WordPress Hosting Reviews - Finding the best WordPress Hosting Service

Posted by saurav.roy 20 Comments

This WordPress guide is a part of How to Use WordPress Series which helps beginners to learn about WordPress.

In last article of How to Use WordPress Series,we took Overview of WordPress and why anybody should choose WordPress,More precisely why Self hosted WordPress.

In this post we will discuss more about Self hosted WordPress and How to choose a perfect WordPress hosting package.

What is Self hosted WordPress ?

As we discussed in previous post,WordPress is merely a blogging software which can be installed on any web server. A self hosted WordPress is a term referred to installing WordPress blogging software on your own web server.

Well,Webservers are very costly and its very difficult to maintain,So everyone canot afford own web server.This is where Hosting companies comes into play.

Hosting companies establishes and maintains several web servers which can be bought (lease) based on monthly or yearly subscription.

Now you might ask how it helps to decrease the cost ? Well,You are not the only one who is going to use the web server,A single Web server will be shared by many bloggers like you.This type of hosting is referred as Shared Web Hosting.

Now you know what is Web Hosting,Lets discuss How to choose a perfect web hosting package for you.

WordPress Requirements

Every software has some hardware and software specifications which is ideal to run,Here is a couple of specifications to run WordPress

PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
MySQL version 5.0 or greater

If you do not understand, Dont worry. Most of the web hosts supports these requirements,So lets move on

Finding the best WordPress Hosting Service

Hosting is a most lucrative niche,Since its very easy to earn money through affiliate programs.So you need to do your ground work before going with any Hosting Provider.

The Hosting Provider and package should be choose based on certain criterias

Type of blog

Hosting should be chosen based on your blog type,They are

Hosting for Bloggers (Cheap but less reliable)
Small Business blogs and Website (Little Expensive but reliable and secure)
High Traffic blogs (Ver expensive and probably not for you (at least now))

Probably 99.999% of people falls under first two category,So lets discuss about these two.

Customer Support

Maintaining a blog is not the easiest job but also not the toughest job if you use WordPress.You might occasionally encounter certain problems,So its very important to look for good customer support.

Uptime

Uptime is one of the metric used to measure the reliability of the hosting service.If uptime is 99% then your host is down for 1% of the total time.

Most of the Web Hosting providers promise 99.99% uptime but you can’t trust that. So do research about the hosting provider before you purchase.But beware of spam websites out there,Which lure you and make money though affiliate marketing.

Hosting for Bloggers – Cheap Hosting

I was a novice blogger once.,So I know what it takes to spend money on Hosting and purchasing domain name.Most newbie bloggers take money from their pocket money but return of investment is not guaranteed.

So,Thats the reason for going with cheap web hosting which can be upgraded as your blog grows.

One of the motto of WPStuffs is to recommend products which I have tested and have experience using them,So most of the products I am going to recommend here are the products which I personally used.

HostGator

I have used couple of other hosting Iservices before switching to Hostgator and I never searched for alternative,even after a year of using Hostgator.Infact WPStuffs still running on Hostgator since its inception.Pingdom reports for WPStuffs states more than 99.99% uptime.

They have plan starting from $4 per month (hatching plan) but if you want to use multiple domains then go for Business Plan or Baby Plan.

[deal]You can also avail 25% on choosing any hosting package by using the coupon code WPSTUFFSOFFER[/deal]

Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the most popular WordPress hosting provider,Most of my friends and clients uses Bluehost.Bluehost was established before 15 years ago and still going very strong.

By spending as few as $4/month you can get free domain name(for one year),unlimited filestorage and one click WordPress installation feature. They also provide anytime money-back guarantee,Thats means you can get your money back at anytime if you are not satisfied with their service.

Checkout Bluehost for more details about their hosting package.

[deal]Signup for BlueHost – Cheap and Reliable WordPress WebHosting for Bloggers[/deal]

Hosting for Small business blog’s and Websites

Business blogs and websites need more security and reliability than a normal blog.Since the business website stands as a symbol for their brand.Websites are the new address to small business companies which brings lot of leads to their service or product.

That doesn’t mean that above hosting services are not reliable,We need different type of hosting solution when it comes to managing business blogs and websites.These type of hosting solution is called Managed WordPress Hosting.

