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The world of website development has reached a highly matured state, and now people are starting to face a problem of plenty in all aspects. There are so many options for website platforms starting from WordPress to e-commerce Shopify to the giant, all-in-one platform like Wix.
For designing the website, there are almost over a million themes available on the internet today. In addition, there are thousands of integrations and plugins available in the market that facilitate modern functions and make the website more functional. Even for buying domains and hosting your website, many good options have opened up.
A few years back, a robust website hosting company’s options were limited to just a couple of big players. But today, that world has expanded a lot, and many new players have entered the market offering cutting-edge features to outcompete each other. While this is good for designers as they get more options, they face the problem of selecting the right website hosting company as each brand speaks highly of itself and throws technical jargon at the customers to sell their products. To help you in the task of selecting the right website hosting company, we have compiled a solid list of the ten best WordPress hosting companies for designers:
1. IONOS: Largest Hosting Company In Europe
IONOS website hosting solutions by 1&1 presently offers one of the most bang for the buck. Based in Europe, its basic plan starts as low as $0.50 per month for the first 12 months. It can offer one of the fastest, most reliable WordPress hosting services with robust customer support even at low costs. Mirroring your data at multiple locations makes hosting geo-redundant, ensuring more reliability and no maintenance downtime – a unique feature compared to its competitors.
Its basic plan includes unlimited websites, unlimited storage, databases, and professional email. With this, it is also offering freebies like a free domain, SSL certificate. It also offers the industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee and amicable 24×7 support for all plans. Its versatility, high reliability, and low cost make it the best choice for website developers.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $4/mo to get started.
Host Summary: IONOS website hosting is super fast, has 99.9% uptime, a solid 24×7 support along with lots of freebies. And all this comes at $0.50 per month, which makes the deal a no-brainer. No wonder it is rising to become the most preferred website hosting solution for standard websites.
2. Kinsta: Super Fast & Secure WordPress Hosting
Kinsta WordPress hosting has got to be one of the all-around best WordPress hosting services that specialize in the WordPress content management platform. We personally like this one the best because we at Line25.com & WebDesignDev.com use them and are extremely amazed. Some of the biggest brands in the world use Kinsta WordPress hosting and the massive list of Kinsta clients includes:
- Intuit
- GE
- TripAdvisor
- RICOH
- Workforce
- Drift
- And Thousands More.
We are proud to say that we use Kinsta for hosting our two blogs Line25.com and WebDesignDev.com. If you’re interested in what we have to say in more detail, you can head over to WebDesignDev.com and read our blog post entitled “Kinsta WordPress Review – Best Choice For 2022?”
They are not the cheapest, but they are extremely laser-focused on super fast hosting along with top customer support, free migrations, a staging platform for developers with DevKinsta, and hosted on Google’s C2 servers. With 29 Data Centers around the globe and utilizing the Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network) provider, your content will be loaded fast and where your site visitors are located. You can’t go wrong with Kinsta’s super-fast WordPress hosting, support from experts in all things WordPress, and top security with regular site back-ups included. As we know, Google loves indexing fast-loading safe sites with top-quality content. You can see a complete list of their features here.
As we mentioned, Kinsta is trusted by some very large companies who trust their expertise. See the list below of clients. With the starter plan, you’ll get free SSL, CDN, staging, migrations, Nginx, LXD containers, on MariaDB and Google Cloud Platform for lightning speed.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $30/mo to get started (but you get a lot for the money – compare!)
Host Summary: They have a modern approach to hosting with state-of-the-art technology and are up to date on all things WordPress hosting. It’s no wonder that TripAdvisor, GE, Ricoh, Intuit, WorkForce, and other internationally recognized brands use them. They offer platforms like DevKinsta for experienced developers as well as a starter plan for beginners. They focus on all things related to security, speed, and WordPress.
