Two people have reached out thoughtfully to ask me about where they should host a WordPress site. They just kinda vaguely wanted it to be good (like a nice dashboard, at least), and not break the bank.
The answer is… c’mon I’m just one dude! 😵💫
I’ve never done an in-depth competitive analysis of the whole market. In a way, it’s too big to review, and honestly you probably just have to look around and make a choice and hopefully, it’s fine.
And now, I shall spit out some more words about my own experiences and poking around.
All my WordPress sites, including this one, are hosted by Flywheel. They have plans as little as $13/month ($150/year), and it scales up with what seems to me fair pricing from there. I do find their monthly visits caps a little low. The admin area for managing your sites is nicely designed and has all the things you’d expect. I’ve found the support good. I especially like that they are who created Local, although I rarely use any of the features that directly connect the hosting to it, so it would still be useful on any other host. Disclosure: Flywheel used to sponsor CSS-Tricks when I ran that. But I honestly do like the hosting and don’t have any experience with anything I like better.
Flywheel is actually now owned by WP Engine, so it’s possible someday WP Engine eat it up. It took about a decade for that to happen to Media Temple.
WP Engine itself is a very legit choice, too. Their lowest option starts a bit higher at $20/month, but theirs options for plans with multiple sites are actually lower. WP Engine also owns some of the biggest and most important plugins and themes in the industry, so they are a major player that likely ain’t going anywhere. I’ve never tried it, but I have heard good things.
It should be known that WordPress.com is an actual option now. It used to be just the place for do-it-all-for-me mode where you mostly just pick a theme but otherwise not have much control. That’s changed, and now on the $25/month plan an higher you get SFTP/SSH access, MySQL access, the ability to install plugins, and whatever else you want. So just like any other WordPress hosting really, except you can’t touch the WordPress installation itself, which is updated for you. Theoretically, about as secure as it gets.
If you like the idea of trusting Automattic to get WordPress hosting right, they also have Pressable. Their personal plan is the same price as the Business plan on WordPress.com, so it’s very unclear to me when you’d pick one over the other. Also with both: you get Jetpack which has stuff like realtime backups which is pretty cool. It’s unclear if you get stuff like Jetpack Search, which I find very good and would be nice if you did. I see Pressable does support over Slack which seems kinda cool.
There are also the ones that, inexplicably to me, WordPress.org recommends: Bluehost and DreamHost. Bluehost has a plan that starts at a rock-bottom $2.95/month, which “rebills” at $11.99 and I can’t find how long the less expensive price goes for, so it’s probably just that first month. Still cheap. DreamHost is even cheaper at $2.59 for the first month and $5.99 after. That’s so low that I imagine they need to cut corners somewhere and how can it possibly be any good? Just a feeling! Never tried either, and it’s worth something that those are the only other two recommends from the whole WordPress open source project, but they both seem awfully suspicious.
There’s also GoDaddy too with WordPress-specific plans starting at $8.99. I actually don’t mind GoDaddy for domains but I’m afraid I’ve never heard anyone ever say anything good about the hosting so I’m personally wary there.
Are there more choices than this?
YES.
Kinsta! (never tried it, looks fancy)
Surely there are dozens if not hundreds of more web hosts that can and do host WordPress websites. All you need is the ol’ LAMP stack to get it done. Plus there is niche stuff like Strattic that does it static or headless style, and SpinupWP that helps you run WordPress on cloud providers.
Me, I’d lean toward a host that specializes in it.
OK one more thing.
ISN’T IT FRIGGIN CRAZY THAT NONE OF THEM WANT TO HELP YOU WITH DEPLOYMENT?
My god. Give me a Git repo where the main branch deploys. Maybe even do build previews for me on the other branches if you really wanna do something premium for me.
The git-focused host you want is Pantheon. They’re excellent. WordPress VIP (Automattic’s enterprise hosting) is also built on top of a git repo.
WP Engine and SpinupWP both let you push from git repos as well!
I can actually recommend dreamhost… kinda. I’ve been a customer for almost 18 years apparently (that hurts to realize), and for simple wordpress sites, the shared hosting is pretty solid (my “professional” site lives there). Once you get into more complex setups where you need more ram/processing, they have stuff for that too.
So for quick small wordpress sites, dreamhost is good.
I think a lot of the popular WordPress managed hosting providers offer site management via Git nowadays, so you should be able to automate deployments that way, via a GitHub action.
Flywheel has a tutorial here on that process.
WP Engine describes their GitHub action here.
WordPress.com has a tutorial to help you set up deployments via a GitHub action here.
The process should be the same as above for Pressable.
As a long-time follower and fan, and I genuinely appreciate you sharing content and felt the need to chime in. First off, you compiled a strong list – these hosts are all respectable and doing good work.
Regarding the Bluehost pricing strategy, our goal has always been to enable the dreamers and provide an accessible entry point for everyone who wants to bring their ideas online. We believe in breaking down barriers to entry and offering more value than the competition. That’s why we’ve set our introductory price to be incredibly competitive, and that introductory price is applicable for whatever term is selected.
When it comes to performance in the under $25 price range, we’re confident that we stand out from the competition. We’ve invested heavily in optimizing our infrastructure and services to ensure that our customers receive the best performance possible, regardless of their budget. You can see more here: https://wphostingbenchmarks.com/company/bluehost/
We are an imperfect company; however, it is not cutting corners that allows us to get to affordable prices but economies of scale.
I would be happy to give you a demo of our product if you’re interested.
The fact they aren’t helpful with the deployment isn’t that weird IMO.
WP has two types of users – those for whom GIT is too much and those already using a CI/CD. For the second type – SSH access is more important. I mean you probably saw the video I made when I was working at Buddy where I connected Buddy and Kinsta together.