Choose the best WordPress Hosting Service for your blog — Gaurav Tiwari

Are you planning to build and initiate a new website? WordPress is the best way of building a website as there are an abundant amount of themes and plugins that are required for hosting a website. Although there are thousands of companies offering hosting plans that are pretty attractive and look similar. You may be confused about which hosting company offers the best plan for you, but you need to know that all of them have some key factors. These features can help you decide which WordPress hosting is the best for your website. We will tell you about all the plans that we have personally tested and we are sure that they will be the best for you too.

Checklist for Good Hosting

If you are looking for the perfect WordPress hosting for your website then you will need to make sure that these features are available with the hosting. All good web hosting companies will surely provide you with the following attributes:

• Email, Chat and Phone support
• PHP version 7+
• MySQL Version 5.6+
• Uptime guarantee
• Built-in caching function
• One-click installation or pre-installed
• HTTPS/SSL Support

Email & Chat Support

Support is the most important feature of any hosting service and customers look for the best support team possible. I use WPX hosting and their support team is incredibly fast and that’s one of the key reasons I am sticking to their services despite high charges. I don’t want to be distracted by anything but the content, and so do other customers. So if you are looking for your dream hosting provider, just read reviews about their support team and not just the specs and features.

Latest PHP & MySQL versions

WordPress recommends that the web hosting servers must provide PHP 7.2 and MySQL 5.6 for the smooth installation of the latest version.

HTTPS/SSL Support

HTTPS is also recommended by WordPress for hosting as this premium SSL certificate allows encryption and blog readers can get secure access to your website. Also, Google favors SSL sites over non-SSL sites due to higher privacy guarantee and more user trust. If your WordPress blog or website is collecting data like Payment details, emails and addresses, then you must begin with a valid SSL and your WordPress hosting provider must support HTTPS installation.

Types of WordPress Hosting

There are so many options when you are looking for a perfect hosting provider and all of them have plans with different names, but here are some common types of WordPress hostings that you need to consider when looking for the best WordPress hosting for your website.

This is the most common and most affordable type of hosting as it merges multiple user accounts on a server. This way, you will be sharing memory and bandwidth with other users. Shared hosting is a perfect type of hosting for new bloggers as there will be no need for numerous resources when getting started and you can change to a bigger plan in the later stage. Shared Hosting provides the power to run the website smoothly. Installing WordPress is quite simple and easy as shared hosting providers give one-click installation so all you have to do is select WordPress when signing up for the plan and you can start blogging immediately.

Cloud WordPress Hosting

Commonly, servers are physically located at various places which require 24×7 monitoring but cloud as we all know is different. Cloud Hosting provides individual servers that are hosted on “ The Cloud “. With Cloud Hosting, your website will not be down since servers will be up and running at all times. Cloud Hosting is popular for scalability as you can add more resources whenever required. If you are tech-savvy then cloud hosting is best as it allows management of your own server settings. Companies offer managed cloud hosting that is a great option for bloggers who are new in the field. With Cloud Hosting you get amazing options like image sharing, viral content and social networking and there will be more traffic.

VPS Hosting

VPS or virtual private servers are used by hosting companies that utilize tools to divide a physical server into multiple, or individual virtual servers. VPS hosting is the most affordable type of hosting using which you can have your own server. There is almost no need for advanced technical skills to operate the system as you get control of virtual server settings. VPS is an amazing option for medium-sized businesses and blogs but can be troublesome if your site has too many files & visits. Small business owners, too, can opt for this but it is not recommended unless there is a lot of revenue involved. VPS hosting is very easy to begin with. All you have to do is install WordPress manually on the server and manage the server settings.

Dedicated Server Hosting

A dedicated server is a stand-alone server that can be rented from a hosting company. The physical server is maintained by them but all other software and settings are in your hands. Although it is costly, you have total control in your hands and you can use 100% of the server’s resources. This is why this type of hosting is an ideal choice for a large website, blog or business. This hosting is quite similar to VPS and we recommend that you learn about various settings, coding languages, and settings to operate this server.

Managed WordPress Hosting

This type of hosting is the easiest way to host a WordPress website. With managed hosting, the hosting providers completely optimize your server for WordPress and manage all the settings and updates. Managed WordPress hosting is based on a shared or cloud platform which is why it is amazing for small businesses, bloggers and online portfolios. The best hosting companies offer completely managed dedicated server plans for large websites and companies.

What is the difference between Shared, VPS and Dedicated Hosting?

Which hosting is best for you?

Hosting needs to be considered according to the type of website as a blogging website will have different requirements as compared to e-commerce or a social website. Small websites require a lightweight hosting plan while large websites need greater resources and more expensive plans, so choose accordingly. While a one-page website requires a shared hosting plan, a large business website with numerous pages will work on a dedicated server. The hosting plan also depends on the traffic to your website. A new website will take some time to build and grow regular traffic and if your website is new then you can start with a low-end website and upgrade later as it grows.

