Clients often ask for our recommendation when buying web hosting for WordPress websites. Here, developer Robin Scott gives guidance on choosing the right home for your WP site.
The order and post, below, was amended on 2 August 2022.
The below will be updated in future as recommendations are updated.
Table of Contents
Best Hosts for WordPress
Here’s a list in order of my personal preference for hosting WordPress.
Cloudways – Best Value for Performance
I’ve been recommending Cloudways as a great all around managed hosting provider to WordPress clients for some time, and can say with absolute certainty that I have been able to rank my personal website as “the fastest website in the world” at position number one on Google, hosting on Cloudways, with an optimal setup – try searching just “fastest website” and you’ll find that page.
I used to urge caution about the support at Cloudways, which, while improved, is often not as good as other – significantly more expensive – WordPress hosts. If you really use and need support (many developers and agencies really do not – as they can manage their own stack) then perhaps scroll down to more user friendly services.
There’s a 3 day free trial too – and with our code SILICONDALES20 you can get 20% off your first invoice, which is a WP site hosted on one of Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS or Google Cloud Platform. Cloudways provide a panel, and a pre-config, in front of those services, allowing you to concentrate on installing and running your WordPress website, rather than working as a systems administrator as well as your million other jobs!!
Importantly, Cloudways offer daily offsite backups, and the backup and restore options live within their panel, as well as SFTP, Varnish configuration, and many other goodies (WP-CLI as standard, SSH available, git connectivity and more) which will keep even the most technical of developers more than happy.
It saves you time – money – and also costs about the same as dealing direct for the supported cloud hosting services – and brings WordPress one-click installs, cloning and migration tools, too.
Click here to visit Cloudways and signup now.
If you think you’d need support and a panel, I would go with Kinsta. It’s a bit more expensive. I would say, though, you get what you pay for with Kinsta.
For most small and medium sized businesses, particularly those with a lower technical comfort level, if you can afford $100 per month for hosting in year one, then take the Kinsta Business 1 plan and you won’t regret it.
Kinsta is hosted on Google’s Cloud Platform with a few configurations that they manage almost completely (infrastructure wise) – so they are hands on, and for the non-technical, this may be a good thing indeed.
Kinsta’s stack is impressive, and can perform really well.
We fully rate WP Engine as a WordPress host. If you have a standard WP site, go there in a heartbeat: the technical stack is reasonably strong, and the support there is excellent.
Want Help Setting it up and Migrating?
Silicon Dales have helped hundreds of WP sites find the right host. Contact us for consultancy or a migration.
Do your own research… or leave a comment
At the end of the day, do your own research, and ask advice from experts… leave a comment below if you’re undecided.