If you are either just starting out as a blogger with a self-hosted WordPress blog or you are frustrated by your current host – here is a list of the best WordPress shared hosting companies as voted for by WordPress experts.
Shared web hosting is a service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the internet. It is generally the most economical option for hosting, as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.
Recommended shared hosting for WordPress websites
I contacted hundreds of individuals through the WordPress LinkedIn group. Members of this group are high end webmasters with hundreds of sites on their books who have been around the block as far as web hosts are concerned – many of them were using 3 or 4 shared hosts for multiple sites. If you’re into LinkedIn and WordPress I would strongly recommend this group as I have found the advice and discussions there to be top notch!
The four most important factors we discussed in the survey were: price, speed, reliability and quality of support. We’ve all had the terrible experience of a website not behaving as it should and sometimes a timely and considered approach by the support team is worth a thousand dollars!
Here are the four hosts who came out as the best shared hosts for WordPress by WordPress professionals:
Bluehost
The general consensus seems to be that Bluehost is inexpensive and has many powerful tools but support is maybe where it lacks the most. BlueHost is one of the 20 largest web hosts, collectively hosting well over 450000 domains with its sister company, HostMonster. I’ve used BlueHost for years and it is astonishingly fast for a shared host and I can highly recommend them.
Hostgator
The company was founded in 2002 by Chairman Brent Oxley, who started the company from his dorm room at university. With over two million domains, HostGator hosts approximately 1% of the world’s internet traffic. They came up many times in our survey as being a reliable host.
Dreamhost
Reasonably priced, good support, fantastic recommendations. Unlimited space and bandwidth. Dreamhost don’t have cPanel but they do have their own award-winning user’s control panel.
What not to do!
One hosting company’s name came up for all the wrong reasons so many times. The server sluggishness and all round poor performance at GoDaddy was mentioned again and again! So, by all means, register your domain name with GoDaddy, but don’t use them for hosting!
WordPress and Shared Hosting
As the internet becomes the preferred method of communication for businesses worldwide, the tool of creating and publishing the content is of increasing importance. WordPress is used by millions to deliver news, messages and articles to the world. It has become not only the blogger’s weapon of choice but also a hugely popular Content Management System.
Learning how to use WordPress is easy. All you have to do is to login, add a new article and either write in WordPress, or copy and paste from your favorite word processor. But WordPress hosting is not for every web service.
WordPress requires high standards from the web hosting provider which is why you should take a lot of time to discover the best hosts. But first here’s a description of shared hosting and why it might be for you.
A shared hosting account is cheaper and easier to maintain than a more expensive dedicated or VPS account. It’s considered typical for budget or entry-level hosting services but people can run successful websites for years on shared hosting. It can supply sufficient disk space, bandwidth and functionality for personal, hobby or small-business websites.
Disadvantages of shared hosting
However, being the cheapest package, it has its disadvantages. Firstly, it usually has a reduced level of security as you are sharing the server with several other websites. Shared hosting also has limited resources causing speed issues at both the back and front ends of your site.
Many individuals on the same server can lead to issues with blacklisting on email. I would recommend everyone route email through Google Apps for Business for this reason.
Remember, with WordPress to choose a host running Linux and preferably running Apache, using the Apache mod_rewrite.
Conclusion
I learnt a huge amount from doing this survey. However, I decided to turn my back on shared hosting for this site and went for a Virtual Private Server (VPS). My next post will be about the VPS hosts for WordPress.
Some other articles you may like:
Hi
I register domain names with GoDaddy and have my sites at Hostgator. I’ve never had a problem and the Hostgator pricing is unbelievably good value.
Hey, Neil, me too, I register most of my domain names with GoDaddy. I got a lot of good feedback about Hostgator, thanks for your added recommendation. One thing I didn’t mention, actually, was the prices. They are all pretty cheap. But it is an important point
I like bluehost a lot, especially for cPanel.
I wanted a reseller account so I could create many sites – for myself. Bluehost doesn’t offer that. I found hostnine.com which also has cPanel, but for 20 bucks a month I can make a zillion sites and subdomains.
I’m always making random experiment sites, so it fits nicely. Never had an issue in 2 or 3 years now.
Thanks for your recommendations of Bluehost and HostNine. Lots of people seem to be pretty happy with Bluehost. I’d never heard about HostNine so will have to check them out. You’re right about having a reseller account so you can start up multiple sites at the flick of a switch. Very empowering.
cPanel or an equivalent is essential for me. I’m going to write about it in my next post about VPSs.
Cheers, Douglas, take care!
Don’t use Godaddy for their hosting? Awww come on! At least give ‘em props for the best commercials! lol
haha, Tony!
