It is overwhelming. There are a ton of web hosting companies available to choose from and there is no way we are familiar with most of them.

We really like Siteground, WPEngine and LiquidWeb. GoDaddy is popular with our clients, but we have some reservations.

What We Look For in a Hosting Plan

As a WordPress developer, we ♥ love ♥ hosting companies that offer:

24/7 Multi-Channel Support. This is Key!
Various Hosting Options to so you can upgrade as your business grows.
Easy-to-Use Control Panel. We want to be able to find everything quickly.
Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates installed with a click of the button. Most companies do not need to pay for an SSL certificate.
Staging Tool for copying and promoting sites between development, testing, and production.
Website Tranfer Tool to move a site between user accounts.
Ability to Add Users so we can continue to maintain the site without needing your id and password.
Built-in CDN Capability. Your website’s files are mirrored on servers around the world for speed.
Web Server WordPress Optimized. A web server that is built with WordPress optimization in mind is just as important as as any caching plug-in.
Email Accounts. Nice to have but there are more powerful email solutions such as GSuites and Microsoft.
Automatic Image Optimization. Nice to have but plugins are available.

A Quick Hosting Comparison

The price listed is the regular recurring price of the plan we recommend you start with. Many times, a discount is offered for new customers which increases upon subscription renewal. This is sometimes different from the lowest price one because of features included.

Depending on your needs, you may need to purchase a different plan. None of these plans are HIPAA compliant which means they can be used for advertising but not for collecting sensitive client information or client portals.

Siteground

GrowBig Plan, $24.99/month

✔ Unlimited Sites
✔ 20 GB Space
✔ ~25,000 visits per month
✔ Unlimited Bandwidth (Fair Usage)
✔ 24/7 Support (email, chat, phone)
✔ Multi-Site Installs allowed
✔ Email Accounts Included
✔ Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates included
✔ CDN Capable (uses CloudFlare)
✔ Easy-To-Use Staging
✔ Proprietary Caching Solution
✔ Automatic Image Optimization
✔ On Demand Backup System

View Siteground Plans

WPEngine

Startup Plan, $30/month

✔ 1 Site ($20/mo for each additional site)
✔ 10 GB Space
✔ ~25,000 visits per month
✔ 50 GB Bandwidth per month
✔ 24/7 Chat Support (no phone)
✔ Email Accounts Included
✔ Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates included
✔ CDN Capable (uses CloudFlare)
✔ Easy-To-Use Staging
✔ Proprietary Caching Solution
✔ Automatic Image Optimization
✔ On Demand Backup System
✘ Email Accounts Included
✘ No Multi-Site Install at this level

View WPEngine Plans

Disclaimer: Because we believe in transparency, we are letting you know the links above are affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase the product, we may receive a commission. The money earned allows us to continue to provide you with free WordPress resources. Thank you for your support.

FAQs about WordPress Hosting

My hosting provider is not listed. Are they a bad hosting company?

Not necessarily. As we mentioned above, there are thousands of hosting companies out there. We only deal with a handful and those providers depend on what our clients use.

We only encourage you to move if the provider’s server setup is causing website issues or if your site is slow do to their infrastructure.

Should I host with a Reseller?

We feel it is best practice for a business to purchase hosting services from the company directly rather than through a reseller. One of the biggest advantage is…. if you can’t get in touch with your web guru, you can contact the hosting company directly if something happens to your site. These companies have many employees and usually provide support 24/7.

Why do you not recommend GoDaddy?

GoDaddy has amazing phone support, but when it comes to WordPress hosting we find them difficult to recommend. Let’s start with the fact that most plans only include 1 SSL certificate, even if the plan includes hosting for more than one site (You can work around this by using CloudFlare). They have a very customized infrastructure which can conflict with plugins and take a lot of effort to debug.

Many of our clients host their websites with GoDaddy. If you are already on it, there is no reason to move away unless you are having problems.

NOTE: If you use CloudFlare for SSL, do not purchase the Website Security product as many of its features are redudant and can slow down the speed of the site.

What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

This is important for websites with a global audience. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a group of web servers located around the world that have miror images of your web files and caches. Even though a website visitor use the same domains and urls, they will view the website on the server closest to them thus making the load time faster. Here is a 60-second video tutorial provided by LiquidWeb.

Do I need to buy an SSL Certificate?

Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates are not just for personal use, but also for businesses. However, there is no liability protection for free Let’s Encrpt Certificates. When you purchase a commercial SSL certificate, the company verifies your business identit and your server setup. They may also offer some liability protection in the case of a data breach.

I heard Siteground or WPEngine are terrible?

You can’t find a hosting company for which there are not bad reviews. We have been working with these hosting providers for over ten years. While we do sometimes have problems with email or the website, they provide great support.

A Few Hosting Setup Tips

Setup the SSL certificate of the domain you will be hosting WordPress on before you install WordPress and build the website. This allows you to avoid the mixed content error which browsers will display if the image urls are non-secure.

If you are using CDN, set it up before you install WordPress and build the website. If you set it up after, your site may be slow while the CDN is copying files to the mirrored servers.

Get a landing page in place first. This way you can start marketing your domain right way.