When it comes to starting a website, it’s fairly easy. Most bloggers and web developers prefer building a website on WordPress, but, when it comes to choosing a hosting provider, there are too many options to choose from.
A hosting provider physically holds your website content, and every time a user visits your website, all the content requests are satisfied by the website hosting provider’s server.
How To Choose A WordPress Hosting Provider?
Choosing a web hosting provider wisely for your WordPress website is vital because the website’s loading speed is one of the underlying criteria for improving the search engine rankings of a website.
There are a few aspects which should be considered while comparing the different web hosting providers, and the most important of these factors include:
- Uptime or how reliable the hosting is and for how long the site would stay up
- Speed or the site load time
- Customer support offered by the hosting provider
- Channels offered to contact customer and technical support
- User-friendly control panel
- Cost
Types of WordPress Hosting
Here are the major types of WordPress hosting:
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the most expensive, but, your website does not share any resources with other websites. The site speed and reliability is highest in the dedicated hosting plans, but, you don’t need to buy a dedicated hosting plan unless your website has a monthly traffic of more than one million visitors.
You might also need dedicated hosting if you are making a resource hogging web application or your website handles the secure data.
Shared Hosting
This is the most common type of hosting plan and a myriad of website owners use this. It’s the cheapest and the plans start from $1 per month.
In shared hosting, a single server is shared by over 100 websites. It’s the cheapest and best solutions for bloggers.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting offers an amalgamation of the shared and dedicated hosting features. In cloud hosting, though you share the resources with other websites, but you are allocated the resources as per your individual needs.
As you use varying amounts of resources every month, your charges will also vary every month. Cloud hosting is ideal for building the web application which requires a variable amount of resources.
Best WordPress Hosting Providers Compared
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HostGator
Host Gator is cost-effective and has been there for a while. The load time of HostGator offers an outstanding website load time.
One of the exceptional offerings of HostGator is their Cloud Hosting, which offers one of the best uptime and speed among all the hosting providers.
HostGator Hosting Review
- The control panel is not very user-friendly
- The service quality offered by HostGator cannot be considered as exceptional, though its good
- Hostgator requires you to pay for SSL certificate and website migration
- The server speed is average
- Customer support is offered through an array of channels including phone, chat, and email
- The cost of hosting is $48 per year
Pros
- You can get unlimited domains, subdomains, unlimited space, unlimited database and unlimited FTP accounts with HostGator hosting.
- Hostgator offers outstanding resources and tutorials for educating the novice bloggers
Cons
- The cPanel has too many options that a user can easily get confused
- As there are a lot of websites using the HostGator hosting, sometimes the emails sent to customer support are given a little-delayed response in the peak hours.
- There are many cheaper hosting options than Hostgator easily available.
- Occasional downtime can happen if you choose Hostgator.
Why Choose Hostgator?
If you are a blogger, then you might like their services. While their hosting services are not exceptional and not the cheapest, but, Hostgator offers a lot of incentives to bloggers, which help them attract huge traffic and a lot of customers.
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Siteground Hosting
Siteground offers one of the best hosting services for WordPress and is highly appreciated by its users for its service quality. Since its launch in 2004, it has grown its network to more than 800, 000 domain names across the globe.
When it comes to uptime and speed, Siteground offers exceptional services. In fact, Siteground is officially recommended by WordPress.
Siteground Hosting Review
- The service quality offered by Siteground is considered amazing by its users.
- It offers free website migration and SSL certificate
- The server speed is outstanding and the cPanel is user-friendly
- The customer support is quite responsive and offers support through phone and chat
- The cost of hosting is $48 per year
Pros
- Offers the best uptime amongst all the hosting providers and auto managed WordPress hosting is available.
- It offers a super cache that increases your site’s speed
- Outstanding customer support
- You will find complete transparency in all the Siteground plans and services. There are genuinely no upsells.
Cons
For each hosting plan, a specific number of CPU cycles are allocated and if you overuse your limit, you start receiving notifications for the same. This is why it’s vital to close your plan after considering all your requisites and expected monthly traffic to avoid any issues later.