I use this BlueHost always it provides seem pretty standard with all of the expected features of a web host such as cPanel, multiple database support, FTP, email, etc. I like this the most!
This was one of the better posts I’ve seen on the subject. I just randomly saw your blog when I was in the middle of doing some work using google. Anyway, wanted to let you know I enjoyed this web site and keep up on doin what youre doing. Also dont forget, enjoy the climb, dont focus so much on the final destination. Ciao, Kyle Bates
Hi Lee, yes, I’ve heard good things about BlueHost and they’ve always been good when I’ve worked with them. Impressed with their speed, actually.
Hi Kyle, thank you. I’ll try to enjoy the climb, thanks for the advice!
Hostgator seem to be the best among the lot. I say this because i’ve used their service personally.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Hostgator, Afam.
Great post. I’m concerned whether US based hosts are good for sites serving UK users. Is there a speed or SEO issue there? I can’t seem to find a good answer to this.
I’ve been using Goddady and find them sluggish with WordPress. Fine with HTML sites though.
Hello David, I wouldn’t worry about US hosts in terms of speed. There maybe a tiny SEO benefit but I find that can be counteracted by setting a geographical target in Google’s Webmaster Tools. But my research came in fairly heavily against GoDaddy as a host. So I’d keep your domain name registered with GoDaddy but use one of the above as a host. I hope this helps.
Thanks Rob you have firmed up my thinking. I’m sure you are right.
I going to try one of the above and a do a little A/B testing.
Incidently I enjoyed many of your other posts here. Cheers.
Cheers, David, glad to be some help. Good that you’ve enjoyed the website. You could join my mailing list and download my free ebook, or subscribe to the feed by email and never miss a thing!
@ Neil, i think your combination is the best i could recomment to anyone. Buy a domain with Godaddy and host with HostGator and not buy a domain and host it with Godaddy or HostGator.
Yikes. I tried Bluehost and did not expect this, but Godaddy on an identitcal test site is giving me much better speed.
Bluehost started well but just got slower and slower. They are CPU throttling me like crazy one day and nothing another. I’m also getting timed out like I never did with Godaddy. I added a CDN and pushed my yslow and google page speed to top, yet the Goddady test site still wins and is actually dealing with real traffic with other active sites on it.
I just tried Bluehost support. They ignore the question and information and tell you go and read more.
Bluehost looked promising at first, but they seem to me to be another bunch of oversellers, promising way more than anyone should.
I think if you end up on the wrong server with any of these big companies – you’re stuffed. Maybe time to try a smaller local company and VPS.
Hey David, your experience with Bluehost being slow and GoDaddy being fast is against my experience and a lot of other people’s but, I think you’re right – it really depends on the luck of the draw of what server they put you on with a shared account. Some smaller companies can be a very good idea. And with VPS and dedicated you know what you’re getting.
I bought JustHost 2 months ago to host WordPress and PHP/MySQL driven websites. Sad to say my main WordPress site fail almost everyday. Since I transferred to JustHost from my old host, bounce rate went from around 3% to 84%! Everytime I complaint someone new responds saying it’s working at their end or to Ctrl+F5 or my IP was unblocked. I have sites on GoDaddy too and they are way better than this, though I don’t recommend GoDaddy either for obvious reasons
(except for their commercials of course…LOL). I’ve seen bad reviews about BlueHost, HostGator as well but I think it’s expected on shared hosting. So VPS is the next step.
Wow, Leo, you’ve been having some terrible luck there. Of course, a shared host will always have it’s problems but I’ve never heard of anything extreme as what you’ve described. You have to keep on writing to their support and explain the problems you’ve been having in great detail and I’m sure they will sort it out because, as I say, those problems are unacceptable. Good luck!
Hi no idea all the pages I read about the best VPS and only you could you give me guidance. Everyone talks about horror stories and your calm my fear. Infinitely grateful to you. Big hug from Mexico.
My pleasure, Mary!
I liked your post ans incidently other of your posts
I am currently with Hosgator and sad to think of departing after 2 years
But with 150.000 p/views pm I need to think of Vps hosting
My concern is RAM using c/panel.I is a big jump going from a $15 pm business plan to 1.5 gb Ram vps for $70 pm
A t present I rely on good caching and a great CDN provider
I need to know more before leaping in to vps hosting
Greg
Hello Greg. Glad you’ve liked the posts here.
Yes, it is a bit of a jump but with the amount of traffic you’re getting you’ll need to do something. More about VPSs here: http://robcubbon.com/recommended-vps-hosts-for-wordpress/