Finding a hosting company for your WordPress website can be tricky. There are a lot of different factors to consider and many different hosting services out there.
WordPress powers more than 75% of websites, making it easy to create the right site for you. WordPress’ powerful tools and mobile capability make it great for beginners and more advanced users alike.
However, when it comes to choosing a hosting company, it’s crucial to pick one that will work well with your WordPress site. Some services even offer additional features to take your website to the next level.
What should you look for in a host, and where should you start? Check out our top 8 WordPress hosting services that you should know about.
WPEngine
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If you’re looking for top tier WordPress hosting, WP Engine has to be in the conversation. It’s a flexible WordPress hosting platform that is secure, fast, and reliable, albeit it’s the most expensive option on our list by far.
"See How My Team at White Peak Can Drive Tons of Traffic to Your Site"
~ Tim Woda - White Peak, CEO
- SEO - unlock massive amounts of traffic from Google.
- Lead Generation - we create phenomenal campaigns that will fill your funnel.
- Google & Social Advertising - cost-effective paid strategies with an exceptional Return-On-Ad-Spend.
WP Engine provides users with a diverse set of tools to strengthen your WordPress site. One of WP Engine’s strongest qualities is its customer service. Its service representatives are there to keep your website performing at its best all the time.
Unlike most hosting companies, WP Engine provides its customers with a staging site. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but if you’re updating your website regularly or making performance updates, this is a “must have.” This also helps to explain the higher price.
One thing that we don’t love about WP Engine is that they place extreme limits on which plugins can be used on their platform. They do this in an effort to maintain a controlled environment. We think they’re overzealous, and this often limits options for your developers to do some amazing things with your site when it comes to functionality and speed.
White Peak
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White Peak didn’t start out with a plan to host websites.
Like most businesses, we hosted our own site with a big, well-known hosting company (one mentioned on this list, actually). But we wanted our website to load faster, and we wanted greater flexibility and way more features that would protect our website from the darker side of the Internet. That’s when we pulled together our own hosting solution. This includes a rock-solid backbone with a number of additional services that are not included with other hosting companies without a hefty price tag.
White Peak’s hosting focuses on security, reliability, speed, speed, and more speed.
By now, you probably know that website speed is a huge Google ranking factor. Slow loading sites also generate fewer leads and sales and less foot traffic to local businesses. Potential customers leave slow sites. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before our digital marketing clients were asking to use White Peak’s hosting environment.
Since then, White Peak’s hosting has become part of our client’s “secret sauce.”
Our servers reside in Provo, Utah, and Houston, Texas, with a few residing in other locations. White Peak’s WordPress hosting is much less expensive than WP Engine and includes all of the same features (and more), including:
- Free SSL,
- Free staging environment, upon request
- Free migration services
- Business email is available for purchase
- Free cPanel,
- Free scanning of core files, themes, and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, malicious redirects and code injections
- Free real-time threat detection to prevent intrusions
- Image optimization
- Free daily backups, and
- Lightning-fast website load times.
SiteGround
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SiteGround was started in 2004 by a few university friends. Since then, they’ve grown to host 2 million domains. They offer a straightforward installation process for your WordPress site, a simple interface, and reliable performance. They provide many different levels of service, depending on your needs.
These shared hosting packages work well with most websites, and they also offer dedicated hosting. In addition to these features, SiteGround offers additional tools for WordPress sites.
SiteGround’s services give you full control over WordPress hosting. Its reliable database and simple interface make managing your website hosting easy. They’re also one of the faster hosting options available.
What keeps them from earning 5 stars from us is that SiteGround has a reputation for throttling resources as site visitors increase, and this can be super annoying to businesses as they’re trying to grow. It has also been reported that they have a weird business practice worth being aware of – they install a secret, live page on their customers’ websites in order to generate website traffic and backlinks for their own site. You can see a screenshot of this below.
Obviously, this page can be disabled, but our concern is the principle of the practice. With the resource limitations and some of the fine print in their Terms and Conditions, we kept from giving them 5 stars.
Bluehost
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Bluehost has been one of the major hosting companies for WordPress for years. Its services are simple to install and provide a variety of unique features for WordPress users.
One thing that sets Bluehost apart from other hosting services is its customizable dashboard.
The variety of options Bluehost offers can be overwhelming. Also, they don’t include very many features you would expect from a top-tier host. They need to be purchased separately, which undermines the lower prices they often promote. Also, while they don’t offer the most straightforward user interface, they do give you a lot of control. Having a personalized dashboard lets you manage the backend however you want.
Bluehost also handles traffic well. Its pretty quick load times and dependable servers make it a popular choice for users.
DreamHost
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Having a reliable and straightforward interface is vital for understanding the basics of website hosting. DreamHost brings a variety of services that let you take control of your website.
DreamHost’s WordPress hosting packages give users more tools for managing your website. DreamHost gives your site an extra boost between the 30 gigabytes of storage, free themes, and unlimited email accounts.
These features make DreamHost a flexible host. There are also a variety of e-marketing and e-commerce tools that help bring more traffic to your website.
Pagely
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Some businesses need hosts that can handle super high traffic volume. This is one of the reasons Pagely is one of the most popular choices for larger corporations.
One of the main focuses of Pagely is security. Because of its list of high-profile clients, Pagely makes sure to keep your data safe.
While it may be an expensive choice as far as hosts go, it’s worth it. Pagely succeeds as a high-performance host made to handle high traffic volume.
It’s fast and functional, making it a natural choice for larger businesses.
Flywheel
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If security is a priority and you don’t have the budget for Pagely, Flywheel may be a good alternative for you. For the price, Flywheel is a bargain and promises to protect your content.
Flywheel is perfect for creative groups. It provides tools and resources for making sure your website looks good and functions well.
There are many different packages available to suit your specific needs. Some cover only one site at a time, while others cover handfuls.
Where Flywheel shines is its constant monitoring of your websites. These technical services work to protect users from hackers.
Flywheel is a secure hosting service that works well for websites of all sizes. In addition to its security, it’s also fast and stable.
Speed means less downtime and load times, giving you more website traffic.
inMotion hosting
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If you’re looking for a well-rounded hosting service, InMotion may be what you need. It’s simple, affordable, and functional.
Its low cost may seem like a red flag, but InMotion is a solid choice for the price. The company balances its services to ensure exceptional performance.
InMotion offers WordPress hosting on a budget. Its features and speed aren’t the best on the market, but they can handle a decent amount of traffic.
Because of this, InMotion is perfect for websites that are working on a budget.
Choosing the Best WordPress Hosting Service
Picking the right WordPress hosting service is essential for growing your website. Since every website is different, finding the right hosting service depends on your needs.
Creating and maintaining a website can be a tricky task. Add your comments below to share your hosting experience with us.
Tim Woda is the CEO and founder of White Peak Marketing. He has been on the founding team of five successful start-ups and his digital marketing campaigns have acquired more than 800 million customers for his start-ups and White Peak’s client companies. Tim has been featured by The New York Times, Fox News, Forbes, The Huffington Post, and more. Under Tim’s direction, White Peak was selected as one of America’s Top Digital Marketing Agencies for 2021 by MarTech Outlook magazine.
