which is stored close to them.
Free Domain Name
Obviously, your new blog would require a name. Domain name – is a unique name your visitor would type in a browser to access your site. Some of the hosting providers don’t offer a free domain name, some of those do.
This is not a crucial criteria, but depending on hosting cost, sometimes it is cheaper to get all-in-one a hosting + a domain name.
Client Support
It is always great to have someone on the hosting provider’s side to assist you in case of any technical difficulties.
While reliable hosting providers always never give a chance of such issues to happen, since everything is automated, you would always benefit from getting a living person’s helping hand.
Some providers only offer an email help, others would offer a live chat, and only few of them would even offer a help over the telephone.
Money Back Guarantee
Refund policy should be clear to understand, and must offer a reliable protection for your money.
While respected hosting providers wouldn’t ever let you down to a point of requesting a refund, it is still safe to know that you can have a refund.
Most providers would offer you a 30-days money back period, but only few of them extend it with 60 or even 90 days refund period.
Bandwidth
How many GBs of data is allowed to be transferred to and from your web-site per month?
This sounds harder than it is. Think of bandwidth as an amount of monthly visitors that would get served with your site.
In most cases, 10,000 monthly visitors is more than enough for a new blog. What you must look for, is if you will be able to scale this number in future.
It is good to ensure the host of your choice allows to scale the bandwidth easily and with decent volumes.
Multiple web-sites
At first, you might neglect this aspect. Later on, when you have your blog grown, and want to add another one with the same hosting provider, you may find yourself in trouble.
That’s why it is important to know if you could add more sites into existing account of your hosting company.
What are some of the best places to host a WordPress blog? Why are those providers great?
All the players in this comparison (and those that have not been selected) proclaim themselves “the best WordPress hosting”.
While this is good they claim to have, this makes even more confusing for us to choose a hosting that best meets our needs and expectations.
Let’s see some of the legitimate providers that suit best for blogging.
We will give you a short introduction of what every hosting would have to offer. In addition to that you will find some examples of hosting plans and pricing.
If you wish to find out the most up-to-date info about each hosting listed below, kindly visit corresponding link.
Now, let’s begin with the best providers suitable for blog hosting with WordPress:
WP Engine
WP Engine is the most “upscale” player in this comparison, and therefore also the most expensive. As the name suggests, they only offer a WordPress hosting. But they do it very very well.
This hosting would save you from facing technical problems. There is zero chance of a sudden failure possible. All thanks to a specialized environment crafted for WordPress only. As well as an outstanding client support.
Staging environment is also available for you to test your changes before they go live. This means, your visitors won’t see any broken pages unless you let them to.
In the basic WP Engine offering, you can only host one WordPress site with maximum traffic of 25,000 monthly visits. Let’s say it right away: it’s more than enough for most sites.
The WP Engine registration process is childishly simple. Your WordPress site is automatically installed by the host. You do not need to install your site upstream. At the end of the installation of your blog, you receive an email with all the access details.
WP Engine also provides access to a very rich documentation, as well as a live chat. A telephone line is also available, except in the basic offer.
All WP Engine users highlight the high quality of customer service. This is undoubtedly one of the greatest strengths of this WordPress hosting solution (with server performance and enhanced security).
So far, WP Engine offers the following features with it’s basic plan:
- 10 GB storage
- 25K visitors per month
- 50 GB bandwidth per month
- 1 included sites
- Genesis Framework (*exclusive to WP Engine)
- 35+ StudioPress Themes
- LargeFS (*exclusive to WP Engine)
- Free Global CDN
- Automated SSL certificates
- Support (Email + Chat + Phone)
- Money Back Guarantee within 60 days
- SSH Gateway
- 99.95% Uptime Guarantee
Price for WP Engine Basic plan: $35/Month when paying for one year! You can save a bit, by getting 3 Months for FREE!
Get WP Engine for 1 Year + 3 Months for Free
InMotion Hosting
InMotion offers a large number of hosting solutions, including several offers specifically dedicated to WordPress (WordPress Hosting). We have been using the basic offer.
