Web Development WordPress

How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting for Your Site in 2022: Key Guidelines

Searching for a good hosting to put your WordPress website live on the Internet? Read this post to learn about the basic hosting types and their essential characteristics. We also present an overview of the best hosting solutions available on the market at the moment.

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With a tremendous variety of hosting options available nowadays, it’s more than easy to get lost. In this post, we provide key guidelines on choosing the best WordPress hosting. Continue reading to learn

  • what are the basic types
  • what you should consider while choosing a provider
  • what reliable solutions you can get.

Web Hosting Options

Firstly, let’s discuss the main features and differences between the basic hosting types that you can find on the market.

Free WordPress Hosting

It’s true that you can get WordPress hosting at no or almost no cost. However, a wise user understands that there can’t be entirely free hosting, as supporting and maintaining a server requires time and resources. Thus, you will have to pay for using the hosting in other ways. Often, free hostings are provided by individuals who are reselling a small section of their server space. To give you hosting for free, such providers may:

  • ask you to place a banner ad on your website
  • request you to insert a text link in your site’s footer
  • limit your website’s traffic.

Obviously, banners may be unrelated to your website and present your business in a negative way. If the server is of poor quality, it can’t process many requests, so your website can go down for an uncertain time. What’s more, free hosting is far from reliable because you never know when the provider will decide to stop sharing server resources and let you down.

We recommend evaluating your needs and choosing other affordable options available at a reasonable price. Purchasing reliable WordPress hosting guarantees your peace of mind.

Shared Hosting

As its name suggests, shared hosting means sharing server resources with other websites hosted on this server. Generally, shared hosting is the most economical way to launch a site. It is affordable because multiple sites share the space on one server, so your website’s performance will depend on how intensively other sites use the server. 

Some hosting providers claim that they offer unlimited resources (such as bandwidth or storage space) in shared hosting. Yet, as it often happens, there’s no such notion as ‘unlimited.’ As numerous websites share server resources, there are certain user restrictions. Your site shouldn’t overload the server. Consequently, shared hosting is not suitable for websites planning to extend significantly. However, you can consider this variant if you need to create a landing page or a small website, for instance.

Managed Hosting

This hosting type implies assistance, or ‘management,’ with server resources. In other words, a hosting company helps you with software setup, server optimization, administration, and support. Depending on the chosen provider, you can get hardware management, basic security checkup, etc.

Usually, managed hosting provides professional hosting solutions for specific needs or software. Hence, you can get fully managed WordPress hosting. Experts will help you deal with WordPress-specific issues and provide back-end support, backups, and recommendations on optimizing your website or plugins to get the best performance. 

Managed hosting often costs more than shared hosting, yet the higher security and specialized assistance you get in managed hosting are mostly worth it.

WordPress VPS Hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting means that you get a virtual machine. The hosting provider allocates you a certain partition on a physical server computer. Although multiple users share the server (like in shared hosting), you have more control over the server and a reserved amount of memory. 

So, unlike shared hosting, where your website’s performance depends on other sites on the same server, with VPS hosting, your website data isn’t influenced by the sudden demands of other users’ websites. Additionally, you usually receive full root access to the server, so you can configure the resources to run specific software.

You may consider this option for medium-sized businesses, complex web software, and websites expected to grow fast.

WordPress Dedicated Server Hosting

As the word ‘dedicated’ implies, you get an entire physical server (a dedicated computer) from the hosting provider for your website only. That means that you also have full control over resources, including the choice of the operating system.

Dedicated hosting is perfect for websites with extremely high traffic or sites with specific applications that demand great computational power. Accordingly, this type of hosting costs from $100 per month. If you are just starting, you don’t usually require dedicated hosting.

WordPress Hosting Requirements

If you are creating a website on WordPress, you should know the basic server requirements. They are:

  • PHP version 7.4 or greater
  • MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater
  • HTTPS support

As you see, the list of requirements is quite short. Any server that supports PHP and MySQL is suitable for hosting a WordPress site.

