Best Web Hosting for WordPress Websites in 2020

Let’s get straight to the fact, for WordPress websites there is no best web hosting for everyone. The best web hosting choice will differ from person to person and is based “strictly” on a lot of factors.

Factors to consider for Website Hosting

Selecting a website hosting is matching between various factors. It is a balancing act, which isn’t difficult – once you understand the major factors that come into play with regard to WordPress websites. Give a thought to the following factors and then proceed to decide on which web hosting service to use for your (and your client’s) website.

1. Website Requirements

WordPress is now used for a lot of different type of websites. Like for a simple 5 page business brochure website, a complex ecommerce website, or LMS (Learning Management System) courses website. So, make sure you are clear about ‘this’ website requirements aspect. For examples, using a low-end (and cheap) hosting for ecommerce or LMS website will be a (very) bad idea from the start.

2. The Money Factor

How much you want to spend? Or better way to put – how much dollar value you perceive is the value for money that you will spend on the web hosting aspect of the website. For example, a website made for a hobby (or testing waters) would have a very small price or budgeting for the website hosting part.

3. Your Technical Know-How

Are you a geeky person and ready to spend some brainpower in managing various aspects of web hosting? If not, then using managed hosting is a better option. Nowadays a lot of web hosting service specialize in doing it all for you and charge a premium for the same. So, decide if you have the technical bend and more important want to use that technical geekery when hosting your websites.

Let’s decide on Website Hosting Service

I am assuming you are already clear about 3 factors discussed above, which are: website requirements, the money factor, and the technical know-how. There are a lot of web hosting services all ready to serve you but I am only going to share the best one (according to me and my experience of being on the web for a lot of years now).

1. Staring Up & need ‘Value for Money’ option

Without a doubt, Siteground hosting is the best value for money for starters in the WordPress ecosystem. It is not the cheapest option like Godaddy, Bluehost, and other tons of rock bottom priced shared hosting providers – but it would not dwindle your bank account in a big way.

Siteground is a perfect match of features, servers (they use Google Cloud), and pricing. I have been a Siteground user for almost 5 years now and it has never left a negative impression (at least for me).

The pricing model of Siteground is unique to itself and is more ideal for users starting their online website journey. They offer up to 70% off for the first year and regular prices start from the next year renewals.

If you need hosting for just one website, then the first plan “Start-Up” is enough. For multiple websites, selecting the second plan “Grow Big” is recommended (and the most popular, even I also use this one).

Besides rock-solid hosting infrastructure, uptime, and own custom dashboard – the Siteground’s chat support is the biggest pull. You can hop on chat and get problems solved real quick. Plus, they got real technical people on chat support – who know their servers and stuff!

Also, there is up to 20% – 30% off discount on renewals. Just check with their support before the renewal date (spilling some secrets)

2. Done for you, Premium Managed Hosting

The premium managed website hosting providers space is getting crowded, which is actually better for WordPress users. Such hosting providers have high-speed hosting servers (premium) and they do it all for you (managed) in the backend.

WPEngine and FlyWheel are two recommended options in this space. I have worked with a bunch of web agencies who only use these hosting providers as they have to spend literally no time in managing hosting aspect of their client websites.

These make life easy with important features like automatic backups and restores (hence, you don’t have to rely on installing or connecting with additional services for basic backups). They have in-built staging option, where you can copy the current website and test for any code or install a new plugin to check for compatibility.

FlyWheel hosting is more recommended for web designer wanting no-fuss web hosting solution for their website clients. They even provide an option for a web designer to set up the client websites and then charge your clients directly for their website hosting.

WPengine hosting sits little higher than Flywheel as it caters to medium to bigger web agency setups. Fyi, WPengine acquired Flywheel hosting sometime back. So, the same owner but different flavours.

3. Freakingly Fast & super premium

Again, even this segment has a lot of options. I would only recommend the web hosting option that I have tried and I know works like a charm. Kinsta hosting is my choice of web hosting when you have the requirement of freakingly fast website (and money/budget isn’t that big a factor).

It is ideal for DIY (do it yourself) users wanting fast websites and everything managed for you with regard to the hosting infrastructure. Also, it is ideal for medium to bigger web agencies hosting a lot of client websites. In-fact more number of websites plan makes it an economical option when you do the calculation for price per website.

4. Under your Full Control & Fast

Cloud hosting is the new category of web hosting and it is getting very popular courtesy ease of things now. It allows “full control” of server resources and the ability to tweak it for super-fast loading WordPress websites.

Cloudways hosting is the top choice among WordPress users when it comes to cloud hosting. Using Cloudways hosting, you can easily host your websites on any popular cloud hosting server providers like Google Cloud, Vultr, Linode, Amazon AWS Cloud, and Digital Ocean.

My WordPress Hosting Journey

My WordPress website hosting journey started a good number of years back. At that time, the web hosting ecosystem was completely different. There weren’t many premium managed hosting providers or easy to use cloud hosting services.

Being tight budgeted (like most of us are at the start), I started with Dreamhost hosting. Guess what, I still have that Dreamhost account (close to 15years now, I need to re-check on exact years LOLs). If I was starting fresh today, I would definitely use Siteground hosting. It has been close to 5 years now with Siteground and I still find this as a good hosting choice.

Since I build websites for clients and work with a bunch of bigger web agencies on projects basis – I have been exposed to a lot of website hosting providers over the period of the last 10 years.

For my direct clients, I refer them to WPengine, Siteground, or Flywheel by careful analysis of their website requirements, permissible budget, and their level of geekiness. For clients of other web agencies, I use hosting providers already being used by specific agencies. Most often they use WPengine, Cloudways, or Flywheel.

Over to you… still not sure about web hosting you need for your WordPress websites. Chime in the comments below and let’s clear the air.

Disclosure: I am sure there are many other good web hosting services but above I have only “strictly” mentioned hosting services that I have used directly or indirectly (while working with other bigger web agencies). Besides the goodness, the article is mined with affiliate links, be careful – HA.