The 3 Best WordPress Hosting Companies in 2023
Does Hosting Matter for Your Website?
As someone who works with WordPress websites, I’ve learned that hosting does matter. Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are so many things to consider when you decide to build your site on WordPress. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that WordPress is an open source platform. This makes it possible for any developer to use the technology and even to build plugins that work specifically with WordPress. The problem is that it is an open platform which means that anyone can easily use it - yes, by that I mean that anyone can easily get into it, aka hack it. Did you know that thousands of WordPress websites are hacked daily?
What are some of those considerations when you are looking for a web hosting company? Well, considering WordPress websites are easily hacked, security is a big consideration. There’s also speed and performance to consider.
Godaddy and Bluehost for Web Hosting
Before I really got into WordPress design and development, I didn’t know much about hosting providers. I had only heard of Godaddy and Bluehost. In my opinion, those are the two most known hosting companies out there - at least known to people who don’t know much about websites, hosting and website security. The truth is, just because they’re big doesn’t mean they’re good. They’re my least favourite hosting providers. They are highly targeted by hackers and because most WordPress sites are on what’s called a Shared Hosting, if the server gets hacked, then all the sites in that Shared Hosting environment have a high chance of getting hacked as well. Yes, that means your website might get malware too. And believe me, some malware is not easy to clean up!
Anyway, I can go on and on about malware, but this isn’t really what this blog is about and probably not why you clicked on this article. So let’s skip that for now. Some web hosts are better than others at security and ensuring that the websites on their server aren’t compromised, even if they are on a shared server. This article will touch on three (3) of those web hosting companies.
WP Engine, Siteground and Websavers WordPress Hosting
Taking into consideration security, speed and performance, the 3 best web hosting companies that made it to our top list are WP Engine, Siteground and Websavers. Not to mention that I just love their customer service. Let’s take a look at each one in detail.
WP Engine for WordPress Hosting
Website and Server Security
WP Engine offers both dedicated and shared hosting exclusively for WordPress websites. They have top notch security with enterprise-grade technology that automates thread detection to block 72 million attacks daily. Yes, millions! Their continuous monitoring, automated updates, proactive threat detection, edge protection, and dedicated security team ensure your site is never compromised.
WP Engine takes security seriously.
Speed and Performance of Websites on WP Engine
WP Engine definitely dominates the market share when it comes to speed, with 31.8% of their sites loading in under 200ms. That’s fast.
They achieve this speed through their proprietary caching technology which is built in such a way that allows your site to run faster with less strain on resources. They also have Canadian and global data centres for customers outside of the United States, which help with speed because the closer you are to your server, the better.
Now you might think, why does my website need to load that fast? Because let’s face it, people (who can become your customers) have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. When website visitors land on your website and your website is loading slower than a cheetah, well, they’ll likely bounce off your site faster than a cheetah! Which, if you know anything about SEO, is just not good. So yes, speed matters.
WordPress Maintenance
WP Engine offers site monitoring and automatic updates of plugins, PHP and WordPress core at an additional cost. I highly recommend going this route because trust me, it’s worth it. Now, I typically don’t like automatic updates because updates can actually break your website. This happens if the update causes a conflict between two or more plugins, or a conflict between an updated plugin and the theme. Or perhaps the updated plugin is not compatible with the WordPress version that you have. Because it’s automatic, you might not even realize that something broke on your site unless someone points it out to you, or you happen to go on your site and notice the issue.
I usually prefer to have an expert update WordPress websites manually because they usually do a once over to check for conflicts and if there are conflicts, they fix them. You, the website owner, might never know that there was an issue in the first place.
So why would I recommend you paying extra for automatic updates if I don’t usually like it? Good question! Because WP Engine does things differently. They take a backup of your site before the update. After the update, they compare the site against the backed up version. If they notice an issue or an error, they’ll revert back to the back up automatically. And then they’ll send you an email to let you know what the problem is and what to do to fix it. If the problem is on their end, their customer service team will help you fix it. If the problem is not on their end, they’ll let you know that you have to fix it yourself. This decreases the likelihood of you waking up one morning and noticing that your website is down or broken.
Price of WP Engine
Out of the 3 best hosting companies I’m talking about today, WP Engine is by far the most costly. Their cheapest dedicated hosting plan is about $590 USD per month. Keep in mind though, dedicated hosting is always considerably more than shared hosting which is what most WordPress users use. Their shared hosting plan starts at $23 USD per month.
However, because of the way their platform works when it comes to updates, you might be able to make do without hiring an expert to do monthly manual maintenance on your site, which can cost you anywhere from $50-$200 per month depending on who you go with and what’s included. That’s a pretty huge savings which more than offsets the higher price.