What to Take Into Consideration When Choosing WordPress Hosting

Numerous factors can influence your choice of a web hosting provider. Yet, all technical characteristics described by companies should first and foremost meet your project requirements. Hence, it’s essential to evaluate your personal (or your project) needs to know what you expect from a launched website and its interaction with users. Let’s have a look at more specific criteria and factors that influence the choice of a hosting provider.

The Scale of Your Project

If you know that your website and business needs are going to grow, you should consider a reliable solution from the very beginning. WordPress hosting solutions can suit various projects or businesses depending on their specific needs.

Let’s say a bookstore owner and an attorney company are both looking for a hosting provider. An online bookstore will need the space to upload multiple products, keep them updated, and securely store clients’ information. An attorney company website, on the contrary, is not going to expand so fast; it can function as a visiting card that describes the firm’s team, services, cases, and contact information.

Number of Websites/Domains and Subdomains

It’s essential to know how many websites you want to host on the same server. Usually, the more sites you need, the higher the price is. Also, depending on the provider, you can have limitations on the subdomains. So, if your project needs subdomains, remember to check how many of them you can have within the chosen plan.

Storage Space

As mentioned before, storage space is usually limited in different hosting options. Accordingly, you should evaluate how much data your website will store and if you need to expand the storage space in the future.

Website Traffic

The estimated number of visitors to your website that you plan to reach is also significant. Hosting providers usually indicate what traffic their plans can cover.

Databases

Depending on providers, your hosting plan can have limitations on either the number of created databases or their size. So, even if you see ‘unlimited database’ in the feature list, you should check the database requirements for them.

Security

SSL certificates protect websites by encrypting data and helping to ensure it won’t be compromised, forged, or eavesdropped on when customers leave sensitive information on the website. Often, hosting providers add free SSL certificates to their plans.

Some hosting providers also include SSH (Secure Shell) to protect the communication between the user and the remote server. With a secure encrypted connection, you can easily manage big files and databases. It is essential for administrators and web developers because it enables direct secure access to the hosting account on the server. When you enable SSH, you can also use SFTP to securely access, manage, and transfer files.

Managed WordPress hosting plans usually include enhanced security offers (compared to shared hosting).

Staging Environments

While working on a project and before making it live, it’s a great idea to have a staging site, or a staging environment, where you can test all the changes you want to make. It helps you avoid errors that you might get if you test your web project on a local host. Some hosting providers let you create a staging environment and then easily make the site live.

Caching

If we speak about hosting, cache functions as a mediator between the user and the server. When visitors browse a website, the system checks whether they have a cached copy of the requested page. Creating such copies means faster webpage opening for users, as they will spend less time waiting for the request to the server and its response. If the server doesn’t provide caching, all requests get to the server itself. Thus, the main advantage of using caching is increasing page speed.

Additionally, as the server doesn’t have to process all requests, you can reduce resource consumption. At the same time, you should remember to clean or refresh the cache from time to time. If your website content changes, it’s necessary to update the cache to prevent visitors from seeing an old page version. There is an option of automatic cache renewals whenever the page is updated or periodically. Likewise, cache cleaning can be manual.

Backups

Regular backups ensure automatic recovery of data in case something goes wrong. Depending on the account type and server specifications, data can be backed up daily or once every 3-7 days. The more often you update the website, the more backups are required. So, if your website changes every day, daily backups are a perfect option. Otherwise, you may select less frequent data updates. Moreover, some hosting companies don’t include automated backups in their pricing plans and offer them only as an optional paid service.

The time of backups is also important. Some hosting providers offer nightly backups. Accordingly, the website will not slow down at the peak hours of its use.

Customer support

Sometimes you can have problems installing your WordPress website or having other server errors. If your website is down, waiting for support may be unbearable and lead to the loss of potential customers. Thus, it’s a pleasure to know that your hosting support team is there for you 24/7, no matter when you may face a problem.

