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How To Find Your Perfect WordPress Hosting

January 30, 2012 14 Comments

One of the first steps, before starting your blog or site, is choosing your WordPress Hosting. Choosing the right web hosting is a very important step. If you’re not familiar with websites and hosting, it can be very hard and time consuming to choose the WordPress hosting that suits you the best.

If you already looked around for WordPress hosting, you’ll probably have noticed that there are so much companies offering so much different kinds of web hosting. That’s why I wrote this article, to help you choose the right hosting for your site or blog!

Some Web Hosting Basics

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of differences in web hosting. In this part, I’ll tell you something more about the basics of web hosting.

Windows vs Linux

If you want to run PHP / MySQL – based applications (like WordPress), then Linux hosting is the best choice. Windows hosting will also do the job in most cases (with some tweaks), but it’s important to know that WordPress is optimised for Linux hosting.

Shared Hosting, a Dedicated Server, VPS or Cloud Hosting?

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting means that your site or blog is hosted on a server running different sites. This makes shared hosting much cheaper, but also slower. Speed can vary a lot, depending of the power of the server and how much sites are running on that server.

Shared hosting is a great choice for those projects with just a couple of hundred visitors a day:

  • a new site or blog
  • a site or blog for a little company

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is a physical server just for your site or blog. Dedicated servers are more secure, can be very powerfull, but also very expensive. Another negative point is that dedicated servers are not scalable, so they can’t grow with your site. If you’re looking for fast web hosting, you better take a look at VPS or Cloud Hosting.

VPS

A Virtual Private Server is a server that runs virtually on a physical server. This makes it possible to run multiple Virtual Private Servers on 1 physical server. The VPS acts like a dedicated server, but it’s easier to scale it to the user’s needs. VPS is cheaper then dedicated hosting, while it offers the same possibilities.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is also a virtual server, but this virtual server runs on different physical servers. In most cases, multiple virtual servers will run on multiple physical servers.

This also makes it very easy to scale the hosting, to create very powerful hosting and it means extra security: when 1 of the physical servers fails, there is always another physical server that keeps running.

WordPress Hosting

Some web hosts offer “WordPress hosting”. In fact, WordPress hosting is just linux hosting that is optimised for WordPress. In most cases, WordPress is already pre-installed, so if you’re not comfortable with installing WordPress yourself, WordPress hosting is a good choice!

Which Hosting Company to Choose?

When searching a web host, it can be very interesting to compare different companies on:

  • Support (is there 24/7 support, support through mail / telephone?)
  • Backups (do they take a back up every day?)
  • Speed (that’s difficult to know in advance, but reviews and forum comments can help)
  • WordPress Installation (do they install WordPress, is there a 1-click-install option?)
  • Security (some companies offer better security then others)
  • Pricing (prices can vary a lot!)

Because there are so many companies, I created a short list of web hosting companies which are known for hosting a WordPress blog or site.

Before you take a look at this list, I also want you to give you 1 advice: write down what YOU need and then compare all the features of the web companies. For example, some companies are cheap if you host 1 domain, but charge a lot if you want to host multiple domains on your hosting. While others offer that option for free…

When doing my research for this article, I was amazed of the extra costs some companies charge. Basically, if it’s cheap, you just get the basics and you pay a lot for extra opions. Just don’t expect to get a Bentley for the price of a Volkswagen ;-) .

Basic WordPress Hosting

Bluehost

Bluehost

  • Starting at $6,95 / month (36 month account)
  • .com domain name: 1 free domain the first year, $11,95 / year after that
  • Shared web hosting only
  • Free 1-Click Script Installs
  • 24/7 support through chat, e-mail and telephone

Visit www.bluehost.com for more information or check the full pricing table here.

Hostgator

Hostgator

  • Starting at $3,96 / month (3 year contract)
  • .com domain name: $15
  • Shared web hosting, VPS or dedicated server
  • One-click WordPress installer
  • 24/7 support through phone, live chat and email

Visit www.hostgator.com for more information.

Godaddy

Godaddy

  • Starting at $3,74 / month (3 year contract)
  • .com domain name: $11,99
  • Shared web hosting, VPS, dedicated server, cloud hosting and managed hosting
  • One-click WordPress installer
  • 24/7 support through phone and email

Visit GoDaddy for more information.

