Are you looking for the fastest WordPress hosting for your website?
It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a new business or if you already have one that’s been active for some time, speed is one of the key elements to ensuring that your site can grow and stay healthy. Not to mention that it will also keep visitors from leaving your site out of frustration. Because let’s face it, nobody wants to sit around for ten seconds waiting for a page to load.
However, looking for the right fastest web hosting can be a little tricky because not every host is the same. Reading through all of their plans might leave you with your head spinning by the time you’re done. Don’t worry though, we’re going to make sense of all the fine details, to make it easy for you to choose the fastest hosting provider that’s right for you and your business.
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Types of WordPress hosting
The decision of what type of hosting to select will depend on your personal requirements regarding how much work you want to be doing with your server and your site later on.
If you’re just starting out and want to see how owning a WordPress site will work for you, you can experiment with free hosts or shared hosting packages (it’s where you share the hosting space with other customers; companies like InMotion or Bluehost will give you that).
For professionals and sites that have built a larger audience, managed hosting and VPS will be the answer (with WP Engine, Cloudways, or Flywheel for example). They are more pricey, but they come with a lot of features and benefits. Chief of which is that you don’t have to deal with the technical side yourself.
The fastest WordPress hosting companies you should look into
There are many hosting companies to choose from, and each of them provides slightly different services and features. We’ve made a selection of some of the more interesting ones, especially having the main goal in mind – finding the fastest WordPress hosting.
The companies here are among the fastest in the field, and they alternate from expensive to cheap, depending on your budget. They offer reliable customer support and assistance, good security, and safe backups.
1. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)
SiteGround is a great choice when you’re looking for fastest WordPress hosting around (and also one of the few platforms recommended by WordPress.org).
They offer three main plans spanning from $2.99, $4.99, to $7.99 a month, which make it a very affordable solution.
As part of the most basic plan, you get 10GB of disk space, a free domain, 24/7 support, free daily backups, a free SSL certificate, and a free CDN as well. The plan comes with everything you’d expect from a reliable, fast hosting service.
Then, there are some additional features as part of the other two plans (e.g. priority support, WordPress staging capability, and more). On top of that, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. Another perk that makes SiteGround a good choice when looking for the fastest WordPress hosting is their custom SG Optimizer plugin that lets you take advantage of SiteGround’s caching algorithms (the plugin comes included with your hosting plan).
| East Coast, USA: 1.11s | West Coast, USA: 1.69s |
| London: 0.35s ⭐ | Paris: 0.41s ⭐ |
| Mumbai, India: 1.46s | Sydney: 2.81s |
2. Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
This is a company specialized in professional shared hosting. It’s an official WordPress approved-hosting provider. They provide one-click installation, automatic backups, non-stop support.
Their offer starts from $2.75 a month (provided that you’re willing to sign up for a 36-month contract), with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
This WordPress hosting service is a good choice for small businesses and bloggers.
| East Coast, USA: 1.55s | West Coast, USA: 1s |
| London: 1.68s | Paris: 1.83s |
| Mumbai, India: 2.72s | Sydney: 2.26s |
3. WP Engine (wpengine.com)
A little bit more expensive than some of the other managed WordPress hosting plans, but it’s worth it.
They provide good services, super-fast servers, great technical and customer support. Their hosting infrastructure is especially created to ensure your WordPress site runs fast and smooth.
The plans start at $20.00 a month and there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee.
As part of this plan, you get 10GB of local storage, a free SSL certificate, a free CDN, one-click staging site setup, daily and on-demand backups, and more.
Monthly visitors are capped at 25,000, but this should be more than enough for a new website. If you ever do outgrow that, you can always upgrade to the next hosting plan tier, which supports up to three websites, and 75,000 monthly visitors.
| East Coast, USA: 1.4s | West Coast, USA: 0.92s ⭐ |
| London: 1.64s | Paris: 1.81s |
| Mumbai, India: 2.72s | Sydney: 1.89s |
4. Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)
With a platform-as-a-service model, Cloudways is a user-friendly solution for managed cloud hosting.
In short, you get the heavy duty hosting firepower (read: really fast hosting) offered by cloud hosting, combined with the guerilla-strength service level offered by managed hosting.
