WordPress Hosting

There are many different hosting providers out there, and which one you choose to host your WordPress site on greatly depends on your preferences and budget. I put together the following list of the best WordPress hosting providers based on my experiences with each company.

The first decision in choosing a WordPress hosting provider is determining whether you want to go with a managed host or an economy host.

Managed WordPress Hosting

As the name suggests, managed hosts provide a \”managed\” WordPress hosting environment that includes special features such as: daily site backups, automated WordPress core updates, improved security, and other useful WordPress improvements. I\’ve included my two highly recommended managed WordPress hosting providers based on your use case.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting for Small Businesses or Professional Bloggers

If you manage a small business website or earn a living from your blog, you will want a WordPress hosting provider that can provide reliable uptime, extremely fast customer support, and strong WordPress features. For those qualities, I highly recommend WPEngine. WPEngine is a more expensive hosting alternative, with plans starting at $30/month, but if your income depends on your website, I believe this is an investment worth making.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting for Website Designers

Do you build WordPress websites for other businesses or bloggers? If so, I recommend checking out Flywheel managed WordPress hosting. I\’ve been using Flywheel to host my client websites for over two years now and I\’ve had nothing but great experiences with the company. The Flywheel dashboard lets you quickly create demo websites to land new clients, transfer billing to your client while maintaining collaboration access to their hosting accounts, and clone sites for quick setup and site management. In addition to these great designer-friendly features, Flywheel also provides managed WordPress hosting features including: daily backups, automated WordPress core updates, hosting tuned for WordPress, extremely fast hosting environment, and hacker-free security improvements. If you are building a website design agency, we highly recommend Flywheel for setting up your client hosting workflow.

Shared WordPress Hosting

Don\’t be fooled by the term \”economy\” hosting, the service providers in this category are really stepping up their offerings and providing great support in the process. Unlike managed hosting though, economy hosts do not typically cap the amount of data you can store or the number of visitors or bandwidth allowed on a monthly basis. They offer plans that start at $3.95/month, although a lot of those prices are advertising related meaning they are either advertised rates for 2 or 3 year commitments or an introductory rate that will increase after your initial payment lapses. After using four of the major economy hosting providers, I can honestly recommend the following economy WordPress host:

Best Shared WordPress Hosting Provider

If you are looking to setup and launch your first WordPress blog or website, I recommend checking out HostGator for economy WordPress hosting. I\’ve found their customer support to be very responsive and they were quick to assist when a friends WordPress website was hacked. They offer additional services that can be added to your site to improve site speed and security, although most of these can be avoided in lieu of WordPress plugins and other setup modifications. Either way, this is a great hosting environment to get started with and migrating to a managed host can be performed by either the new hosting company or a number of services.

Use the coupon code RunsOnGenesis to get 25% off your first order with HostGator.

Conclusion and Our Recommendations

I believe that the three hosting providers listed on this page provide a stable WordPress platform that will help you get started or grow your site. If your budget allows for managed hosting, I would recommend starting with this service. While migrating your site can be a straightforward process, I\’ve found that its easier and worth the initial investment to start with a managed hosting environment.

Flywheel plans start at $15/month, so if you are getting started with blogging, you can host your website for $165/year (with annual discount). I always recommend that new bloggers start with the Flywheel Tiny plan which provides 5GB disk space, 250GB bandwidth, and 5,000 visitors per month. You would be contacted if your site starts to exceed the plan limits, but I\’ve found that by the time your traffic increases to these limits, you should be able to recover the increased hosting costs in monetization (advertising, services, product sales, etc.).

If you have any questions about which WordPress hosting provider to choose, please leave a comment below and we will be happy to answer your questions.