- I tested six of the most popular WordPress hosts
to find out which one is worth your money.
In this video, I'm taking a look at the ease of use,
speed, pricing, and customer service
of each of the six providers.
I like to look at web hosts that are easy to use
because I'd rather focus my time
on how the website looks instead of how it loads.
Because of this, the setup process is critical
to how quickly you're able
to start setting up your WordPress site.
The setup process at every web host I tested
was honestly pretty decent.
They all have a setup wizard
that installs WordPress automatically
and even recommends a WordPress theme
and some essential plugins to help you get started.
DreamHost recently introduced a new WordPress installer
that asks you a series of questions
on how you'll be using your website,
and then makes a recommendation for an ideal WordPress theme
and bundle of plugins for your use case.
It used to be that this type
of setup wizard was only available
in high-end managed WordPress hosting,
but in recent years,
web hosts have been adding this feature
to their base plans and their shared hosting
and I really like seeing that trend.
It's also become easier
to migrate your website between hosts.
Every web host, except for Bluehost
offers automatic migration
and a lot of them offer a WordPress plugin
that you can install on your existing WordPress site
and just whisk it right over to the new host.
The only host that gave me trouble
with migrations was Bluehost.
They technically do offer automatic migrations
via a plugin, but the plugin is so buggy
that the reps just tell you to avoid it
and recommend a manual migration anyway.
And while they do offer complimentary migrations,
they kept saying that my site was not compatible
and I did eventually get a live chat rep
to transfer the site manually.
But each time I reached out in the future
about getting another migration,
they kept telling me to just do it myself
and sending me help articles on how to do it.
It's very time-consuming and it's not super straightforward.
I also had issues with the automated migration at GoDaddy.
It kept giving me this critical error in WordPress
and I had to reach out to their live chat
and they took forever to get the issue resolved.
They had to transfer me to a specialist
and they eventually figured it out,
but it was not a fun process.
I'd tell you that DreamHost, WP Engine,
and Cloudways do the best job at handling migrations.
After the initial setup process,
it's also important to consider the ease
of ongoing management.
When evaluating a web host,
I like to know if they're using cPanel
or their own management panel.
cPanel is an off-the-shelf web hosting management solution
that has been industry standard for many years.
It's popular to see in shared hosting
and I have to be honest,
I think it's gotten harder to use over the years.
It's just gotten stale.
cPanel hasn't really updated it.
The interface is starting to look really dated
and I tend to prefer web hosts that have their own
well thought out management panel
instead of using cPanel.
GoDaddy's shared hosting, as well as all Bluehost plans
take advantage of cPanel.
GoDaddy does have some shortcuts
in their main dashboard to get to things,
like FTP and phpMyAdmin, but for most settings,
you're gonna have to interact with with cPanel itself.
Similarly, Bluehost offers a basic management panel
built around cPanel.
They do allow you to do more WordPress-related functions
like enabling and disabling plugins,
and enabling automatic updates.
But for any other hosting configuration options
you're gonna have to go to cPanel
and make your changes there.
And this even applies to Bluehost's WP Pro Plans,
which is their high-tier managed WordPress hosting.
This is honestly unacceptable to use cPanel
for such a high-end product,
and I was shocked to see that this is the case at Bluehost.
None of the competitors, not even GoDaddy,
are using cPanel for their high-end product
and I wish that Bluehost would do better here.
Hostinger's hPanel is a custom solution
but it's very similar to cPanel.
I think the UI
is a little bit overwhelming and cluttered.
By far, the best management panel
for shared hosting is from DreamHost.
It's completely in-house.
There's no cPanel to be found anywhere
and you can quickly access important functions
like FTP, phpMyAdmin, backups, DNS management, and more.
And for managed hosting
this is where dashboards get more exciting.
My favorite dashboard is from WP Engine.
You can access every configuration option
you would ever need right there in the sidebar.
And for beginners, DreamHost's DreamPress dashboard,
makes it super easy to access what you need
with WordPress without going overboard
with technical terms that you may not understand.
WP Engine and Cloudways do offer the more powerful
and flexible dashboards, but they're definitely targeted
at enthusiasts and they're likely to feel overwhelming
if you're a beginner.
