A room full of computer servers

Best website hosting for WordPress in 2022

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Arguably the most important part of every website is the web hosting that makes it all possible.

I mean, at the end of the day, that’s where everything happens. The web host houses all of your files and databases that make the website run. And if there’s an issue with the web host, your website is going to run into a lot of issues.

And that goes doubly so for WordPress websites. While it’s the best open source content management system today, it can be a bit bulky and a quality web host is needed to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Picking the right web host for your WordPress website is one of the most important decisions you will make when creating a website. Pick the right one, and things will be smooth sailing and minimal issues. But pick the wrong one, and you’re going to have a headache on your hand.

So if you’re looking for that perfect web host for your WordPress website in 2022, let’s find the right one for you.

Just one note before we begin. I’ve broken the following web hosts into three categories: the best overall no matter the price, the best cheaper WordPress options and then the best of the rest to help you find the perfect solution for your problem.

The best overall web hosts

First off, we’re going to start with the best overall web hosts, regardless of price. Some of these might be in your budget, or might be at the top range of your budget, and others might not even be in it. But if you’re looking for the best you can get and/or will be running a medium to large sized ecommerce business through this website, these options will be your best bet.

WP Engine

So full disclosure before continuing on: I use WP Engine for hosting my websites. I’ve been using them for almost seven years now, and haven’t had any issues with them at all. In fact, they’ve been extremely responsive when I do run into problems. I want to get that disclosure out there so you know the full story.

With that out of the way, I truly think that WP Engine is one of the best web hosts for WordPress on the market. I haven’t run into any uptime or performance issues with them during my time. Plus their customer service can’t be beat.

In terms of features, caching is built into the hosting, there are automated daily backups and each site gets a staging and development environment for you to play with. And they have a lot of great tools, like StudioPress’ line of themes.

On the flip side, it can be a bit expensive. One site hosting will run you about $25 a month and the next highest is $63 a month. Plus, depending on your site’s popularity, you might run over the 25,000 visits a month you’re allowed with the basic plan. So it’s not great for super simple sites.

Also, there’s no email included with the hosting, if that matters to you.

But if you’re looking to create an online store that can scale, WP Engine is worth a look. You won’t run into a lot of technical issues, and you can feel confident that your store is running at all times.

Liquid Web

Another really good ecommerce solution is Liquid Web.

Liquid Web is great for medium-to-large size ecommerce operations. They have a number of high-powered and high-quality plans for you to choose from. Plus there aren’t a whole lot of uptime or performance issues to deal with that you might with cheaper web hosts.

Also, they have outstanding virtual private server options and plans that you can choose from. And all of this can scale as your business hopefully grows in the years to come. Oh, and their technical customer support is second to none in the industry.

Finally, they also boast of Home Depot, National Geographic and Porsche in their client list.

On the other hand, their plans do tend to be on the expensive side. While the lowest plan is $19 a month, the next highest plan jumps to $79 a month. And there are no shared hosting plans.

But if you’re looking for a host that can handle and scale your ecommerce operations, Liquid Web is definitely a web host to take a look at.

Pantheon

Pantheon is also another good option for those who need a bit of extra hosting to make sure that their online store stays online with minimal issues.

They are very big on WebOps, which is a plus for developers and others who are used to running bigger sites. They offer production, staging and development sites for each of your installs, which gives you a playground to test things without killing your live site. And they have developer-focused tools like Git workflows, SFTP and a command line interface.

Plus, their site speed for even the bigger of the ecommerce sites is pretty good, and their customer service is outstanding. And they’ve got automatic updates for WordPress core, plugins and themes.

But that technical work can be a drawback for smaller or simpler websites. More small businesses or freelancers won’t need all of that technical stuff which can cause their hosting to be a bit on the expensive side of things. Their basic plan starts at $41 a month, and it only goes up from there.

So while anyone running a medium-to-large sized ecommerce operation would be wise to check out Pantheon, it’s probably not the best option for smaller websites.

Kinsta

Finally in the best overall class of web hosts, we have Kinsta, which has grown to be one of the better WordPress hosts recently.

They have a lot of great options that make it really easy for you to just sign up and get going with creating a website for your business. In addition to great uptime and performance, you’ll also get a free SSL certificate for each of your websites (a must in today’s world), automatic database optimization as well as help with migrating your website from another hosting company if you need it.