There are plenty of advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting,Like

Daily Scheduled backups and simple restore option (No need of backupbuddy )
Managed Upgrades
Inbuilt CDN and caching
Scheduled Security scanning

But the downside is,It cost much higher than Shared Web Hosting.You can learn more about Managed WordPress Hosting here.

So,Lets discuss the top Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

WPEngine

If you got WPEngine Hosting package then you dont need to worry about anything…anything. From WordPress setup to taking daily backup,WPEngine will do it for you.You dont need to worry about website security,WPEngine will fix your WordPress blog if it got hacked..No compromise ever.

Google says they lose 20% of their traffic for each additional 100 milliseconds it takes a page to load.Now with WPEngine your blog will become incredibly fast with their inbuilt caching and CDN system.

Speciality of WPEngine is their Expert customer support.They will help you to get rid of any error with your WordPress blog,Not only sever related problems but also related to plugin recommandations,installations etc.

[deal] Signup for WPEngine Hosting – Little expensive choice but take my word “It Worth every penny you spend” [/deal]

Synthesis by Copyblogger Media

Synthesis Managed WordPress Hosting is one of the closest competitor to WPEngine.Founded by the company behind StudioPress (Genesis Framework) and Copyblogger.

Their service and pricing scheme is same as of WPEngine so lets discuss about some of their unique features.

You will get a uptime monitor called Site Sensor,It can be used to get instant notifications about your website status.

They have plenty of backup options,They take backup everyday and send it the copy to different data locations ensuring no data loss even if entire server fails.User can also send backups to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

[deal] Get Synthesis Hosting account here if you are serious about your business [/deal]

Whats next ?

Now you got your own domain name and web hosting,Whats next ?

WordPress Installation..What else !!!

If you opted for Managed WordPress Hosting providers like WPEngine or Synthesis,then you dont need to install WordPress by yourself.You can skip the next guide but I strongly recommend you to know how to install WordPress.

This WordPress guide is a part of How to Use WordPress Series which helps beginners to learn about WordPress.

Stuffs You might like :

Comments

Michael Huber says

November 13, 2014 at 2:29 am

Why are some WordPress Hosting so expensive?
Is there really such a difference between something like Websynthesis.com ($47) Pagely.com (24$) or WpEngine (29$) and something like MyWoHo.com (1$) or Bluehost.com (3.5$)?

Or is the reason why most blogs list only companies like websynthesis, pagely or wpengine the fact that this companies earn 30-40 times what others earn and that they can spend this money in advertising?

Reply
Dave says

May 18, 2014 at 11:06 am

Best really is very relative. I used to go with the bigger sites in the past, but none of them really offered any decent support. But I’ve been using HostAwesome for a little while now, and even though they’re a relatively newer WP Host, the service and support could not be more fantastic. In the end, I believe that quality of support really trumps most of the other things, and that everyone should be looking at that first.

Reply
Shiv Saroya says

December 5, 2013 at 1:23 pm

I think one more point to consider would be whether the host would do all the initial wordpress installations. This changes the whole equation as a user need not bother about the hard stuff (installing the blog, setting up email ids etc).

Reply
Kamran says

November 14, 2013 at 11:08 am

Awesome! thanks for this post. it really helped. 🙂
Kamran recently posted…Optimum settings for W3 Total Cache v0.9.3 | Go PRO

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Self-Hosted Wordpress says

August 5, 2013 at 9:53 am

You need a web hosting provider which specializes in WordPress and also has a good reputation for their service and their technical support. Thanks for sharing valuable info and keep posting more info…

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sleevajackson says

August 1, 2013 at 6:02 pm

For any type of websites hosting services are the most important things, really maintains the word press sites and blogs are not that much of easy, so cheap and best hosting services make your work as more easier.

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Gurwinder Singh Bhinder says

June 23, 2013 at 9:54 pm

Hi,
That was a great list of WordPress hosts. I usually recommend everyone to go with Bluehost or Hostgator and I think i don’t need to tell the reason for the same.
Gurwinder Singh Bhinder recently posted…External Hard Disk Not Recognized – How to Fix This Error?

