Best WordPress Hosting Comparison (2021)

Now after browsing through the top WordPress hosting companies listed previously, you might still

be wondering which one is best for your business?

To help you choose the best WordPress hosting, we have created few additional resources for you:

1. Detailed WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison
2. Side-by-Side WordPress Hosting Feature Comparison

Our goal is to help you make the right decision because choosing the wrong provider can have a negative impact on your website SEO, speed, and sales.

/READ MORE// Setting Your Dashboard in Blogger

If you want personalized help in choosing the best WordPress hosting provider, then please send us a message using our contact form. One of our team members will respond within 24 hours.

Detailed WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison

One of the reasons why The Art of Blogging is a trusted blogging and WordPress resource site is because our reviews are based on actual data and experience.

Unlike other WordPress hosting review sites who just steal words straight from press-releases of respective hosting companies, we actually sign up with each individual WordPress hosting provider and thoroughly test their services.

We use independent third-party tools like Pingdom, LoadImpact, and Bitcatcha to test the performance and reliability of each company, so we can help you choose the best WordPress hosting for your business.

To accurately measure performance across all WordPress hosting companies, we create a sample WordPress site on each hosting provider and install the default Twenty Seventeen theme. Next, we import dummy content including images and media so our test resembles an average user website.

After that, we use Pingdom, an industry leading website speed test service, to measure our sample website speed across multiple hosting companies.

We also use Load Impact service to send virtual users (VU) to each website to see how the hosting server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once. This helps us see how the individual WordPress hosting company would perform during peak traffic times.

Last but not least, we use Bitcatcha service to test server response times across numerous geographical locations including United States, London, Singapore, Sao Paulo, India, Sydney, and Japan. This helps us decide which hosting company is best for which geographical location.

Now that you know our test process, let’s compare the performance of the best WordPress hosting companies.

Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies on the planet, and they are an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. 

Here are the results from our Bluehost performance tests:

As you can see, our test site loaded in less than two seconds. That’s faster than 85% of all tested websites. Considering the fact that our sample website wasn’t using any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this result is very good.

After the speed test, we ran the Load Impact test on Bluehost servers. We gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

Here is the result screenshot:

The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server load time. As you can see the server load remained stable through out the test even at peak traffic.

After the load impact test, we used Bitcatcha to test more accurate server response time from various geographical locations.

The Bluehost server performed exceptionally well in the United States loading under a fraction of a second. In other locations, response was a bit higher but still under less than a second.

If your target audience is in the United States, then this would hugely benefit your website. 

In our detailed Bluehost review, we also evaluated their customer support, features, and pricing. After our analysis, we rate Bluehost as the #1 WordPress hosting provider for small businesses to make a website.

• PROS: 63% off WordPress hosting + Free Domain + Free SSL
• PROS: Officially recommended by WordPress
• PROS: Free Site Migration
• CONS: Sometimes support can be slow

HostGator

HostGator is a popular web hosting company that hosts over 8 million domains. The Art of Blogging website is currently hosted on HostGator dedicated servers, and we have been using them since 2007 for our various websites.

Here are the results from our HostGator performance tests:

As you can see, our test site loaded in just under a second for a server in Dallas, Texas. That’s faster than 94% of all tested sites. Considering the fact that our sample website wasn’t using any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this result is amazing.

But how does HostGator perform when you have a lot of traffic? 

We ran the Load Impact test on HostGator servers where we gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

The green line represents page load time and the blue line represents number of users on the site. As you can see, our test site performed really well up to 80 users, after that it started to slow down.

These results are normal for shared hosting accounts because you share server resources with other sites hosted on the same server. As your site grows, you need to move up to VPS hosting or even managed WordPress hosting.

After the load impact test, we used Bitcatcha to test more accurate server response time from various geographical locations.

The HostGator review site server performed really well. The server response time remained less than a second. In the United States, it was merely 37 ms.

In our detailed HostGator review, we also evaluated their customer support, features, and pricing. After our analysis, we find HostGator to be a great option for growing businesses because they offer plans that grow with your business.

• PROS: Fast and Reliable with good support
• PROS: The Art of Blogging is hosted with HostGator
• PROS: Free Site Migration
• CONS: No free domain and renewal fees are higher

SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated hosting provider in the WordPress community. They provide unique in-house speed and security solutions which is why they’re an official WordPress recommended hosting provider.

Here are the results from our SiteGround performance tests:

As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (649 ms to be precise) for a server in Dallas, Texas. That means our site is faster than 95% of tested sites.