Furthermore, there are different ways to get support: via phone, emails, tickets, or chats. With more expensive plans, you can also receive fast advanced priority support of exceptional quality provided by the most experienced agents.

Page Speed as a Ranking Factor on SERPs

If organic traffic from Google is important to you, it’s vital to consider the page speed of your website. Back in 2010, Google announced that speed would become a ranking factor for desktop results. In July 2018, the team also confirmed that page speed as a ranking factor is applied for mobile searches, too. Consequently, search engines evaluate user experience on the website, i.e., the faster a website loads and customers get an answer to their query, the more chances this website has to appear higher in organic results.

Page speed, undoubtedly, depends on the content that the website contains. The same hosting resources may lead to different speed results for websites with clean HTML coding and numerous plugins or a poorly written theme.

Additional Options

Different hostings offer other bonuses, such as a free domain name (usually for one year), custom WordPress themes to build a website faster, website builders, etc. To attract businesses, some hosting providers include SEO tools, business emails, WooCommerce extensions, Google Ads, and Microsoft Advertising spend match credits in more expensive plans.

Pricing

We advise you to study pricing plans carefully after listing your requirements. Thus, you will know what each company offers, choose the essential criteria, and decide what matters for you most.

To engage customers, hosting providers offer special prices that usually work for the first month or another introductory period. Afterward, regular prices can significantly differ from promotional ones. So, not to be misled by promotional costs, we recommend checking

  • the term for which reduced rates are applied 
  • the conditions of how you can get promotional prices (sometimes you’ll have to pay for one or even three years as one payment)
  • the regular prices.

Best WordPress Web Hosting Providers

Now, let’s compare the most famous and try-and-tested places for a WordPress website.

Bluehost

Since its founding in 2003, BlueHost has been actively growing and empowering numerous websites worldwide by providing reliable hosting. Now, there are more than 2 million websites on BlueHost, many of which are WordPress sites.

Bluehost Shared Hosting

Performance indicators

With almost all Bluehost plans for WordPress, you get standard CPU performance on Bluehost Shared Hosting. It’s suitable for most websites going online today, as it is built for low to moderate-traffic sites. If you need hosting for websites with higher traffic, you may opt for Bluehost’s Pro Shared Hosting with an optimized CPU.

Moreover, Bluehost features a free CDN by Cloudflare. Consequently, website files will be kept at over 200 locations all over the world. It ensures a fast response from any place around the globe.

As for the storage, you get 50 GB to store your files with the cheapest pricing plan. The other plans have unlimited SSD storage for projects. Similarly, the Basic plan allows you to create up to 20 databases, while the other options have no restrictions on databases.

Security

The visitors’ and customers’ data is safe due to the encryption with a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt. You will find this protection in all pricing plans.

Staging environments

With BlueHost, you can create a staging site and experiment with website features or updates. All BlueHost plans include staging environments for website testing.

Caching

You can improve your website’s performance with the caching feature by BlueHost. It’s possible either to enable caching via the plugin or by accessing ‘My Sites’ on the Bluehost portal. When you switch on this function, you can also choose from various options of Caching level according to the time you want your site to store cache.

Backups

As for backups, they depend on the pricing plan. The Basic and Plus plans don’t offer free automated backups. If you need this feature, you can choose the Choice Plus plan (with a free backup for the 1st year) or the Pro plan.

Support

All Bluehost plans come with 24/7 support for questions connected to your website or account. You may reach the team no matter where and when you need assistance.

Pricing plans

Bluehost offers four WordPress hosting plans: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro. The cost starts with a promotional $2.95 per month (for the first month) and the normal price of $9.99 for a small website or blog. The promotional price for the Pro plan is $13.95 per month, while the regular cost will be $28.99.

Bluehost Managed Hosting

There are three WordPress managed hosting plans: 

  • Build
  • Grow
  • Scale. 

