WordPress Website Hosting: The Best (and Worst) Options Reviewed

In this post

• What is WordPress website hosting?
• Why is WordPress website hosting important?
• What are the best WordPress hosting providers?
• Why to avoid "budget" WordPress hosting

What is WordPress website hosting?

Website hosting refers to the process of storing and making a website accessible to users on the internet. When you create a website, it consists of various files, including HTML, CSS, images, videos, and other media. These files need to be stored on a server, which is a powerful computer connected to the internet, capable of handling requests from users and delivering website content to their browsers.

Website hosting involves renting server space from a hosting provider, who operates and maintains the servers. The hosting provider stores your website files on their servers and ensures they are accessible to anyone who visits your website by assigning a unique address, known as an IP address, to your site. This IP address allows users to access your website by typing in your domain name (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com) into their browser.

Website hosting has several important components:

1. Server Infrastructure: Hosting providers maintain robust server infrastructure, including powerful computers, network connections, and data centers. These servers are designed to handle the high demands of website traffic, ensuring fast loading times and reliable website performance.
2. Storage and Bandwidth: Hosting plans come with allocated storage space to store your website files, including HTML, CSS, images, and other media. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from the server to users' browsers when they access your website. Hosting providers offer different storage and bandwidth options based on your website's needs and anticipated traffic.
3. Domain Name: A domain name is your website's address on the internet (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com). You can either register a new domain or transfer an existing one to your hosting provider. The hosting provider associates your domain name with the IP address of the server where your website files are stored, allowing users to access your site by typing in the domain name.
4. Control Panel: Hosting providers often provide a control panel, such as cPanel or a custom interface, to manage various aspects of your hosting account. The control panel allows you to set up email accounts, manage databases, install applications (e.g., content management systems like WordPress), and perform other administrative tasks related to your website.
5. Security and Backup: Hosting providers implement security measures to protect your website from cyber threats, including firewalls, malware scanning, and SSL certificates for secure data transmission. Regular backups of your website files are essential to safeguard against data loss and allow for easy restoration in case of emergencies.

Different types of hosting options are available, including shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), dedicated servers, and cloud hosting. Each option offers varying levels of server resources, performance, and control, catering to different website requirements and budgets.

Why is WordPress website hosting important?

It's a digital world we're all living in and having a strong online presence is paramount for businesses and individuals alike. A well-designed and engaging website serves as the gateway to the online world, connecting you with your target audience and driving growth. However, amidst all the elements that contribute to a successful website, one aspect often underestimated or overlooked is the importance of quality website hosting. In this section, we will explore why investing in reliable hosting services is essential for unleashing the full potential of your online presence.

Reliable Performance and Reliability

When it comes to websites, performance is everything. Slow-loading pages can drive away potential visitors and customers, resulting in missed opportunities and revenue loss. Quality website hosting ensures your site is hosted on powerful servers with ample resources, enabling faster loading times, smooth navigation, and an overall seamless user experience. Additionally, reputable hosting providers employ redundancy measures, including backup systems and data centers, ensuring your website remains online even in the face of hardware failures or unforeseen circumstances.

Enhanced Security

Online security is a critical concern in today's digital landscape, where cyber threats continue to evolve. A quality website hosting provider employs robust security measures to protect your website from malicious attacks, hacking attempts, and data breaches. They offer features like firewalls, regular security updates, malware scanning, and SSL certificates to encrypt data transmission, safeguarding both your website and your visitors' sensitive information. By partnering with a reliable hosting provider, you can focus on your core business without worrying about compromising your site's security.

Scalability and Flexibility

As your online presence grows, your website's demands may change. Quality website hosting allows for seamless scalability, providing the infrastructure and resources needed to accommodate increasing traffic, data storage, and complex functionalities. With flexible hosting plans, you can easily upgrade or downgrade your hosting resources based on your evolving needs, ensuring your website remains optimized for performance and cost-effectiveness. This scalability empowers your online presence to adapt to the demands of your business and accommodate future growth effortlessly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Benefits

Search engines prioritize websites with faster loading times and consistent availability. By choosing a quality hosting provider, you can positively impact your website's search engine rankings. Improved website performance, uptime, and security contribute to better SEO, enhancing your visibility and attracting more organic traffic. A reliable hosting service ensures that your website is always accessible, thereby reducing downtime and minimizing the risk of search engine penalties or negative user experiences.

Professionalism and Trust

Your website is often the first point of contact between you and your potential customers. Investing in quality website hosting reinforces your professionalism and instills trust in your audience. A website that loads quickly, functions flawlessly, and remains secure conveys reliability and credibility. Conversely, a poorly hosted site can undermine your reputation and lead to missed opportunities. By prioritizing the quality of your hosting, you demonstrate a commitment to providing a positive user experience and building strong customer relationships.

What are the best WordPress hosting options?

Here at Mithril Media, we've been building WordPress websites for a long time. We've been around the block with dozens of different hosting providers and we've narrowed down our preferred list of providers to 3 specific options. Sure, there are a ton of budget hosting options our there, but when it comes to website hosting, the cheapest options are prime examples of "you pay for what you get". And even so, better, more reliable options are available at price points that won't break the bank either. Here's a breakdown of our 3 favorite hosting providers for WordPress.

SiteGround

SiteGround is the preferred hosting partner for Mithril Media. We host the majority of our clients websites with them and have come to love their service. SiteGround is known for its exceptional performance, reliability, and excellent customer support. Here are some of the main reasons we love working with SiteGround:

Outstanding Performance

SiteGround invests in cutting-edge technology and infrastructure to deliver fast loading times and optimal website performance. They utilize SSD storage, NGINX web server technology, and advanced caching mechanisms, all contributing to faster page rendering and an enhanced user experience.

