The importance of web hosting is often neglected, especially by the non-technical business owners who just want a good looking website, or if they are aware of the purpose of their website, they want it to convert and bring in business leads for them.
Truth be told, a Web Host is the backbone of your online presence and your business relies on it. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the last few years and a whopping 90% of them were using WordPress therefore our recommendation will be based on the review of services we’ve used and recommended to our clients.
Since over 60% of websites today are built on WordPress, there is no doubt that we need specialized WordPress Hosting which just works.
You just don’t want a 1-click WordPress Install but a complete solution which will keep your business running day in and day out.
We need features like:
An exemplary customer support to begin with
Optimized server ( built-in caching and ability to handle large influx of traffic )
Faster loading speed
Automatic backups
Enhanced security against Malware and DDOS attacks
Automatic Updates
Daily Monitoring
Choosing the best WordPress hosting service for your website isn’t always easy as there are dozens of hosting companies out there, all competing to make money off you but do they really deliver what they promise?
In this short guide, we’ll discuss about the types of hosting available and recommendation for the best hosting provider that you can bet your money on to support your growing business.
Benchmark for Hosting a WordPress:
WordPress has very basic requirements which most of the hosting companies support, however it is always good to ask, if they support.
PHP 5.2.4 or greater
MySQL 5.0 or greater
The mod_rewrite Apache module
The hosting companies we have discussed in this guide meet the above requirements.
Types Hosting for WordPress:
As we discussed above, there are over a dozen of hosting companies out there and we’ve worked with a number of them.
But before we give our verdict, it is important to understand the types of hosting packages to understand what will best meet your requirements.
Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared hostings are the most popular type of WordPress hosting that people use and companies offer because of its affordability.
Usually this is the best place to start off with and a lot of wordpress users tend to opt for shared hosting plans as you can get a decent shared web hosting from $3.99 and at times even lower with all the features like cPanel, Web mail etc.
The only downside is that you are sharing the resources of server such as memory and computational power with a number of other customers which means you can’t keep your websites on it much longer, especially when you are growing as the number of live visitors increase on your website, the response time suffers which results in a bad user experience for your audience.
Your website is also at risk from malware attacks as there are multiple clients hosted on the same server, you never know when you can get affected by it.
Shared hosting plans are ideal for low traffic blogs, individual freelancers, small design agencies and businesses.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed wordpress hosting came in to scene a couple of years back and become popular with WP Engine and eventually other hosting companies started offering this service.
Think of it as a premium hosting solution which literally takes the hassle out of managing the technical details of owning a WordPress website e.g:
Keeping regular backups of your website
Trouble-shooting and maintenance
Enhanced security and protection
Automatic updates and daily monitoring.
But most importantly the managed wordpress hosting offers highly-optimized server configurations which means far superior performance than your average web host.
If your site is growing in popularity, then you need a hosting server which can handle the load and yet deliver faster page speed to all of the visitors.
While the premium service comes with a premium cost, they are still a better option as compared to a dedicated server as it comes with a hosting staff which means you don’t need to spend the time learning or bear the cost of hiring a technology expert to manage the technical details.
Best Hosting for WordPress: Site Ground vs WP Engine
Our recommendation on best WordPress hosting is based on our personal experience at Omnicore and number of clients we have worked with.
Best Shared WordPress Hosting: SiteGround
There are many shared hosting companies which compete on price however SiteGround is the hosting client which packs some heft features even at the low starting price of $3.95 per month which is an excellent deal if you are just starting out and still don’t want to compromise on the quality of a web host.
Performance
Even if you are paying $3.95 per month, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice on the performance as it matters the most.
a) Hardware:
Siteground uses top notch hardware and store MySQL Database on separate SSD hard disks which means WordPress performs at lightning speed as SQL queries are being processed faster.
b) Multi-Location Server:
Siteground has data centers in 3 continents North America, Asia and Australia which means the visitors are served based on their location which allows for faster processing.
They also provide a Free CDN adding 23 more geographic locations to deliver faster loading website to your visitors.
The average response time is 842ms which is quite good considering the cost.
c) WordPress Cache:
Siteground has their own caching system and plugin for wordpress optimized for performance and is available on GrowBig and GoGeek plans.
Control and Scalability
Compared to WP Engine, Siteground offers more control thanks to cPanel which is available on a lot of hosting companies.
If you haven’t used cPanel before, it offers a lot of features for managing a website e.g FTP accounts, SQL Databases, File Manager, Add on domains, Web mail and more.
Support
We’ve used a number of hosting companies and found Site Ground’s support to top notch, to our surprise it was even better than WP Engine as SiteGround offer 24/7 support through LiveChat, Support Tickets and via phone (pick your choice).
