If you are using WordPress, maybe you will consider which WordPress hosting service is the best for your needs. To be the best WordPress hosting service, it should guarantee about page speed, uptime, full feature set, security system and customer support. However, how to find out which hosting service is the best choice? It is obvious that any serious WordPress site needs four things: security, speed, scalability, and service. Usually you can find a company that gives you one or two of these. After using some different WordPress hosting services for my websites, these are three best WordPress hosting service platforms whose effect and stability are the best. Especially, WP Engine can excel at all four. They are not just a hosting company, they are really our partners in success.
What to consider when choosing a hosting?
Hosting is not everybody’s area of expertise or favorite subject in the world so it’s important to have a clear picture of what you should expect as standard from the outset.
- Speed: Web users are notoriously impatient so speed is vital. Google is also cracking down on slow sites so you really can’t afford to be slack in this area. This is especially the case when it comes to WordPress hosting. Left unoptimized, WordPress can be a resource-heavy application so you need top-notch hardware in place to get the most bang for your buck.
- Full feature set: This isn’t specific to WordPress hosting of course but it should go without saying that your hosting provider offers email accounts and forwarding, appropriate server access and excellent tooling on the admin side.
- Security: Nothing ruins a day quicker than discovering your site has been pawned by script kiddies. Your host should have verifiably secure systems in place to deter common attacks.
- Support: Excellent support is essential in a hosting provider. You should be able to reach friendly and knowledgeable support people at any hour of the day or night. Waiting around on email tickets isn’t good enough if there’s a real problem.
- WordPress-friendly hosting: WordPress has its own specific requirements and peculiarities and not every host is set up to handle it optimally. Right now, WordPress ideally needs to be running on PHP 5.6 (or greater) and MySQL 5.5 (or greater) to avoid security vulnerabilities and potentially broken features. Look for a host with a strong track record in dealing with WordPress sites.
- Pricing and value for money: It’s all very well having a super-fast, super-secure server, and an awesome site, but if you’re spending ten times as much on it as you can ever hope to get back, all that effort is in vain.
Wpengine
Coming forward is WPEngine – “the best WordPress hosting”, it describes its products as simply. They are fully managed in that it will do all the security, backups, caching, and core updates for you. The platform of WPEngine is created exclusively for WP and has over 100 application layers built in… because of the maturity of the platform its customers see an average of 3-4x speed increase. Especially, the difference, when we compare WPEngine load time, page speed in the US and other locations, is not worth considering. It’s only ~200ms- 400ms. WPEngine provides excellent uptime and fast server, it’s uptime has been always 100% since I used this service. In addition, their customer services also have 24/7 support if you have any trouble with your site, they provide best-in-class customer service on top of innovation-driven technology. They offer you a platform and much more than just a piece of hardware.
With over 220,000 currently active WordPress installations and serious funding behind it, WP Engine is very much one of the big beasts in the WordPress hosting space. WPEngine always prides of their slogan: “no matter what your requirements are, WPEngine can scale to meet them.”
KEY FEATURES
- Excellent Uptime: WP Engine provides a rock-solid web hosting experience and 100% uptime guarantee (actually 99.95%). A credit of 5% of their monthly bill would be assured for every downtime hour customers may experience.
- Real-time security threat detection: WP Engine Block Millions every day, they prevent attacks before they happen. Proprietary, adaptable intrusion detection and prevention system dynamically detects and blocks malicious behavior. If you get hacked, they will fix it for free. It’s not cheap for emergency unpacking services. Fortunately, you can save your money. In the unlikely event that your site is compromised, they’ll fix it at no extra cost to you.
- Solid Hosting: WP Engine excels not only on current features but also on creating new, cutting-edge hosting features. Every version of WordPress 4 has rolled out new developer features that WP Engine has been able to integrate.
- High Security: All of us will need security for our website and this is the big one. Thankfully, WP Engine does it very well. Your website will be protected in a highly secure by a free of charge Secure Socket Layer with your hosting subscription.
- Helpful customer support: I was really impressed by WP Engine‘s helpful support. During my first experience, I contacted it several times, early morning and midday as well as the Web chat to contact a representative who could explain SSL certificates above. The team answered all questions quickly and impolitely. So I think WP Engine operates an effective customer support with live chat support 24 hours a day 7 days a week and 365 days a year for all plans. Even you’ll get one-on-one help by logging in your account, they will recognize you and your problems then find the best solution for them. Phone support is offered for almost all the plans, except Personal plan, and ticket support is only offered for Enterprise plan.
