There is no doubt that WordPress is the most popular CMS out there. Currently, it is used by 52% of top 100 blogs on the web and by millions of site owners worldwide. Each website has to be hosted somewhere and there are hundreds of web hosting providers that offer a wide variety of plans and features.
Since our themes are created for WordPress CMS, we all perceive the importance of a reliable, fast and secure host, that will guarantee 100% uptime for your website. Many providers offer a lot of features, but only a few of them are best suited for WordPress sites.
We have decided to list and to compare the most popular WordPress hosting providers on the market. Here they are:
Updated 9/13/18 with an additional host: Cloudways.
| General Information | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | WPengine | Pagely | Bluehost | Dreamhost | Site5 | Cloudways |
| Year founded | 2010 | 2006 | 1996 | 1997 | 1999 | 2011 |
| Number of Employees | 70 | 6 | 300+ | 100 | 105 | 58 |
| Company location | USA, Austin | USA, Chandler | USA, Orem | USA, LA | USA, Denver | EU, Unknown |
| Hosting features and pricing | ||||||
| Number of websites | 1 | 1 | unlimited | unlimited | 1 | unlimited |
| Bandwidth | unlimited | 10GB | unlimited | unlimited | unlimited | 1TB |
| Disk Space | 10GB | 5GB | unlimited | unlimited | unlimited | 25GB |
| Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Toll Free Number | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A | Yes | Request Call |
| Live Chat | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| Ticket Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email Support | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| Support Forums | N/A | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Uptime guaranteed | 99.9 % | 99.9 % | 99.9 % | 99.9 % | 99.9 % | 99.9 % |
| Backups | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WordPress 1 click install | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated Hosting Available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated IP Available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| One-Click Checkpoint And Restore | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Money Back Guaranteed | 60 days | 30 days | 30 days | 97 days | 45 days | Unknown |
| Price | Starting from $29/month | Starting from $24/month | Starting from $3.95/month | Starting from $8.95/month | Starting from $4.95/month | Starting from $10/month |
As one of the leading hosting providers for WordPress sites, (click the link for 20% discount) WPEngine provides really good hosting, with fast loading time and good technical support. WPEngine has around 70 employees, is located in Austin Texas and was founded in 2010. It has many positive reviews from its customers and offers 60 days money back guarantee.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| WordPress specific | Relatively high pricing |
| Extremely fast servers | |
| Professional tech support provided by WordPress Experts | |
| Easily add a CDN to your website |
Pagely is a relatively small hosting company which is run by only 6 employees, and has been founded by the Strebel Family (Joshua and Sally). Although it has a relatively small staff, it still has many clients and provides very good hosting for WordPress.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Very fast and secure | Different time zone support |
| PressCDN ready | Relatively high prices |
| Provides automatic WordPress core and plugin updates |
Bluehost was founded in 1996 and is currently one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. Since their beginning, this Utah based company has been delivering the best hosting experience along with a good and fast customer support. Bluehost is owned by Endurance International Group and is one of the 20 largest web hosts in the world, collectively hosting over 1.9+ million domains with its daughter companies.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| 100% WordPress compatibility | No monthly billing plans |
| Fast and secure | |
| Experienced WordPress support | |
| Cheap services |
With more than 100 employees and 1500 servers DreamHost is one of the biggest hosting providers in the world. Dreamhost was founded in 1997 when four Computer Science undergraduates at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA launched the company with no capital apart from a single Pentium 100 web server, that a friend gave them at no cost.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Reliable and fast | Service outages |
| Relatively cheap price | Limited support |
| Lots of features |
Site5 is a Denver based hosting provider that is run by a team of 105 members. It provides servers in 19+ locations, professional support (not outsorced), a 30 day free trial (quite unique offer) and 45 days money back guarantee.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Affordable price | Some support delays |
| High quality support | |
| 19+ server locations | |
| 30 day Free Trial |
Cloudways is a managed WordPress cloud hosting platform which provides great features and convenience in managing your server and WordPress website. Cloudways infrastructure is built of advanced tools like Nginx, Varnish, PHP-FPM and Redis caching for high performance, security and speed. Users can launch unlimited apps and just pay for their server. It is one of the most affordable and high performing cloud hosting solution out there.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Affordable pricing plans | No root access |
| High performing Infrastructure | |
| Easy to use platform | |
| 24/7 live chat support |
The bottom line
If you’re running a WordPress blog which receives less than 10,000 hits per month, you don’t need some extra features and customization, and don’t want to exceed your budget, than you should consider Bluehost, Dreamhost or Site5. On the other hand, if you are running a medium or high traffic website, and are looking for a faster, more tailored and customizable solution, than you should definitely consider Cloudways, WPEngine or Pagely. Also you may read a in-depth guide about hosting providers written by our friend Dev Sharma
Finally, it is up to you to decide which hosting provider to choose, just make sure you’re in a good company and gather as many useful information you can.
Emanuel Pietri
10 Oct 2013Well, i think you have to check and study for Siteground.com host plans cause i think they have most of atributes we need for wp hosting and service is incredibile fast.
tesla
11 Oct 2013Hi Emanuel, they have a really good offer, but it’s up to users to choose whatever service they want. Regards!
Michael Oberpetinger
12 Nov 2014Why are some WordPress Hosting so expensive?
Is there really such a difference between something like Websynthesis.com ($47) Pagely.com (24$) or WpEngine (29$) and something like MyWoHo.com (1$) or Bluehost.com (3.5$)?
Or is the reason why most blogs list only companies like websynthesis, pagely or wpengine the fact that this companies earn 30-40 times what others earn and that they can spend this money in advertising?
Wil Ransz
22 Oct 2015@Michael – Yes, there is really such a difference, just like there is difference between a Rolls Royce and an ordinary family car. It all depends on your requirements. WP Engine for example offers managed WordPress hosting, which is compared here with the shared hosting plans of Dreamhost – although the latter also offers managed WordPress hosting named DreamPress. Start with your requirements, next consider the options of shared, managed or VPS, after that start comparing a number of host.
Anand
22 Oct 2015How can you leave hostgator?
Tesla
22 Oct 2015Hello Anand,
We focused on those which in our opinion are best suited for a WordPress site.
Regards,
Rob Siders
22 Oct 2015You’ve got a couple things wrong in the DreamHost list… they do have both chat and email support. Email support is temporarily off while they sort out some domain blocking issues with one or two ISPs.
Also, I’ve been with DreamHost since 2005 and service outages are rare. The ones that do occur are usually due to equipment or software upgrades, and DH gives plenty of notice, performs them overnight, and downtime is relatively short (minutes).
Services outages used to be a huge problem with them. But I’ve operated my current business’s Web site through DH since early 2010, using several tiers of service from shared to the dedicated WP hosting, and they’ve been pretty great.