Best WordPress Hosting: 9 Providers Reviewed

WordPress is by far the world's most popular content management system (CMS). This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise: The service is user-friendly, flexible, open-source, and endlessly customizable thanks to its huge array of plugins. Whether you intend to create a blog, a business website, or an online store, anything is possible with WordPress.

It doesn't take much to set up a WordPress website. On the technical side of things, there's only one requirement: a good hosting provider. Thankfully, there are many services that offer tailor-fit WordPress hosting solutions. We tested 9 of them.

We hosted a sample WordPress website with each of the 9 providers and compared the results. Besides rigorous performance tests, we evaluated their user-friendliness, variety of features, security, support, and price-performance ratio.

We'll discuss our selection criteria in greater detail further below. But first, let's introduce our top 5 providers:

SiteGround, from Bulgaria, hosts more than 2.8 million domains. Besides managed WordPress hosting, it also offers classic web hosting, cloud hosting, and reseller hosting services.

It would be easier to ask what we don't like about SiteGround. In our eyes, no other provider offers a better combination of performance, user-friendliness, and security at a more reasonable price.

SiteGround leads our performance ranking thanks to excellent load speeds and response times. Its backend is streamlined and intuitive, helping beginners to feel right at home. Its modern tech stack supports PHP 8.2 and features include caching, a CDN, staging environments, and a firewall.

Since all subscriptions include a free domain and email hosting, you'll get a truly all-in-one package that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

SiteGround is a great all-rounder and suitable for any type of website. Thanks to its strong performance, SiteGround is a highly reliable hosting choice for small and medium-sized business pages. Since SiteGround offers several plans that allow users to create unlimited websites, it's also ideal for those who need to simultaneously manage multiple projects.

SiteGround only offers manual (on-demand) backups to its GrowBig and GoGeek subscribers – the StartUp plan does not include these. Support leaves a bit of room for improvement as well: While we had a very positive experience with the provider's customer support team, we'd love to see phone support in addition to the live chat and ticket system. Overall, though, there's very little to complain about.

Based in California, Kinsta is a web hosting provider that's been on the market since 2013. Initially, Kinsta focused entirely on WordPress hosting, but its portfolio has expanded over the years and now includes hosting for applications and databases. Nevertheless, the top 2 spot in our ranking proves that Kinsta remains a WordPress specialist.

Kinsta's backend makes WordPress management easy for anyone, even the most inexperienced beginner. Live chat support is available around the clock, and you'll get a huge selection of features, solid performance, and state-of-the-art security.

Kinsta offers premium service at a premium price. If you're looking for a user-friendly host with 24/7 support and aren't put off by its price tag, Kinsta is a good option.

Among all the services we reviewed, Kinsta wasn't just the second best, but also the second-most expensive. Other providers have better price-performance ratios, and none of Kinsta's packages include a free domain or email hosting. Compounding the negatives, automatically-created backups are only stored for 14 days.

Moving from California to the Lone Star State (Texas), WP Engine is entirely focused on WordPress. And it's done well for itself, too: As of the time of writing, more than 1.5 million websites trust WP Engine with their hosting needs.

WP Engine's WordPress focus results in excellent performance across the board. Its response times and page speeds were great, even under load, and our website was available with zero downtimes over the course of six weeks.

In addition, WP Engine impressed us with its intuitive management backend built around WordPress features, its high-security standards, and solid support.

WP Engine's excellent performance makes it a good choice for important and professional projects that require fast loading times and maximum availability. It's a great fit for business websites with growing traffic, too.

If performance isn't essential, such as for a smaller or hobby project, WP Engine might be overkill – especially considering the price.

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, or perhaps in this case, you pay for what you get. WP Engine knows its value and charges accordingly. On top of that, some features, like a web application firewall (WAF) or DDoS protection, aren't included in subscriptions and need to be purchased separately.

Hostinger is a Lithuanian hosting provider that first entered the market in 2011 and has expanded its portfolio ever since. Alongside its WordPress products, the host also offers a range of hosting services, covering everything from VPS to dedicated Minecraft servers.

Hostinger offers a relatively affordable solution for WordPress projects. You'll get plenty of bang for your buck, including a wide selection of features, an intuitive user interface, and first-rate security. Since email hosting and a free domain are included, Hostinger's packages are all-in-one.

