The Best WordPress Hosting: How to Pick The Right One for Your Website in 2022

WordPress is proven to be one of the best platforms to use for your site, but before you even start thinking about setup, themes and plugins you need to pick a WordPress hosting for your site.

A good hosting is the foundation of any website. You may have the best design, content and products planned for your website, but all this would be useless without the right hosting plan. The decision you make when choosing a hosting provider and plan will be crucial for the final result.

There are thousands of companies offering WordPress hosting and most of the offer look pretty much the same. However, not all hosting plans are suitable and there are some key factors to keep in mind, depending on your project specifics.

If you read this article, it’s obvious you’re not a server management guru, so the option for self-hosted website on your own computer is not a good idea. There are also some free alternatives, but unless you want to build a website for your family only, that’s not the way to go too.

Why you should avoid free blogs and hosting

Even it may seem to be a great option, the cons always outnumber the pros. Free hosting and blog systems are usually slow and only provide the absolute minimum in server requirements and features. In most cases you wouldn’t be able to install premium themes or even simple plugins.
Even, if you’re lucky to find one that offers all this for free, your server resources will be exhausted pretty soon and your website will crash pretty often and make it useless. That’s not what you want if you’re serious about your site.

Not only that, but with free blog or hosting usually you get an awful domain name. Most of them offer subdomain like yoursite.somefreeblog.com. Not only it looks terrible and hard to remember, but your website’s domain name has a huge impact on your Search Engine Optimization and social media marketing efforts.

What makes a hosting good for WordPress

WordPress as a platform have its own official server requirements. There are also some other factors you’ll want to consider.

• PHP version 7.0+ (recommended PHP 7.2+)
• MySQL version 5.6+
• SSD Storage
• SSL support (including free options like Let’s Encrypt)
• HTTP2
• Built-in caching instruments
• Uptime guarantee
• Reliable support

It’s also highly recommended to pick a hosting that offers the possibility to fine tune settings like

• max_execution_time
• memory_limit
• post_max_size
• upload_max_filesize

PHP and MySQL versions are really fundamental for your WordPress installation and there are no short cuts for them, but we also highly recommend using a hosting plan that offers HTTPS and HTTP2 support. A good hosting company will usually offer SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates and also allow you to use a free certificates by third-party providers like Let’s Encrypt.

SSL certificates ensure your website visitors can securely access your content and/or make secure financial transactions (for e-commerce websites). SSL enabled sites are usually served over HTTP2, which also gives your site performance boost. Not only your site will be less annoying for users, but loading speed also boosts your Search Engine Ranking and can dramatically improve your position in Google (and other) search results.

A good hosting company will also offer uptime guarantee. This ensures your website is up and running 99,99% of the time (there is always a small reserve for server and software updates etc.). Top notch support is really a key factor too, especially if you’re new to this field and don’t have a server management experience. It’s even more important on shared hosting plans (90% of the cases) as you don’t even have direct access to the server.
If you ever face a hosting/server issue, you’ll want to have a tech support available 24/7 and a couple easy ways to get in touch as soon as possible.

TIP: It’s always recommended to choose a local hosting company if possible, particularly when your audience is local too, with servers located as close as possible to your operations area. This would make your site load faster and generally improve your user’s experience. Also, some global companies offer different server locations you can choose from – e.g. SiteGround have data centers on 3 continents.

Recommended WordPress Hosting Companies

Bluehost: Affordable Shared WordPress Hosting for small sites and shops

Bluehost is one of the biggest hosting providers and there is a solid reason for that – they offer affordable hosting plans for every need with plenty of resources, great support and some extra features that any new website owner would love to have. Bluehost offers a free domain name for the first year, free SSL, free email accounts and bonus marketing offers ($200 in marketing offers for plus and prime plans users). Last, but not least, their plans are some of the most affordable you can find.

Althemist users are getting special prices starting from €7.04 €3.48/month (more than 67% discount).

