One of the most common questions new WordPress users have is “which hosting service is right for me?” and as a web designer, I’ve had plenty experience with different hosting services so today I’m breaking down the good, the bad, and the BEST WordPress hosting options.

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GODADDY –

Let me go ahead and break down everything that’s wrong with GoDaddy:

• Extremely Confusing Interface, I can’t tell you guys how many times I’ve gotten lost trying to find something in GoDaddy and I use it almost weekly.

• Auto Renew Traps, if you don’t ensure every single auto renew option is turned off, you’ll get a surprise fee within 2 years of being on GoDaddy. For example, my client had purchased a domain through GoDaddy which came with free email service for a year, however, my client ended up using G Suite for their email but the free service was still on their GoDaddy plan. When the one year mark rolled around, a $60 email service fee appeared on their bank statement from GoDaddy, a fee for something they weren’t even using!

• Slow Loading Websites, most of my client sites on GoDaddy ALWAYS experience a temporary “maintenance in progress” page every time I go to update a plugin, I’ve never experienced this with any other hosting service.

Blue Host –

Blue Host is one of my favorite hosting services out of them all, here’s why:

• Affordable, most WordPress users want a host that’s affordable while providing the bandwidth necessary to run an average speed site and Blue Host offers that.

• 24/7 Quality Support, their support team is available 24/7 and handles most problems in a timely manner.

• Easy To Use Interface, Blue Host makes it easy to navigate your hosting dashboard, find what you need, and travel to your email service or website.

• Free SSL + Domain, if you aren’t familiar with SSL, in short, it’s the thing that makes your website “secure”. Since Blue Host offers both of these things at sign up, it’s super easy to get started.

  **Click here to sign up with Blue Host using my affiliate link!**

ionos by 1 & 1 –

Possibly the worst hosting service I’ve ever experienced:

• Terrible Customer Service, I called with questions regarding a staging environment and the customer service representative eventually hung up on me because she couldn’t answer my question. It was rude and completely unprofessional.

• Cheap, Ionos might be affordable but if you ever run into an issue with your website…which you probably will, good luck finding assistance.

Wp engine –

The absolute king of all hosting services!

• Terrific Upkeep, WP Engine has a tight knit team who ensures everything is running smoothly and maintains the bandwidth for large scale sites. For example, a previous client received upwards of 50,000 views per month on her blog and WP Engine is the reason her site could handle so many viewers at once with no lag.

• Staging Environment, only some hosts offer staging environments and WP Engine is one of them. If you aren’t familiar with a staging environment, it’s basically a place to build a new website while keeping your other site live and when you’re done, simply push a button to send the “staging” environment to the live site.

• Quality Customer Service, any questions I had while working with WP Engine were answered quickly and thoroughly.

• Daily Backups, if anything goes South, WP Engine keeps a database of daily backups at your disposal.

  Overall, WP Engine is a superior hosting service but quality comes with a price and they’ve got a high price tag compared to the more commonly used hosting services.

WordPress (.com) business plan –

You may have heard in order to fully customize your WordPress website you NEED to self host with a third party but this actually isn’t true. You can host your site on wordpress.com using their upgraded business plan to gain access to all features self hosting provides, the only difference is that all of your content is managed by WordPress. Here are some benefits:

• Backups, if anything goes South, you’ve got a plan!

• 24/7 Support, with self hosting you must rely on your host for support or community forums regarding wordpress.org for assistance but with wordpress.com hosting, you’ve got all the support you need in one place.

• Large Bandwidth, your site will be able to handle a large amount of views without lag due to the amount of bandwidth wordpress.com hosting provides.

  Using WordPress.com as a host instead of self hosting on WordPress.org is optimal if you’re looking for quality hosting and a streamlined process with everything in one place. The business plan costs just as much as the starting plan on WP Engine and actually provides a larger amount of storage space.

 

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There are plenty of other hosting services out there but these are just a few I’ve had direct experience with! Hopefully this list has given you some valuable insight as to what each hosting service is like and helped make your decision a bit easier.

Feel free to reach out to me directly with any other hosting related questions!
~ Kenzi