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Raj says

May 29, 2013 at 11:10 am

Well I have tried HostGator, BlueHost & HostMonster (FYI all from the same home company) and but I feel that the service levels of HG are downgrading these days and I always rely on BlueHost for my production sites.. HM is as promising as BH..
Raj recently posted…BlueHost Review

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- Craig Grella says
  
  June 4, 2013 at 11:21 am
  
  I am a part of a few active businesses that use accounts at hostgator, blue host, godaddy, and even a few other lesser known hosts. I was on hold at hostgator for nearly an hour before they picked up yesterday. I spent that same amount of time today transferring my sites off hostgator. An hour on hold? not in this day and age.
  
  In response to eshan, blue host does not have a vps offering (at least not yet, maybe a few weeks or months out still. I spoke with them about this in february of this year and they said just a few more weeks – so who knows), and while their support is good among the hosts in that tier, i certainly wouldn’t call it a managed product. Nor is hostgator or dream host.
  Craig Grella recently posted…Can Social Media Really Make a Difference in the Life of a Nonprofit?
  
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Vishnu says

May 27, 2013 at 12:28 pm

Now a Days WordPress Bloggers use SUPER Cache PLUGIN To reduce down time of blog and also to reduce load on wordpress , many hosting company recommend this .Chosing a good host is a very hard but 10-20 Blogger together can own a Server and run wordpress on there own server .
Vishnu recently posted…5 Ways to Make Home-Based Job Productive

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Karen Walters says

May 25, 2013 at 10:39 am

Web hosting is one of the key features in running a website. As a beginner, sometimes the wrong decision can come back to haunt you in the future. Your guide helps beginner a lot about to choose best website hosting service among all available in the market.
Great job and keep it up !!!
Karen Walters recently posted…10 divine subject line secrets – A sure shot ladder to heaven!

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karthik says

May 23, 2013 at 2:42 pm

I know blue host is the best but they are a bit expensive too. I’m a godaddy user all the way and haven’t had a single problem till now. Also their support is excellent. But I still don’t know why its underrated!!
karthik recently posted…How to Choose a Good Portable Hard Drive

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Ehsan says

May 23, 2013 at 1:03 pm

Bluehost is the best hosting for all WordPress bloggers, I’ve used them and have great experience. There are a lot of things to consider before going with a host, but Bluehost has all the features that you could think of.

Thanks for the reviews, Vivek. You’re doing a darn good job here at WPStuffs.

Reply
Vijesh says

May 20, 2013 at 8:51 am

Hey Vivek,
Nice in depth information on hosting, all service providers you mentioned are awesome may be dreamhost should also have been included in the list.
Vijesh recently posted…Top 30 Indian Blogs based on Alexa Ranking

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- Vivek R says
  
  May 20, 2013 at 11:25 am
  
  Thanks for the suggestion vijesh,I too heard that Dreamhost is one of the best Hosting provider.Whats your experience with Bigrock ? Did you experienced any problem with them ?
  
  Reply
  - Vijesh says
    
    May 20, 2013 at 11:29 am
    
    For me BigRock is fine till date 99% up time only once or twice in a year they go down and that too not for long. They will mention via a mail when they go for maintenance and it won’t be more than 15 min so 99% up time is for sure.
    
    Only once they had gone down 12 hours as they were shifting their company to a new address and did not affect much as they did all that during night time during starting days when I bought hosting.
    Vijesh recently posted…Top 30 Indian Blogs based on Alexa Ranking
    
    Reply
Eric T. Benoit says

May 20, 2013 at 6:49 am

I use hostgator myself and LOVE it. The customer service (on the rare occasions I’ve needed to contact them) is the best I’ve seen.
Eric T. Benoit recently posted…Remember The Sabbath Day

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- Vivek R says
  
  May 20, 2013 at 11:23 am
  
  Yes indeed..My favorite till now but heard that EIG the company behind Bluehost,Fatcow and iPage bought Hostgator as well.
  
  Reply
Karnal Singh says

May 20, 2013 at 12:27 am

I am using a local hosting service from Delhi….I have heard these big names in hosting but Luckily I never had problems with the local hosting service provider though most of the people complain about hosting services by small companies….
Karnal Singh recently posted…Staff Nurse Vacancy in MPPEB Bhopal 2013

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