Kinsta also has tremendous technical customer support that can help you with almost any issue, and you’ll get staging environments, automated backups and a lot more.

Unfortunately, because of that it can be a bit on the pricey side of things. The lowest plan starts at $30 a month and the best plan they offer starts at $100 a month. Also, email accounts are not included in the plan, if that’s something you need and don’t want to have to fuss with.

Still, for anyone looking to create an online store that can grow with their business, Kinsta is a good option to look at.

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Best cheap WordPress-specific options

The next set of web hosts are more on the cheaper side of things, but are still really good options for almost every business. They might not offer as many cool and techy features as the ones I just mentioned, but they will get the job done. And they will most likely be within your budget.

Pressable

Presable has become a really quality web host for anyone running a WordPress website in today’s environment.

I’ve used them for a couple of freelance projects this year, and I’ve got to say that I’ve enjoyed my experience with them. For starters, you get unlimited storage for all of your images, PDFs and other files for your website. I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere else that wasn’t confined to a top-tier package. Plus, you get a free SSL certificate and CDN for each of your sites. And you get 

All of this starts for $19 a month for the lowest plan and $25 a month for the best quality plan.

On the other hand, there are some questions about their customer support. I haven’t personally had to deal with their support, but in research for this post, a number of people pointed out their limited custom service. Also, you won’t get an email address with this host and you can’t choose your cloud platform.

But if you’re looking for a simple web host to get started on your WordPress website, you can’t go wrong with Pressable.

Siteground

Siteground checks in as one of the cheapest WordPress-specific web hosts in this list. Their lowest plan starts at $15 a month, and I’ve noticed that they tend to run a lot of specials too.

And that lowest plan isn’t bad at all. You won’t have a lot of uptime issues to deal with. You’ll also get a free SSL certificate. You’ll also be able to choose your server location. Plus, they have great customer service based off of the comments I was able to find online. Oh, and again, they will likely fit your budget too.

But on the flip side it doesn’t have a lot of dedicated servers available for you to use. And you might find yourself running out of the 10 GB of data space quickly.

Still if money is on your mind, it’s probably worth taking a look at Siteground and if it can help you and your website.

Flywheel

Finally in this category we have Flywheel. Like Siteground, this is the cheapest WordPress specific web host in this list with a lowest plan price of $13 a month. That ought to fit basically any budget.

Also, you’ll get automated daily backups of your website. Plus it’s easy to use and has no uptime issues and performance is pretty strong.

And developers might love working with Flywheel as they make it easy to create demo sites for clients to view, and they can use Local by Flywheel to create dev websites on their own computers and push those sites either a live or staging site.

Unfortunately, you do only have 5 GB of storage space to use at that price level. And things can get a bit pricey. The next plan up is $25 a month and the plan after that starts at $96 a month. I also ran across a good number of comments about Flywheel’s struggles with customer service. And overall, I’m not sure they are a good fit for medium and up ecommerce operations.

Still if you’re looking for something super simple, Flywheel is a good option to check out.

Best of the rest

Finally, we have the best of the rest. These aren’t necessarily WordPress-specific hosts, although they might offer one-click installs of WordPress. Some of them might be cheaper than the previous hosts mentioned. And they are all good options, though I might not consider them as plan A.

Inmotion

So Inmotion has been really a surprise for me with their web hosting quality. My church’s website has been hosted on it for a while, and I’ve actually had a really good experience with it so far, which I did not expect.

It has really good uptime and performance. It, like the rest of the hosts in this group, can host WordPress or other websites. There’s also a one-click install for WordPress, which I found super easy (especially because it’s been a while since doing that). Also, you can get unlimited email accounts and overall it’s pretty easy to create a website.

On the other hand, I’ve had just a few performance issues here and there, but nothing major. And not all of the plans can be month-to-month, which might be a problem if you’re looking for that.

Still, for $6.99 a month for WordPress hosting, that’s not a bad deal if your main focus is pricing. Inmotion is something to take a look at.

A2 Hosting

Another really good host in this category is A2 Hosting. I haven’t used them before, but I have heard good things about them.

For starters, they have great uptime and performance. Also, from the comments I’ve seen in my research, their customer service seems to be very high quality. And they also offer a lot of great web hosting packages, especially for WordPress.


The one knock I can find against them is that their WordPress managed hosting can be a bit expensive, checking in at $23.99 a month. At that point, it might be better to go for one of the other hosts mentioned earlier in this post.