But even if your web host has an amazing dashboard,
it's not really gonna do you any good
if your website is slow and unreliable.
Speed is the hardest aspect
of web hosting to evaluate because it's so subjective.
Results will vary based on your physical location
in relation to the server location,
your internet speed and a number of other factors.
I tried to find a scientific method
of testing the speed of different web hosts
with tools like Google's Page Speed Insights and Pingdom.
But this didn't turn out to be a viable option.
Many times I was getting nearly identical results
even when one web host was considerably faster than another
and once I got a 29-second page load time in Pingdom,
when I was able to load that page
in just seconds on my computer.
So when it comes to which web host is fastest,
I guess it's just a big, it depends.
For shared web hosting,
I think the results are pretty similar across the board.
For managed hosting,
I can confidently say that WP Engine
is noticeably faster than the other options.
I don't know what sort of caching magic
they're doing in the background,
but if you're gonna pay the premium
for managed hosting anyway,
I would definitely pay the extra couple bucks for WP Engine.
When it comes to pricing,
I'm gonna be looking at month-to-month,
as well as annual packages for both shared
and managed WordPress hosting.
The cheapest way to get web hosting
is to buy shared web hosting from DreamHost
at only $8 a month.
Hostinger is a close second.
And GoDaddy and Bluehost charge a pretty penny
if you want to pay for their hosting monthly.
If you're willing to pay for a year of hosting, upfront,
Hostinger's the cheapest option
by a margin of a dollar a month.
GoDaddy and Bluehost also come down significantly
in price with their annual packages.
Shared hosting is an affordable way to get started
with web hosting, but sometimes you need more speed
more features, and more reliability.
Because of this,
managed hosting is gonna be more expensive.
For monthly billing,
Hostinger has the cheapest plan at $15 a month.
And this is true for annual billing as well.
It is worth noting that Hostinger
considers all of their hosting plans managed,
but I personally like to see a staging environment
in automatic daily backups as features for managed hosting.
These are features that all of the competitors offer
and since that's only included in the hosting
or business plan for $15 a month,
I would say that is the true managed plan at Hostinger.
Or another important factor when evaluating
a web host is customer service.
If you need help migrating your site or your site goes down
and you need to bring it to someone's attention,
you're gonna have to interact
with their customer service department.
And there's definitely a divide between companies.
I'll say this, GoDaddy and Bluehost
do not have good customer service.
GoDaddy offers live chat and phone support,
but if you call, you're likely gonna end up talking
to a glorified salesperson who's gonna' spend more time
trying to sell you more products and services
than actually helping you fix your problem.
The support is also inferior at Bluehost.
I kept requesting help migrating
my WordPress website to Bluehost,
and they kept just sending me links to pages
telling me how to do it myself.
Eventually, there was a rep nice enough to help me out
and transfer my site for me,
but when I reached out for another issue in the future,
they kept just telling me all the things
that I needed to go do myself to fix the problem.
And when I would follow their instructions,
I would find that the site was still broken.
The customer service experience is a bit better
at DreamHost and Hostinger.
DreamHost does make it difficult
to get to the live chat initially.
They have this widget that looks like a live chat,
but it's actually just a chat bot
and it eventually redirects you to this page
where you have to fill out a form
and then click a start chat button.
But once you finally get to the real live chat,
the reps are courteous and helpful.
Hostinger is kind of the opposite.
It's really convenient to get to the live chat.
It's always there at the little widget in the corner,
but I find that sometimes the reps take a while to reply,
and sometimes they're not the most helpful.
When it comes to higher-tier WordPress hosting,
you would expect the best quality customer support
and this is partially true for WP Engine.
They absolutely have superior customer support
over shared hosting, but it's not perfect.
They do offer live chat support on their base plans,
but sometimes there's a decent wait time to speak
with a rep.
Once you are connected with a rep,
they're courteous and friendly,
and generally helpful to fix your issue.
However, I have seen cases where WP Engine support
is less than stellar.
Sometimes they have to escalate your issue to a ticket,
meaning you have to wait
to receive an email response for a resolution.
One time there was a ticket regarding not having access
to SFTP and phpMyAdmin from the dashboard,
and it took them two months to resolve the ticket.
