A reliable and fast hosting provider is essential for a good WordPress website. It ensures better performance and security of your website. There are numerous hosting providers available, but how do you know which hosting company is the best fit for your website?
To help you out, we have compiled a list of the top 5 best WordPress hosting providers for your website. Whether you’re looking for affordable options or high-performance hosting, this list will certainly assist you in finding the perfect hosting choice for your website.
Overall ranking: Top hosting providers 2023
🥇 Best all-round hosting: SiteGround
🇳🇱 Beste hosting voor de Nederlandse markt: Cloud86
💰 Best budget hosting: Hostinger
📈 Best hosting for bigger websites: Kinsta
What makes the best WordPress hosting?
We have paid attention to the following 6 important aspects:
- Performance: Loading times are essential for the user experience and search engine optimization of your website. Therefore, we only select hosting providers with fast servers and reliable infrastructure.
- Availability: Hosting providers that guarantee a high level of uptime are key. This ensures that your website is always available and accessible.
- Reputation: We pick hosting providers with a high-standing reputation and great customer reviews, who have proven themselves over the years.
- Customer service: It is important that excellent customer service is provided so that you can receive professional assistance whenever you need it.
- Scalability: As your website grows, a hosting provider should offer the ability to add more resources and capacity, so that your website remains fast and smooth. Whether you’ll build a small blog or a large commercial webshop.
- Price: Cheap is often more expensive in the long run, but hosting should also remain affordable. We select hosting providers within various price ranges, without compromising on quality and performance. Great price-quality value is important.
1. SiteGround
🥇 Best all-round hosting
One of the most important aspects to consider when choosing a hosting company is performance and reliability. SiteGround has a very high uptime guarantee of 99.9%, which means your website will be available to visitors almost all the time. SiteGround also has good security measures in place, such as a free SSL certificate, automatic daily backups, and malware scans.
Speed is another critical aspect of hosting. SiteGround has an advanced infrastructure optimized for WordPress websites. They have a lot of experience hosting WordPress websites and offer many WordPress-specific features and tools. For example, they have their own caching plugin, optimized for WordPress, which makes your website even faster.
SiteGround also uses the latest hardware and software to ensure that your website loads quickly, and you have the option to choose a data center that is physically close to your target audience. This is important because visitors don’t want to wait long for your website to load, and a fast website also helps you rank higher in search results.
In addition, SiteGround has excellent support. If you have a problem with your website, you want to be helped quickly and expertly. SiteGround has excellent customer service available 24/7. You can contact them via live chat, email, or phone, and you will receive a prompt response to your questions or problems.
Note that SiteGround’s interface and customer support are only available in English. But if that’s not a problem for you, SiteGround is an excellent choice. With reliability, speed, security, customer service, and WordPress expertise, they offer everything you need for a successful website.
Pros
- Very good price/performance ratio
- Secure, fast, and reliable (with free SSL, CDN, and backups)
- Excellent company reputation
- WordPress-specific optimizations
- Good scalability
- Excellent 24/7 support
Cons
- There are better hosting companies available for complex websites with specific requirements (such as large online shops)
2. Bluehost
Bluehost is a well-known name in the hosting industry. It is a popular choice among website builders and Bluehost is known as a reliable and trustworthy hosting company.
Because Bluehost uses advanced technologies and a robust infrastructure, almost every website will feel fast. Downtime rarely happens. In addition, the range of Bluehost’s product offerings is great. There are various hosting packages, the dashboard is user-friendly, and there is a direct integration available with WordPress.
Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting providers in the US, UK, and Canada. That’s with a reason: Bluehost is reliable, fast, and clear. However, there are some drawbacks. For example, the service is only available in English and Bluehost doesn’t have servers on the European mainland. It depends on your wishes whether that is a disadvantage for you. Also, subscription prices are slightly higher than other low-budget providers and each subscription only has a 1 or 3 years plan (not monthly). However, our experience is that a hosting package is rarely purchased for just a couple of months and if needed, Bluehost offers a money-back guarantee too.
Pros
- Very good reputation
- Fast and safe
- User-friendly dashboard
- Great support
Cons
- Only annual subscriptions available (but with a money-back guarantee)
- Only available in English language
- No servers on the European mainland
3. Hostinger
Hostinger is known as an affordable but excellent hosting provider. Hostinger offers hosting packages at very competitive prices, making it possible for almost everyone to host a website.