Bottom Line
If you have a high traffic website or a website that uses a lot of resources for things like courses, memberships and ecommerce, WP Engine is a host that you should highly consider. In my opinion, the additional cost is worth it. If you are moving from another server, WP Engine includes a free migrator tool.
Sign up for WP Engine now and get 4 months free on all shared hosting plans with code, wpe4free.
Siteground for WordPress Hosting
Website and Server Security
Siteground offers shared hosting for WordPress and non-Wordpress websites. Security is important to them. Their smart AI system blocks between 500,000 and 2 million brute-force attempts per hour and stops malicious traffic before it reaches their customers' sites. They have a dedicated security team and 24/7 server monitoring. They also have their own plugins to enhance security.
Speed and Performance of Websites on Siteground
Siteground’s caching technology improves performance up to 5x. This is achieved by caching both their static resources and the dynamic PHP output. And they run the service on Google Cloud which guarantees reliability. Just like WP Engine, Siteground has Canadian and global data centres which contribute to increased performance.
In comparison to WP Engine, Siteground loads a tad slower than WP Engine. Don’t get me wrong, they are still fast, but just not quite as fast as WP Engine. But they are so much faster than Godaddy or Bluehost. I have a client who moved from Godaddy to Siteground and the difference in speed was incredible. For the speed alone, the move to Siteground was well worth it.
WordPress Maintenance
Just like WP Engine, Siteground includes daily backups and automatic updates. They store up to 30 copies of your backup, which equates to 30 days of daily backups. However, unlike WP Engine, they don’t have the technology of taking a snapshot of your website before the update and reverting it back automatically if they detect an issue. So if your plugins or theme get updated and the updates break your site, you’ll have to revert back to a previous version manually once you discover that there is an issue with your site.
Because of this reason, I would still recommend working with a WordPress expert who can either maintain your website for you manually, or have them on standby should any conflicts or issues happen after your automatic updates.
Price of Siteground
Siteground is considerably less expensive than WP Engine, especially for the first year because they discount the first year heavily. For shared hosting, their plans start at $2.99 per month for the first year, and $14.99 per month for subsequent years.
Bottom Line
Siteground truly is a great host. It’s affordable and for the price point, offers great security and performance. You really can’t go wrong going with Siteground. If you are moving from another server, you can migrate your website easily using their free migrator tool.
Learn how to easily sign up for Siteground here.
Once you've signed up for Siteground, you can easily follow the following tutorial to setup your new, WordPress website.
Websavers for WordPress Hosting
Website and Server Security
Websavers has put a security system in place to prevent their clients’ websites from getting hacked. What I love about them though, is their customer service. If for some reason your website managed to get hacked, their expert team can help you clean it up and walk you through ways to prevent it from happening again. Because let’s face it, hosting companies can do all they can to prevent hacks, but if you don’t take the necessary steps (such as having a secure password) on your end to prevent that, then there’s only so much they can do.
Speed and Performance of Websites on Websavers
From my experience, in comparison to WP Engine and Siteground, Websavers is last on the list when it comes to speed and performance. However, they are still on our list of 3 best hosting companies because they are by far so much better than Godaddy, Bluehost and Hostgator. Just because they are last on this list doesn’t mean they aren’t good. In fact, they’re a very reliable web host.
WordPress Maintenance
Websavers includes automatic updates in all their plans. You can also connect a local storage (such as google drive) and schedule backups to be saved to your local storage. To be honest, I normally turn off automatic updates for the reasons I stated above - that updates can cause conflicts which then causes your website or part of your website to break.
Because of this reason, I would still recommend working with a WordPress expert who can either maintain your website for you manually, or have them on standby should any conflicts or issues happen after your automatic updates.
Price of Websavers
Websavers is so affordable. They offer a free hosting option and their paid plan starts at just over $4 per month. They’re a Canadian company and their prices are in Canadian dollars (if you’re a Canadian, I know you appreciate that).
Bottom Line
I love Websavers because they are economical and they are reliable. For a lot of clients with lower traffic websites that don’t require a lot of resources, Websavers is a great option. You really don’t need anything more than this. Sure, more is nice, but also at a higher price, and probably not necessary to have. So for the price point, Websavers is a really great WordPress Web host. Bonus is that their customer service team is top notch. They are always so helpful and you can easily get a hold of them through their online chat function.
Summary for the 3 Best WordPress Hosting Companies
As you can see, all three hosts - WP Engine, Siteground and Websavers are great web hosts. It really depends on your needs - how much resource your website will take, speed, performance, security and of course, your budget. You really can’t go wrong with either of them.