So unfortunately, WP Engine doesn't always
have the best customer support,
but it is far superior to Cloudways.
The thing about Cloudways is that
it's very much targeted to enthusiasts.
You get to pick your own server instance
from common providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, or AWS.
Cloudways is basically a management panel solution
for these common providers.
And you can't host unlimited websites on your instance,
but it's up to you to determine
how many websites is too many
and you can overload your instance
and cause performance issues.
Because of this, I find that there's not much
of an emphasis on customer service at Cloudways.
You are partially responsible for managing your server
and making sure that it runs smoothly.
So oftentimes, when you reach out for support,
you're not gonna find much help.
When evaluating web hosting,
there's one non-negotiable feature
I think every plan should have; automatic backups.
Preferably daily automatic backups,
but I think weekly automatic backups are acceptable
at a minimum.
This is because WordPress sites are easy to break
when editing and you're likely not gonna think
to make a manual backup
before you start working on your WordPress site.
So if you ever break it and something goes wrong,
you have a restore point from a day ago
or a week ago to revert to
and that way you didn't lose all your progress.
For shared hosting,
GoDaddy and Bluehost offer automatic backups
for an additional fee.
Hostinger backs up your data every week.
And DreamHost offers automatic backups
at undisclosed increments.
They do it a bit weird.
They give you the option of restoring a recent backup,
a mid-range backup,
which is anywhere between one day and two weeks old.
Or the oldest backup, which is more than two weeks old.
And in the backup UI, they've got this disclaimer
that they don't guarantee taking backups of your data.
It's just a courtesy.
They recommend that you take your own offsite backups.
I wish DreamHost had a more friendly backup policy,
but given the fact that they do include automatic backups
in their shared hosting, unlike GoDaddy and Bluehost,
I still think it's a viable option.
For managed hosting,
every web host offers automatic daily backups.
This is standard for managed hosting.
It's expected, and everyone is competitive in this area.
Another feature worth considering is a staging environment.
This is where a copy of your website is made
on a temporary subdomain,
and you can make changes to your WordPress site
on that temporary sub-domain
without affecting your live site.
Then once you've made your edits and you're comfortable
with the way your website operates,
you can transfer the staging site to the production site.
And that way it ensures that there's no downtime
and everything updates seamlessly.
This is a feature feature typically reserved
for higher-tier managed WordPress hosting,
but you will find it in Bluehost's shared plans.
I really don't recommend Bluehost though,
as there's quite a few shortfalls in many areas.
Though, like automatic backups,
staging environments are a feature you'll find
in all the managed WordPress hosts in this video.
So which hosts do I recommend?
For shared hosting, I think DreamHost is the best option.
They have the most affordable month-to-month plan
at $8 a month, making it accessible to beginners
without the need for a big upfront investment.
The WordPress installer and in-house panel
make it really simple to navigate,
and my only gripe with DreamHost is the weird way
they handle automatic backups.
But if you know you need daily automatic backups,
you're probably a candidate for managed hosting.
And when it comes to managed hosting,
I would recommend DreamPress by DreamHost
for beginner to intermediate WordPress users.
It's simple management panel makes it approachable.
You don't need a bunch of technical knowledge
to use DreamPress,
but you still get the advantages of managed hosting.
Things like the automatic backups
and the staging environment.
And if you want the most powerful WordPress hosting
you can buy, I definitely recommend WP Engine.
This is what I use for most of my websites
and it's definitely targeted at tech savvy users.
There's a lot of flexibility in the configuration options
and this is something that I like,
but if you're a beginner, you may not love WP Engine.
But I can say that it is crazy fast.
Cloudways is another solid pick,
but it's even more enthusiast-oriented than WP Engine.
You're left to pick your own server provider
and configuration, and this can be a bit overwhelming
for someone who doesn't have a background
in server administration.
I do like that you have all the same features
like a staging environment and automatic daily backups,
and the management panel is relatively simple to use.
So if you're able to understand
which server configuration is right for you,
Cloudways is a solid option.
Now, just like with web posting, you need to consider
where you purchase your domain name from.
Not all domain registrars are created equal,
so I've got a video on that you can check out right here.