There are various hosting plans available. Each package has great performance with SSD storage and features optimized for WordPress. The customer service – in case you encounter any problems – is also easily reachable. Support is 24/7 available via live chat or email, and you often get response within a few minutes.
Additionally, Hostinger offers various types of hosting, such as cloud and VPS hosting, which is ideal if your website is going to be much larger.
Pros
- Very affordable
- Fast performance
- Great features included, such as backups and SSL
- Easily scalable with many different hosting plans available (including VPS)
Cons
- No telephone support
4. Kinsta
📈 Best hosting for bigger websites
Are you looking for a high-quality hosting provider for a website that expects a lot of traffic? Then Kinsta is an excellent choice. They may be more expensive than the average hosting provider, but you get a lot in return.
Kinsta is an excellent hosting provider for WordPress websites. The company has been specifically focusing on WordPress since 2013 and offers high-quality hosting solutions with excellent performance, security, and support. The loading times that Kinsta offers are incredibly fast.
Kinsta uses the latest technologies and infrastructure, including Google Cloud Platform. This enables powerful and scalable hosting that is useful if you expect your website to grow significantly and attract more visitors in the near future.
Kinsta also offers excellent security features, including automatic updates, daily backups, and built-in firewall protection. In addition, support is available via live chat and email. They speak a few different languages, such as English and Spanish, and the dashboard interface is multi-language as well.
Kinsta is a great choice if you have high, specific hosting wishes, and your WordPress website attracts more visitors and is more more complex than the average small blogging website. Because Kinsta offers many customized options, you pay a little more, but you get high-quality in return.
Want to know even more about Kinsta? Read our article here.
Pros
- Excellent performance
- Fast, secure, and reliable
- Everything specifically optimized for WordPress
- All the necessary features are available
- Own hosting panel (MyKinsta)
- Excellent support
Cons
- More expensive than other hosting providers
5. HostGator
The last hosting provider we will discuss is HostGator. This is a popular hosting company that is especially worth considering for smaller websites. One of the main advantages of HostGator hosting is its affordability. HostGator offers various hosting packages that are often cheaper than those of other hosting providers. This can be a good option if affordable hosting is of high importance to you.
Another advantage of HostGator hosting is the customer service. They are available 24/7 via live chat, email, and phone (although phone support is not available for the cheapest hosting plan).
In addition, HostGator offers excellent uptime and each hosting plan has decent specifications, such as an SSL certificate and unlimited subdomains.
HostGator can be very much compared to Hostinger. There is little difference between both providers. They both offer affordable hosting, excellent service, and the ability to scale up to VPS servers. However, Hostinger is more affordable, so in that sense, we recommend Hostinger for budget websites.
Pros
- Affordable
- Fast performance for smaller websites
- Scalable (including VPS servers)
- Great hosting plan features
Cons
- Slightly more expensive than comparable budget hosting providers (such as Hostinger)
Frequently Asked Hosting Question
How important is customer support when choosing a hosting provider?
Great customer support is an important aspect when choosing a hosting provider. In our experience, virtually every website owner needs to contact a hosting support team at some point. This is even more likely if you are not very experienced in setting up and managing websites or if you manage a very large website.
For example, technical issues may arise (such as your website not working because you have performed an update that is causing a problem), or you may be receiving spam emails and need a solution for that. But you may also have question in which you need advise, such as about the hosting packages offered: which one is the best for your situation? In all these cases, fast and good customer support is very useful.
Is there a difference between Regular Hosting and WordPress Hosting?
Yes and no. There are many hosting providers that only offer regular hosting plans. WordPress websites can run excellently on those. It is certainly not a must to opt for a hosting provider with a specific WordPress Hosting Plan. Even regular hosting plans contain all the background technologies needed for a successful website.
Where WordPress hosting differs from regular hosting is in its specific optimizations. WordPress hosting is specifically designed for WordPress websites and provides optimized server environments. It often offers additional features and services that are specifically aimed at WordPress users, such as automatic WordPress installation, automated updates of WordPress and plug-ins, and a special control panel to help you manage your WordPress website effectively. It can also offer features such as caching, CDN integration, and security measures to improve the performance and security of your WordPress website.
Can you make a wrong choice with hosting?
In general: certainly yes. However, if you choose a hosting provider from our list above, you can’t go wrong. All providers meet the guidelines we described in our introduction. The standard is quite high. We hope that the information above will help you make an optimal choice for your situation, as everyone has different wishes regarding budget and required server capacity.