There are various type and levels of WordPress Hosting options available in the market. Choosing the best one for your website is a really serious task. I am going to help you out on choosing the best of them by discussing the pro & cons of the available options for WordPress hosting. I will also try to touch the closely related topics which may help you create a great website. So let’s begin:

If you are reading this post, you have already decided two things :

1. You will create your website/blog with WordPress.
2. And out of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org, you chose to go with wordpress.org or say self-hosted WordPress.

When you plan to move ahead with self-hosted WordPress, hosting becomes a very important factor. You should choose the most suitable one (I wouldn’t say the best one, as the best one might be really costly and overkill according to your current needs). Assessing our needs and finding suitable solutions makes better sense than running for the best one.

I have been working with WordPress websites since the last 7+ years and worked on more than 2,000 WordPress websites. I have almost worked with most of the WordPress hosting solutions available in the current market and have experienced their pros and cons first hand. I will try to share the best of my experiences with you too so you get a clear idea.

Disclosure: I earn an affiliate commission if you purchase any of the web hosting services if you click on the referral links and buy any of the hosting plans.

Parameters To Look For While Searching for Best WordPress Hosting:

There are few hosting parameters which impact the performance of your website. Lets first examine the parameters to look for while selecting the WordPress Hosting:

1. php Version – Check for the php version supported by your hosting. The latest version of WordPress (currently 5.0.2) needs php 7.2 or greater. You should also check if your hosting provider comes up with the latest updates timely.
2. MySQL Version – Latest WordPress version needs MySQL 5.6 or greater. Check if your hosting fulfills this requirement.
3. HTTPS supports –  Hosting should support https protocol which is secure. Some hostings are coming with a free self-signed SSL feature from Lets Encrypt or other similar option. It may be an added advantage.
4. Server Response Time – As Google recommends the server response time shouldn’t be more than 200 milliseconds to put your website in the fast loading category. You should check for this factor while searching for WordPress hosting.
5. Customer Support – I feel customer support is one big factor when it comes to hosting. Some hosting service provider doesn’t provide 24×7 support which is really a pain. Also, some provider’s support team is not skilled enough to solve your issues properly and always keep you in an endless loop.
6. Server Uptime – Most of the hosting providers guarantees 99% to 99.99% uptime. How true are their commitments?
7. Easy WordPress Installation Option – Not a big deal as installing WordPress manually is also super easy if you have basic tech-skills. But for a layman, it will be good to have some kind of One-Click install option.

Type of Hosting options available for WordPress Website :

There are several types of WordPress hosting options available with most of the hosting service providers. You can choose among them based on your requirements. It may depend upon the amount of data on your website, the number of visitors, Email uses, functionalities added in your website etc.

Based on the operating System of Server there are majorly two options available for WordPress Hosting :

When you reach to a hosting service providers website, you will find two types of hosting namely – Linux & Windows. Lets have a look into them:

1. Linux Hosting – As the name suggests that these servers are powered by  Linux. It is the most preferred option for WordPress Hosting. 20+ Web Host management software available for Linux hosting among which cPanel is most popular. cPanel has made if super easy to manage. As Linux is open source so there are a lot of free resources available and large community support is available. Also, it is less expensive.
2. Windows Hosting – In windows hosting servers are powered by Windows. The web host management software, in this case, is Parallel Plesk which is also easy to use but not as cPanel of Linux hosting. It is less preferred among WordPress Website developers.