Professional WordPress Hosting

Dreamhost

Dreamhost WordPress hosting

  • 2 week free trial
  • Starting at $8,95 / month (2 year contract with prepayment)
  • .com domain name: 1 free domain ($ 9,95 for contracts less then a year or additional domain names)
  • Shared web hosting, VPS or dedicated server
  • One-click software installation
  • 24/7 support, depending on your hosting plan (premium support costs extra)

Visit www.dreamhost.com for more information or check the full pricing table here.

Vps.net

VPS.NET

  • Powerful hosting
  • Starting at $20 / month
  • .com domain name: no information found
  • Shared cloud hosting, cloud servers
  • One-click WordPress installer
  • 24/7 support through phone, Twitter and email

Visit VPS.NET for more information.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is an excellent choice if you:

  • really don’t have any technical knowledge
  • don’t want to care about updates, upgrades, security…
  • want to focus on the content of your blog and not on the maintenance

Page.ly

Page.ly

  • Fully managed WordPress hosting
  • Automatic updates of the WordPress core & plugins
  • Enhanced security
  • Starting at $19,95 / month
  • .com domain name: no information found
  • Cloud hosting
  • Quick 2 minute setup
  • 24/7 support

Visit Page.ly WordPress Hosting for more information.

WordPress hosting: Conclusion

As you can see there are many companies offering WordPress hosting. I can only advise you to compare between the different hosts and the different packages they offer. I know, this is a lot of work, but hosting is a very important issue of your blog or web site! That’s why I already created a small list with companies offering WordPress hosting.


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About Nico Julius

Nico is a teacher, developer and likes to share his ideas and vision on WordPressNinja.Com
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  • http://about.me/mikeschinkel MikeSchinkel

    Why are you recommending GoDaddy and not WPEngine or ZippyKid? All the WordPress pros I know actively recommended against GoDaddy, and many of the pros I know recommend WPEngine and/or ZippyKid for high performance managed hosting for WordPress. FWIW.

  • http://www.wordpressninja.com Nico Julius

    Hi Mike, thank you for your interesting comment. When I was writing this article, I knew it was impossible to list al the good WordPress hosts. About recommending these hosts, you have to keep in mind that most of the visitors of this blog are beginning bloggers, or people starting with WordPress. That’s why I list the more cheaper hosts here. Prices at WPEngine start at $49/month, so you just can’t compare this with GoDaddy or Hostgator.

    • http://about.me/mikeschinkel MikeSchinkel

      So a WordPress “Ninja” writes for beginners? :-)

      Yes, WPEngine starts at $49, but some bloggers have high traffic and need the performance. It makes your list glaringly incomplete not to include them, IMO.

      However not recommending WPEngine is one thing but to recommend GoDaddy is much worse. Also, try asking on the LinkedIn WordPress group whose members are mostly consultants if you should host a WordPress site on GoDaddy. You would get a resounding “NO!!!”, and people will continue to reply for months on end.GoDaddy overloads their servers and making site very slow and Google penalizes slow sites.

      Seriously, act like you are a beginner who doesn’t know anything and go to the LinkedIn WordPress group and ask “I’ve been told the best place to host my WordPress site is on GoDaddy. I just wanted to ask the experts to confirm that advice is correct?” and see what you get…

      • http://www.wordpressninja.com Nico Julius

        Hi Mike, I’ve seen WPEngine has a new package, starting at $29. I’m going to test it soon.
        And yes WordPress “Ninja” writes for beginners :-) . That’s also the reason that I’m working on a new project, it will be online soon.

        • http://about.me/mikeschinkel MikeSchinkel

          I’m not certain, but I’ll bet if you contact Trafton Esler at WPEngine he’ll probably give you an eval account… (I just met Trafton while speaking at WordCamp Atlanta this past weekend as they were a sponsor. :) You might also get the same if you contact Vid Luther of ZippyKid…

          • http://www.wordpressninja.com Nico Julius

            Thanx for the tips!

          • Trafton Esler

            Thanks Mike — Nico, I’d be more than happy to set you up with an eval account to see what WP Engine has to offer. I can be reached at trafton *at( wpengine.com

          • http://www.wordpressninja.com Nico Julius

            Hi Mike, I just started to test WPEngine and your right. Even the basic package is very fast! Thanx for your interesting comments!

