Finding the best hosting provider for your WordPress blog can be quite overwhelming and a painful process. If you’re new to blogging or haven’t even started yet, you might be finding out that there are a lot of technical terms with setting up a blog that you may not have expected. For example, what is hosting and why are there so many options on the market? Good news – I’ve done all the research for you and I’m here to walk you through the top hosting providers for hobby and personal bloggers.

First, What is Web Hosting?

• The official definition is as follows: the activity or business of providing storage space and access for websites.

Web hosting is a service that allows users to create and post a website or landing page on the internet. This service stores the data and files and provides the tools needed for your website to be visible to visitors that come to your blog. Selecting the right web hosting provider is important because they control whether your site will be live and visible to visitors. In this post, I go over a number of hosting providers and breakdown the costs and overall benefits.

What are the Top Features to Look for in Hosting Providers?

• What will the initial cost be and will that change after the first year?
• Are there any specials/promotions included in the first year? i.e. – free domain for the first year
• Is the company known for good customer support?
• Do they offer a free SSL Certificate? If so, is this temporary or ongoing?
• What is the up-time for the hosting provider? How often do their sites go offline? (Both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance)
• How is the performance of servers that will host your website? Will your visitors experience quick load times?

Top 3 Hosting Providers Endorsed by WordPress

The 3 hosting providers listed below are endorsed by WordPress and have free forums for each of the providers below on their site.

SiteGround Hosting

Siteground is one of the highest rated and most popular WordPress hosting providers. They are known for their top-notch support and in-house WordPress speed and security solutions. What really impressed me was their WordPress-friendly features and multiple options for SSL Certificates. Google’s goal is to make the internet a safer place to search and browse, and adding an SSL Certificate to your website is the best way to accomplish that for your blog. Combine these features with their affordable hosting plan options for my personal blog – and I was sold! If you’re interested in using them as your hosting provider, make sure to click on my referral link to get 60% off.

SiteGround Hosting Benefits Overview:

• Cost: $3.95 – $11.95/month (Regularly $9.95 – $29.95/month)
• Domain Cost: Domain prices start from $9.95
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates for all plans, Premium  WildCard SSL Certificate is free for the first year on their GrowBig and GoGeek plans
• SiteGround Has been in Business Since: 2004
• Support: 24/7 support
• Money Back Guarantee: 30 day money back guarantee
• Uptime: 99.99% of the time.
• Page Load Time: Siteground prides themselves on fast sites. They have servers on 3 continents, SSD storage, customized server setup, Free CDN with each account, HTTP/2 enabled servers and 3 levels of SuperCacher depending on your plan level.

DreamHost Hosting

DreamHost has been around since 1996 and is known for having a great interface. They have a 100% Uptime guarantee policy, and they claim their servers can be up to 200% than competitors using HDD servers due to their SSD servers. They also include a free domain for the first year and a SSL/TLS Certificate with Let’s Encrypt – so it’s no wonder why they are one of WordPress’s trusted providers! Want to learn more about their web hosting? Click here.

DreamHost Hosting Benefits Overview

• Cost: $7.95 -$16.95/month
• Domain Cost: A free domain when you purchase annual hosting plans (1st year)
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Free SSL/TLS Certificate with Let’s Encrypt
• Has been in Business Since: 1996
• Support: 24/7 US Based Support
• Money Back Guarantee: 97 day money back guarantee
• Uptime: 100% Uptime Guaranteed
• Page Load Time: According to their websites, site are hosted on fast SSD servers. Which allows your site and pages to load up to 200% the speed compared to HDD hosting.

Bluehost Hosting

BlueHost is one of the most budget-friendly options on the market when it comes to web hosting. They are also one of the 20 largest web hosting companies, powering over 2 million websites worldwide. Like SiteGround, they do offer a Free SSL Certificate, but the Wildcard SSL Certificate isn’t available until you go up to their Ultimate plan. When you sign up for Bluehost, they also include a free domain for the first year. Pretty cool perk. Are you interested in learning more about their hosting plans? Click here.

BlueHost Hosting Benefits Overview:

• Promotional Cost (WordPress Hosting): $19.99 – $49.99/month (Regularly $39.99 – $129.99/month)
• Promotional Cost (Cloud Hosting): $6.95 – $15.95/month (Regularly $9.99 – $25.99/month)
• Domain Cost: Free for the first year
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Free
• BlueHost been in Business Since: 2003
• Support: 24/7
• Money Back Guarantee: 30 day money back guarantee
• Uptime: not stated on their site
• Page Load Time: I couldn’t find anything on their site about page load time

Additional WordPress Hosting Providers to Consider

Hostgater Hosting & Benefits Overview:

• Promotional Cost: $3.98 – $9.18/month
• Domain Cost: $12.95/year
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Private included for the business cloud plan
• Has been in Business Since: 2002
• Support: 24/7 support
• Money Back Guarantee: 45 day money back
• Misc. Benefits:
  • Free $100 credit for Google AdWords and Bing Ads
  • Email Marketing is included for all plans
• Uptime: 99.9%
• Page Load Time: Hostgater claims to have 2.5x faster load times due to their advanced cloud architecture, low-density servers, CDN, and multiple caching layers

GoDaddy Hosting & Benefits Overview:

• Promotional Cost: $3.99 – $13.99/month (Regularly $7.99 – $24.99/month)
• Domain Cost: Free domain for the first year with an annual plan
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Their developer plan includes 1 SSL certificate – 1 year free ($69.99 renewal annually)
• Has been in Business Since: 1997
• Support: 24/7
• Money Back Guarantee: 30 days
• Misc. Benefits:
  • Free (1) Microsoft Office 365 email – 1st year free (optional)
• Uptime: 99.9%
• Page Load Time: Your site will be hosted on load-balanced servers and SSD drives to help provide your website with a high-performance solution

WPEngine Hosting & Benefits Overview:

This hosting provider is the most costly of the bunch, but is an excellent solution for a business hosting on WordPress.

• Cost: $29 – Enterprise Solutions
• Domain Cost:
• 1-Click WordPress Installs: Yes
• SSL Certificate: Free
• Has been in Business Since: 2010
• Support: 24/7
• Money Back Guarantee: 60 days
• Misc. Benefits:
  • Free automated migration
  • Staging/test site is included for all plans
• Uptime:
• Page Load Time: WPEngine provides page performance data and recommendations for your website.

I hope you found this research helpful! Do you have any additional questions about web hosting? If you do, please feel free to ask in the questions below or send me an email via my contact page.

This blog post includes affiliate links.