Based on the usage type there are following hosting options are available :

1. Free WordPress Hosting – Yes you might be surprised but there are some hosting providers which offer free WordPress Hosting service. It may come with its own drawbacks like the provider may ask you to provide him backlinks to his blog/website or they may ask you to put some relevant ads on your website for them. This type of option is better to be avoided if your website is not for the purpose of a school project. Things you get for free doesn’t come with good service as the other party is not liable to provide you any support as you are not paying them. If you have a long-term plan you should avoid such options.
2. Shared Hosting for WordPress – Shared hosting is one most popular hosting option available. It is the most used one as it is quite cheaper than the other alternatives. Now, what does it mean by shared hosting? In shared hosting, the hosting service provider provides you a part of a server to host your website. This server is shared by multiple websites. None of these websites gets any minimum guaranteed resources, though there is a limit on maximum resources it can utilize. If it takes more resources, the hosting service provider will warn you and eventually suspend your account if the overages continue. If your website is hosted on a share WordPress hosting, its performance is more or less dependent at times on the amount of resources used by other websites hosted on this server along with yours. I hope you got my point. Despite these shortcomings, it is the most used one as it is the cheapest and almost all starters opt for this hosting. Only website’s which outgrows and need more resources, moves to the better options.
3.  Cloud Hosting for WordPress- Some hosting service providers have come up with this option. It is a bit similar to shared hosting. The difference is that it incorporates a cluster of servers instead of a single server. Your site is hosted on multiple servers at the same time and the is displayed to the visitor from the server most convenient to the visitor. It offers higher performance when compared to the shared hosting as your website get to use more resources.
4.  VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting for WordPress- This is also a type of shared hosting but in this type, the minimum resources are guaranteed for your website to run with. Even if you are not using the resources to the limit, no other website hosted on the same server will be able to use the resources allocated to you. Thus you get far better performance than a usual shared hosting. Though it is a bit costly option when your website starts getting good traffic and have a lot of data, you should move your site from shared/cloud to VPS hosting, so your visitors keep getting good speed and performance.
5. Dedicated Server Hosting For WordPress – In this type of hosting your hosting service provider assigns a complete dedicated server machine to your website. Only your website is hosted from this server and no other. Thus you get the best performance. It is really costly and should be used when other options are overwhelmed with your website’s traffic and data usage.
6. SSD Hosting for WordPress– Some service providers have come up with this type of special hosting. In this type of hosting the Harddisk of the server is not rotatory but SSD type. As we all are aware that a normal rotary hard disk’s performance is dependent on the speed of its rotation so its performance is limited. While SSD performance is not limited by any such mechanical phenomenon. Thus these hosting has a better performance than the general hosting. SSD hosting can be shared, cloud, VPS or Dedicated type.
7. Managed WordPress Hosting- Looking at the popularity of WordPress, most of the hosting service providers offer specialized managed WordPress hosting. This hosting type is specially designed to run WordPress websites and optimized to improve WordPress websites performance. Even there are some companies offering only WordPress hosting.

Top 10 WordPress Hosting in 2022 – Comparison & review:

1. HostGator

Hostgator is one of the best (I would say the best) hosting service provider in terms of server performance and support. It is one of those companies which have a toll free number for customer support. Also while other companies put sales on priority as their sales chat is open 24×7 while support is off sometimes, Hostgator does its reverse, its sales is sometimes closed but support is always on. It shows HostGator’s commitment to customer care. Also, I found that their support staff has a good technical knowledge about most of the commonly used platforms like WordPress and they are happy to help you on them, unlike others who will just say that it’s not their issue. So from the support point of view, you can always prefer Hostgator.

Support – 5/5

Performance – 4/5

Website – https://www.hostgator.in/ (for India); https://www.hostgator.com/ (rest of the World)

Uptime – 99.9%

2. BigRock

BigRock provides a really cost-effective service. You will get a good level of resources at a very reasonable price. Performance of the server is average though support is a bit of issue. They don’t have 24×7 support, also the support number is not a toll-free one. So till your website is running fine its all ok but as soon as something goes wrong your might be struggling to find support.

Support – 2/5

Performance – 3/5

Website – www.bigrock.in

Uptime – 99.9%

3. Godaddy

4. Bluehost

5. WPEngine

6. Kinsta

7. Globehost

8. HostRipples

9. Server Cake

10. HostingRaja