WordPress is a blogging platform that powers a huge amount of the internet. Getting your own website hosted on a stable platform is vital for a long-lasting online presence, and that makes WordPress a prime candidate for the job.

If you're interested in using WordPress as a fast, simple and effective way to create and host a website, you'll need to find out which WordPress-friendly web hosting service to use. We've tested and rated the top contenders, which are listed below.

Here are the pros and cons of each top WordPress web hosting provider, along with a little information on the price ranges available and a comparison on two types of hosting, shared and managed. With this article, we'll help you choose the right plan at the right price.

In this guide:

• Best WordPress Web Hosting Providers
• Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting
• WordPress Hosting Costs

Best WordPress Web Hosting Providers

At Tech.co, we have tested all the top web hosting providers across a variety of metrics including the features offered, the help and support team quality, the cost-to-value ratio, and the breadth of types of hosting each one offers.

We've also gone deep on measuring each hosting service's uptime performance, a metric that represents how likely each website is to remain up and running at any given time. For instance, Bluehost had the top uptime with a 99.98 score, which means it'll keep your website operational 99.98 percent of the time. It's an essential metric, as even a tiny drop in functionality can quickly give your audience the impression that your website's buggy and unreliable.

Here's the list of our top WordPress web hosting providers, along with a quick comparison table. You can scroll down farther to see our review of each service, or just click their names here to hop directly to each review.

1. Bluehost – A great choice: feature-rich, cost-effective, and the top uptime performer.
2. GoDaddy Hosting – A solid service with a ton of features but a price tag that asks a little much
3. InMotion – Great speeds, great functionality, and a top-tier customer support team
4. WPEngine –  Unbeatable ease of use, but very beatable features and shaky uptime
5. A2 Hosting – Popular and well-supported, but offers poor uptime
6. 1&1 – Good for expert users: Strong functionality, but few customer support options

Scroll horizontally to view full table on mobile devices

	Bluehost	GoDaddy Hosting	InMotion	WPEngine	A2 Hosting	1&1
No of Plans.	6*(3x Shared, 3x Managed)	4 *(4x Managed)	6*(6x Managed)	4*(1 Custom plan)	7*(4x Shared, 3x Managed)	3*(3x Managed)
Managed Starting Price	29.99	9.99	8.99	35	24.46	9
Managed Highest Price	59.95	34.99	142.99	290	75.48	15
Shared Starting Price	3.95	✗	✗	✗	7.99	✗
Shared Highest Price	5.95	✗	✗	✗	24.46	✗
Money back guarantee	30 Days	✗	90 Days	60 Days	Anytime	30 Days
Free Domain	✔	Across all Annual Plans	✔	✗	✗	✔
SSL Certificates	✔	*See note	✔	✔	✔	✔
Free Back Ups	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Bandwidth	Across all plans: Unmetered	Across all plans: Unmetered	Across all plans: Unmetered	Varies: 50GB/ 200GB/ 400GB	Across all plans: Unmetered	Across all Plans: Unmetered
Uptime Performance	99.98	99.97	99.97	99.95	99.95	99.98
Click for Discounts	See Deals	See Deals	See Deals	See Deals	See Deals	See Deals

*Note: Basic: N; Deluxe: N; Ultimate: Y (For the first year); Developers: Y (For the first year)

BlueHost for WordPress

BlueHost has grown into a top web hosting brand name since its founding in 2003, and for good reason. The service offers a strong performance, offers more features and types of plans than most will need, and comes with a great support team to boot. Its WordPress plans include free installs and updates as well as one free domain (for the first year).

In our tests, BlueHost earned four and a half stars out of five across all our test areas combined. It's definitely a top pick: Only InMotion did better overall.

• Number of websites per plan: Unlimited
• Storage per plan: Unlimited

GoDaddy for WordPress

GoDaddy is huge: They manage 77 million domain names for 18 million customers around the globe. And they offer a reliable service, with a good feature set and a variety of hosting plans. They aren't perfect, however, particularly in two pretty important areas. First, the support team doesn't include 24/7 live chat unlike many competitors, and second, their uptime performance, while decent, isn't amazing.

Like BlueHost, GoDaddy throws in a free domain name for a year, though you'll need an annual plan to qualify for this perk. Also included in the WordPress plans are free daily backups and automated software/security updates. They're a reasonable choice overall, and their updates and backups are useful for website newbies.

• Number of websites per plan
  • Basic: 1
  • Deluxe: 1
  • Ultimate: 2
  • Developer: 5
• Storage per plan:
  • Basic: 10GB
  • Deluxe: 15GB
  • Ultimate: 30GB
  • Developer: 50GB

InMotion for WordPress

InMotion is our absolute best web hosting provider, across all tested areas. With five-star wins for its breadth of plan types, its help and support options, and its features, InMotion pulls up its not-quite-perfect 99.97 uptime and value for money scores to narrowly edge out BlueHost as our top service.