Listed here are some of the best WordPress Hosting Companies that offer great plans and features, so choose wisely as per your requirement:

MilesWeb

MilesWeb is a global web hosting company with diversified locations all over the globe with several data centers in the US, Romania, UK and India. MilesWeb provides reliable and modest hosting solutions at affordable prices. MilesWeb is currently one of the top hosting companies in India & USA and claims to be #1 in both speed and services. They provide a wide range of hosting options. Their web hosting facilities include Shared Hosting, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated server.

MilesWeb emphases on providing a whole range of high quality hosting plans, with a 99.95% uptime assurance and 30-day money-back guarantee. Both Linux and Windows packages are available, as well as VPS and dedicated server plans. Also, MilesWeb offers a wide variety of web services, including shared hosting, reseller hosting, managed WordPress hosting, premium SSL certificates, server management, domain registrations, and email services.

Why MilesWeb is unique?

• Instant account setup (instantly after making the payment, you will catch a welcome email with your login details to set up your hosting account)
• Datacentres of your choice (currently they offer multiple data centers including India, Singapore, UK, US, Australia, and Canada)
• Free malware scans and removal tool to protect your site from malware attacks
• 30 days money-back assurance where you can initiate the refund demand within the first 30 days from the date of purchase to get your money back
• Free domain with their Value and Unlimited web hosting plans
• Hassle-free website migrations at FREE of charge
• SSL certificates are offered for free
• SSD storage with all of their hosting packages for better performance and faster speed.
• Instant chat replies (customer support assistance through their live chat is extremely fast & available 24/7)

BlueHost

Bluehost is a very popular web hosting company that is known to provide excellent services in the field. The company provides easy to use interfaces, low pricing plans, and a dedicated one-click installer for WordPress users. WordPress recommends Bluehost hosting as top-notch providers for quick and easy installation and management. With Bluehost, two famous companies have partnered together to give the best hosting services to patrons. The cloud solution by Bluehost is quite affordable and even the low-tier users get 24×7 support and advanced features. Bluehost offers various types of hosting like Shared hosting, VPS hosting, reseller hosting, Optimized WP Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Cloud Hosting. The company is powering more than 2 million websites. With various types of hosting services by Bluehost, you can easily leverage Google and Bing advertising. Bluehost is the most reliable hosting option for millions of users globally. Owned by Endurance International Group, Bluehost is one of the 10 largest companies for web hosting. Launched in 1996, the company offers amazing hosting solutions to millions of users.

Why BlueHost is unique?

• You will get Cloud, VPS, Shared, Reseller, and dedicated hosting
• Bluehost is a recommended hosting provider by WordPress
• Helps you in leveraging Google and Bing Advertising
• They have their own data centers, fiber connections, and custom Linux kernel operating on custom-built servers
• It is highly recommended for PHP applications that need light CMS installation

Hostgator

Hostgator is a prominent and popular web hosting company that offers Shared hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers and managed WordPress hosting plans. Hostgator offers the best pricing in the industry with monthly based web hosting plans that are available in 3 types namely Hatchling, Baby and Business plans. With Hostgator, you will get a wide range of products that cover all the main hosting essentials. Presently Hostgator is hosting over 9 million websites that make it so popular. This budget hosting service provider is known for reliable and secure web hosting services. It tops the choice of the best web hosting companies listed as it specializes in the field. Cloud-hosting packages are some of the most affordable packages of their kind and with this, you will get faster performance and amplified scalability.

It offers easy to use dashboard and the WordPress users get Built-for-speed plans that have advanced security and free migration. With Hostgator, you will get streamlined hosting and the customer support team will assist you 24/7. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime and your existing website can be seamlessly transferred to HostGator location. Millions of satisfied users have formed a community and if you opt for Hostgator, you can exchange ideas and opinions with website owners. The company also offers a 45-days money-back guarantee.

Why is Hostgator unique?

• Best services in website hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated services
• There are power backups, consistent monitoring, and fire detection that keep the 12,000 servers safe.
• 99.9% uptime guarantee and RSS feed to give service status upgrades
• There are ten different types of fiber providers along with hardware from Time Warner and AT&T
• 45-days money-back guarantee
• Numerous partners like AT&T, Dell, and Cisco

SiteGround

SiteGround Company has its expertise in Linux-tailored web hosting. The company offers fantastic plans for shared, cloud, reseller and dedicated hosting for the users. With SiteGround you will get tailored enterprise hosting plans that are available for corporate users that are designed as per client’s requirements and specifications. SiteGround is recommended as a security precaution as it provides numerous safeguarding measures like add-on HackAlert Monitoring, IP address blocklists, hotlink protection, and antispam software tools SpamExperts and SpamAssassin. SiteGround hosts more than 350,000 sites globally and it also supports e-commerce applications like OSCommerce, Prestashop, and Magneto. The hefty price tag is due to free SSL certificates, CDN, Site migration, email accounts, and daily backups.

Why is SiteGround unique?