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Bluehost Cloud
With over 2 million domains under its network, Bluehost is one of most experienced web hosting providers. They offer an outstanding array of services and outstanding uptime.
When you analyze the performance of Bluehost in terms of speed and pages loading time, the results will highly impress you. The best part is that the customer service of Bluehost is available round the clock and they can help you with any issues related with website setup.
Bluehost Hosting Review
- The service quality of Bluehost can be regarded as average (not the best)
- Bluehost requires you to pay for SSL certificate and website migration
- The cost of hosting is $48 per year, but you get a free domain
- The control panel is not user-friendly and is highly complex
- The customer service is quite amazing, and they offer support through phone and chat
- Server speed ranges from average to good
Pros
- One can get a discount on the regular hosting price of $3.95 per month
- If you don’t like using FTP clients, then Bluehost offers a web-based file manager
- Unlimited hosting resources are available and thus, one can leverage unlimited bandwidth
Cons
- They don’t offer email support, and thus, you have to stay on call or chat till you get an executive to discuss your problem with
- The migration on Bluehost is a highly expensive affair and you may have to pay somewhere between $100- $150
Why Should You Choose Bluehost?
Sometimes Bluehost offers some amazing discount coupons, which can help you save a lot of money on hosting. In this scenario, Bluehost hosting option is good.
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Dreamhost
Dreamhost is a huge network with over 1.5 million domains. One of its most amazing features is the reliable uptime. It offers unlimited bandwidth and the site speed is also pretty amazing.
Dreamhost Hosting Review
- The service quality of Dreamhost is outstanding
- They offer quickly responding customer support offered through an array of communication channels including phone, chat, and email.
- The control panel is not user-friendly
- The server speed is good, and sometimes it is exceptional
- The SSL certificate is free, but, you would need to purchase a dedicated IP and pay for website migration as well.
- The cost of hosting is $120 per year
Pros
- 97 days money back guarantee with no questions asked
- Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited data storage, and unlimited sites
- One can host unlimited subdomains, add-on domains while creating unlimited SQL database
- The website files can be accessed through FTP, SFTP, SSH, and shell
- With Dreamhost hosting, you also get a free domain with “Whois” privacy
Cons
- Though their email and chat support are quite fast,, their phone support is very poor.
- The control panel is text-based and is not user-friendly at all.
Why Should You Choose Dreamhost?
Dreamhost is a developer friendly hosting. If you are well versed in coding, programming and development tools, its ideal for you.
Also, if you are developing a web app which needs high-performance servers and are seeking a low-cost hosting plan, Dreamhost offers the best solution.
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GoDaddy
When it comes to hosting, GoDaddy is one of the most prominent, well-known and common names. One of the biggest reasons behind the popularity of Godaddy its cheap prices. One can build and launch an entire website in less than $25.
The best part is GoDaddy is very easy to use, and even if you are not a technical person you can easily manage your website on GoDaddy.
GoDaddy Hosting Review
- The only channel of communication offered by GoDaddy for customer support is a phone and you might have to wait for several minutes before the call gets connected to the executive. Moreover, they ask for a time of 24 hours to resolve any issue which you bring in their notice.
- The control panel is extremely user-friendly
- The server speed is poor
- GoDaddy requires you to pay for the SSL certificate
- The website migration can be done free of cost but you have to do it manually if your website is hosted by some other hosting provider
- The price is just $18 per year
Pros
- The biggest pros are the cost. GoDaddy offers the cheapest cost
- They offer unlimited bandwidth
- You can configure multiple backup points for your site
- No technical knowledge is required to manage your site on Godaddy
Cons
- The servers are slow and unreliable
- Customization is not possible
- The backup of the website is non-transferable and it can’t be downloaded
- The customer support is not at all good and they never respond quickly
Why Should You Choose Dreamhost?
Only if you have very less traffic and your business does not completely depend on your website, then you can choose GoDaddy as it offers the cheapest cost.
These were some of the prominent names in the web hosting industry.Consider all these factors before selecting the best web hosting provider for your WordPress website.