Next, we ran the Load Impact test on SiteGround servers where we gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how their server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server load time. SiteGround performed almost consistently except for a spike when there were 50 users on the site. It quickly recovered and page load time remained steadily low even with more users.

After the load impact test, we used Bitcatcha to test more accurate server response time from various geographical locations.

Our SiteGround test site server performed really well in the United States and all other locations with the exception of Japan.

If your audience is in Asia, then you can ask SiteGround to move you to their Asia-Pacific servers to remedy this.

In our detailed SiteGround review, we also evaluated their customer support, features, and pricing. After our analysis, we find SiteGround to be a great option for beginners because their support is incredibly helpful.

• PROS: Best WordPress support, good uptime, fast speed, and free SSL.
• PROS: Officially recommended by WordPress
• PROS: Free Site Migration
• CONS: No free domain and GoGeek Plan is expensive

InMotion Hosting

InMotion hosting has been a well-known industry brand with reliable performance for business class hosting. They offer award-winning 24/7 U.S. based support.

Here are the results from our InMotion hosting performance tests:

As you can see our test site loaded in just under a second for a server in Dallas, Texas. That’s faster than 90% of all tested sites.

Since the test above only measures the load time with single user on the site, we used Load Impact to test how InMotion hosting servers would perform during peak traffic hours.

We gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how their server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

As you can see that our test site performed well until it reached 25 users. After that it slowed down as traffic kept increasing.

This is normal for shared hosting where your website shares resources with other websites hosted on the same server. But some hosts do a better job of resource allocation than others.

After the load impact test, we used Bitcatcha to test more accurate server response time from various geographical locations.

For all locations, InMotion Hosting responded under a second. The response time was slightly higher for locations in Japan, Brazil, and Australia.

If your websites’ target audience is in the United States and/or United Kingdom, InMotion Hosting is a fast and reliable host. If your target audience is located outside these regions, then you might benefit from finding a server location near those regions.

In our detailed InMotion Hosting review, we also evaluated their customer support, features, and pricing. After our analysis, we find InMotion Hosting to be a great option for businesses who value U.S. based support. Their plans grow as your business grows.

• PROS: U.S based support, good uptime, and free SSL.
• PROS: 90 day monkey back guarantee
• PROS: Free Site Migration
• CONS: No free domain and No instant activation for people outside U.S.

DreamHost

DreamHost has been around for 18 years and is known for their reliable web hosting. They are also an official recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Here are the results from our DreamHost performance tests:

As you can see our test site loaded in just under a second for a server in New York City. That’s faster than 93% of all tested sites.

After the speed test, we ran the Load Impact test on DreamHost servers to see how it would perform during peak traffic hours. We gradually built up to 100 unique visitors at once to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

Here is the result screenshot:

The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server load time. As you can see the server load remained stable through out the test even at peak traffic.

After the load impact test, we used Bitcatcha to test more accurate server response time from various geographical locations.

The DreamHost server performed well in the U.S loading under a fraction of a second, but in other locations it was slightly slower.

Overall, DreamHost is a great host for websites in any geographical location. 

In our detailed DreamHost review, we also evaluated their customer support, features, and pricing. After our analysis, we find DreamHost to be a great option for businesses who value privacy. They offer free domain privacy with each of their domains. They also recently fought the U.S. department of Justice to protect the privacy of one of their customer website.

• PROS: Good speed free SSL, free domain with privacy protection, and 1-click WordPress install.
• PROS: Officially recommended by WordPress
• PROS: Free Web Application Firewall Included
• CONS: More expensive than every other host in this list.

Best WordPress Hosting (Quick Recap)

Now that you have seen the performance comparison of the top WordPress hosting companies, it’s time to decide which is the best for your business.

For your convenience, we have created a table with a side-by-side feature list, so you can easily compare the best WordPress hosting companies.

Hosting	Cost	Free Domain	Free SSL	1-Click WP
Bluehost	$2.75/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes
HostGator	$2.78/mo	No	No	Yes
SiteGround	$3.95/mo	No	Yes	Yes
InMotion	$3.49/mo	No	Yes	Yes
DreamHost	$6.95/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes

In our in-depth WordPress hosting review, we came to a conclusion that if you are looking to start a blog, then you cannot go wrong with Bluehost. The fact that they offer you a free domain and free SSL for the price of $2.75 per month, it’s very hard to beat.

But truly, you can’t go wrong with any of the top WordPress hosting companies that we have mentioned above. They all offer great uptime, fast servers, quality support, and extremely low prices.

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