The provider's most affordable beginner subscription is a solid choice for smaller projects that don't require the best performance and support but would benefit from a user-friendly, reliable, and secure WordPress host. Since up to 300 websites can be hosted with a single plan, Hostinger is also ideal for users looking to create multiple projects.

Owing to its average performance in terms of response times and page speed, and the relatively high percentage of downtime we experienced, Hostinger did not do well in our performance test, finishing near the bottom of our ranking. Making matters worse, its support team – while prompt and polite – was unable to answer some of our questions to our satisfaction.

WordPress hosting straight from the source? Almost. WordPress.com is a hosting service owned by Automattic, a company created by Matt Mullenweg, one of WordPress's creators. The hosting service and CMS enjoy a very close relationship, which ultimately benefits the former's subscribers.

Our performance test proves that WordPress.com was created by WordPress specialists: In most categories, the platform did better than most of the other providers we examined, resulting in a top 3 spot in our overall ranking. In our load test, WordPress.com even took the top spot.

But there's much more to WordPress.com than performance: Its support was fast, reliable, and knowledgeable, its features are solid, and the price-performance ratio is excellent. You'll also get email hosting and a free domain as part of the plan.

Thanks to its free plan, WordPress.com is a particularly good choice for non-commercial hobby projects or those without a budget. At the same time, its excellent performance and solid support make it a solid option for more demanding websites too.

Although good, when it comes to features, WordPress.com can't really compete with some of the other hosts from our sample. For example, multisite projects aren't supported, and automatic backups, a standard feature practically everywhere else, are only offered to higher subscriber tiers. Finally, the WP Admin Dashboard is less modern than those which the provider's competitors bring to the table.

We reviewed 9 managed WordPress hosts in total. While our top 5 providers offered the best overall experience, we don't want to discourage you from checking out the remaining four:

Cloudways just missed out on a spot in our Top 5: Its performance is excellent, there are plenty of features on offer, and support is first-rate. Experienced users and pros will appreciate the ability to extensively configure servers. We do have two complaints though: Its user interface is not our cup of tea and features like a CDN, firewall, and DDoS protection are behind paywalls.

Flywheel focuses solely on WordPress hosting, but you wouldn't be able to tell from its performance test scores: Even though its speeds were "good" overall, the average scores in all four of our performance tests were below average. At the same time, we like its user interface as well as its workflow tools, which might be interesting for agencies and teams.

IONOS's WordPress hosting packages serve up lots of performance for a very small price. Its admin dashboard is so intuitive and minimalistic that it's almost impossible to put a foot wrong. Still, this sword cuts both ways, as it also means configuration is extremely limited. Even some basic options that are standard elsewhere (CDN, backup management, etc.) are missing.

GoDaddy finished dead last in our managed WordPress hosting sample. This is primarily due to the US provider's recent security issues: At the beginning of 2023, a data leak was discovered which had gone unnoticed for many years. Despite decent performance and a user-friendly interface, we remain highly sceptical of one of the world's largest hosting services.

Here's our complete ranking of WordPress hosts:

We've prepared a brief guide to help you select the right hosting service for your WordPress website's needs:

Do you actually need WordPress hosting, or would a regular hosting package do the trick?

In the past, if you wanted to create a WordPress website, you needed to manually install the CMS's software and manage it on your own. After the initial setup, which could be quite complicated and required some technical know-how, site owners had to handle updates, optimization, and security themselves.

Users can still take this route today, but WordPress make it much simpler. You can install your WordPress instance with a few clicks and leave its management and updating to the pros, while getting a support lifeline for any questions or issues you might have. For less-experienced users, managed hosting is an easy choice.

What should a WordPress host offer? The technical requirements for WordPress aren't particularly demanding, but it's important to make sure that your hosting service meets them. WordPress.org, the official website for WordPress software, recommends the following:

The above reflects the absolute minimum. Other specifications that you should keep in mind depend almost entirely upon how big and active your website is. To explore these issues further, be sure to check out our guide:

Managed WordPress hosting needs to be user-friendly. Since users will spend a lot of time in their host's dashboard or interface, it should be as intuitive and welcoming to beginners as possible. The first step, and the first criterion we look at, is the setup process.

One of the advantages of WordPress hosts is that they make installing your WordPress website's instance very simple. Several hosts refer to this as a "one-click installation", even though in practice, one click usually doesn't quite cut it. All the same, as long as the process is logical, transparent, and quick, we're happy.