HostPapa

HostPapa is hosting about 5 million websites from the USA and Canada. They were founded in 2006 and are part of a massive corporation. The company is a little different from other hosting companies with features like sustainable business practices and green hosting. The company offers cPanel based services in various plans with amazing webspace, free domain, free website migration, and unmetered bandwidth. With HostPapa you will get support in different languages like English, French, German and Spanish. They have grown a great deal in the past few years with this hosting company and you will get great uptime. Signing up is quite easy and takes only five minutes to receive an email with the username, password and login links. With HostPapa, you will get great Uptime and customer support options to choose from. The dashboard has one plus cPanel tab that provides instant access to all the website building and management tools. You will get a one-click installation that is handled by Softaculous that has the best installation frameworks. WordPress can be set up within a few minutes with no hassle and the service supports popular web forums, image galleries, wikis, shopping carts, etc. The site builder is highly capable of 120 responsive templates and easy integration of maps, videos, and forms. Overall HostPapa offers reliable web hosting and domain name registration.

Why is HostPapa unique?

• 99.9% Uptime guarantee
• 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and fax
• You will get enhanced security with Panda cloud antispam protection
• You will receive a 30-days Money-back guarantee and Site Migration

WP Engine

WP Engine hosts WordPress websites and they offer only managed WordPress hosting plans that are amazing. The entire hosting platform is built using great technology and you will get an optimized environment with customized design and coded rules. With WP Engine, your website can run with perfection, giving maximum performance and you don’t have to manage anything related to server. You will get 24×7 professional support from the WordPress experts and there are numerous features offered by them which are: Free SSL option, Staging environments, WordPress multisite, built-in CDN and PHP7 support. They are known to provide optimized hosting that is stable, secure and fast and this is why they are quite a popular choice for the WP website. You can create a WP website using one-click installation and they also take care of optimizing and hardening.

Why WP Engine is unique:

GoDaddy

GoDaddy holds a great reputation for web hosting as it dominates the hosting industry. This American Company currently has 17 million users worldwide and supports 72 million domains around the globe. GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name company and web hosting provider that is known for being highly safe and secure. The main focus of GoDaddy is on the corporate community and the business-friendly domains offered by them are valued by online shoppers. With GoDaddy, you will get an SSL certificate that guarantees the safety of every user’s data. GoDaddy also provides a practical website builder for new users and the owners can get complete control of what is happening on their websites. Godaddy is known to offer 24×7 customer support for 365 days a year and the support team is quite professional that solves your queries and problems quickly. GoDaddy holds a great reputation as it provides amazing performance and fast page speed. Page loading time is quick and uptime is 99.99% along with 100GB of website storage.

Why is GoDaddy Unique?

Hostinger

Hostinger provides you with cheap yet efficient MySQL, PHP and FTP hosting services. The company designs hosting that is best for individual site owners, small businesses and startups. With Hostinger you will get a free domain, unlimited disk, and bandwidth along with unrestricted access and premium support. It provides one of the fastest WordPress hosting services in the industry. Hostinger has about 29 million free and paid clients worldwide and is also planning to provide web design collections for the users. You will get a 30-days money-back guarantee along with the paid plan from Hostinger. The company has data centers and servers located in seven different regions across the world. The company provides an uptime guarantee of 99.97% and the average page load time is quite fast.

Why Hostinger is unique?

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting provides shared hosting services along with other solutions so that companies can build their internet presence easily. It is a high quality hosting provider with great response time and stability. It has hosted about 80,000 sites worldwide and is known to deliver the fastest server speeds. The customer support is amazing and the hosting plans are developer-friendly. A2 also offers a anytime money-back guarantee and you can get an easy refund on the unused portion of the plan. Most of the plans have SSL certificates and backups. The speed with A2 hosting is excellent and they offer friendly customer service, refund policy is liberal, and security features are great.

Why A2 hosting is unique:

• They are fastest shared hosting provider
• Friendly and efficient customer support
• You will get free Hackscan that will keep your site secure
• Free website migration
• Anytime money-back guarantee
• Environment friendly web hosting services

WPX hosting

WPX hosting uses a custom control panel to make changes to websites and accounts. The company has created their own dashboard as many users were having problems navigating cPanel and it slows down the server’s performance. New users find it easy to navigate and make changes to their website with WPX web hosting. WPX hosting offers a tailored dashboard that is quite user-friendly. You will get numerous features like 1-click WP installation and backups. The dashboard is quite useful for users as they offer premium quality managed WordPress hosting that lays the focus on providing fast website loading and top-notch support.

Why WPX Hosting is unique:

• Loading time is lightening fast
• 24×7 customer support
• Free content delivery network
• WPX offers cloud services
• Free SSL and migrations
• Free daily backups

Final Verdict

Here I listed some of the web hosting providers that provide excellent customer support, great uptime guarantee, and high-level security. BlueHost, HostGator, WP Engine, and SiteGround are some of the best web hosting companies that offer affordable hosting services to users. Buy the right plan according to your requirements and enjoy great traffic through your website.

Originally published at https://gauravtiwari.org on December 4, 2019.