Best WordPress Hosting for 2021 (9 Top Web Hosts Compared)
If you’re thinking about starting a WordPress site or you already have a site that’s running a bit slow, you’ll want to choose one of the best WordPress hosting services. But researching the companies offering the best hosting deals can be time-consuming and confusing, especially when you don’t really know what you’re looking for.
We don’t like to boast, but here at eCommerce Booth, we’ve collectively launched and managed dozens (if not hundreds) of WordPress sites over the years.
When it comes to WordPress, we really know our stuff. And we’ve experienced the best and worst of WordPress hosting.
So we’ve combined our real-life experience together with actual data from real sites that we’ve set up on each web host to compare the features and services they offer as well as the speed and performance of each site.
We tested the average load time of each of our test websites with Load Impact – a testing platform that simulates high traffic levels). A smaller page load time = a faster website.
Of course there’s no single one host to rule them all… The best hosting for you will depend on the type of site you run, how much traffic it gets, your budget, the level of support you need, and other factors.
So, we’ve compiled a shortlist of the best WordPress hosting for various budgets and requirements so you can quickly find the best option for you.
What Are The Best WordPress Hosting Companies?
- WP Engine – Best for high traffic sites
- Kinsta – Best for managed WordPress hosting
- Bluehost – Best budget WordPress hosting
- Flywheel – Best for agencies and freelancers
- Dreamhost – Best for pay monthly WordPress hosting
- Hostgator – Best for WordPress beginners
- Inmotion – Best for small business website hosting
- A2Hosting – Best for a fast site and generous storage limits at a low cost
1. WP Engine
Best host for high traffic sites
WP Engine is known for its high performance managed WordPress hosting packages. If you’re looking for premium support and a hands-off hosting experience, this might be the host for you.
- Price: From $25 a month
- Page load time: 260ms
- Hosting type: managed
- Customer support: <3 minutes response time to live chat support with 200 experts available 24/7
- Best feature: Includes Genesis Framework and 36 Premium StudioPress themes
WP Engine is not the cheapest WordPress hosting service out there but they do claim to be the fastest and the most reliable.
WP Engine currently hosts 1.2 million websites and boasts some big name clients including AMD, Thomson Reuters and Yelp.
The hosting platform provided by WP Engine is specifically optimized for WordPress sites. This means that sites can benefit from higher performance and a page speed increase of up to 40% when moving from a non-optimized host.
The other big pro to choosing WP Engine for hosting your WordPress site is that they offer managed hosting services. This means they’ll take care of all the admin tasks of running a site such as making backups, performing updates, and monitoring for potential security breaches.
WP Engine also provides a suite of design and development tools including premium StudioPress themes and the Genesis Framework (this alone has a value of $360), plus a local development tool and a library of optimized WordPress plugins.
In our speed and performance tests, WP Engine was one of the fastest performing hosts with a page load time of 260ms.
WP Engine hosting plans
- Startup – $25/month for 1 site, 25,000 visits/month, 10GB storage
- Growth – $95.83/month for 10 sites, 100,000 visits/month, 20GB storage
- Scale – $241.67/month for 30 sites, 400,000 visits/month, 50GB storage
2. Kinsta
Best for managed WordPress Hosting
Kinsta is another premium managed WordPress hosting service that’s ideal for large sites with a lot of traffic that need reliable, secure, and high-performance hosting.
- Price: From $30 a month
- Page load time: 500ms
- Hosting type: managed cloud hosting
- Customer support: Average 1 minute 27 seconds response time. Support available 24/7 with non-English support available at limited times.
- Best feature: Fully-managed, scalable Google cloud hosting
Kinsta’s cheapest plan is more than the most expensive shared hosting plan offered by many budget hosts, so you’d expect they’d better be delivering an amazing service for the money. Luckily, Kinsta doesn’t disappoint and you can expect some of the best site speeds, performance, security, and support if you make the leap.
Because Kinsta is powered by the Google Cloud platform, it means its hosting is highly scalable. There are 10 plans available to suit all needs from a single site to large enterprises hosting sites with millions of visitors each month. Scaling is also automatic so you’ll be allocated more resources during a traffic spike and don’t have to worry about your site going down.
Hosting with Kinsta is a completely hands-off experience as they’ll take care of everything for you so there’s no need to worry about security or backing up your site or not noticing if your site has gone down.
Kinsta is also a developer-friendly platform with all the tools you need for site building and debugging including staging areas with one-click push to live.
Kinsta hosting plans
- Starter – $30/month for 1 site, 25,000 visits/month, 10GB storage
- Pro – $60/month for 2 sites, 50,000 visits/month, 20GB storage
- Business 1 – $100/month for 5 sites, 100,000 visits/month, 30GB storage
3. Bluehost
Best budget WordPress hosting
Bluehost is one of the biggest names in hosting and there was a time when every website and blogger seemed to be recommending them. While this was more likely to be because of their generous affiliate payments than the quality of their service, there’s no denying you get a lot of bang for your buck when you choose to host your sites with Bluehost thanks to their “unlimited” hosting packages.
- Price: From $3.95 a month
- Page load time: 640ms
- Hosting type: shared
- Customer support: 24/7 via live chat or telephone. Bluehost doesn’t offer a ticketed email support system, which can be frustrating for more complicated or ongoing issues. Responses to live chat can also be slow (40 minutes in our test)
- Best feature: Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
Bluehost hosting is aimed at individuals and small businesses that don’t have high performance needs.
The advertised unlimited disk space and bandwidth on all except the cheapest hosting plan is attractive. This is certainly a bonus if you’ll be building a lot of sites, as you have an unlimited number of WordPress installations.
However, it’s important to note that Bluehost states in their terms and conditions that this is subject to their acceptable use policy and sites that have an excessive number of database tables, data storage, or bandwidth may have their accounts terminated.
In general, Bluehost is a great all-round WordPress host, especially if you’re just getting started with your site or you don’t have a lot of traffic. It didn’t perform best in our speed tests but it was far from being the slowest.
Bluehost hosting plans
- Basic – $3.95/month for 1 site, 50GB storage
- Plus – $5.95/month for unlimited sites and unlimited storage
- Pro – $13.95/month for unlimited sites and unlimited storage with dedicated IP
4. Flywheel
Best hosting for agencies and freelancers
Flywheel has distinguished itself from the myriad of managed WordPress hosting services available today by aiming at creative freelancers and teams with some handy tools for collaboration and working with clients.
- Price: From $13 a month
- Page load time: 1 second
- Hosting type: managed, powered by Google Cloud
- Customer support: 24/7 live chat and email support and telephone support during office hours. Support responded to our chat within 15 minutes
- Best feature: Built-in tools for collaboration and workflow optimization
With Flywheel you’ll get everything you’d expect from managed WordPress hosting including infrastructure optimized for performance, backups, updates, and malware removal.
Flywheel users also benefit from a rather beautiful dashboard which makes it quick and easy to manage multiple sites, work with team members, and launch sites from production to live with the minimum of fuss.
With an average load time of 1 second in our Load Impact performance test, Flywheel wasn’t as fast as the premium hosting options on our list, but load time was within acceptable limits.
One other important note to make is that Flywheel was acquired by WPEngine in 2019. While the two companies continue to operate separately to meet the needs of their customers, it does mean that Flywheel customers now also have access to the Genesis framework and themes as part of their hosting plan.
Flywheel hosting plans
- Tiny – $13/month for 1 site with 5,000 monthly visits and 5GB storage
- Starter – $25/month for 1 site with 25,000 monthly visits and 10GB storage
- Freelance – $96/month for 10 sites with 100,000 monthly visits and 20GB storage
- Agency – $242/month for 30 sites with 400,000 monthly visits and 50GB storage
5. Dreamhost
Best for pay monthly WordPress hosting plans
Dreamhost is a web hosting company that’s been around a lot longer than WordPress and has earned itself a reputation of providing high quality and reliable hosting at an affordable price.
- Price: From $2.59 a month
- Page load time: 3s
- Hosting type: Shared, managed, woocommerce-optimised, or vps
- Customer support: 24/7 email support with live chat during office hours. Our chat was responded to within 6 minutes.
- Best feature: Affordable monthly rates and managed hosting
It’s a common trick in the webhosting world to advertise monthly rates that are only applicable if you’re signing up for a year or even 3 years of hosting in advance (I’m looking at you Bluehost!). If you want to pay montly, the price shoots up. However, this is not the case with DreamHost as you can pay monthly from only $4.95 a month – great for those on a very limited budget or if you’re just not sure your website will even be up for a year.
DreamHost also offers lots of different types of hosting to suit different needs. You can opt for affordable shared hosting (which includes unlimited traffic) managed WordPress hosting, or VPS with dedicated resources.
Our DreamHost test site loaded in a very disappointing 3 seconds which is significantly slower than other hosts in the same price range. A quick Google of other speed tests shows that our site was probably having a bad day but page load times of more than one minute don’t seem to be uncommon with this host. If speed is your priority, there are faster hosting options available.
DreamHost hosting plans
- WordPress Starter – $2.59/month for 1 site with unmetered bandwith and 50GB storage
- WordPress Unlimited – $3.59/month unlimited sites and storage
- Dreampress – $12/month for managed hosting for 1 site with 100k visits and 30GB storage
- VPS Basic WordPress – $10/month for unlimited websites, 1GB RAM, and 30GB storage.
6. Hostgator
Best hosting for WordPress beginners
- Price: From $5.95 a month
- Page load time: 1.64s
- Hosting type: Shared, managed, woocommerce-optimized, or vps
- Customer support: 24/7 email support with live chat during office hours. Our chat was responded to within 6 minutes.