InMotion's WordPress options in particular are also solid, offering a free domain for one year, WordPress install and regular updates, unlimited bandwidth, and email accounts. Check out our in-depth InMotion review for more detail on the plans and features it provides.

• Number of websites per plan:
  • WP -1000s: 1
  • WP-2000s: 2
  • WP-3000s: 3
  • WP-4000s: 6
  • WP-5000s: 10
  • WP-6000s: 20
• Storage per plan:
  • WP -1000s: 40GB
  • WP-2000s: 80GB
  • WP-3000s: 120GB
  • WP-4000s: 160GB
  • WP-5000s: 200GB
  • WP-6000s: 240GB

WPEngine for WordPress

This provider caters entirely to WordPress websites, making it one of the better options for WordPress-obssessed users. Sadly, the uptime and available features aren't quite as competitive as they could be. Add in their higher prices, and ultimately WPEngine may not be a top choice, even given how central WordPress is to the service.

WPEngine keeps it simple with just three shared hosting plans, with each offering more storage and bandwidth allotments than the last. Our review is available for more information, but we've included additional details below as well.

• Number of websites per plan:
  • Startup: 1
  • Growth: 5
  • Scale: 15
  • Custom: 25
• Storage per plan:
  • Startup: 10GB
  • Growth: 20GB
  • Scale: 30GB
  • Custom: 100GB – 1TB

A2 for WordPress

A2 Hosting offers an easy-to-use service with an intuitive design and strong suite of plans. Prices are reasonable, customer service is great and its features are okay. Plus, it's the green choice, having kept its carbon footprint invisible since 2007. It does come with one downside: The service claims a super speedy service, but its uptime during our tests only totalled a 99.95 – tying with WPEngine for the worst uptime in any of the web host services we tested.

In the end, A2 is still definitely a solid option, with that high-quality 24/7 customer support a particularly good perk. WordPress plan users will get the typical free WordPress install and updates in addition to unlimited storage, unlimited site transfers, and, with the exception of the cheapest plan, unlimited websites.

• Number of websites per plan: Unlimited (except for the Managed 1-site and 3-site plans)
• Storage per plan: Unmetered

1&1 for WordPress

If you're a do-it-yourself type who understands the ins and outs of web hosting, 1&1 Hosting might be the service for you: Its support options aren't great, with no live chat options to speak of, but the service it provides is high-functioning, comes with plenty of features, and offers a great value for its price.

Check out our full review for more detail, but rest assured that all of the service's WordPress plans offer above-average storage and plenty of email accounts.

• Number of websites per plan:
  • Essential: 1
  • Business: 2
  • Pro: 5
• Storage per plan:
  • Essential: 25GB
  • Business: 100GB
  • Pro: 200GB

Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress web hosting services are defined by the fact that they offer the WordPress package, a website creation software solution that makes it easy to build a site and add regular blog post updates. However, WordPress hosting comes in two flavors: Shared hosting and Managed hosting.

What's the difference? The simplified answer is that shared hosting is a cheaper but less powerful and reliable service, while managed hosting costs more but is best for larger sites with greater needs. Shared plans will let you share a server with a group of other sites on shared plans, while managed plans give the user a designated, dedicated server for hosting.

Granted, that's the short answer. However, the important thing to remember is that both types of hosting have their uses: A shared server is the most cost-effective option for a smaller business, while managed plans are the more cost-effective option for larger ones.

Help & Support

The support options are a key difference between Shared and Managed: Managed hosting plans tend to offer better support alongside a more powerful service. In practice, however, all the brands we've covered here offer strong support, so this is an area where you're unlikely to lose no matter what you opt for.

We've included a table here to quickly detail what levels and types of support you'll see from each WordPress web hosting provider. As you can see, there are a lot of checkmarks!

Scroll horizontally to view full table on mobile devices

WordPress Hosting Costs

Hosting comes with a huge variance in costs: Some might pay as little as 4 dollars a month, while others pay thousands a month for a web server entirely to themselves.

The huge range is due to traffic, stability and bandwidth considerations: If you host a personal CV online, you won't expect to see more than a few hundred visitors a month. But if you're running a successful ecommerce website, suddenly that number of bandwidth-hogging visitors might leap by a thousand times, and your costs will rise to account for the difference.

Here's the short version of what to expect when cracking open your bank account:

• If You're Running a Personal Blog – you can expect to pay from $10 per month. The prices may even be a little lower with some services, as you'll be using a shared service. As long as you're expected just hundreds of visitors, not thousands, this is the best type of plan to opt for.
• If You're Running a Small Business Site – you can expect to pay from $75 per month. This might be a managed plan with limited storage, or a more robust shared plan. Either way, you'll be able to handle thousands of monthly visitors.
• If You're Running a Large Business Site – you can expect to pay from $125 per month. This type of hosting sees the most price differences, with monthly fees often pushing past $200 or $300. The extra money will give you peace of mind that the site will keep running smoothly no matter how many millions of views you see.