All of them let you create only 1 website and include staging sites, basic AutoSSL, sFTP/SSH access, WordPress tools powered by Jetpack, daily scheduled backups, 24/7 support, and many more. 

The minimal managed plan is suitable for up to 50K visitors per month, Grow suits website traffic of up to 150K visitors, and with the Scale plan you can have up to 500K visits.

The lowest promotional price is $9.95 for the first month, $19.95 per month (if you make a 36-months payment), and the regular renewal cost is $29.99. The most expensive managed hosting plan, Scale, has advanced features for running an online store. Its introductory price is $27.95/mo, and the renewal cost is $59.99.

SiteGround

SiteGround emerged as a company in 2004 and has been delivering quality hosting services to people in different countries. Currently, they manage four offices globally and several data center locations around the world.

SiteGround Shared Hosting

Performance indicators

Website performance on SiteGround depends on the plan you choose, and it’s necessary to pay attention to the number of websites, their expected traffic, and web space available. The cheapest shared hosting option lets you host only 1 website, while the rest don’t limit the number of websites you can have. 

Also, the more visits you expect, the more you’ll have to pay. Notably, the StartUp plan is suitable for about 10.000 visits per month, whereas the GoGeek plan will suit websites with 400.000 monthly visits.

It’s worth mentioning that the web space also differs according to the plan. Depending on your choice, you can get 10GB, 20GB, or 40GB. Besides, with any SiteGround hosting, you can create an unlimited number of databases (on condition that a database doesn’t exceed 1000MB in size).

Security

Websites hosted on SiteGround can issue and automatically renew SSL certificates by Let’s Encrypt. New websites get the free Standard SSL enabled. You can use a free Wildcard SSL to secure subdomain traffic if necessary.

Staging environments

The Staging tool, included in SiteGround hosting, lets you make a copy of your website in one click and test the required changes. Likewise, one click allows you to upload your staging environment to production. If you have a new PHP version, you can also test the environment to see how the website behaves. 

Please, note that the StartUp plan doesn’t include WordPress staging, so you should choose either the GrowBig or GoGeek plans.

Caching

SiteGround has its own powerful caching solution – SuperCasher – available to all customers. It has three caching options:

  • NGINX Direct Delivery that caches the website’s static content (CSS files, images, etc.);
  • Dynamic Cache that caches and stores the website’s dynamic content;
  • Memcached that accelerates database calls, API calls, and page rendering, reducing the number of times when the database is reached.

In short, depending on your needs, you may adjust website caching and speed up your website with SiteGround.

Backups

Free daily backups are an excellent feature offered by SiteGround. Thus, your website gets protection against data loss, hacking, or human mistakes. The provider keeps up to 30 copies of your account. 

Besides automated backups, you can create on-demand backups using Site Tools. This option is free for GrowBig and GoGeek plans. For the StartUp plan, the feature costs $29.95. So, if daily backups are not enough for you, it’s necessary to choose a more expensive plan.

Support

If you have any questions about SiteGround hosting, their round-the-clock help center will help you with a fast reply via phone, chat, and tickets.

Pricing plans

The cheapest option of WordPress hosting by SiteGround is a StartUp plan with discounted $3.99 per month and the full price of $14.99/mo. The GrowBig plan will cost you $6.69 for the first month and $24.99/mo later. Similarly, the most expensive GoGeek plan starts with a promotional price of $10.69 per month and a usual cost of $39.99/mo. 

You should make an annual payment in advance to get the special price. You can check current prices for the shared hosting plans here.

SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting by SiteGround doesn’t differ much from the general shared hosting. You’ll find the same pricing plans (StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek) that also include such WordPress features as free install or automated transfer and preinstalled WP-CLI (Command-line interface) to help you install themes, plugins, etc. from the command line.

DreamHost

This company is one of the oldest in this business. It was founded more than 25 years ago and now hosts more than 1.5 million websites, including 750k+ WordPress sites, worldwide.

