12 Best WordPress Hosting Providers of 2021 Compared & Tested

This comparison of the best WordPress hosting providers is based on pure performance data, actual speed test experiments, user ratings from the largest WordPress hosting survey to date, plus our own experience running websites regularly visited by 670,000+ people each month.

Dig in to find out which firm is going to be the best WordPress hosting match for your individual needs:

No list of best WordPress hosting could be complete without SiteGround playing a prominent role. The company has been making a name for themselves in the WordPress community for a while now. And not without a reason. Their hosting platform is strong when it comes to for-WordPress optimized servers, plus they offer managed WordPress hosting at price points that are unheard of (read: you won’t find a cheaper managed host of the same quality anywhere else).

What’s also worth pointing out is that SiteGround is one of the few officially recommended hosts by WordPress.org.

For the tests, we went for the StartUp package. Although for a generally more WordPress-optimized package, we’d recommend the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. They are a tad more expensive, but come with additional perks such as advanced caching (custom-built by SiteGround), staging, premium wildcard SSL certificates, and free PCI compliance – should you want to run an e-commerce store.

WordPress installation

Getting WordPress up and running with the built-in installer took just a few clicks. There really isn’t anything more to say here … the installation process really was as seamless as possible.

During this setup process, you also get to choose your server location. There are five data centers available – in USA, Asia and Europe.

Customer support

SiteGround offers what they call “unmatched” support (via chat, phone, tickets, social media), and it’s hard to argue with that, honestly. Apart from being able to access your account and fix any issues, the support agents are also knowledgeable about WordPress and WordPress hosting, and can help you out with a range of other issues that might not be strictly hosting-related.

In our little test, the SiteGround customer support was able to help us get a temporary URL working quickly and efficiently.

Special mention has to go out to the slickness of their customer support software and the extra mile the staff were prepared to go in offering detailed account advice and providing screenshots. (This makes it a great HostGator alternative, for instance, if you want a more refined support environment.)

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 8.38/10 overall by survey respondents (top-rated company) 🏆
• Used by 4.83% of survey respondents
• No.2 most popular host in the UK 🇬🇧
• The most popular host in Spain 🇪🇸
• 93% of users will extend their hosting subscription when it’s up for renewal

We went for the basic package here. As you can see, a very cheap WordPress hosting option – a shared WordPress hosting plan, to be exact.

One immediate point to note is that Bluehost is the only alternative on the list that doesn’t offer a monthly package. Twelve month commitments are the minimum, though that is offset somewhat by a strong money back guarantee policy that I have personally invoked without issue.

WordPress installation

In addition to the standard cPanel options in place, Bluehost’s one-click WordPress installations are handled by a service called MojoMarketplace.

The MojoMarketplace interface for installing WordPress left a lot to be desired. It was possible to install multiple instances accidentally, and overall feedback on what was happening at any given point was inconsistent and confusing. (For instance, when we look at Bluehost vs SiteGround, the latter gives you WordPress installs in just a few clicks.)

On the plus side, this gave us an instant opportunity to talk to support!

Customer support

Service via chat support was fast and friendly and helped us with clearing up the initial WordPress installation problems and setting up a temporary URL to view our site.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 8.02 overall by survey respondents 👍
• Used by 9.61% of survey respondents (top 2 result)
• The most popular host in the US 🇺🇸
• The most popular host in the UK 🇬🇧
• The most popular host in Canada 🇨🇦
• 23.7% of Bluehost’s customers are first-timers to web hosting
• Bluehost is the first hosting platform ever recommended by WordPress.org

Kinsta is a boutique hosting provider for WordPress that focuses mainly on optimized managed hosting setups. However, them being “boutique” doesn’t mean that they can’t handle the load.

In fact, Kinsta has the full power of the Google Cloud Platform behind it. They take Google’s infrastructure and make it more accessible and easier to use. Kinsta doesn’t use the traditional cPanel UI, but instead gives users a custom panel that puts focus on what’s important while hiding everything else.

The fact that this host is “managed” means that it’s Kinsta who handle every server-management-related task for you.

WordPress installation

As you’re setting up your account, you can tell Kinsta to install WordPress on your hosting account for you. All you need to do is tick one box.

Customer support

Kinsta offers 24/7 chat and ticket support. The representatives know WordPress and can help with anything you might be struggling with.

Plus, the fact that you don’t have to deal with cPanel will also reduce the number of times you need to contact support in the first place.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 4.3 / 5 for “value for money”
• Rated 4.8 / 5 for “WordPress optimization”

Hostinger is a very appealing option when it comes to best WordPress hosting, and their entry level pricing has a lot to do with that. At just $1.99 / month, you get to build one website and welcome up to 10,000 visitors (/mo). You also get one email account and a free SSL.

Hostinger also has a handful of WordPress-specific features for you. These include a guided installation with a site-building wizard to speed things up.

With WordPress running, you don’t have to do much maintenance of your own. Most things like core and plugin updates are handled by Hostinger and happen automatically. To make sure that your site runs fast, Hostinger uses LiteSpeed Cache and has it pre-configured.