- Best feature: Affordable monthly rates and managed hosting
Hostgator is another very well-known name in the world of hosting. Although they’ve earned a reputation for offering bargain-bucket hosting packages, Hostgator actually offers a range of premium services including dedicated hosting.
In their wide range of hosting services, Hostgator offers WordPress hosting that’s optimized for faster WordPress sites and includes automatic updates and expert support.
At $5.95 a month you’re not going to get the same service as you would with fully managed WordPress hosting, but you can think of it as a little hand hold for a faster and more secure WordPress site while you’re getting started. They also offer free site migrations, which is a nice perk.
Hostgator WordPress hosting plans
- Starter – $5.95/month for 1 site with 100k visits and unlimited storage
- Standard – $7.95/month for 2 sites with 200k visits and unlimited storage
- Business – $9.95/month for 3 sites with 500k visits and unlimited storage
7. Inmotion
Best for small business hosting
Inmotion is an affordable and popular hosting company that’s a good all-rounder for WordPress hosting. Its range of scalable hosting plans with generous storage limits make it a good choice for growing businesses.
- Price: From $6.99 a month
- Page load time: 480ms
- Hosting type: optimized WordPress hosting
- Customer support: 24/7 support via chat or email. Our chat query was responded to within 12 minutes
- Best feature: Includes free marketing tools
Inmotion has optimized its hosting environment for running WordPress and WordPress comes pre-installed. All hosting plans also come with free marketing tools including a drag and drop site builder and customer management tools.
There’s the option to upgrade to VPS hosting if the shared hosting packages aren’t meeting your needs any longer.
This was one of the speedier hosts we tested, which is somewhat surprising considering its budget prices. It’s nice to know that affordable hosting doesn’t have to mean a slow website.
InMotion hosting plans
- WP-1000S – $6.99/month for 1 site, 50GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth
- WP-2000S – $9.99/month for 2 sites, 100GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth
- WP-3000S – $12.99/month for 3 sites, 150GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth
- QP-4000S – $19.99/month for 6 sites, 200GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
8. A2 Hosting
Best for a fast site and generous storage limits at a low cost
Everyone wants a fast website. But not everyone is willing to pay hundreds in hosting charges every month to get it. A2Hosting claims their servers are up to 20X faster than standard servers and yet their hosting packages start at under $3 a month. Too good to be true? Well let’s see…
- Price: From $2.99 a month
- Page load time: 400ms
- Hosting type: shared and managed WordPress hosting
- Customer support: 24/7 support via chat or email. We received a response to our support request within 20 minutes.
- Best feature:
Indeed, A2Hosting came out super speedy in our tests, beating Kinsta and almost as fast as WP Engine. Of course, page load time at any one time can be affected by many different variables but this is still impressive for a budget host.
A2Hosting plans are pre-configured for the best speed and security settings for WordPress sites and Litespeed cache is built into the server for best performance. All plans include free site migrations and you have the option of upgrading to managed WordPress hosting, which includes site staging and Jetpack.
A2Hosting plans
- Startup – $2.99/month for 1 site with 100GB storage
- Drive – $4.99/month for unlimited sites and unlimited storage
- Managed 1-Site – $12.99/month for 1 site with 10GB storage
- Managed 3-Sites – $22.99/month for 3 sites with 25GB storage
How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting for You
So now we’ve given you a rundown of the best WordPress hosting plans around you might know right away which host is for your or you might still be confused.
It’s best to start by thinking about exactly what you want and need from your hosting:
- Are you just starting out or do you have an established site? If the latter, how much traffic do you get?
- What issues do you have with your current web host?
- Do you want to manage your hosting yourself or do you want a hands-off experience so you can concentrate on running your site?
- Do you have just one site or several? Do you build or manage sites for clients?
- Do you want access to additional tools like website builders and premium WordPress themes?
- How critical is your website to the running of your business?
- What is your budget?
After you’ve asked yourself these questions you should start to narrow down exactly what you need from a host. While cheap shared hosting might be fine for one person, another might need a premium solution. But remember – there’s nothing wrong with starting small and scaling up. You’ll soon know when you start to outgrow the limits of your current hosting package.
To make it easier for you to make your decision, I’ve compiled some of the most useful data and information about the cheapest hosting plans with these top hosts into a table below for quick and easy reference.
| Monthly price | Average page load time in ms (lower = better) | Hosting type | No. of sites | Storage limit | |
| WP Engine | $25 | 260 | Managed | 1 | 10GB |
| Kinsta | $30 | 500 | Managed | 1 | 10GB |
| Bluehost | $3.95 | 640 | Shared | 1 | 50GB |
| Flywheel | $13 | 1000 | Managed | 1 | 5GB |
| Dreamhost | $2.59 | 3000 | Shared | 1 | 50GB |
| Hostgator | $5.95 | 1640 | Shared | 1 | “unlimited” |
| Inmotion | $6.99 | 480 | Shared | 1 | 50GB |
| A2 Hosting | $2.99 | 400 | Shared | 1 | 100GB |
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