DreamHost Shared WordPress Hosting

Performance indicators

The Starter plan by DreamHost allows you to create only 1 website, while the Unlimited plan has no restrictions. Moreover, this provider claims that you can have unlimited traffic to your site and fast SSD storage in all plans, including the cheapest one. 

If web space is essential for your project, you should note that the Starter plan has 50GB and allows you to create up to 6 MySQL databases. The second, Unlimited plan, has no storage or database number limitations. DreamHost’s database limit on any shared hosting is 3GB per database.

Security

Similar to other providers, DreamHost gives you a free ‘Let’s Encrypt’ SSL certificate to protect your site.  

Staging environments

DreamHost allows you to create a free dreamhosters.com subdomain to test your website. You have to create or duplicate the website manually, and you may choose the name of the subdomain you like.

Caching

DreamHost’s shared hosting doesn’t provide a built-in server cache (which is available in managed DreamPress hosting). Yet, the company provides recommendations on using several caching plugins for WordPress sites. WP Super Cache plugin is included and activated with all new Deluxe One-Click Installs of WordPress from the DreamHost web panel, so you can use this option with shared hosting.

Backups

DreamHost creates automatic backups of WordPress websites every day, no matter what pricing option you choose.

Support

The support team is available 24/7 to provide clients with assistance at any time of the day or night. You can get help via ticket support at any time or in a live chat at specific hours.

Pricing plans

DreamHost, like other providers, offers a variety of shared hosting plans for multiple periods (month, year, or three years) and for different purposes (WordPress Starter and WordPress Unlimited). WordPress Starter has a promotional price of $1.99 for the first month and a usual price of $7.99/mo. The Unlimited package costs $2.99 for the first month and $13.99/mo after the introductory period.

DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting

There are 3 managed WordPress hosting plans by DreamHost: DreamPress, DreamPress Plus, and DreamPress Pro. With managed hosting, you get not only automated daily backups but also additional on-demand backups. 

The cheapest, DreamPress, plan has an introductory price of $12/mo, which lasts for 3 months; the renewal price is $19.95/mo. The most expensive, DreamPress Pro, plan costs $79.95/mo. Moreover, with all plans, you can save your money (up to 17%) by making an annual payment instead of paying each month.

HostGator

As a hosting provider, HostGator started its service in 2002. Thus, in two decades, they have supported more than 2.5 million websites worldwide.

HostGator Shared WordPress Hosting

Performance Indicators

Hostgator offers unlimited subdomains, FTP accounts, bandwidth, MySQL databases with phpMyAdmin access, and disk space in all shared hosting plans. The cheapest plan has limitations on addon/parked domains and doesn’t include a free dedicated IP address.

Security

A free SSL certificate is included in Hostgator hosting. You’ll get unlimited protection for domains and subdomains. Also, you can purchase an upgraded SSL for your account to get additional features, such as a warranty level.

Staging environments

Using Hostgator’s special software, Softaculous, that you’ll find in the cPanel, you can create a staging site for a domain. You have to note that after testing the changes on your website, you cannot automatically apply the changes to the live site, as Hostgator doesn’t offer site cloning at this time. It’s necessary to copy the staged site to your live website, following the required steps.

Caching

Hostgator recommends using plugins, such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, to cache websites. If you install WordPress via the QuickInstall cPanel plugin, you’ll see the WP Super Cache plugin set by default.

Backups

As the company states in plan descriptions, they provide frequent website backups due to the automatic work in the background. Yet, if you want to get daily backups for all web files and databases with a 1-click restore, you’ll need to pay $2/mo (billed annually).

Support

You can address the support team 24/7 via live chat, phone, or email.

Pricing plans

Hostgator shared hosting has three plans: Hatchling, Baby, and Business. Also, like other providers, they have introductory prices for the first month and regular rates for the rest of the time. Additionally, the cost depends on the period you are ready to pay for at once (3 months, 6 months, a year, 2 years, or 3 years). 