One of the first things we noticed was that InMotion offers SSD disk space at no additional cost. SSD technology is recognized for its excellent performance compared to other storage technologies.
The basic offer allows you to host two WordPress sites and offers the SSL certificate.
InMotion proposes to automatically install your WordPress site during the installation process of the hosting. This is one of the most useful features of this WordPress hosting solution. In other words, you do not need to install WordPress separately.
Another detail to note: you have the possibility to choose a “max speed zone”. You have two possibilities: East or West. If you choose “West”, the speed of your WordPress site will be optimized for the Western region.
InMotion offers very robust customer support. You have access to dozens of guides and tutorials to help you in the installation and management of your blog. There is the entire section devoted to WordPress.
They also provide a 24/7 live chat, Skype, and phone.
Let’s have a look of what’s available with InMotion’s basic plan:
- 20,000 Monthly visitors
- 40 GB SSD storage
- WordPress optimized stack
- Unlimited email accounts
- Free Domain Name
- Free SSL certificate
- 1 Web Site
- Free 200+ themes
- Support via phone, email, or a live chat
- 90 Days Money Back Guarantee
- Staging Environment
- SSH Access
- Uptime Guarantee of 99.9%
Basic plan of InMotion hosting starts from $8.99/Month. There is also a 33% discount available for readers of this blog. So the final price would be $5.99/Month.
Get InMotion WordPress hosting with 33% OFF
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is a relatively new player in the market of WordPress hosting solutions.
The company has already made a name for itself among the WordPress community thanks to its very competitive prices and the good performance of its offers.
The company has more than 10 years of experience in the field of hosting and is very familiar with its business and the determinants of quality hosting.
The offers dedicated to WordPress are based on a number of principles that guarantee the best quality: developer-friendly customization, high level of security, good performance, and an environment optimized for a WordPress.
The customer support is accessible by live chat, email or phone 24/7. It is very efficient and composed of competent technicians.
Among the features offered by A2 Hosting with a basic plan:
- Unlimited SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free SSL
- 25 Email Addresses
- Free CDN
- 24/7/365 Guru Crew Support (email, live chat or phone)
- CloudLinux OS
- 99.9% Uptime
- 5 Databases
- 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
Basic plan of A2 Hosting is available for only $7.99/Month. Discount is offered for annual plans, cutting the price down to $3.92/Month!
Get Started with A2 Hosting with 51% OFF
BlueHost
BlueHost is one of the few players not to offer monthly plans without commitment.
You must commit to a minimum of one year (even though there is a money-back guarantee that allows you to get a refund fairly easily). We tested the basic offer, on a shared server.
It allows you to host a website and offers 50 GB of SSD disk space. You are not limited in terms of bandwidth. It is very pleasant.
BlueHost offers a one-click WordPress installation via a service called “MojoMarketplace“.
Customer support (live chat) is very robust and will help you if you are lost in the installation, or in need of other assistance.
Bluehost is a company with many years of experience, and a well-earned reputation. They’ve been around for awhile, and definitely knows how to please their customers.
In terms of features, Bluehost offers the following with a basic plan:
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- 1 Web Site
- Free SSL certificate
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free Domain Name
- 5 Parked domains
- Support is available via: email, chat, and phone
- SSH Access
- CGI-BIN
- 1-Click WordPress Installation (the simplest among all the others)
- 30 Days Money Back
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
Basic plan from Bluehost is offered for only $7.99 per Month. There is a discount for those who is just starting, cutting the price down to $2.95 per Month (when getting a 3-Year plan).
Get Started with BlueHost for $2.95/Month
DreamHost
DreamHost is a very popular and well-established WordPress hosting solution on the market.
It is officially recommended by WordPress (same as Bluehost and SiteGround). We’ve been testing the shared hosting offer, and were satisfied with the experience we had.