          • http://about.me/mikeschinkel MikeSchinkel

            Be sure to also check out ZippyKid.

  • Anonymous

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  • Willie Park

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  • http://www.convert-word-to-pdf.org/ Mench Ramos

    Choosing the right web hosting is a very important step. If you’re not familiar with websites and hosting, it can be very hard and time consuming to choose the WordPress hosting that suits you the best.

  • Lawrence

    This is a long post for 1 reason, I needed the info I’m about to give you as bad as you do. I wasted all my time hours and days doing all the research so now you can benefit from it. If you want the best WordPress load time ever which will both keep visitors from leaving your site and will increase you search rankings organically I suggest you read all my research below!

    I was hosting with godaddy and my WordPress sites were very slow over 7s each to load. about 3-5s just to First Byte Time, (the time it take from when you enter the domain to the time the server makes it’s first response, then it takes 2 more seconds to load the info.

    I had enough and did extensive research regarding word press hosting. When I say extensive I mean hours upon hours days upon days researching and scouring the web and taking to people for the best WordPress host that was also affordable. If you want to finally get your answer as the the best WordPress Host just keep reading!

    I did not want to manage myself a VPS or Dedicated server because you really need to know what you’re doing or you’ll screw things up. Also you’re responsible for all updates to your WordPress sites and the serer itself. I just want to make sites!

    After all my research looking at every hosting company I came 100% to the conclusion that Managed WordPress Hosting was the best way to go. All these companies that specialize in this host only WordPress, they know everything about WordPress. They do everything to optimize WordPress. This includes managing updates, backups, optimization and eliminating hacking while also taking care of the hacking if it were to happen. Basically we can make websites and they take care of the rest.

    3 companies stood out as the best, Wpengine, Zippykid and Lightning Base. So I looked into all 3.

    ~ All 3 offer a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for FREE. That’s huge for load times.

    ~ All 3 set up and install a caching software.

    ~ All 3 Take care of updates and configuration.

    ~ All 3 back up your sites for you.

    Once I established all 3 did the same thing, I wanted to look into any differences and especially prices.

    The Differences I saw was between Lightning Base and the other 2. Both Wpengine and Zippy Kid were almost 100% the same but Lightning base had 3 main differences:

    1. Price. Lightning Bases charges $9.95 a month for your first site and $5 a month for each additional site, that price get’s cheaper if you pay for 10 months in full they give you 2 free so it’s really $8.30 a month. Wpengine is $29 a month for your first site then you have to buy 10 to get the rest for $10 each. ZippyKid is $25.00 a month for your first site then each additional is $10. So price wise #1 by far was Lightning Base the #2 Zippy Kid then #3 Wpengine.

    2. Lightning Base was the only company that offered to move my sites from godaddy and set it all up for FREE, nothing for me to do.

    3. Customer service. I sent emails to all 3 and all 3 replied but I could barely get a second email from Wpengine or ZippyKid. but Lightning Base I’m not kidding you responded to each of my emails and my emails were long as you can see with this post. HA, They not only responded they gave me detailed answers to each of my questions and asked if i had more, well of course I did.

    Lightning base offered me a 30 day money back guarantee so I decided to try it. I went online and paid for it then I received welcome emails. Shortly after that they emailed me for my login info for godaddy so they can move everything. I gave it to them and then a few hours later I receive a confirmation it was successfully moved and set up. I was amazed at this, I did nothing!

    THE RESULTS:

    But here is where everything became amazing. I still remember it as though it just happened. I cleared my history and typed in my url. On my phone I opened a stopwatch app and clicked them at the same time. My site loaded in under 1 second. My wife and I looked at each other and said Oh My God! I then opened up 4 online website speed test companies and here was my results:

    Prior to lightning base my First Byte time was a grade of an F and was between 3-5 seconds. That’s just waiting for the server to respond. My test showed now it was an A grade at only 0.436s. to First Byte and the repeat view meaning someone who went to the site a second time was. 0.000s for First Byte Time and only 0.878s to load and view the site!!! This is exactly what I was looking for!

    I immediately emailed them and said let’s move all my sites: I’m now fully affiliated with them with all my sites hosted by them.

    You need to look into them as well, you can see them here at: https://secure.lightningbase.com/aff.php?aff=018

    Lawrence