This post is a WordPress Hosting Review. I have reviewed 8 different hosting providers websites and compared some of their features so you can pick the best hosting for your blog. With a lot of information all over the internet, I thought it would be beneficial to have a simple comparison that would show the cheap hosting options as well as premium hosting providers.
Comparison Criteria
My main criteria I was focusing on for picking the perfect hosting for myself were as follows:
- Do I get any bonuses? Let’s say I will pay $85 for 1 year of hosting but will get $200 bonus in free ad money -it means my hosting is free.
- Free trial – when you are starting a blog you may either be very knowledgeable or learn everything as you go. You can make poor decisions eg. with hosting provider, you may notice your site is not loading, runs very slow etc. With the trial period, you are able to change your hosting provider. I would recommend for a new blogger but also for someone who is changing hosting provider. It doesn’t mean only your first hosting provider may not be the right fit, maybe second wouldn’t work as well. I wouldn’t go in extreme to change hosting providers like gloves every month as there are more important things to focus on when you are starting a blog but would definitely change the provider if I was really unhappy with the service.
- I had no clue how much space my blog posts, pictures or inserted videos would need so I was looking for an unlimited website space.
- Domain privacy protection– this is something I would pay for as this will not show your personal information to people who want to know who owns the certain page. Your address is then protected.
- WordPress Hosting Provider popularity. I was wondering how often people visit hosting pages and as you can see in the table below the differences between them are enormous. This doesn’t say how many pages are supported by those providers but you can see potential clients and differences are between 600 and 5 000 000 in daily page views. My thinking is that a big hosting site can have plenty of resources and lots of lessons learned whilst a small hosting provider (significantly less monthly page views) can be relatively new and created by some very intelligent people who maybe used to work for the big companies in the first place and since they were really good at what they were doing they might have started their own business. So no right or wrong here but as a beginner, I would start with a big provider.
- SSL – without it you are not going to be shown in google results so all your SEO efforts are going to be wasted. Must have.
- Recommended monthly visits– when starting a new blog there needs to be a lot of content promotion, you need to gain readers, unless you plan to write blog post, pay for site and enjoy them by yourself 🙂 If you want your blog to become your business and bring you passive income you need to have at least 30k monthly views. This would qualify you to work with a good paying ad providers.
- Backup – if for some reason your site disappears you lost all your effort. With a backup, you can restore all your posts using a different provider. Must have.
- Spam and Malware Monitoring – a good to have feature
- Email account is a good to have not a big priority but it definitely helps to have private and blog related emails in different folders.
- As a beginner, I was not focusing on having multiple websites as I decided to have one page with various topics.
- Free domain wasn’t a high priority since if hosting is cheaper without it and after I pay the $15 it is still less than I do not mind paying for my domain
WordPress Hosting Comparison – 8 Providers
The cheapest option, just under $60 a year (if moving your blog from other provider) or around $75 if starting a blog from scratch (Domain name cost is usually about $15 depending on the domain availability) is WebHostingPad . It can host up to 5 pages, gives you unlimited email accounts and storage and does a malware scan and removal for you. It does not include a free domain, this run for about $15. I was not able to find the website space provided or any option to get SSL as it is not included in the price.You can purchase a backup plan. It does not offer a trial period. WebHostingPad is very popular and has 36 500 daily page views.
The second provider- Hostpapa Business plan runs for $71,4 on a 12-month plan. It includes a free domain and you can host unlimited amount of domains. For a new bloger who do not have a domain yet this is the cheapest plan. Webspace, email accounts and storage are also unlimited. Hostpapa gives you a free SSL and 30 day trial. Additionaly you can get a free one-on-one training which for a beginner can be a great help. It is a really good deal and I would definately recommend it to a new blogger. I was not able to find anything around malware and spam protection and domain privacy protection so I assume this are not provided but if you like the plan I would definately contact Hostpapa and check with them what can be done about it. The are very popular with 70 170 daily pageviews.
Next hosting provider on my list is AvaHost and for the comparison I picked the Business Plan. This plan would cost you $76.2 per year and free domain is included. With this hosting provider you get a very long trial period- 60 days, unlimited website space, free SSL, free backup and reccomended monthly views are unlimited. As this is a business plan you can host up to 50 websites. You do not get email account and storage, domain privacy protection, spam and malware monitoring or any bonuses. This is the least popular site from the comparison with 610 daily pageviews. Definately worth trying. I like the low cost, 60 day trial free ssl and backup.