Hosting options are offered at varying price points, but because they are all cloud hosting providers, you won’t need to worry about speed.
Plus, if your website traffic grows, you can always scale up later. The prices are correlated with the cloud hosting provider you choose, and start at $11.00 to $12.00 per month when you go with DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode. The other two options – AWS and Google Cloud – start at $36.51 per month and $33.18 per month respectively. These prices are all inclusive and you won’t have to pay any additional cloud hosting charges.
Here’s the best part: For being a dedicated CodeinWp reader, you’ll get a 25% discount for your first three months. Simply use coupon code “CODEINWP” at checkout.
| East Coast, USA: 0.88s ⭐ | West Coast, USA: 1.47s |
| London: 0.29s ⭐ | Paris: 0.35s ⭐ |
| Mumbai, India: 1.3s | Sydney: 2.6s |
5. Kinsta (www.kinsta.com)
Some hosting providers do their best to please everybody. In contrast, Kinsta does not want to be known as the jack-of-all-trades of the hosting world. It is hyper-focused on offering a single set of plans, and each and every one of them is targeted towards WordPress users.
Similar to Cloudways, Kinsta’s hosting plans are also fully managed and also cloud-based. Unlike Cloudways though, Kinsta does not offer choices for its cloud servers.
Instead, all its hosting plans are powered by the premium tier of the Google Cloud Platform. This is the same infrastructure that Google uses to support its own products. Needless to say, if you’re looking for fast WordPress hosting, then Kinsta will not disappoint you.
| East Coast, USA: 0.61s ⭐ | West Coast, USA: 1.28s |
| London: 1.08s | Paris: 1.2s |
| Mumbai, India: 2.89s | Sydney: 2.28s |
6. Pagely (www.pagely.com)
A bit more pricey than the other solutions on this list, but it does give you a lot in return for your investment (it’s a managed hosting plan).
The entry level performance plan will set you back $499 per month but as the saying goes – “you get what you pay for.”. Just to name a few perks that come with it: you get WordPress pre-installed, auto-updates for your WordPress and plugins, auto backups, free CDN, and 24/7 US+UK-based support (important!).
Pagely has been known for their WordPress-optimized hosting plans and basically giving you the fastest WordPress hosting possible, so if you’re looking for something that gives you a hassle-free experience, this might be the provider for you. Plus, you also get to launch up to 35 websites on a single plan, and you get 200GB of bandwidth with no cap on monthly traffic.
7. Flywheel (www.getflywheel.com)
This is a WordPress hosting built for designers and agencies, but it is also friendly for less advanced folks who want to develop their websites.
Starting at $13.00 per month, Flywheel provides a good balance between pricing and performance. You’re capped at 5,000 monthly visitors on that entry-level plan, which makes it adequate if you’re just starting a blog, but once you start getting some heavier blog traffic, then you’ll want to upgrade to the next tier.
That one will set you back $25.00 monthly, but you’ll be able to handle five times as many visitors every month, at 25,000.
On the whole, Flywheel provides great speed, security, customer collaboration, and safe backup support.
| East Coast, USA: 0.91s ⭐ | West Coast, USA: 0.35s ⭐ |
| London: 0.35s ⭐ | Paris: 5.64s |
| Mumbai, India: 0.39s ⭐ | Sydney: 0.42s ⭐ |
8. InMotion Hosting (www.inmotionhosting.com)
One of the most popular shared hosts for WordPress, InMotion comes with an efficient price-features ratio.
The first plan starts at only $2.29 per month, which is one of the cheapest offers on the market. What’s in it for you? Unlimited bandwidth, two websites on one account, ten email accounts, free lifetime SSL certificate, and free site migration. And one more awesome thing: it comes with WordPress pre-installed, so you won’t need to install it separately.
| East Coast, USA: 0.52s ⭐ | West Coast, USA: 1.12s |
| London: 1.32s | Paris: 1.67s |
| Mumbai, India: 3.02s | Sydney: 3.97s |
9. WPXHosting (www.wpxhosting.com)
This is what you call fast WordPress hosting, with great support and good page loading times.
Power and speed are the two most important pillars of their company, and they certainly deliver on both fronts.
WPXHosting provides a one-click WordPress installation, a free CDN, enhanced security, and good customer support.
The prices start at $20.83 a month (if you pay up front for the year). The offer lets you build five websites, get 200GB of bandwidth and a 15GB storage limit (all disks are SSD, which is huge for site speed). Plus they throw in a complimentary site speed optimization to improve your Google Core Web Vitals scores.
10. HostGator (www.hostgator.com)
Another shared WordPress hosting, which is one of the biggest online hosting companies out there.
It offers some of the lowest prices you’ll find, starting at $3.75 a month (on a 36-month contract). You can install your site in just one click. Fits best people who want to start their first business site.
If you need more, HostGator offers shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated server packages for both beginners and professionals at different price points.
| East Coast, USA: 0.14s ⭐ | West Coast, USA: 0.14s ⭐ |
| London: 0.11s ⭐ | Paris: 0.11s ⭐ |
| Mumbai, India: 0.13s ⭐ | Sydney: 0.11s ⭐ |
Why is speed important?
The fastest WordPress hosting will help you organize and develop your content in an easy way. A slow host not only slows down the page load for the visitors, but can slow the admin panel too. This will make your work harder and more time-consuming.
However, most importantly, a fast hosting will make your visitors feel comfortable when they try to access your site and interact with it in some way (like commenting or trying to click your social media buttons). A website that fails to load fast will cause them to go away.
There’s also one more issue that’s not that apparent at first glance when it comes to the fastest WordPress hosting. Mainly, even if your current web host is perfectly capable of handling your average traffic numbers, what happens if you hit a really popular day? As it turns out, not all hosting plans can handle that.
Visitors are … what’s the word … moody. They just won’t spend their day waiting for a website that barely moves. Many of them won’t come back again if you don’t offer them some basic comfortable browsing experience.
Need proof?
Keep reading.
Page load time and mobile bounce rate
According to a 2017 study done by Google, as page load time goes from one second to ten seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing from your site increases by 123%.
One. Hundred. Twenty-Three. Percent.
That’s not a little bit.
As tight as that window of one to ten seconds is, even at lower increments, the numbers were still significant.
- From one second to six seconds, the bounce rate went up by 106%.
- From one second to five seconds, by 90%.
- From one second to three seconds, by 32%.
Lowering bounce rates is important for any type of website, but if you run an online store or some other type of business where you want your visitors to take action, then page load speed is even more crucial.
We’ve got hard data to share with you on that as well.
Page load time and conversion rate
A 2022 study conducted by Portent looked at just over 100 million page views across 20 B2B and B2C sites for conversion data and how page load speed affected it. The study was done over the course of 30 days, and captured 5.6 million sessions. Six of the sites were B2C e-commerce, and the other 14 were B2B lead generation.
For the B2B lead generation websites, the study found that:
The difference in conversion rate between extremely fast sites and modestly quick sites was significant. A site that loaded in one second had a conversion rate three times higher than a site that loaded in five seconds.
For the B2C e-commerce websites, the study found that:
The difference in conversion rate between extremely fast e-commerce sites and modestly quick ones, was almost as strong as it was for their lead generation counterparts. A site that loaded in one second had a conversion rate two and a half times higher than a site that loaded in five seconds.
There is something obvious we can deduce from all of this:
Whoever first came up with that saying “every second counts” must’ve clearly been thinking about website hosting speed because it couldn’t be more applicable. The role of site speed is huge in business terms and can have a significant impact on a website’s success.
You may also be interested in:
- AWS WordPress Hosting: Full Tutorial and Best Options in 2023
- Best Divi Hosting: 4 Top Web Hosts Optimized for Divi Sites
- Kinsta Review: Our Honest Assessment of Kinsta WordPress Hosting After 5 Years
Looking for the fastest WordPress hosting – factors to consider
There are a couple of important factors that you need to be aware of when looking for the right host:
The size of your current audience
The size of your audience is the first thing you should look into when searching for the fastest WordPress hosting.
It is important to know how many visitors your host can serve – and whether it’s going to be able to handle your growth.
With the standard hosting packages, every client has a certain space allocated on the server. Even if the host says that the space is “unlimited,” this is not exactly the case, which you will quickly find out if you read the fine print under the user’s agreement.