The staff is very supportive and very patient, furthermore, they have also got a staff for custom requests for additional payment which can come in handy in special circumstances.
Cost
Siteground offers a number of plans which includes Shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated servers VPS and specialized WordPress Hosting plans.
Here is how they price the WordPress Hosting plans:
Startup – $3.95/Mo:
This plan is for one website only, offers 10 GB of Storage with all the features like unlimited bandwith, database, ftp account, email accounts and free domain name and CloudFlare CDN.
This plan is suitable for website for 10,000 monthly visits only, if you are getting more traffic then you can upgrade.
GrowBig – $7.95/Mo:
GrowBig plan allows you to host multiple websites, offers 20 GB of Storage. Basic features includes unlimited bandwith, database, ftp account, and email accounts.
Premium features includes:
Priority Support
SuperCacher
30 Backup Copies
1 Year free SSL Certificate
This plan is suitable for websites getting up to 25,000 monthly visitors.
GoGeek – $14.95/Mo:
GoGeek plan is for websites with large websites getting traffic up to 100,000 monthly visitors.
Basic features includes 30GB of Storage, unlimited bandwith, daily backups, ftp accounts, database and email accounts.
Premium features includes:
Less Accounts on Server
1- Click WordPress Staging for Development work
Priority Support
SuperCacher
30 Backup Copies
1 Year free SSL Certificate
Best Managed WordPress Hosting: WP Engine
WP Engine is the leader in managed WordPress hosting industry and is no doubt the best one and is recommended choice. They provide super-fast servers and that is what it is all about. Performance!
Performance
WP Engine is all about performance, even if your website is not perfectly optimized the performance it gives you makes up for any deficiencies.
There are a lot of customers who reported massive increase in their website speed and said their website now loads under 0.5 seconds.
If you are a geek and drool over these metrics, then WP Engine should be a perfect match for you.
a) Blazing Fast Server:
WP Engine uses rackspace servers to host clients websites which means you are getting enterprise level servers at a fraction of cost with WP Engine’s managed service.
b) Multi-Location Server:
WP Engine has data centers in six different locations which means the visitors are served content that is nearest to them which helps with the website speed.
c) WordPress Cache:
Just like SiteGround, WP Engine has custom-built EverCache technology to deliver WordPress fast and that too consistently across their client base.
Control and Scalability
While SiteGround offers cPanel, WP Engine has a limited set of features with with only essentials like managing backups and databses, setting up SFTP, managing domains and CDN.
They believe do so to only provide the absolute necessary features required to run WordPress, everything else stays away.
Note: WP Engine does not offer email account, in case you want to use an email account on your domain name you can use Google Apps for business to set up your email account using Gmail service at $10/month.
However, when it comes to scalability, WP Engine is a beat and can handle traffic like it is no body’s business. You don’t have to configure or worry about too much traffic. They never take your website offline even if you exceed the allowed traffic limit.
One other feature which we love is that they offer security and in case your website is ever hacked, they will fix it for you for free.
Support
WP Engine does not make fans when it comes to support. They don’t offer 24/7 support like SiteGround and their live chat is available during certain hours of the day which makes it tough to get hold of them.
The ticket system is slow too and we’ve had a bad experience with them when it comes to billing. We were charged for the next year even though we cancelled beforehand and it took several support tickets and phone calls to get the matter sorted out and get a refund.
But that was just us, however we didn’t have any complain using their service, the website always performs at blazing speed and that is what matters and that is why customers turn to WP Engine for scaling their business considering the fact that website speed is one of the Google’s ranking factor.
Cost
Unlike SiteGround, they don’t offer many plans as all of their packages are based around wordpress.
Here is how they price the managed hosting plans:
Personal – $29.00/Mo:
This plan is for one website only, it comes with 25,000 visits/month limit, 10 GB of storage and unlimited data transfer.
Professional – $99.00/Mo:
This plan allows you to host up to 10 websites, offers 100,000 visits/month limit, 20 GB of storage and unlimited data transfer.
Business – $249.00/Mo:
This plan allows up to 25 websites, 400,000 visits/month limit, 30 GB of storage and unlimited data transfer.
Premium – Custom:
They offer custom plans and pricing for required WordPress installs and visits per month.
Best Budget Wordpress Hosting: BlueHost
While we don’t recommend going for low cost hosting for your business websites but BlueHost is a reliable company. They have been around since 1996 and have a great interface and very user-friendly.
Their beginner package starts at $3.49 per month, but unlike SiteGround they have unlimited bandwith so make sure to check this out if you are looking for a budget wordpress hosting.
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