Obviously, DreamHost has assets to sell, such as SSD technology. The installation is done without any difficulty. The interface is particularly intuitive.
Customer support is very professional and responsive. You can contact them via the live chat. They also offer a special support plan designed for WordPress sites using Woo-Commerce at $24.95 per month.
This provider offer an advanced cache system, advanced client support, a domain name and a reinforced level of security.
Here is the list of features you are getting with DreamHost’s basic plan:
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Free Domain Name
- Free SSL certificate
- 97 Days Money Back Guarantee
- Support via email, chat, and phone
- Free Domain Privacy
- 6 MySQL Databases
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 1 Web Site
- Domain bound email accounts for $1.67 per Month
The basic plan, mentioned above is available for only $2.95 – which is a discount of 47%.
Get Started with Dreamhost for $2.59/Month
SiteGround
Among the youngest hosting companies, still offering one of the best services these days.
SiteGround has been established in 2004 as an independent hosting provider with a completely new vision of what the good hosting should look like.
Given the independent management, SiteGround has implemented the most sophisticated WordPress hosting platform.
It is even recognized as the recommended blog hosting on an official WordPress.org web-site.
SiteGround was one of the first, who offered a SSD storage as a replacement to outdated HDD one.
They’ve also made an innovation by adding a SSH gateway, and a staging environment to their shared hosting plans.
At the moment, SiteGround is chosen by every 1 of 3-d web-site authors, since it offers an outstanding page loading speed, great uptime, and affordable pricing tag.
Let’s see what are the core features, offered in a basic plan of the SiteGround:
- 10,000 Monthly visitors
- 10 GB of SSD storage
- 1 hosted Web-Site
- Free Email accounts
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- WordPress autoupdate
- WP-CLI Pre-installed
- Free CDN
- Server location selection
- Support via phone, chat, and tickets
- Free SSL certificate
- SSH and SFTP access
- Anti-hack protection
- 30 Days Money Back
SiteGround’s basic plan costs $11.95 per Month, but is offered with a discount upon first time sign-up, making it only $3.95 per Month.
Get SiteGround Managed WP hosting for $3.95 per Month
HostGator
We tested the Starter package. Registration for the service is a breeze. You are quickly redirected to a traditional cPanel configuration panel, which works very well.
HostGator offers a free migration service that allows you to easily transfer your current WordPress site to this provider.
Clearly, HostGator is a WordPress hosting solution that holds up.
Only downside: the customer service, which is competent but not very responsive. There is a bunch of negative feedback complaining to a slow support team response.
Here is what you can get with a starter plan:
- Monthly visits (bandwidth) of 100,000 visitors
- 1 Web Sites
- Unmetered Storage Space
- Free SSL
- Automatic Daily Backups
- Auto Malware Removal
- Support via chat, email, and phone
- 99.9% Uptime or you are getting compensated
- Free Site Migration
- $100 of Google Adwords Credit
- 45 Days Money Back Guarantee
HostGator offers their basic plan (mentioned above) with 40% discount, for $5.95/Month. This is probably the most expensive among shared hosting providers.
Get HostGator for $5.95 per Month
GoDaddy
What makes GoDaddy different is it’s language support. GoDaddy is one of not so many WordPress hosts that support many different languages besides English.
Another big point for choosing GoDaddy is the advanced domain name registration features. After all, GoDaddy is one of the biggest and trusted domain registrars.
GoDaddy have long dragged behind them a bad reputation in terms of user experience. Things seem to have changed. We did not encounter any difficulties to register for the service and proceed with the installation.
Obviously, a lot of front-end optimization work has been done in recent years by development teams.
Today, GoDaddy probably offers one of the most qualitative interfaces on the market (with a very modern control panel).
Not much special to say about the customer support. You can easily reach a support technician in case of any problem or a question.