For those who want to tinker under the hood, there’s a whole database of WordPress tutorials, plus you get access to WP-CLI.

WordPress installation

Hostinger offers one-click installation, so there’s not much to talk about in this department.

What’s worth mentioning, however, is that you do get to choose from eight data center locations around the world – in the US, UK, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Lithuania.

Then, when you log into your user panel for the first time, you can also go through the site-setup wizard. You’ll get to choose from Hostinger’s collection of pre-approved themes and pick the one that suits you best.

Customer support

Hostinger offers 24/7 support. The support team is easy to contact and they will help you with general inquiries (WordPress related and otherwise). Though, you might have to wait a couple of minutes before getting a response.

Performance and uptime

Flywheel presents a very enticing offer for people who want to get into managed WordPress hosting but also don’t want to spend too much on it.

Feature-wise, there’s nothing missing with Flywheel, and you can expect great performance as well (more on which in a minute). The $13 / month plan allows you to host one WordPress website, and you can handle up to 5,000 visitors monthly (20GB of bandwidth). You also get 5GB of disk space and free site migration. The servers run on Google Cloud Platform.

Focusing on the “managed” features specifically, Flywheel gives you things like daily backups, multisite support, staging (very cool if you want to test new things out before rolling them out to public), SFTP, plus there’s also a free SSL certificate. They also take care of your WordPress updates via the main Flywheel panel rather than letting you tinker with that from the wp-admin.

What’s really impressive is the ease of use of Flywheel’s platform and user panel. Everything is clear, easy to navigate, and you don’t need to be a server pro to perform basic tweaks or configure this or that.

WordPress installation

This literally couldn’t be easier. There are a couple of ways in which you can get WordPress installed. First, you can migrate your existing site from your previous host (for free), you can also create a new site from the Flywheel dashboard in a couple of clicks, or you can use a tool called Local by Flywheel to build a site locally (on your PC or Mac) and then export it to your live Flywheel setup.

Customer support

Live chat is available 24/7. You can also submit support tickets whenever you wish. Since Flywheel allows only WordPress websites, you can expect the support team to know their way around WordPress.

To make things even easier, there’s an extensive knowledge base with lots of helpful articles about their WordPress hosting platform.

Performance and uptime

The plan we’ve tested here is called Personal, and it’s the entry-level plan with WP Engine. As part of it, you’re allowed to have 1 WordPress install, and it can handle up to 25,000 visits a month, so probably more than enough for most new websites.

WordPress installation

The whole sign-up process with WP Engine is very straightforward, and I’m only mentioning it here because getting WordPress installed is an integral part of that initial sign-up. In other words, you don’t need to do any WordPress installing on your own, the WP Engine team takes care of that for you.

At the end of sign-up, you simply get an email with all the access credentials and important data regarding your new site.

Customer support

WP Engine offers some great support options – via helpdesk and chat (plus phone if you’re on a higher plan).

Overall, users report very good quality of WP Engine’s support – currently rated 4.5 / 5 by our survey respondents. And we can only confirm this, as the quick interaction we’ve had with the support team has been nothing but positive (helped us get the test site going after solving a billing issue).

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• 4.7 / 5 – that’s how users rate WP Engine’s level of WordPress optimization
• 92% of users say they will extend their WordPress web hosting subscription with WP Engine
• WP Engine reliability ranked 4.5 / 5 by users (top rank among the best WordPress hosting firms here)

We selected the standard shared hosting package with DreamHost, which was the most expensive of the base offerings we tested. Still, a very popular WordPress website hosting in the market.

Overall account signup with this shared WordPress hosting provider was slick and painless, and I was eager to see how DreamHost’s much-touted SSD servers would perform.

WordPress installation

The one-click install options in the backend worked straight out of the gate and the interface was generally straightforward to navigate.

Customer support

We needed some help in configuring a temporary URL as a subdomain on the main DreamHost domain. Customer support was easily reachable via chat and able to help us clear the issue up quickly.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• DreamHost rated 4.4 / 5 by users when asked how happy they were with the value they’re getting for their money
• DreamHost’s user-friendliness ranked 4.2 / 5

A2 Hosting is a relatively new player for us when looking for the best WordPress hosting. The company has been making a name for themselves in the WordPress space lately thanks to their affordable prices and very good performance (compared to other similarly priced hosts).

The company has more than 10 years of experience in the hosting world, and seems to know a thing or two on how to deliver a high-quality product. Their WordPress web hosting offering is set on a couple of principles: being developer friendly, offering high security, good performance, and a WordPress-optimized environment.

WordPress installation

All WordPress hosting accounts with A2 Hosting come with WordPress preinstalled. You can also install new instances of WordPress through Softaculous’ one-click installer.

Customer support

A2 Hosting prides itself on giving you access to “24/7/365 Guru Crew Support.” They claim to hand-pick their support team and only work with the most knowledgeable technicians.

When contacting the support, you can use live chat, email or even phone. The agents don’t disappoint when it comes to basic WordPress knowledge and, based on our quick test, they are ready to recommend some solutions even if the question you have for them isn’t entirely hosting-related.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 7.87 overall by survey respondents 👍

InMotion offers a lot of hosting options, but we wanted to look into the ones that are optimized for WordPress specifically, so we went into the “WordPress hosting” section and selected the plan called Launch. This one is the most affordable.

The great thing about it is that you get SSD disk space without any additional fees (SSDs are known for their superior performance compared to the other hard disk technologies). Also, you can have 2 websites on this plan, and you get a free SSL certificate.

WordPress installation

Another surprise with InMotion is that you get WordPress preinstalled as part of your WP hosting package. All you need to do is tick the right checkbox during the checkout process. In other words, you don’t actually need to do handle WordPress installation on your own, it’s all being done automatically. Also, during install, you get to select your preferred “max speed zone.” There are two settings: east and west. Depending on which you choose, the site is going to be faster in some parts of the globe vs the others.

After everything is done, you’ll get the access details to your new WordPress dashboard, which is all that’s needed, honestly.

Customer support

Right after you sign up, you’ll realize that InMotion has a lot to offer in terms of support and helping you to launch your website. There are tens of different guides and tutorials on various hosting-related matters. There’s also a separate knowledge channel all dedicated to WordPress.

But that’s not all, the support chat is available 24/7. We’ve tested it by asking some domain-related questions regarding the temporary URL of the site. The person on the other end was able to solve those at first try. Really cool.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 8.00 overall by survey respondents 👍

We went for the Starter package here.

Signup with HostGator was straightforward and we were soon logged into a pretty traditional cPanel setup on the backend without incident.

WordPress installation

Installation was also painless using the built-in cPanel WordPress installer. We did find ourselves having to update themes post-install, but that was just a matter of a few clicks.

Customer support

Again, we reached out to customer support for assistance in setting up a temporary URL. Here we hit our first minor inconvenience with a wait time of eight minutes on chat. They weren’t quite as quick to point us in the right direction as previous WordPress hosting providers, but we got there in the end. (E.g. when comparing HostGator vs. Bluehost, the support chat is much easier to access with the latter.)

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 7.92 overall by survey respondents 👍
• HostGator was the third most popular host in the survey
• The most popular host in Brazil 🇧🇷
• 74% of users will extend their hosting subscription when it’s up for renewal

We went for the basic package here.

Despite their formerly less than stellar user interface reputation, signing up to GoDaddy went without a hitch.

This feeling continued on into the backend, which was a modern take on cPanel and intuitively laid out – the easiest one to navigate so far in fact.

WordPress installation

WordPress installation was a snap with the built-in installer.

Customer support

GoDaddy was the only WordPress hosting provider on our list not to support the provision of temporary URLs, so we were forced to set up a standard subdomain here.

Our initial attempt to contact support via chat was less than ideal, with wait times of over 40 minutes reported, so we hit the phones instead. (E.g. when comparing GoDaddy vs. Bluehost, the chat can be accessed much quicker with Bluehost.)

Support here was superb. Extremely friendly and professional, they talked us through the subdomain options and assisted in making changes on the account itself.

This continued on in subsequent chat support tickets that were required to clear up some minor DNS snafus that emerged on the registrar side.

Performance and uptime

Online reputation according to our hosting survey

• Rated 7.36 overall by survey respondents 👍
• The most popular host in the survey overall 🏆
• The most popular host in India 🇮🇳
• Second most popular host in Canada 🇨🇦
• Second most popular host in Australia 🇦🇺
• Second most popular host in South Africa 🇿🇦
• Second most popular host in Pakistan 🇵🇰
• Third most popular host in the UK 🇬🇧

GreenGeeks is an interesting alternative for those of us who consider themselves being environmentally-conscious. This WordPress hosting platform has been built with the principle of “maximum use” in mind, which means that the architecture makes it possible for no resources to be wasted anywhere.

Also, the company claims that for every amperage they pull from the grid, they re-invest three times that in the form of renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

On the WordPress side of things, GreenGeeks offers WordPress-specific plans at affordable prices, and with lots of features.

All of their servers use Solid State Drives (giving you better loading times), there’s customized caching technology, you get a free SSL certificate to use, and you can integrate your setup with Cloudflare. Here are all the details about GreenGeeks’ platform.

As a great added bonus, you also get a free domain name for a year with your setup.

WordPress installation

GreenGeeks gives you handy 1-click WordPress installs, so there’s not much you have to do by hand.

Apart from that, you also get automatic updates, which should make managing the site on an ongoing basis more hassle-free.

While setting up your account, you also get to choose from data centers in Phoenix, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Amsterdam.

Customer support

You can use three main support channels with GreenGeeks: email, phone, and chat. Probably the best option of the three is the live chat – available 24/7. The phone support is available during working hours.

GreenGeeks also gives you access to a knowledge base and a range of tutorials on their website.

Performance and uptime