After using upwards of 7 different hosting companies plus experiencing many other hosting environments with our clients such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator or InMotion, I can say that for hosting WordPress websites, WP Engine is second to none and stands out as an extremely popular web host. Personally speaking, WP Engine is a more-than-competent host that boasts excellent uptime, WordPress-specific security, unlimited monthly data transfers, and other excellent features. I do hope that it can be a feasible solution for your websites, and especially the precious 20% discount on WP Engine plans is available up to the end of this month.
DreamHost
DreamHost is the next best WordPress hosting service you should choose. It can be said that they are number 1 for reliable web hosting. They provide easy setup, automated updates, and backups, network uptime with no bandwidth limitation and 24/7 support. They offer both a shared plan and a managed one with a single payment structure for each. Both plans enable you to host unlimited sites, as well as all the space and bandwidth you’ll need. It could be said that most hosts offering one-size-fits-all plans tend to provide a service that’s less focused, but Dreamhost manages to keep their standards high. Dreamhost’s load time is always impressively stable across locations, irrespective of in and out the US. The difference is from 200ms to 600ms. They also guarantee 100% network uptime, this is not worse than WPEngine. Especially, one of the most noticeable points is automated malware scans, which can guarantee our website’s security as a result.
In brief, DreamHost’s key features are:
- Ruby On Rails support, along with Python, and Subversion Repository.
- $100 Adwords credit when you sign up.
- 1-Click Installer for the most common web apps, such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!
- Mobile Website Generator powered by DudaMobile
- Automated Malware Scans powered by StopTheHacker .
- One-click Cloudflare setup.
- Free Domain
Dreamhost is the best for personal sites, small business sites, they have built something very robust, with lightning fast performance preconfigured for WordPress.
Hostgator
Finally, it is impossible not to mention Hostgator – one of the renowned hosting providers in the market, one of the best WordPress hosting services which many people used for a long time. Hostgator is equipped with many different packages like web hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting…, which are suitable for your needs.
Although Hostgator load time is not as fast as two hosting services above, the consistency remained impressive. The load time difference between locations is about 200ms – 800ms. Their uptime is also great when up to 99,9%. Besides, if you are new in the programming field, don’t worry, Hostgator provides full of guidance documents from pictures, the document to video, it will be very easy to install. After you bought the plan which you need, you would receive an email which had your ID and password. You access the link in your email and find software Quick Install in heading “Software and Services”. You only need to click on “Install WordPress for Free”, then fill your information in the form and click “Install WordPress”. Your install is complete. Very easy!
Inspite of being a famous company, Hostgator provides Shared, Reseller and Dedicated Hosting with attractive prices. Hostgator is evaluated being a trust, strong and stable hosting service.
BlueHost
Bluehost is one of the most established and well-known hosting brands on the internet. It’s a brand owned by the Endurance corporation. I have written about Bluehost in my comparison between Bluehost vs. GoDaddy, but I have never written a Bluehost review looking at the pros and cons of the brand.
Bluehost has positioned themselves as not only the go-to hosting provider for beginner and starting websites but also the no-hassle hosting provider for small businesses. I’ve used Bluehost for several projects of my own, and my oldest client has been using Bluehost for almost 10 years.
Pros: Wide range of web hosting options. Excellent uptime in testing. Easy-to-use interface. Weebly site-building software.
Cons: Lacks Windows-based servers. No monthly shared hosting plans. Aggressive upselling. Users need to install add-ons to do just about everything.
The verdict: Bluehost makes it easy to create attractive, functional, and stable pages for your business. However, it lacks Windows servers and a few features found in rival hosting services.
Bluehost’s security features are pleasantly surprising. It offers three antispam tools—Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Experts, and Spam Hammer—as well as hotlink protection. You can also create filters for email accounts and users, password-protect directories, create IP address blacklists, and manage private keys and digital certificates.
Bluehost offers CloudFlare, which enhances performance and security features. If you want SSL on your site, or you are worried about distributed denial of service attacks against your site, CloudFlare is worth considering.
Website uptime is a vital element of the web hosting experience. If your site goes down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services.
Bluehost’s hosting packages come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is standard fare in the web hosting space. That said, DreamHost bests it with an impressive 97-day money back guarantee.
I’d like to stress that all five services offer a full range of more advanced hosting options if you start to outgrow the entry-level packages. My hope is that the information above will help you have a great experience when using WordPress.