Here is what GoDaddy can offer in terms of WordPress hosting, with a basic plan:
- 10GB storage
- Daily backups
- 25,000 monthly visitors
- Free domain name
- 99.9% uptime promise backed by money back guarantee
- CDN for free
- Free themes and plugins
- 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
- WordPress optimized hosting platform
- Malware scan and removal
GoDaddy offers only managed WordPress hosting. That’s why it is not that cheap, but is not extremely expensive either.
Basic plan is offered, starting with $9.99 per month, but you can get up to 30% OFF depending on period you choose to prepay. No worries, since GoDaddy has a money back promise for 30-days, if you are not satisfied.
Get up to 30% OFF for GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is the only WordPress hosting solution, to our knowledge, which presents itself as an “eco-friendly”. This solution works best for those who cares about the environment.
The platform was designed with one goal in mind: do not waste any resources. For each ampere consumed, the company finances 3 ampere of renewable energy from the Bonneville Foundation for the Environment.
GreenGeeks offers several WordPress hosting plans at affordable prices. The offers are virtually stuffed with amazing features.
GreenGeeks offers home caching technology, SSL certificate, allows you to connect your hosting storage to a Cloudfare and even offers you a domain name for one year with no additional fee.
The installation, “in one click”, is done without any difficulties. Note that the updates are installed automatically, which facilitates the maintenance of your site.
GreenGeeks has 5 data centers: two in the US, two in Canada and one in Amsterdam.
Customer service is accessible via three channels: email, phone, and live chat. The live chat is particularly effective (accessible 24/7).
GreenGeeks also provides its users with a comprehensive resource center, which is full of tutorials.
Let’s see what you are getting with a basic hosting plan from GreenGeeks:
- Unlimited SSD Disk Space
- Bandwidth is unmetered
- 1 hosted Domain and web-site
- Free Domain Name upon sign-up
- Free SSL certificate
- Nightly backups
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- 100 emails per hour
- 1-click WordPress installer
- Automatic WP updates
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
- Email, Live Telephone & Live Chat Support
In terms of pricing, basic GreenGeeks plan costs $9.95 per month. With that said, you can get it as cheap as $2.95 per month with this discount, when prepaying for a year or more.
Get GreenGeeks WP hosting for $2.95 per Month
Conclusion. Which reliable hosting provider to choose?
With all the analysis we have made for this article, you might still have some questions not answered. We can assure you, having the list of WordPress hosts mentioned above, we ourselves, also getting a little bit confused. After all, which one of 8 hosting providers should you choose for a blog? Let’s try to provide some final thoughts.
For those of you, who already have a significant experience blogging and WordPress site building we highly recommend going with WP Engine. You won’t ever regret by choosing this provider. WP Engine is really an awesomely optimized and crafted WordPress blog hosting. Just make sure, you are ready to pay around $320 every year.
Otherwise, in case you are a startup blogger, or maybe you don’t expect too many visitors in your fist year, or simply don’t have extra $320 to spend every year – BlueHost, A2 Hosting, or GreenGeeks is a hosting for you.
A little bit more tech savvy people would enjoy using SiteGround. They provide you with Git support, SSH gateway, and a WP CLI. You are able to control and fine-tune lots of hosting parameters by yourself. Choose it, if you like to experiment, and know what you are doing. SiteGround is a little bit expensive compared to previous 3 providers.
In case you want to get a little bit more out of your hosting, and ready to spend more money, anything from GoDaddy, HostGator, to InMotion – would work best for our blog.
DreamHost is a trusted provider for those, who likes to work with a company that’s got a history behind it. It is also listed in a WordPress.org recommended hosting page.
This article is big enough to provide you the most important things to look for, when choosing a blog hosting. We’ve also tried to include the best WordPress based companies to give you a quicker suggestion, in case you want to start your blog today.
Many of other good hosting providers like: Kinsta, Arvixe, Hostinger, and Pressable are not listed here as the article is already huge. You are free to provide your own research, armed with the most important hosting criteria for blogging.
We hope you enjoyed this post, and have some useful insights now. Kindly let us know in the comments, what your experience is, and other thoughts on choosing the best place for hosting.