Powering over two million websites across the globe, Bluehost is one of the largest website hosting providers in the world. It can cater to any type of hosting requirements starting from simple WordPress blogs to E-commerce to large enterprise websites. Its basic shared hosting plan starts from $2.75/month, and the WordPress plan one can get at $2.00/month. The plans are good for the money as they come along with a variety of options and also CPanel access for expert designers.
Bluehost has now even come up with its own website building services. Offering over 300 templates, you can quickly create a website using the drag and drop builder, stock images and other integration options. However, what makes Bluehost a bit costly is the absence of a monthly package. You have to pay for the entire year, and that can become too big a commitment. Also, its customer support is not up to the mark given its wide user base. Finally, professional developers would find their hands tied as Bluehost does not allow you to tweak its advanced server settings.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $2.95/mo to get started.
Host Summary: Bluehost offers a power pack bundle of website hosting and building options. But this comes with long commitments and limited configuration options, which will be a disadvantage to professional website designers.
4. Domain.com
As the name suggests, Domain.com is a market leader when it comes to buying domain names. But since a few years, it has started focussing on providing website hosting solutions as well. This combination is always preferred as your domain and website hosting can be at the same place. When it comes to the hosting plans, it is quite generous as it offers unlimited storage and scalable bandwidth even with the basic plan that starts at $3.75/month. It also provides a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt, which is a big plus for website designers.
Domain.com does really well compared to its competitors when it comes to customer support. Its 24/7 live chat support ensures requisite handholding for designers. Its e-commerce plan is loaded with a lot of features. But just like Bluehost, it also does not provide any monthly billing option. Because it is relatively new to this space, it is not able to offer a wide product range. The biggest drawback of domain.com is that it does not provide a cPanel option, and this will irritate all website designers.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $3.75/mo to get started.
Host Summary: Domain.com offers better value for money packages if website designers are looking for simple website hosting options with good customer support. But because it does not provide a variety of products and cPanel options, it does not fare well with designers looking for customizable solutions.
5. Hostgator
One of the oldest and widely spread hosting services, Hostgator has earned a good reputation over the years of its operation. Its shared hosting service is the one that is widely used because of its return for money value, reliability, and 99.9% uptime. The Hatchling subscription plan is also attractive as it offers unmetered bandwidth, free WordPress/cPanel website transfer, and a free SSL certificate.
Apart from the above, it also has set up other good plans and offers website building services. It allows a 45-back money guarantee offer and freebies like one domain per year, free transfers to new accounts, and a very robust 24×7 support system. However, it misses out on some basic features like the availability of CDN, free backup tool and its dedicated server plans are quite costly.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $2.75/mo to get started.
Host Summary: Hostgator seems attractive at the start given its features of free migration, good support system, cPanel access and money-back guarantees. But for bigger websites, the plans get costly, and the absence of common features like CDN, free backup and others makes it lose out to competitors.
6. GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is the world’s number one green energy web hosting provider and therefore needs to be mentioned in the list. The company claims that for every 1 unit of energy that it utilizes to power the servers, it invests three times to build renewable energy through Bonneville Environmental Foundation. This makes this hosting service not just carbon-neutral but also carbon-reducing.
It has a powerful sharing plan that offers unlimited websites, emails, databases, bandwidth, a free domain, and an SSL certificate. It also offers CDN, every night back features, and has a seasoned support team as well. But apart from that, GreenGeeks fails to impress the website hosting front as it has limited plans and products. Also, the packages come with a long commitment as its basic plan starts at $2.49/month, provided you pay three months upfront.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $2.95/mo to get started.
Host Summary: GreenGeeks – an eco-friendly website hosting service is for those who really care for the environment and are ready to compromise on the quality of the hosting and also pay a bit extra for saving the earth.
7. Hostinger
One of the formidable forces in the WordPress hosting space, Hostinger provides one of the best cloud hosting services with high speed and affordable packages. All of its plans come along with freebies like free domain, SSL certificate, daily back-ups, Google Ad credits and allow the user to host up to 300 websites. In addition, while it provides the standard c-Panel, it also gives the option of using h-panel a customized backend that gives the developers more advanced options.