Inevitably, a huge spike in traffic will slow down your website if it’s run on a shared hosting plan. And if the spike is big enough, at some point, your site will go down completely.
Before choosing a web host, browse some online forums and reach out to the web host’s support as well. Try to look for information regarding the traffic numbers that the host can handle realistically.
The server location
This is something that’s often overlooked. But in general, to make sure that your webhost will be fast for your audience, you should pick a server that’s actually close to your audience’s geographical location.
In other words, don’t host your site on the other side of the globe from your audience just because it’s cheaper.
For additional region-specific hosting guidance, feel free to check out some of our posts below:
- 5+ Best UK WordPress Hosting Options Compared 🇬🇧
- 6 Best WordPress Hosting Services in Australia 🇦🇺
- Best WordPress Hosting India: 5 Top Hosts Compared 🇮🇳
How to choose the fastest WordPress hosting for you:
Here’s the step-by-step for selecting a hosting package that’s going to be fast for you and your audience:
- ✅ Select one of the companies
- Go through the companies listed above and get familiar with what they provide. Take note of every interesting detail about their offerings. This is where your budget comes into play.
- ✅ Check their server location to see if it fits yours
- After you select a company, you should check their available server locations. That means you have to verify if it’s relatively close to your audience’s location. The closer, the better. This aspect is important, because it gives you better performance for the same investment. Some companies show their server locations during the sign up process, others need to be contacted directly about this.
- ✅ Choose a plan
- After you decide which company is closer and also serves all your needs, you have to choose one of the plans they’re offering. The plan you need is the one that fits best your budget, your audience and your goals.
| Price / month | Number of sites | Monthly visitors | Disk space | Av. load time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGround | $2.99 | 1 | 10,000 | 10GB | 1.4s US | 0.38s EU |
| Bluehost | $2.75 | 1 | unmetered | 10GB | 1.28s US | 1.76s EU |
| WP Engine | $20 | 1 | 25,000 | 10GB | 1.16s US | 1.73s EU |
| Cloudways | $11.00 | unlimited* | unmetered | 25GB | 1.4s US | 0.38s EU |
| Kinsta | $24.00 | 1 | 25,000 | 10GB | 0.95s US | 1.14s EU |
| InMotion | $2.99 | 2 | unmetered | 100GB | 0.82s US | 1.5s EU |
| Pagely | $499 | 35 | unmetered | 50GB | n/a |
| Flywheel | $13.00 | 1 | 5,000 | 5GB | 0.63s US | 3s EU |
| WPX Hosting | $20.83 | 5 | unmetered | 15GB | n/a |
| HostGator | $3.75 | 1 | unmetered | unlimited** | 0.14s US | 0.11s EU |
**Cannot exceed 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds.
*Unlimited, but with recommendations on how to set up multi-site operations based on their type or size. For big sites, Cloudways recommends deploying them on their own servers. For smaller sites, they suggest grouping them by type (e.g. WordPress) and deploying groups of max 10 sites on a single server.
Conclusion
There’s plenty of hosting companies that can serve everyone’s needs and budgets. But this maybe makes selecting the fastest WordPress hosting for your site even tougher.
It’s important to know your business and your goals very well to be able to select the right company. Apart from that, there are also a lot of tools and services – free and premium – that can further improve your site and make it work even more smoothly.
Right now, the absolute fastest WordPress hosting providers on this list are WP Engine and Cloudways. This is based purely on the maximum fastest load time results, but keep in mind that your location is an important factor in this as well. WP Engine may have scored the fastest load time, but it was specifically in their West Coast, USA service area. If your business is located in London, then you’d want to consider Cloudways, which performed better there.
Also, although we do not have the load time results for Pagely, we can probably safely assume that with the resources available at their disposal, their speed times probably aren’t too shameful either.
That’s it for our view on the fastest WordPress hosting providers on the market. Feel free to share your suggestions and opinions with us! Tell us how your web host is performing in terms of speed. Is there a company that you would (or wouldn’t) recommend to others?
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Original draft written by Adelina Tuca and Karol K. Layout and presentation by Karol K.
* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a small commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no additional cost on your part.