Ideally, a host should offer a tutorial for new users that explains the broad strokes of installing a WordPress instance. Here's an example from WP Engine:

If you already have a WordPress website and want to transfer it to your new host, a straightforward migration process is a plus.

Since it's in your (new) host's interest to make site migration as easy as possible, many offer free migration services. This makes transferring your WordPress website particularly simple since the host's team takes care of all technical details. Alternatively, a number of services offer free migration plugins. These require a bit more active participation from your end, but they're not exactly complicated either.

Once your website's instance has been installed or transferred, you'll want to start managing it. Many services rely on well-known solutions like cPanel or Plesk, whereas others offer their own admin dashboards or panels.

In either case, the user interface should neither be too complex nor too minimalistic. Hosts should offer as many features and configuration options as possible, without making things difficult for beginners that might not use them.

Kinsta strikes a very good balance with its beginner-friendly interface that offers experienced users a wide variety of settings options:

Make sure to choose a WordPress host whose user interface you're comfortable with. Some services offer free trials or money-back guarantees, allowing you to try a platform out before committing to a subscription.

The technical requirements mentioned above are just the bare minimum that's required to run a WordPress project. Good hosting services should offer much more – including lots of features and options that enable you to tailor your server and your WordPress website to your needs.

Here are some of the most important features that we looked for in our reviews:

Of course, not all of these features will be equally important for you and your WordPress project, and there are plenty of other tools that we didn't mention. To make sure that your host can match your expectations, prepare a list of your must-haves, and compare this against their subscription plans.

When you opt for managed WordPress hosting, you entrust your website's security to the pros. They should adhere to the highest security standards – but how can you be sure that's the case?

First things first: There's no such thing as 100% security, even among the best-performing services from our sample. Still, you can review your host's past performance and see how well (or poorly) they've done.

One provider from our sample immediately stands out, but for all the wrong reasons: GoDaddy. In the very recent past, the US hosting giant suffered from several major security issues – and didn't exactly handle their resolution with the honesty and transparency we'd expect.

It's also important to look at specific security features and resources and make sure that your host offers the following:

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies strict rules for processing and storing personal data – and any website that does business in the European Union must adhere to them.

In terms of hosting, this primarily impacts data storage. To be on the safe side, chose a host with a data center in the EU. Use our price comparison tool to filter providers by their (server) location.

Certifications, such as ISO27001, are a great indication for a provider's data security and privacy practices. Make sure your prospective host has had its security standards externally verified.

Managed WordPress hosts also handle WordPress updates (depending on the provider, they might also back up your plugins and themes). This helps to (automatically) close security gaps or loopholes that, if left unattended, could jeopardize your website.

The same goes for WordPress backups: Hosts should regularly and automatically back up your projects so that you don't lose your entire website in the event of a catastrophic data loss. Most hosting services back up their users' websites once per day, and store copies for anywhere from 14–60 days.

In addition, you should be able to create backups manually (some providers refer to these as "on-demand backups"). Unfortunately, not all providers allow this, or limit it to certain subscriber tiers.

Summing up: When selecting a managed WordPress host, you should check that they don't have any skeletons in the closet, offer important security features, and automatically handle both backups and updates.

A good performance is the foundation of every successful website. For this category, we can let metrics do the talking. In four performance tests, we were able to measure key performance metrics of each provider.

These were:

Based on the performance in each of the four tests, we compiled an overall score for all providers from our sample. Here, you can check our complete performance ranking and see how each service did:

Want to learn more about our performance tests and see how the top-performing hosting services fared in each test? Read on here:

For most users, pricing is a crucial factor. Thankfully, there are solutions for every budget, with each provider offering quite a wide selection of plans.

Just like with wine, a steep price doesn't necessarily translate into high quality: Our top-rated host, SiteGround, is priced near the middle of our sample's average, and some low-budget alternatives were able to outclass their more expensive competitors in our performance test. The area where we found most correlation between price and quality was customer service.

Comparing the pricing of each host is difficult, since each provider offers a wide range of subscriptions. In the table below, we selected the most affordable subscription of each service and ranked them against one another:

Keep in mind that web hosting isn't the only cost source of your WordPress website. To find out what sort of overhead you can expect, be sure to check out our guide, here:

There's a perfect host for every WordPress project, you just need to find it. We thoroughly reviewed 9 of the leading WordPress hosts and to help you select the best provider for your needs. With our price comparison tool, you can apply a range of filters to discover which hosts best fit your budget and other criteria.