CLAIM YOUR DISCOUNT WITH BLUEHOST

SiteGround: Managed WordPress Hosting – Powerful, yet simple to use

When it comes to choosing the best WordPress hosting for your WordPress website, we strongly recommend SiteGround. They offer managed WordPress hosting plans and are great at what they do. Specifically, their entire hosting platform is built on top of the line tech. They’ve created an optimized environment for WordPress powered by custom designed and coded containers, so that their servers can evaluate browser requests, balance server load and integrated SG Cache for on the fly optimization. All their managed WordPress plans include WordPress installation, automated migrations, automatic updates, advanced caching, and expert WordPress support. Basically this all means that your website can run perfectly at max performance without you having to manage anything server related. SiteGround also offer professional support from experienced WordPress experts, 24/7. Even if you need a bit of help on a Sunday there’s help within reach. Other host features include staging environments, free SSL option, WordPress multisite, PHP7+ support and even a free CDN (powered by CloudFlare).

Althemist users are getting special prices starting from €12.99 €5.99/month (more than 50% discount).

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Kinsta: Premium WordPress hosting for everyone, small or large

Kinsta is not just one of the plethora managed WordPress hosting companies. They offer fully managed and optimized Google cloud hosting, state-of-the-art technology like Nginx, PHP 7.3, LXD software containers, and MariaDB to make sure your website loads in the blink of an eye. Featuring complete resource isolation, automatic scalability, and high availability. In addition they offer active and passive measures to stop attacks and malicious intent in its tracks. Constant monitoring for uptime, DDoS attack detection, software-based restrictions, SSL support, and hardware firewalls. In few words: your site is monitored and secured 24/7, so you can concetrate on your real business, not your web presence.

LEARN MORE ABOUT KINSTA

Other WordPress hosting providers worth mentioning

Of course, these aren’t all of the hosting options available to you. Rather, this is simple and curated collection of popular and well rated hosting companies which we’ve personally had the chance to test and recommend for the project types where our themes are mostly used. There are many other good hosting companies, especially when it comes to large projects with specific requirements. These are just some of them:

• WP Engine – Premium managed WordPress hosting. Hands down, one of the best you can find.
• Flywheel – Managed WordPress hosting for Freelance / Client sites
• Cloudways – Cloud hosting made easy
• Media Temple – Shared, Managed & VPS hosting
• Pagely – Custom enterprise hosting solutions

So, which WordPress hosting is the best?

It’s really hard to name one company “best” as that would depend on your project specifics.

We strongly recommend SiteGround – this is what we use for our own site and all theme demos. It’s fast, reliable, offers great support and price/value ratio is one of the best on the market. Also, it’s officially recommended by WordPress.org for self-hosted sites.

BlueHost on the other hand is probably the best option for starters, as it offers great value for the price and it’s absolutely enough for small sites, blogs and even shops with not much products and advanced features. Also, you can always start with a lower tier plan and upgrade effortlessly. They are also one of the recommended by WordPress.org providers.

Kinsta is no worse than the other options, that’s for sure. Their service is top notch and they are industry leader when it comes to bigger, professional websites and shops. It’s more expensive, of course, but it’s worth every penny. We highly recommend it for bigger e-commerce and marketplace websites, where available resources and speed are crucial.

Conclusion

Picking the best WordPress hosting is not an easy task, especially if you’re new to all things WordPress, website building etc. It all starts with understanding what your needs really are, so you can find the best option for your specific project. The best thing you can do is take your time and read everything you can find, compare options and determine what your projects requires, what help you might need with issues you might face. There is no single best host – there is a hosting that’s best for your project in the right moment. Look for latest technologies, security, top notch support and last but not least – scalability options.

DISCLAIMER: This article may contain affiliate links. We only share our unbiased opinion and never post “sponsored” content, but, we may receive a small commission if you decided to purchase through these links.

About the Author: Althemist

Dimitar Koev is a graphic and web designer, front-end developer and marketing expert. CEO & founder of the Althemist team (previously known as Koev) - an independent envato market author, focused on building WordPress themes with strong e-commerce accent.