Still, I don’t think you can go too wrong with A2 Hosting.

HostGator

Next up we have HostGator, which seems to be pretty popular with the WordPress crowd. And it looks like they have a good reason for it too.

They offer a lot of different plans, which can work with almost any level of website, sans larger ecommerce operations. Although if you just want to start a small online store without committing too much money to it, HostGator might be your best bet.

You can get started for around $6 a month. And that gets you a free email address and SSL certificate. Plus, they have almost no uptime issues and performance is pretty good.

And to be quite honest, from my research I couldn’t find a whole lot of issues with their hosting. I have to say that HostGator is definitely the best of this category of web hosting. Can’t go wrong with them at all.

Bluehost

Bluehost is an interesting web host. To be quite honest, I haven’t had good experiences with them in the past, although it’s been six years since then, so they’ve hopefully changed a lot since then.

From a price perspective, they will no doubt fit your budget. The cheapest plan is $10 a month and the best quality WordPress plan is $19 a month. And to be honest, when you’re just getting started, it’s pretty easy to get up and running on a WordPress website. They’ll also assist with migrating your existing website to their hosting if you have one.

That being said, I did run into a lot of uptime issues with them in the past, which was extremely frustrating (and I wasn’t even selling anything online either). Plus there’s no cloud hosting and no monthly shared plans.

But if you just want something simple, easy and somewhat cheap, Bluehost is a good option.

GoDaddy

Finally, the last web host here is GoDaddy. And I’ve had sort of a mixed bag of experiences with them.

On the one hand, they have really good performance and hardly any uptime issues. Plus, you can use their website builder or quickly spin up a WordPress website. Also, you can get an email address, and their service is pretty closely tied with Microsoft. And their pricing starts at $6 a month, and the best plan starts at $13 a month.

That being said, I’ve also had issues with them. For starters, if you have a form plugin that needs to send out an email notification when someone submits a form, you can’t do that through GoDaddy. I found that out the hard way and had issues with their customer support. Also, if you want to use the email address from them outside of Microsoft, it’s going to be a challenge.

But at the end of the day, it’s a good, cheap option that can help you out if you don’t need anything too big.

How to choose the best web hosting

So now that you know your options for web hosting with WordPress, how do you find the perfect host for your website?

Well first off, set your budget for what you can spend on web hosting. If you only have a certain amount that you can or are willing to spend on hosting, that will limit your options for you. And while I might argue that it’s worth splurging a bit on hosting to get it right, ultimately you have to do what’s right for you and your business.

Next, figure out what you need from your web hosting. If you’re just looking to create a basic portfolio website since you’re in college or nearing graduation, you don’t need the same level of hosting as a small business operating a decent ecommerce business. Something simpler and cheaper will work.

And on the flip side, if you are going to be selling online and hope to grow your business, you probably need to find something that is strong enough to do that and to scale as you grow.

After that, read reviews for each of the hosts you’re interested in. PC Mag has a number of great reviews, both from their authors and user reviews, that you can check out. A simple Google search will be your best friend. Honestly, read more than just this blog post.

Ultimately, find what works the best for you, your business and your situation. The best option is the one that works for you.

Don’t get your domain from the same place

Finally, I do want to briefly warn you about web hosting and domains, especially since they can be easily confused for one another.

Don’t get your web hosting from the same place you get your domain name. It’s honestly better just to make sure you separate the two.

For starters, you can get a domain pretty cheap at other places, which you can find through this blog post I wrote on domain names.

Second, getting it from another place, like Name.com, honestly makes it easier to switch web hosts if you need to. I originally had this domain and web hosting through the same host but had to switch hosts and moving the domain to a different domain company was a headache. You wouldn’t have to worry about that if you separated it.

I know those bundle deals that some web hosts run look appetizing and they are very easy to set up, but it can cause a headache down the road. So just be sure to keep them separated.

Sign up for web hosting that cares

Want to get more than you can get with any of these web hosts? Then sign up for one of the WordPress Website Care plans. Not only will you get top of the line hosting through WP Engine (including daily automated backups), but your website will get security upgrades, managed WordPress core, plugin and theme updates, emergency fixes if anything breaks or gets hacked and so much more.

It’s web hosting that will care for the technical side of your website while you focus on running your business. If you want peace of mind with your website, sign up today!

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