And now my provider Bluehost. I have chosen the Plus plan as it has good bonuses which made me decide to pick them as my WordPress hosting provider. Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting providers with over 4.8 mln daily pageviews the bonuses are really amazing and make you feel your hosting is totally free, but you actually pay $83.4. Comparing to the first three providers you pay $10 more (or $50 more if including SSL but you will get $200 in ad budget so in the end it is a good price) You are getting $100 that you can use in AdWords and $100 in Bing, Yahoo ad bugdet. You get a free domain but you can host unlimited amount with this plan. Website space is also unlimited and you get email adresses and storage. They are the only ones that offer free domain privacy protection which is very valuable. You also get free backup and 30 day trial period. The two things that are missing are SSL which is pricy – $39.99/year and no spam, malware monitoring. From my own experience I have not had any issues with Bluehost so far.
GlowHost is the next WordPress hosting provider on my list but it actually have same price point as Bluehost – $83.4 a year. GlowHost gives you a free domain and allows youu to host 1 website. You get unlimited website space and free SSL. You can buy domain privacy protection for $12/year and spam and malware protection for $11.95/month. There is no backup available and no email accounts. You won’t get any free trial period. This WordPress hosting provider seems to be more beneficial for sales websites than blog as a bonus they offer you get free toll numbers, trust marks and badges. This Hosting provider is one on the less popular side in my comparison as they have 1720 daily pageviews.
Hostgator is the most popular WordPress hosting platform as they reach over 5.3 mln daily pageviews. They give you a $100 ad bonus to Google AdWords so you can get the free hosting feeling as you will pay $86.16/year for their hosting services. They are not giving a free domain so if you are a new blogger you would need to purchase one, this usually cost $15/year. HostGator allows you to host two websites and gives you 150GB space. You get unlimited emails and storage free security and sitelock monitoring and free backup. Standard plan has recommended monthly views of 200k/month. You also get 45 free trial period. You are not getting domain privacy protection and can purchase SSL for $19.95/year.
JaguarPC would cost you $131.4/year and will give you unlimited website space, emails and storage. Reccomended monthly visits are 150k/month. There is no free domain or bonuses, you can host 1 website only, there is no domain privacy protection, security sitelock monitoring or free trial. You can get SSL for $27/year. In the comparison to the above you are paying a lot and do not have a space for expansion, when you buy a new domain you need to pay for new hosting. This WordPress Hosting is although very popular as they get 11 108 daily pageviews.
WP Engine is a premium hosting provider, very popular, over 2mln daily pageviews. Their services start at $232/year as they currently run a 4 month free promotion( promo code: wpe20off). You get a 60 day trial period so a great chance to get premium service test drive with them. They also give you a free SSL. You need to purchase a domain and are allowed to host only one. Website space is limited to 10GB and you won’t get any email nor domain privacy protection. There is no security monitoring nor backup. The basic plan supports up to 25k/monthly pageviews.
To sum up I am glad I picked Bluehost as my Hosting provider as it meets all my needs. Below you can find a table I created when comparing diferent providers. Let me know what were your priorities and let me know if you have any questions.
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Disclamer: all the information were gathered from the Hosting Providers websites and may no longer be accurate and might have been updated since this post was published.
Tags: best hosting for your blog, cheap hosting, premium hosting, hosting providers comparison, how to pick best hosting provider for your blog
Hi, my name is Joanna, I started this blog in Jan 2017. I created posts about beauty, fashion, travel, rabbits, money blogging ect. Simply put: all the stuff I care about. After 10 months I realized my blog is not getting enough traffic so I dived into research. Till Oct 2017 I only had around 700 visitors on my blog per month. Then I implemented my Pinterest strategy and automated my pinning with my own build tool – PinMeApp. In Nov 2017 I got 3300 page views and then in Dec 2017 8500. That is how my app was born: PinMeApp. I wanted to help others grow traffic to their sites as well. Today I offer subscription for my app, but I also teach people my Pinterest strategy, step by step what I did to grow the traffic so fast, so this blog is now getting around 20k page views each month. I also offer Pinterest Management and implement my strategy for brands who want to reach their audience on Pinterest as well. My Pinterest account reaches over 5m people monthly. If you want such results feel free to contact me. Cheers, Joanna