Testing The 12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers

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I took the 12 fastest Wordpress hosting providers on the planet and put them through 5 vigorous tests to see who really is the fastest.

Pay attention:

Because the results of what I’m about to share…

 Could save you thousands of dollars in wasted WordPress hosting cost’s this year.

Choosing fast hosting solution is absolutely critical to the success of your business site, because if your WordPress website loads slowly you will suffer from-

  • Lower search engine rankings
  • Higher bounce rates
  • Lower page view numbers
  • Lower conversion rates
  • Lower profits

Not only is site speed a critical factor for your visitors, but it’s also a confirmed Google ranking factor and it’s not often Google confirms an SEO rankings factors definitively.

But what does all of that mean in the real world?

Well you can use this calculator from Google to find out. For me, it meant that I would increase my bottom line by $28,464 if I increased website speed by 1 second-

estimated revenue loss

So you need to make sure you are actually choosing the fastest Wordpress hosting provider which is absolutely critical because if you get it wrong, the consequences for your WordPress site could be far-reaching.

We’ve also seen some pretty bold claims from WP Engine recently stating their new Google C2 Infrastructure is “40 percent faster than anyone else in Wordpress”

WP Engine claiming they offer the fastest wordpress hosting by 40%

As you can imagine…

That led to some pretty heavy backlash which was doubled down by the founder blocking a number of industry leaders that asked them to provide data to back up their claim.

wp engine social backlack

On top of that:

WP Engine’s article also says…

wp engine c2 plan rollout

But that is also very misleading!

Because they don’t consider the $290 per month Scale plan hosting package a “premium” plan and they are VERY shy about sharing pricing for their “40% faster than everyone else” C2 setup-

wpengine c2 pricing

But, I’ve got some great news for you.

After jumping through many many many hoops, I was able to get a site set up on the new WPEngine C2 platform for $600 per month-

wpengine google c2 pricing

So I am very much looking forward to putting the “40% faster than every Wordpress host” claim to the test because they are 1,100% more expensive than the next cheapest web host in this test.

This is also likely to be the only independent testing you’ll see of WPEngine’s new C2 hosting service because of the high pricing and the many barriers they have in place to get setup.

And just to add to the controversy:

Kinsta recently migrated all their customers to the same C2 Google Cloud Platform that WP Engine are claiming victory over-

kinsta wordpress hosting performance boosts

But the key difference between the web hosting companies Kinsta & WP Engine…

Is that with Kinsta, the new C2 platform is default on all of their web hosting account plans which start from $30 per month versus the $600 per month cost and special setup requirements of WPEngine.

Kinsta c2 pricing

So with all this controversy over who actually are the fastest WordPress hosts…

…I decided to put 12 fast WordPress hosting providers to the test.

12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies You Should Look Into

I decided to test the 12 fastest WordPress hosting providers by comparing how they performed in terms of load speed, support and price.

The last time I tried to find the best managed Wordpress host, I only compared 7 hosts.

So this time I have increased this to 12 of the fastest WP host to find great hosting solutions.

Here’s a quick introduction to each host-

1. Kinsta (www.kinsta.com)

Kinsta

Kinsta is a premium WordPress hosting provider who is obsessed with fast speeds and top security. It uses a Google Cloud platform across its 24 data centres meaning a speedy and secure transfer of data.

Some of Kinsta’s best features are:

  • DDoS detection
  • Hardware firewalls
  • Uptime monitoring
  • SSL support and free SSL certificate
  • Free site migration
  • Daily backups
  • Development staging areas
  • KeyCDN included

And they have a super user-friendly dashboard with access to 24-hour support from real WordPress experts at just the click of a button.

Pricing And Plan Information

Kinsta has plenty of options when it comes to choosing a plan and they all come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The Starter Plan is priced at $30 per month and provides-

  • The hosting of 1 site
  • Up to 20,000 monthly visitors
  • 10GB of SDD storage
  • A 50GB CDN limit

Other plans include Pro which is $60 per month, Business which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $100 per month and Enterprise which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $600 per month.

2. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)

siteground

Siteground offers multiple types of hosting and their Managed WordPress Hosting services are welcomed by those on a smaller budget and they are recommended by some big names such as WordPress itself and Yoast.

Siteground offers:

    • Free SSL certificate
    • Daily backups
    • Email services
    • Staging tools
    • Free CDN

And they also commit to a 100% renewable energy match with their data centre (Google Cloud).

Pricing And Plan Information

They often have promotions running so you may see even lower prices available and all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The current Siteground Managed WordPress plans are-

      • StartUp – $6.99 per month (reduced from $14.99) and you are allowed 1 site, 10,000 monthly visitors and 10GB of webspace.
      • GrowBig – $9.99 per month (reduced from $24.99) and you are allowed unlimited sites, 20,000 monthly visitors and 20GB of webspace.
      • GoGeek – $14.99 per month (reduced from $39.99) and you are allowed unlimited sites, 100,000 monthly visitors and 40GB of webspace.

Keep an eye on the pricing and try and lock the prices in for a longer period of time if you can afford the upfront payment.

3. WP Engine (www.wpengine.com)

WP Engine

WP Engine is a well-known host that caters specifically to WordPress sites. They boast of being the best platform for hosting a WordPress website and do offer a pretty good sales pitch.

With WP Engine plans you get-

      • A CDN included
      • A free SSL certificate
      • Daily backups
      • A staging area
      • 24/7 support available

We will see if the hype is real…

Pricing And Plan Information

WP Engine has 3 set plans you can choose from which can be paid monthly or yearly. You can usually get a better deal if you go with the yearly option.

      • StartUp – $30/month gives you a 25,000 monthly visits allowance, 10GB of storage, 50GB bandwidth allowance for 1 site.
      • Growth – $115/month gives you a 100,000 monthly visits allowance, 20GB of storage, 200GB bandwidth allowance for a maximum of 10 sites.
      • Scale – $290/month gives you a 400,000 monthly visits allowance, 50GB of storage, 500GB bandwidth allowance for a maximum of 30 sites.

Custom plans are for those sites that are expected to receive more than 400,000 monthly visits and you need to discuss with a sales specialist to get a quote.

4. WPX Hosting (www.wpxhosting.com)

WPX

WPX Hosting offers a fantastic managed WordPress hosting service that has been proven to provide speedy load times backed up by an excellent level of support.

Their plans include:

      • 24/7 expert support
      • Free custom-built CDN
      • Free SSL
      • Free migrations
      • Daily backups
      • DDoS Protection
      • Staging Area

And WPX Hosting CoFounder Terry Kyle is committed to using the success of this hosting provider to care for and improve the lives of hundreds of cats and dogs every day.

So as well as investing in a great service you are also contributing to the running of Every Dog Matters.

Pricing And Plan Information

WPX Hosting plans are pretty competitively priced and all offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy.

      • Business – $24.99/month which covers you for 5 websites, 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth.
      • Professional – $49.99/month which covers you for 35 websites, 40GB of storage and 200GB of bandwidth.
      • Elite – $99/month which covers you for 5 websites, 10GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth.

The monthly price gets reduced if you purchase the yearly subscription.

5. A2Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers a ton of different budget-friendly hosting services. Their managed WordPress hosting packages include some pretty cool features that keep up with the other premium hosting services on the market.

Such as:

      • Free staging area
      • Free SSL certificates
      • Malware protection
      • DDoS protection
      • Daily backups
      • Cloudflare included

And they are available 24/7 to assist with any questions or problems you may have.

Pricing And Plan Information

A2 Hosting provide a lot of hosting services but as we are focusing on WordPress hosting then I will run through their managed WordPress hosting plans-

      • 1-Site costs $11.99 and gives you 10GB of storage
      • 3-Sites cost $18.99 and gives you 20GB of storage
      • Unlimited sites cost $36.98 and gives you 40GB of storage

And all plans use A2 Hostings Turbo servers, which boast of being up to 20x faster.

They also have a pretty impressive ANYTIME money-back guarantee.

6. BlueHost (www.bluehost.com)

Bluehost

Bluehost is a well-known hosting provider that was founded by Matt Heaton in 2003. They offer professional managed WordPress hosting services that are designed to help build and grow their client’s websites.

All Bluehost WP Pro plans include-

      • An unlimited number of sites
      • A staging environment
      • Unlimited web storage
      • A free SSL
      • A CDN enabled
      • Spam protection
      • And much more

And all this is backed up by 24/7 customer support meaning you can pick up the phone or send a quick message anytime day or night and have no worries about needing help fast from a different time zone.

Pricing And Plan Information

Bluehost offers 3 WP Pro managed WordPress hosting plans-

      • Build – $19.95 a month
      • Grow – $29.95 a month
      • Scale – $49.95 a month

Each plan offers a different level of some pretty impressive features, there are no traffic limits on these plans and they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Want to see how Bluehost stand up against its competitor SiteGround? Check out my post SiteGround vs Bluehost.

7. Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)

Cloudways

Cloudways is a cloud-based hosting platform that teams up with a selected provider to offer a good balance between functionality and affordability.

Cloudways plans offer-

      • 24/7/365 Customer Support
      • Free SSL
      • CDN
      • Free migration
      • Dedicated Firewalls
      • 24/7 monitoring
      • Automated backups
      • Staging environment

…as well as a bunch of other helpful features.

They have been featured on some pretty notable websites like Forbes and PC Magazine.

Pricing And Plan Information

Cloudways offers hosting with different infrastructure providers, for this article we have tested using Digital Ocean so I will run through those available pricing options-

      • $10/month gets you 1GB of RAM, 25GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth
      • $22/month gets you 2GB of RAM, 50GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth
      • $42/month gets you 4GB of RAM, 80GB of storage and 4TB of bandwidth
      • $80/month gets you 8GB of RAM, 160GB of storage and 5TB of bandwidth

And they have a ‘No Lock In’ policy meaning you don’t get tied up in contracts.

8. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)

DreamHost

Dreamhost is an award-winning hosting platform that was originally founded in 1996.

They have been widely known as leaders in the web hosting industry so it will be interesting to test them against some of the newer kids on the block.

Dreamhost managed WordPress hosting plans include-

      • Unlimited email
      • 1-click staging
      • SSL certificate
      • Daily backups
      • 24/7 WordPress support
      • Free automated WordPress migrations

And the two higher-tier plans include Jetpack Professional too.

Pricing And Plan Information

Dreamhost has a good range of pricing on its plans meaning they can appeal to all budgets.

      • DreamPress – $16.95 covers 100,000 monthly visitors and 30GB of SSD storage
      • DreamPress Plus – $24.95 covers 300,000 monthly visitors and 60GB of SSD storage
      • DreamPress Pro – $71.95 covers 1,000,000+ monthly visitors and 120GB of SSD storage

And all the plans have unmetered bandwidth and like most of the other hosts, they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

9. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com)

GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a well-known domain registrar but they are also a pretty popular web host too and has customers all across the globe.

Their WordPress hosting plans include-

      • 99.9% uptime promise
      • CDN boost for fast load times
      • Free business email for the first year
      • Access to free themes & plugins
      • Free 24/7 customer support
      • One-click migration tool

The higher-tier plans also offer regular malware scans and removal as well as a free SSL certificate.

Pricing And Plan Information

Here are the current pricing plans but ensure to double-check the renewal prices before you purchase-

      • Basic – $6.99 and you get 1 website with 30GB of storage and is recommended for up to 25,000 visitors a month
      • Deluxe – $9.99 and you get 1 website with 75GB of storage and is recommended for up to 100,000 visitors a month
      • Ultimate – $12.99 and you get 1 website with unlimited storage and is an unlimited number of visitors a month
      • Ecommerce – $15.99 and you get 1 website with unlimited storage and is an unlimited number of visitors a month but this has a bunch more features to warrant the higher price.

Not a bad set of plans to choose from.

10. GreenGeeks (www.greengeeks.com)

GreenGeek

GreenGeeks is a hosting platform who pride themselves on providing an eco-friendly but fast and secure hosting service.

Their plans boast-

      • Unlimited space
      • Unlimited data transfer
      • Free SSL certificate
      • Free domain name for the first year
      • Nightly backup
      • Free CDN
      • Unlimited email accounts

And if the name wasn’t a giveaway… GreenGeeks focuses on giving back to the environment by having a 300% green energy commitment on all plans.

Pricing And Plan Information

GreenGeeks currently have a special price on plans so be sure to check on their website for any pricing updates-

      • Lite – $2.95 (normally $9.95) which covers 1 site and unlimited web space
      • Pro – $5.95 (normally $14.95) which covers unlimited sites, unlimited web space and 2x performance.
      • Premium – $11.95 (normally $24.95) which covers unlimited sites, unlimited web space and 4x performance and a free dedicated IP

And they offer the standard 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try them out with peace of mind.

11. LiquidWeb (www.liquidweb.com)

liquid-web

LiquidWeb is another old-timer in the web hosting industry, they were first founded in 1997 and they pride themselves on their 99.999% uptime.

Nexcess has joined LiquidWeb and now take care of their managed WordPress hosting plans through their high-performance cloud which includes features like-

      • No traffic limits
      • Daily backups
      • A staging site
      • Automatic SSL
      • Unlimited email accounts
      • Their own data centres

And they back all this up with 24 hour support.

Pricing And Plan Information

LiquidWeb offers a wide range of plans, here’s a quick look-

      • Spark – $19/month. With this you get 1 website, 15 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Maker – $79/month. With this you get 5 websites, 40 GB storage and 3 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Designer – $109/month. With this you get 10 websites, 60 GB storage and 4 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Builder – $149/month. With this you get 25 websites, 100 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Producer – $299/month. With this you get 50 websites, 300 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Executive – $549/month. With this you get 100 websites, 50 GB storage and 10 TB bandwidth allowance
      • Enterprise – $999/month. With this you get 250 websites, 800 GB storage and 10 TB bandwidth allowance

They are so confident in their services that they offer 14 days free hosting without even asking for a credit card!

12. Pantheon (www.pantheon.io)

PANTHEON

Pantheon is a web hosting company that advertises lightning-fast speeds through a combination of hosting and its WebOps platform.

Their plans include some great features like-

      • 24/7/365 support from WordPress experts
      • Automated backups
      • CDN included
      • Maintaining a 99.99% uptime
      • Managed HTTPs

Can they live up to their claims in the tests I am going to put them through! We will see shortly.

Pricing And Plan Information

Pantheon offers two fixed price plans-

      • Basic – $41 per month (or $29 per month if paid annually) this plan covers 25,000 monthly visits and 20GB SSD storage.
      • Performance – This plan has many tiers ranging from $160 per month to $916 per month (or $114 per to $687 per month if paid annually). And ranges between 25,000-300,000 monthly visitor allowance and 30-200 of SSD storage.

And a third plan called ‘Elite’ which you can chat through with a web expert before getting a quote.

Best WordPress Hosting Logos

Each WP host was tested “out of the box” with the recommended setup to recreate the customer hosting experience and hosting needs as closely as possible.

HOST PLAN MONTHLY RENEWAL PRICE WEBSITE SLOTS CDN INCLUDED?
A2 Hosting 1-Site Turbo $32.59 1 No
Bluehost WP Pro Build $27.95 Unlimited*** No
Cloudways*** Digital Ocean $22 Unlimited*** No
Dreamhost DreamPress Plus $29.95 1 No
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Basic $14.99 1 Sucuri
GreenGeeks Ecosite Premium $24.95 Unlimited*** No
Kinsta Starter (C2) $30 1 KeyCDN
Liquid Web Personal $29 1 No
Pantheon Basic $50 5 Fastly
SiteGround** StartUp $11.95 1 Cloudflare Free
WP Engine* Startup $35 1 Stackpath
WP Engine C2* New C2 Platform $600 1 Stackpath
WPX Hosting Business $24.99 5 WPX Cloud

A few things you should know before we get started:

*The WP Engine benchmarks were first taken on their startup hosting plans. Then we upgraded the hosting packages and they migrated the domain to the new C2 architecture (with a different IP) where we took a second set of benchmarks.

** SiteGround is only being tested here with the recommended free Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) enabled.

*** Cloudways is more self-managed with System Admin Panel knowledge required.

**** Unlimited managed WordPress hosting is rarely unlimited and managed WordPress hosting companies TOS make sure it very clear that any account exceeding normal usage will be billed, restricted or disabled.

How The Wordpress Hosts Were Tested

I built a test blog to the following specifications-

      • 11 high resolution photos
      • 1,000 words of dummy content
      • Astra theme
      • Elementor plugin

And then cloned that across each of the 12 Wordpress hosts so that every web host had an identical install of Wordpress.

Then I ran 5 distinct tests across these sites-

      • Test #1 – GTMetrix website speed (from 7 global server locations)
      • Test #2 – Pingdom Tools website speed (from 7 global server locations)
      • Test #3 – Load Impact stress test (500 simultaneous visitors)
      • Test #4 – WP Performance Tester (a plugin that tests raw server management configuration performance)
      • Test #5 – Support quality (I installed a false flag virus on each site)

So without further ado…

 Let’s find out who offers the fastest Wordpress hosting solutions once and for all.

Test 1 – GTMetrix Loading Speed

I ran each of the test blogs through GTMetrix from each of the 7 global locations.

To make sure all caches were primed, I ran 3 passes of GTMetrix for each test site, for each server location (there’s data center locations for all your target audience) and averaged out the results-

wordpress hosting speed test gtmetrix

Test #1 Conclusion

Unlike last year, the results of this were incredibly close this time around.

Both WPX Hosting (0.8 seconds) and Pantheon (0.81 seconds) are literally neck and neck in 1st and 2nd place.

Interestingly Kinsta in 3rd place need double the time (1.60 seconds) than 1st and 2nd place did to load the site.

But shockingly the new WP Engine C2 environment delivered similar results to the basic hosting plan despite costing hundreds of dollars more per month.

The GTMetrix Test Winner:

It’s hard to declare either WordPress hosting company a winner here but I think WPX Hosting wins purely because they cost $24.99 per month whereas Pantheon costs $50 per month.

Test 2 – Pingdom Loading Speed

Next, I wanted to run a similar site speed experment but this time using Pingdom tools.

I followed the same order process by running 3 passes for each test site, for each server location (there’s a ton of data centers) and then took an average of the results that look like this-

Best WordPress Hosting Pingdom

Test #2 Conclusion

Interestingly the top 4 hosts are unchanged in this test and came out in exactly the same order as test #1 above.

Both WPXHosting (357ms) and Pantheon (359ms) were neck and neck yet again with 3rd place Kinsta (835ms) trailing behind.

The Pingdom Test Winner:

So just like in test #1 we can easily declare that both WPX Hosting and Pantheon are more than twice as fast as the rest of the managed WordPress hosting providers.

Test 3 – Load Impact

Isolated site speed testing is one thing, but it doesn’t tell you how hosts perform under stress.

So I wanted to know how each web host would handle 500 simultaneous visitors using Load Impact.

The problem with this test is WordPress web hosting providers often block it because they think it’s a DDOS attack and because all of my testing was done anonymously across each hosting account, I didn’t want to submit a live chat support ticket to the system administrator and disable the protection.

So I created a new page on each of the sites with 1,000 words per piece-

Then I setup Load Impact to test each page with 500 simultaneous visitors.

These are the results for those hosts that didn’t automatically block the test-

Best WordPress Hosting Load Impact

Test #3 Conclusion

Pantheon (4ms), WP Engine (17ms), WP Engine C2 (23ms), Kinsta (24ms) and WPX hosting (26ms) were the managed hosting providers that performed exceptionally well.

With that said, each of the hosts performed well under load and each of them demonstrated that they can comfortably handle larger simultaneous high traffic sites.

But Pantheon really stole the show here!

And while I would have loved to be able to get the data on the hosts where the tests failed, I couldn’t have done that without tipping off the support team members that they were being tested.

The Load Impact Test Winner:

Hats off to the Pantheon team for achieving the kind of stability under load, that is a serious achievement. However WP Engine, Kinsta and WPX Hosting all held their own.

Test 4 – WordPress Performance Tester

All of the tests so far have been served up from cached results but this test is designed to test the website performance of the actual server itself for each WordPress site.

To do that I am going to use the Wordpress Performance Tester plugin from Kevin Ohashi who invites WordPress hosting companies to pay to take part in his annual testing.

This stress tests server resources by doing a number of things-

      • Math – 100,000 math function tests
      • String Manipulation – 100,000 string manipulation tests
      • Loops – 1,000,000 loop iterations
      • Conditionals – 1,000,000 conditional logic checks
      • MySql – basic mysql functions and 1,000,000 ENCODE() iterations
      • $wpdb – 250 insert, select, software updates and delete operations

Once it has finished crunching all of the data, it outputs 2 distinct metrics to measure performance-

      • Execution Time – how long it took to do all of those tests (lower is better)
      • Queries Per Second – how many queries per second processed (higher is better)

I let the server monitoring plugin loose on each of the test blogs, this is how it went down-

Best WordPress Hosting Performance Tester

Test #4 Conclusion

What I love about this test is that a lot of hosts hide behind heavy web design caching because there’s a big difference between a server rendering a cached page and actually having to think about things.

As you can see Pantheon (3.82 seconds) really fell behind the pack here despite being top competitors in all of the previous tests.

And for the first time, we can see a clear difference in performance between WP Engines offerings with the new C2 platform showing a significant increase in performance.

WPX Hosting (0.696 seconds), Green Geeks (0.81 seconds) and Siteground (0.965) all put in sub 1-second high performance respectfully.

The WordPress Performance Tester Winner:

It looks like Kinsta (0.538 seconds) have made significant improvements this year with their new C2 platform offering a high performance of 23% faster execution time and a 31% more queries per second over last years testing.

Test 5 – Support Quality

Finding the fast Wordpress hosting provider is one thing, but unless that is backed by an incredible customer support team you’re going to face problems.

Each of the tested hosts are managed Wordpress hosts and self-proclaimed Wordpress site experts (except CloudWays & Pantheon).

So I wanted to put the speed and quality of support of each WP hosting account to the test by asking them to solve 3 common problems that most people have faced-

      • Problem #1 – Would they take care of website transfers?
      • Problem #2 – Would they remove malware on my test site? (I infected each site with a false flag triggering virus)
      • Problem #3 – Would they stop other sites hotlinking my images?

I sent the same questions on a support ticket to the customer support of each host to see how they would react and this is what happened-

Best WordPress Hosting Support Comparison

Test #5 Conclusion

Although WP Engine wouldn’t offer free site migration, they do offer a free plugin that should help with the process.

But in general, as you can see from the results, the quality of live chat customer service that each managed hosting provider offers really separates the cream from the crop.

The Support Team Winner:

The only host that offer free migrations, free malware cleanup AND took control of the hotlinking problems was WPX Hosting. However they don’t offer phone support and everything is done via 24 7 live chat email & email accounts.

Wordpress Hosting Key Features Compared

So after the 5 tests, I can compare the most important features you should be looking for when choosing a WordPress host.

We’ll take a look at these key features:

      • Price per month
      • Sites allowed
      • Speed
      • Customer support
      • Migrations

      • Daily backups
      • SSL certificates
      • Staging Environment
      • Email hosting
      • Trust Pilot rating

Take a look at this comparison table and scroll across to see all the hosts.

WP Engine / C2 WPX Hosting Kinsta A2 Hosting Dreamhost Cloudways Siteground Pantheon Bluehost Go Daddy Liquid Web Green Geeks
Monthly Price $35 / $600 $24.99 $30 $32.59 $29.95 $22 $11.95 $50 $27.95 $14.99 $29 $24.95
Sites Allowed 1 / 1 5 1 1 1 unlimited 1 5 unlimited 1 1 unlimited
Speed Slow Fast Fast Slow Slow Normal Slow Fast Normal Fast Normal Slow
Support Poor Excellent Excellent Average Average Poor Average Poor Average Poor Poor Average
**Migrations Plugin Free Free Free/Paid Paid Free/Paid Paid Unclear Paid Paid Free Free/Paid
Backups Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily
SSL Certificate Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Yes Free SSL Yes
Staging Area Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No
Email Hosting No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No No Paid No Yes
Trust Pilot Rating 3 Stars 5 Stars 5 Stars 4 Stars 4.5 Stars 4.5 Stars 5 Stars No reviews 1.5 Stars 4.5 Stars 4 Stars 4.5 Stars

**Migrations: Free/Paid = First site free and any after paid.

The Worst Things About Each Host

Despite the results of the managed WordPress hosting tests, no host is perfect and each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages.

And what is the right choice of web hosting services for me, might not be the right choice of WordPress hosting services for you.

So here is what I don’t like about each of the featured WordPress hosting providers-

WP ENGINE

WPX HOSTING

      • No phone support
      • No VPS hosting options
      • No Git support
      • Back end control panel could be easier to use

A2 HOSTING

      • Expensive per site with this hosting plan
      • Unimpressive speed
      • $25 per site migrated if not coming from cpanel
      • Malware removal $125 per site cleanup
      • Free CDN not included

DREAMHOST

      • Among slowest hosts in this test
      • CDN not included
      • Migrations will cost $99 per each site
      • Malware removal $199 per site cleanup

CLOUDWAYS

      • No email support
      • Control panel not user friendly
      • No free malware removal
      • Site migrations $25 per site after 1st free transfer
      • Limited support performance in above tests
      • CDN not included

SITEGROUND

      • Unimpressive speed in these tests
      • No free malware removal
      • $30 per site migration
      • Pricing virtually triples in year 2
      • No staging hosting environment on base plan
      • After first month, no monthly payment option
      • No real CDN on base plan (free Cloudflare doesn’t count)

KINSTA

      • Expensive per site
      • No phone support
      • No email accounts – additional costs with Google Apps or your chosen provider
      • List of banned plugins
      • Expensive for multiple sites
      • No live chat for pre-sales questions

PANTHEON

      • Expensive per site
      • No free site migrations offered
      • No free malware removal
      • Limited support help in above tests

BLUEHOST

      • To migrate a site $149.99 for up to 5 sites
      • Slow speed in this comparison
      • CDN not included
      • Malware removal for $500+ per year
      • Poor customer ratings

GODADDY

      • Migrations $99.99 per site
      • Malware removal $359.99 per year
      • Poor customer ratings
      • Limited support performance in above tests

LIQUID WEB

      • Expensive per site
      • Average speed in this comparison
      • No free malware removal
      • CDN not included
      • Limited support performance in above tests
      • No email accounts – additional costs with another provider etc

GREENGEEKS

      • Slow speed in this comparison
      • Site migrations $15 per site after 1st free transfer
      • CDN not included

There is no such thing as perfect right?

The Fastest Wordpress Hosting Is…

WPX Hosting (Cost: $24.99 per month) offers the fastest Wordpress hosting based on my testing. They came out on top with a high performance for both of my loading speed tests as well as a solid performance in the Wordpress performance benchmarker testing. Read my full WPX Hosting review to learn more about them.

Pantheon (Cost: $50 per month) was hot on their heels during both of the WordPress speed tests, dominated the load impact testing but seriously fell short in the Wordpress site performance benchmark and support tests.

Kinsta (Cost: $30 per month) also put in a solid performance top to bottom including speed, performance, load and customer support. Take a look at my detailed Kinsta review to learn about my favourite feature.

(If you’re looking to switch hosting to improve not only your speed but also your core web vitals, I highly recommend this one).

So if I had to rank them-

Why?

Because despite Pantheon delivering lighting fast load times, they really fell short in the support area and that is really what separates the cream from the crop and their hosting plans price per month is one of the highest.

Both WPX Hosting and Kinsta over-deliver in this area and have a great reputation for taking control of problems (whilst maintaining a 99.9% uptime guarantee) and solving them…

…while both being best value with lots of disk space and nearly 50% cheaper in price than Pantheon with a 30 day money back guarantee.

Best WordPress Hosting

And as for WP Engine’s claim that they are 40% faster than everyone else in Wordpress, well they are barely 20% faster than themselves and both their $30 monthly hosting plan and new C2 $600 monthly hosting plan failed to perform against cheaper hosts.

 So there you have it, if you want to choose the best Wordpress hosting… the winner is WPX Hosting.

And don’t forget, a faster WordPress website will result in-

      • Happier visitors
      • Lower bounce rates
      • Higher page view numbers
      • Higher search engine rankings
      • High traffic sites conversion rate

And last, but most importantly-

 Higher profits.

What Other People Say…

I came across an interesting thread the other day in a Facebook group-

wpx hosting feedback from other people

So that double confirms it!

WPXHosting is the best Wordpress hosting!

Which leads me to an important question…

…have you had any good or bad experiences with any of the featured hosts?

Answers in the comments please along with your name and email address! In the meantime, take a look at the website hosting resource site FAQs below.

Frequently Asked Questions

I run tests across a range of the fastest WordPress hosts every year. In my latest round of testing, I declared WPX Hosting as the best host, followed by Kinsta in second (who host this blog) and Pantheon in third.
The fastest WordPress hosting service for a WordPress site is WPX Hosting (at the moment). I ran speed tests across 12 different hosts, and WPX Hosting came out on top, with both Kinsta and Pantheon closely behind them. Read the full post for the full case study results.
If you want to host your site with a fast premium provider that includes an excellent set of features and truly expert support - you can expect to pay $249 a year with WPX Hosting and $300 a year with Kinsta. Look at my A2 Hosting review if you need a cheaper option.
The most important features to look for are daily backups, on-demand data backups, a free CDN & free SSL certificate, email hosting, free malware scanning, free malware clean-ups and excellent support.

What Are Your Thoughts?

264 Responses

  1. Hi there, I might be biased here, but if you compare fast WordPress hosting, you should really include 20i – not only really fast, but 100% run on renewable energy, lots of extras and true autoscaling (just to name a few features). Let me know if you need any more info, would be happy if this in included in your test.

    1. If I ever do another round of testing, I will try to include it. Thanks for the suggestion.

  2. I found a blazing fast wordpress hosting, and could you take it into your test lists? In my experience, it overtakes Wpx a lot, which calims itslef the fastest. Hope you can test it and put the result in the benchmark. The hosting is called Rocket, and its url: https://d.pr/PtP5VZ

    1. I know this hosting, and you’re right; it’s actually pretty fast. If I ever do another test, I’d include it for sure!

  3. Hi Matthew,Long time no see.I read your blog since 2013, and very happy to see you’re still sharing.Hat off to you!And thank you for this another useful and professional review.I bought wpx via your link, cheers!Best,Howard

  4. WPX is SO helpful! I am not particularly techy, and have run into so many issues on my site. I know if I mess it up, help is just a message away. The issue is generally resolved within 5 minutes! Plus, the hosting really sped up my slow site.

  5. I have tested wpx hosting and several of the other mentioned hosts above, and I certainly would not rate wpx as highly.Yes they may have fast servers, but I found the customer support rather lacking. Ironically, the best customer service/support I found was also one of the cheapest hosts I tested (GURU), their (Litespeed) servers also out performed better than many of the more expensive hosts.Another shady tactic I have noticed with WPX, they will get a bunch of people to make positive comments on a facebook post, then disable comments and boost that post as an ad. So nobody else can comment or disagree.The absolute worst of this bunch (that I have tested) are Siteground, who I would never touch again with a barge pole, followed closely by GoDaddy.here are my reviews/tests if you are interested.https://michaels.me.uk/category/reviews/hosting/

    1. Thank you for sharing your opinion and reviews with us. I really appreciate it! I just wanted to point out that I compared/tested these tools on their performance (speed) ONLY. This is why WPX is rated number #1. It was the tool that performed the best through my tests.

  6. Ours is a wp site, but the loading speed is very low.We are working on ways to improve it. will update once we are above par.

  7. No words to explain this post. I am very excited about reading time because I found in this article real information, and it is containing a much more useful method. You know I am facing one small issue past some days finally I solved my problem after reading this post. Thanks so much for sharing as like rich full content.

  8. Hello, Great review indeed. Can you test the host: NazwaPL – it’s the number one host provider in Poland. The performance is good, the price is perfect, the customer service is crap. But I would like to see your opinion. My website is built with this provider and is doing well.

  9. I appreciate the detailed data-driven review. Well done. I can’t help but notice that it is approaching 2 years old. A lot could have changed since 2019. It would be helpful for all the people about to discover this article to know which host is actually winning in 2021 -vs- the results of 2019 tests..

    1. Yes, you’re right. A lot can change in 2 years. I’ll try to do other tests this year, but as you can imagine, running tests like these takes times, investment and money to do, so I can’t promise anything!

  10. UK based blog reviewing US hosting companies. I’m guess because they pay the most in affiliate fees. Doesn’t make the findings any less valid, but I found it curious given the domain name used, and everything being in dollars. It wouldn’t make sense for a UK focused or European focused blog to be using US servers. That would actually be slower.

    1. Uk based but with visitors from all around the world (UK, US, India, Australia, Canada etc). Using US dollars, in this case, is the easiest solution.

  11. Hi Matthew,Thank you for your research!it is very informative. the data you provide very validly. thank you very much for sharing such a piece of great knowledge. keep sharing…Thanks

  12. Hi Matthew, excellent case study which you presented really well. I’d be curious to learn how flywheel stacks up to the rest but I realize it would be impossible to cover every single host out there and put it all into one post. That being said you provided some quality data for anyone looking to choose a hosting company.

  13. Believe that your contribution here is the first that has dealt so clearly with this topic. You can clearly see that you really went out of your way to get it all right in the end. In the end, you did that too.

  14. I have been with WPX hosting for about 1.5 years. I had been happy with their hosting and the live chat support was excellent. However, recently my site suffered from a 503 error (unsure of the reason). Unfortunately, this also occurred on the weekend. A support ticket was created and was ‘escalated’ to the Security & Optimization department. But this department only works weekdays from 9am to 6pm. FIVE DAYS later and I’m still waiting for my site to be fixed. I’ve persisted with my questions about why it has taken so long and been met by similar responses “Our Security & Optimization team will reach you back in their working hours(09:00 AM – 06:00 PM GMT+3).” I’ve also been accused of being too persistent and that “Pushing us to do this “faster” will not help us in any way, you as well” My site has been down for five days and I’m losing money and organic search. How can I not be persistent? They also give me absolutely no explanation or information on why the 503 error occurred. I’m in the dark and they don’t want to shed any light. They say it isn’t a DDoS but they do seem to blame me and say that “It seems the website has overloaded its resources.” So I’d say speed is great but it certainly isn’t everything. I have been hurt by this latest issue and I am considering changed hosts. Kinsta seems a good alternative.

    1. So sorry to hear about your bad experience!Kinsta is a great host. In fact, this blog is hosted with Kinsta (and I don’t plan to change it anytime soon).

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