  1. The cheapest option, Hatchling, starts at $2.75 for the first month and costs $10.95 per month later. 
  2. The Baby plan is $3.50 as an introductory offer and $11.95 as a regular price. 
  3. The most expensive is a Business plan that costs $5.25 for the first month and $16.95 for later periods.

HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting

There are 3 managed WordPress plans by HostGator: Starter, Standard, and Business. The lowest price for the Starter plan, $5.95/mo, is the introductory offer for the first period if you make a 36-month payment; later, the regular price for this plan is $19.95/mo. 

The most expensive, Business, plan offers an introductory price of $9.95/mo (with a 36-month payment) and the regular cost of $27.95/mo. All managed plans have advanced security options, including free CodeGuard, SiteLock fix, and automatic malware removal.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy was founded in 1997 and now has become one of the world’s largest platforms for businesses. They host more than 20 million websites.

GoDaddy Shared WordPress Hosting

Performance indicators

With the minimal Economy plan, you get 1 website, 100GB disk space, 1 shared CPU, 10 MySQL databases (of up to 1GB), 25 subdomains, and DNS management. More expensive pricing plans offer unlimited disk space, 25 or an unlimited number of databases, unlimited subdomains, and 1 or 2 shared CPUs.

Security

To have free website protection, you need to choose an Ultimate or Maximum package. Free SSL certificates are not included in the Economy and Deluxe pricing plans. At the same time, you’ll find SSH access (secure shell) in all plans.

Staging environments

A staging site is not available in shared hosting plans by GoDaddy. Furthermore, the Basic managed WordPress plan doesn’t include it, either. Thus, to create a staging environment, you’ll need to purchase a Deluxe, Ultimate, or Ecommerce managed plan. 

You should also note that GoDaddy automatically generates a domain for your staging site, so you can’t choose a different domain or add another domain to your staging environment.

Caching

If you purchase a Website Security from GoDaddy and set up a Web Application Firewall, you’ll get high-performance caching. There are four caching options: enabled, minimal, site, and disabled caching.

Backups

Shared hosting plans by GoDaddy don’t have automatic backups. You can create your site’s backup manually using the Backup Wizard in the cPanel. The file will be created in your Home Directory; afterward, you may download it to your local computer. 

Additionally, you can have automatic daily backups as an optional paid service. You’ll have to pay $2.99 for the backup service.

Support

GoDaddy offers hosting support 24/7, so you can ask questions and get explanations at any time if it’s necessary.

Pricing plans

The tricky system of pricing plans in GoDaddy can make you spend much time choosing a suitable option. By default, the WordPress hosting plans page offers managed, not shared hosting. So, if you want to get shared hosting, you should check the web hosting page.

As for shared hosting options, there are 4 pricing plans: Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate, and Maximum. 

  1. The cheapest, Economy plan, has a promotional price of $5.99 /mo (if you pay for 3 years at once) and a regular price of $8.99/mo when you renew your subscription. If you want to pay for only three months, you’ll be charged $10.99/mo. 
  2. The Deluxe plan costs $7.99 /mo (with a 3-year payment) or $11.99/mo (as a regular price). 
  3. For the Ultimate plan, which is recommended for high-traffic websites, the promotional price is $12.99 /mo, and the regular one constitutes $16.99/mo. 
  4. The most expensive shared hosting option, Maximum, is $19.99 /mo (when you pay for 3 years) or $24.99/mo of a regular price.

GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting

There are 4 managed plans for WordPress websites: Basic, Deluxe, Ultimate, and Ecommerce (for WooCommerce sites). You can purchase the Basic plan for only $6.99/mo if you make a 36-month payment or for $8.99 if you make a 12-month payment; the regular cost of this plan is $11.99/mo. 

The Ultimate plan costs $12.99/mo with a 36-month purchase, $18.99/mo with a 12-month payment, and $24.99/mo as a regular price. 

A special plan for online stores, Ecommerce, features appointment scheduling, automatically calculated real-time shipping rates, and other top premium WooCommerce extensions. The regular price for the Ecommerce plan is $29.99/mo; yet, when making a 36-month payment, you get the plan for only $15.99/mo; with a 12-month purchase, you’ll pay $20.99/mo.

WPEngine

Founded in 2010, WP Engine is one of the world’s leaders in WordPress hosting. WP Engine specializes in providing managed and eCommerce WordPress hosting. They don’t offer shared hosting options.

WPEngine Managed WordPress Hosting

Performance indicators

The more websites you need to create, the more you have to pay. The Startup plan includes only 1 website, while the Scale plan lets you launch up to 30 websites. You can have an additional website for $20/mo in any plan.

Available local storage varies from 10GB in the Startup plan to 50GB in the Scale solution. Estimated traffic is also different: from 25K visits/month in the Startup plan to 400K visits/month in the Scale plan.

Security

All managed WordPress plans by WPEngine include free SSL, SSH, and proactive threat detection.

Staging environments

You’ll find one-click staging in all managed WordPress hosting plans. WPEngine ensures easy website copying to test changes and similar one-click pushing your website live.

Caching

Optimized caching achieved with modern cloud infrastructure ensures better website speed. This caching is a part of all managed WordPress solutions.

Backups

There are daily automatic backups in all plans. Furthermore, you can create a backup yourself at any time.

Support

The Startup plan is the only pricing plan that offers only chat support 24/7. The rest options guarantee you assistance via chat and phone, 24/7.

Pricing plans

WPEngine offers transparent pricing with annual discounts for 4 managed WordPress hosting plans

  • Startup, 
  • Professional, 
  • Growth, 
  • Scale. 

The Startup plan costs $25/mo (with a yearly payment) or $30/mo (with monthly payments). Accordingly, the Professional option is $49 or $59 per month, the Growth plan costs $96 or $115, and the Scale plan is $242 or $290/mo.

Special pricing plans for eCommerce websites offer more tools for WordPress online stores, such as:

  • one-click store creation, 
  • optimized store themes, 
  • a WooCommerce template, 
  • instant store search, etc. 

The lowest cost of eCommerce solutions is $30 (billed annually) or $36/mo (billed monthly); the highest price for eCommerce hosting is $292/mo (with annual payments) or $350/mo (with monthly payments).

Both in managed and eCommerce hosting plans, you may choose advanced solutions and customize the payment according to your needs.

WordPress Hosting options: short comparison

The table below briefly sums up the information we have provided.

Bluehost: sharedSiteGround: sharedDreamHost: shared DreamHost: shared SiteGround: sharedBluehost: shared
Performance indicatorswebsites1/
unlimited
1/
unlimited
1/
unlimited
1/
unlimited
1/
unlimited
1/3/10/
30
storage50GB/
unlimited
10GB/20GB/
40GB
50GB/
unlimited
unmetered100GB/
unlimited
10GB/15GB/ 20GB/50GB
databases20/
unlimited
unlimited (max.1000MB)6/
unlimited
unlimited10/25 (of up to 1GB)/ unlimitedunlimited
Securityfree SSL certificatefree SSL certificatesfree SSL certificatesfree SSL certificatesonly in Ultimate or Maximum plansfree SSL and SSH
Staging Site+except Startup plan+
(dreamhosters.com subdomain)
+
(no site cloning)
no staging sites+
Cachingplugin/ Bluehost portalSuperCasher; adjustable cachingSuper Cache pluginplugins: WP Super Cache/W3 Total Cachewith Website Security and Web Application Firewall+
Backupsnot all plansfree daily backups; on demand backups – in GrowBig and GoGeek plansfree daily
backups
no free daily backupsno free daily backupsdaily automatic backups; on demand backups
Support24/724/724/7 (live chat – specific hours)24/724/724/7 (no phone calls in Startup)
Pricing Planscheapest$2.95 (regular – $9.99)$3.99 (regular – $14.99)$1.99 ($7.99)$2.75 (regular –  $10.95)$5.99 (regular – $8.99)$25 (yearly)
$30 (monthly)
most expensive$13.95 (regular – $28.99)$10.69 (regular – $39.99)$2.99 ($13.99)$5.25 (regular – $16.95)$19.99 (regular – $24.99)$242 (yearly)
$290 (monthly)
Bluehost: managedBluehost: managedDreamHost: managedDreamHost: managedGoDaddy: managedGoDaddy: managed
cheapest$9.95 ($19.95 or $29.99)$3.99 (regular – $14.99)$12 (regular – $19.95)$5.95 (regular – $19.95)$6.99/$8.99 (regular – $11.99)$30 (yearly) $36 (monthly)
most expensive$27.95 ($59.99)$10.69 (regular – $39.99)$79.95$9.95 (regular – $27.95)eCommerce: $15.99/$20.99 (regular – $29.99)$292 (yearly)
$350 (monthly)