WordPress users highly prefer Hostinger as it is simple to use and set up. The plans it offers are affordable, and the 24/7 chat support is a big plus. The downside is that there is no phone support. Also, the bigger problem is that there is no dedicated hosting plan if you want a better, safer and faster server for your website. Also, standard features like daily backups, CDN, SSH access are offered only in premium plans.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $2.59/mo to get started.
Host Summary: Hostinger has been attracting newbie website developers with its high value for money shared hosting plans. But the lack of a dedicated server and other advanced features makes the developers think twice before choosing Hostinger for important websites.
8. Dreamhost
Dreamhost has over 20 years of experience in the website hosting market and has matured with a large scale of products and services. It offers WordPress, Cloud, and also dedicated hosting plans. An interesting feature that it offers is email hosting in case you need to just house your emails with a set domain. This feature boasts of a good spam filter as well.
Unlike other hosting companies, Dreamhost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee. In addition, all its plans offer unlimited bandwidth and come with varied freebies as well. But Dreamhost loses out on lapses like the absence of a server location option or the unavailability of windows hosting. Also, users need to pay extra for emails if they are choosing the starter pack.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $1.99/mo to get started.
Host Summary: Dreamhost showcases its 20 years of experience by offering tailored products that are a good mix of economy and reliability, and its email hosting option is a good catch. On the other side, as a user, you are bound to get confused with multiple options, and hence you need to be careful not to miss out on any essential needs.
9. Liquid Web
A premium and bespoke hosting service, Liquid Web is a highly underrated website hosting provider. Focusing on walking the extra mile, all its plans offer a lot more than what you can ask for. It offers all kinds of products starting from email hosting, WordPress, Woocommerce, dedicated hosting, and cloud services. One example of its premium services is that it handles all the plugin updates separately, ensuring that nothing wrong happens with the website when it updates WordPress.
Its premium services are again reflected in its 24/7 customer support and 100% uptime guarantee. But all this comes at a very high cost. All its packages are way too costly compared to the competitors. Also, it does not offer shared hosting. In the absence of free trials, it is hard for new customers to be convinced about its services.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $13.30/mo to get started.
Host Summary: A highly premium website hosting service, Liquid Web delivers more than what is expected from its plans. It is best suited for conglomerates who do not mind spending extra for tailored services. For normal websites, the plans will come across as expensive.
10. WP Engine
Contrary to Hostwinds, WP Engine is a master in offering managed WordPress hosting. As the name suggests, it truly powers a strong WordPress ecosystem that can help you set up and manage all the aspects of your WordPress website. It just doesn’t stop here; rather, it prides itself in doing all the back work for your website while you can rest in peace and focus on the other aspects of your business. Along with the wide range of products, it offers robust customer support.
The downside of WP Engine is that it charges exorbitantly for this. Its basic plans are almost three times the rates that other good website hosting companies are offering. No doubt it handles all the WordPress work for you, but still, the cost makes it hard to choose, especially for developers who are better equipped to carry out many tasks themselves and save money.
Pricing: (as of Jan 2022): $23/mo to get started.
Host Summary: WP Engine is the one-stop solution for all your WordPress hosting needs as it provides the best-in-market services. But this comes at a very high cost. Therefore, it is only suitable for people with very little WordPress knowledge who can afford to spend extra on hosting.
Conclusion
We have discovered through the years that going with the cheapest host is not the wisest choice. A cheap web host tends to be very lacking in services and especially with customer support. Also, choosing a host that is modern in their approach, keeping up with technology changes, and that is an expert in a specific content management platform, such as WordPress, is the best way to go. Our favorite is Kinsta. Kinsta WordPress hosting is phenomenal and they are everything that you’d want in a WordPress host including super fast and secure servers on the Google Cloud Platform. You may want to consider Kinsta, which, would be #11 in the list above.
Here is a list of all the website hosting companies we’ve covered above:
