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Best WordPress Hosting of 2024 – CNET [CNET]
Our Experts
Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.
Expertise Web hosting, operating systems, applications and software Credentials
- Apple software beta tester, “Helps make our computers and phones work!” – Zach’s grandparents
Alison DeNisco Rayome Managing Editor
Managing Editor Alison DeNisco Rayome joined CNET in 2019, and is a member of the Home team. She is a co-lead of the CNET Tips and We Do the Math series, and manages the Home Tips series, testing out new hacks for cooking, cleaning and tinkering with all of the gadgets and appliances in your house. Alison was previously an editor at TechRepublic.
Expertise Home Tips, including cooking, cleaning and appliances hacks Credentials
- National Silver Azbee Award for Impact/Investigative Journalism; National Gold Azbee Award for Online Single Topic Coverage by a Team; National Bronze Azbee Award for Web Feature Series
WordPress hosting can help you get your site up and running in no time.
Pavlo Gonchar via Getty ImagesIf CNET has inspired you to start writing reviews of your own, then there’s only one content management system you need: WordPress. It’s one of the most popular CMS options out there, with around 40% of all websites using it, according to Web Tribunal. Not only that but more than 600 sites are created every day with WordPress. That’s around 10 times more than Shopify and Squarespace’s 60 to 80 a day. Yes, if you need a website, then WordPress is the way to go.
Choosing a WordPress hosting service can be challenging. A huge number of WordPress hosting options offer great customer service and a lot of good features at a reasonable price. We examined the data for 22 services to help make the choice easier for you.
While we didn’t test these services, we did read through each service’s offerings and ranked them according to essential features. Here’s what we looked for to determine the best WordPress hosting service. You can also check out CNET’s best web hosting services and things to know about web hosting for more information on some of these features.
Tiered hosting plans: Tiered plans give you the option to scale your WordPress site up as it grows.
Security features: Services need to include some basic security features such as SSL certificates, DDoS protections and backups to protect your and your visitor’s data. The best web hosts do this at no extra charge.
Uptime of 99.9% or higher: An uptime of 99.9% or higher ensures your site won’t go down for more than 20 minutes a month, so you keep losses of readers and sales to a minimum.
Customer support: All services offer some kind of customer support. Some say they offer customer service 24/7, but they mean you can email them any time. That’s a good start, but if you have an issue that needs immediate attention live chat support is better, and phone support is best.
The best WordPress hosting services meet all four of those criteria. If a service falls short on one or more of those measures, you’ll find it in our list of other WordPress hosting services to consider or our list of additional WordPress hosts.
Three of the WordPress hosts on this list are recommended by WordPress: Bluehost, Dreamhostand Siteground. Bluehost and Dreamhost are not among our best WordPress services. Bluehost doesn’t have an uptime guarantee, and Dreamhost lacks phone support and offers customer support by chat only within limited daily time frames.
Note: Pricing for hosting services is hard to follow. Services usually list introductory rates that require contracts of one or more years. Once those contracts are up, the prices jump considerably, meaning the long-term cost is quite different than it seems at first glance. This is why it’s important to check the renewal price because most services auto-renew contracts annually to ensure sites stay up at all times. Actual month-to-month plans are available in some cases, but they usually bill at the regular rate without an introductory discount.
Best WordPress hosting services
Other information
Each WordPress plan also comes with automatic WordPress installation and free site migration when you purchase a plan. Each plan also includes automatic updates, so you can customize an update schedule once a new plugin or version is available. Siteground also has a 100% renewable energy match so the service gives back as much energy as its data centers use.
On the downside, Siteground’s language around its ‘Best Deal’ is a bit misleading. Siteground says its 12-month plan is the best deal, but the price renews at the regular rate of $15 a month after the first year, which is more than three times the introductory price. The service’s 36-month plan looks to be more pricey, but this plan is actually the best deal if you plan on hosting a site with SiteGrounds for three years, coming in at almost $30 less than the ‘best deal’ for that same amount of time. Domain registration is also not included, so when you check out, that is automatically added for a one-time additional $18.
Prices start at $3 a month.
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Pros:
- WordPress automatic updates available
- Free business email accounts included
Cons:
- Value of “deals” doesn’t hold up for long-term use
Tiered hosting plans
SiteGround offers three WordPress hosting options: StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. Each offers unmetered traffic, but as you move from StartUp to GrowBig and finally to GoGeek, you get additional perks like on-demand backups and more server resources.
Security features
Each SiteGround WordPress plan includes security features like SSL certificates, daily backups and a custom web application firewall.
Uptime
SiteGround offers a 99.99% uptime, which is higher than the industry standard of 99.9%. Customers should expect less than an hour of downtime per year, compared to nine hours for companies that only offer 99.9% uptime.
Customer support
Customer support is available 24/7 by phone, chat or ticket submission. SiteGround also offers tutorials to help you if you want to figure out any issues on your own.
Other information
Each WordPress plan also comes with automatic WordPress installation and free site migration when you purchase a plan. Each plan also includes automatic updates, so you can customize an update schedule once a new plugin or version is available. Siteground also has a 100% renewable energy match so the service gives back as much energy as its data centers use.
On the downside, Siteground’s language around its ‘Best Deal’ is a bit misleading. Siteground says its 12-month plan is the best deal, but the price renews at the regular rate of $15 a month after the first year, which is more than three times the introductory price. The service’s 36-month plan looks to be more pricey, but this plan is actually the best deal if you plan on hosting a site with SiteGrounds for three years, coming in at almost $30 less than the ‘best deal’ for that same amount of time. Domain registration is also not included, so when you check out, that is automatically added for a one-time additional $18.
Prices start at $3 a month.
Photo Gallery 1/1
Domain registration with SiteGround isn’t included with hosting and is a one-time additional $18.
SiteGround/Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET
These automatic add-ons can be removed from your InMotion Hosting bill if you don’t want them.
InMotion Hosting/Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET
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