WordPress Hosting Frequently Asked Questions

This section summarizes the most common questions on how to host a WordPress site that customers have.

What should you consider when choosing a WordPress hosting provider?

Nobody knows your needs better than you do. So, when choosing a hosting provider, you should have a clear picture of your website/project. Some essential points to consider are:

  • how much information you are going to store,
  • how many WordPress databases you wish to create,
  • what monthly website traffic you expect,
  • how users will interact with the website,
  • how fast the website is going to grow,
  • how important site security is,
  • whether you need a staging site,
  • what your budget is.

What are the most popular WordPress hosting options?

Shared hosting is the most affordable way to start a website. As several users share server resources, your website performance depends on other sites’ behavior. Yet, this option is suitable if you don’t have much traffic and your website won’t grow very fast.

Managed hosting usually costs more as it provides additional security and advanced software management solutions for WordPress sites.

VPS hosting guarantees you a specific partition on a physical server, so you are not dependant on other users. 

With a dedicated server, you receive a whole server for your project/website, so it’s possible to configure the software to a great extent and test complex solutions.

How does WordPress hosting work?

Due to the popularity of WordPress, a lot of hosting companies specialize in providing solutions for WordPress websites. Such hosting plans usually include free install, easy migration tools, automatic WordPress updates, professional support by experts in this field, and much more. Fully managed WordPress hosting will save you time when any technical issues arise.

What are the prices for WordPress hosting?

Pricing plans for hosting vary a great deal. You can find reliable hosting as cheap as $1.99/month. However, you should remember that most providers offer promotional or introductory pricing for a limited time. So, you should check the term of reduced costs and other conditions (such as a yearly or 36-month payment) that you should accept to get promotional prices.

Do WordPress hostings have website backups?

Most companies provide automatic daily updates. However, some providers charge additional fees for this option. More expensive pricing plans also offer on-demand backups.

Do hosting providers support eCommerce websites?

Yes, they do. Often, companies indicate which offers are most suitable for online stores. Also, there are sometimes special hosting plans that clearly enumerate what WooCommerce features you’ll get with the chosen option.


Superior WordPress Development Services from GetDevDone

Still have questions regarding the choice of a perfect hosting provider for your WordPress website? Get the help of our expert WordPress developers. With 16+ years of industry experience and thousands of successfully completed WP projects, we know everything about the world’s most popular CMS.

Reach out to us with any WordPress-related request, from building engaging custom themes or modifying existing ones to performance and security optimization.

Dmytro Mashchenko

Dmytro is the CEO of GetDevDone, an experienced web developer, and a prolific author of in-depth technology and business-related posts. He is always eager to share his years-long expertise with everyone who wants to succeed in the web development field.

For more professional insights from Dmytro, connect with him on LinkedIn.