Robust Security Measures

SiteGround takes security seriously and implements a range of measures to protect websites from threats. They offer account isolation, proactive server monitoring, automated backups, and free SSL certificates. Regular software updates also address any vulnerabilities, ensuring website security is maintained. The SiteGround Security plugin takes it a step further by offering additional options to secure your WordPress website such as disabling the file editor and the ability to hide your WordPress version from your website.

Exceptional Customer Support

We really can't say enough good things about the support team at SiteGround. After many bad experiences with long wait times, inaccurate answers and unresolved questions that we've dealt with at other providers, the white-glove support that SiteGround provides their customers is really second to none. Their support team consists of knowledgeable and friendly experts who are available 24/7 through various channels, including live chat, phone, and ticketing system. They are known for their quick response times and efficient resolution of hosting-related issues. They also offer an extensive list of self-help tools in their tutorials and documentation.

User-Friendly Interface

SiteGround provides a user-friendly control panel (cPanel) that simplifies website management tasks. It offers intuitive tools for domain management, email setup, website backups, and more, making it suitable for both beginners and advanced users.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers a flexible and scalable solution for hosting websites, leveraging technology from top server infrastructure providers. Here's why Cloudways is a great option for your WordPress hosting needs:

Choice of Cloud Providers

Cloudways allows you to host your website on top cloud infrastructure providers like AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and more. This gives you the flexibility to choose the cloud platform that best suits your specific needs in terms of performance, pricing, and geographic location.

Scalability and Performance

Cloudways enables seamless scalability, allowing you to easily allocate resources as your website grows. Their server infrastructure is optimized for speed and performance, and they offer advanced caching mechanisms, SSD storage, and CDN integration for faster page load times.

Simplified Server Management

Cloudways offers a user-friendly interface and control panel that simplifies server management tasks. You can easily manage server settings, install applications (including popular CMS platforms like WordPress), and monitor server performance all from a single dashboard.

Developer-Friendly Features

Cloudways provides features like staging environments, easy deployment workflows, Git integration, and SSH access, making it a popular choice for developers and agencies. These features enhance collaboration, version control, and streamlined development processes.

WP Engine

WP Engine specializes in managed WordPress hosting, offering a hosting environment optimized specifically for WordPress sites. Here's why WP Engine is another option worth considering:

WordPress Optimization

WP Engine's infrastructure is tailored for WordPress, providing a highly optimized hosting environment. Their server architecture, caching mechanisms, and CDN integration are all optimized for WordPress, resulting in faster page load times and improved performance.

Enhanced Security

WP Engine places a strong emphasis on security and offers advanced security measures to protect WordPress sites. They provide daily backups, malware scanning, firewalls, and real-time threat detection to ensure website security and protect against common cyber threats.

Developer-Friendly Environment

WP Engine offers developer-focused features like easy staging environments, Git integration, version control, and command-line access. These features facilitate efficient development workflows, collaboration, and seamless deployment of WordPress sites.

Excellent Support and Resources

WP Engine provides exceptional customer support, with a team of WordPress experts available 24/7. They also offer a vast knowledge base and documentation, making it easy to manage your website.

Why to avoid "budget" hosting options

There are a ton of options out there for hosting a website that may seem less expensive on the surface. However, when factoring in the overall experience with these hosting providers, the costs can add up quick. Let's take a look at why you should avoid budget hosting options and some of the companies that fit that bill.

Which hosting options should I avoid?

While personal experiences can vary, there are a handful of hosting providers that we always recommend our clients stay away from. Note that these are our opinions based on personal experiences and interactions with each of these providers and should be treated as such.

• GoDaddy
• Bluehost
• HostMonster
• HostGator

In addition to these providers above, any hosting company that focuses primarily on the low-cost of their services is usually one to avoid. This is a tell-tale sign of hidden expenses, poor customer support and unreliable hosting infrastructure. Here are some of the areas that tend to suffer with these budget hosting companies.

Performance and Reliability

Budget hosting options are known for slow load times and server crashes, which negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings. These performance issues can result from overcrowded servers and limited resources allocated to each user. One of the reasons "budget" hosting is so inexpensive is because the servers are packed with as many websites as they can fit which impact performance for all of the sites on that server.

Upselling & Hidden Fees

While budget options might seem less expensive on the surface, there are almost always an array of hidden fees under the surface. Take for example GoDaddy's hosting service which requires you to pay annually for an SSL certificate. With more reliable hosting options such as SiteGround, an SSL certificate is included for free via LetsEncrypt and is also incredibly easy to install.

In addition to the fixed costs of additional features, the time spent dealing with unreliable resources or downed websites often proves to be more costly in the long-run.

Poor Customer Support

When it comes to customer support, nothing is more frustrating than waiting for an extended period of time, only to be passed from rep to rep without your questions answered or problems solved. Every experience we have ever had with the support teams at a budget hosting provider fit this bill. As the website owner, reaching out to a support team typically means that something is wrong with the website and needs to be fixed. The longer that problem goes unsolved, the more money your business could be losing. We encourage our clients to make quality customer support a table-stakes requirement for any hosting provider they choose.

In Summary

Choosing the right hosting provider for your WordPress website is something that should be given a fair amount of thought to ensure you aren't creating more headache for yourself down the road. While budget options can seem great on the surface, the hidden fees and unreliable infrastructure is not a headache any business owner wants to deal with. Your website should be an asset for your business, not a liability, and choosing the right hosting provider can often be the difference between the two.

If you have questions about choosing the right hosting provider for your next project, feel free to drop us a line!