Best WordPress hosting services of 2023

• The best WordPress hosting services in 2023
• Best for security
• Best for customizability 
• Best for a wide choice of plans
• Best for affordability
• Best for web migration 
• Best for beginners 
• Best for all-round capabilities 
• Best for managed WordPress
• TechRadar Pro expert rating
• How we test
• How to choose
• What is WordPress hosting?
• Benefits of WordPress hosting
• Is WordPress hosting worth it?

Cheap WordPress hosting can have a lot of appeal, but it usually won't deliver the features, performance or reliability that high traffic sites really need. If you're the demanding type, or rather your website is, opting for the best WordPress hosting provider will give you much better results.

Hostinger provides four different dedicated plans for WordPress-specific hosting, and its WordPress Starter plan is one of the best choices for anyone looking to have a WordPress website up and running quickly.

For $2.99/month, you’ll get to build up to 100 websites. You’ll also receive 100 GB of SSD storage space and unlimited bandwidth. 

Hostinger also offers Business WordPress ($6.99/month) and WordPress Pro ($11.59/month) plans for web professionals, offering developer-specific management features for everyone from a complete blogging beginner to a more seasoned web developer veteran.

No matter which plans you choose, setting up is quick and simple, and Hostinger offers a one-click WordPress installation feature with all of their offers. Once you’re logged in, there are plenty of user-friendly tools, plugins, and features to help you further with the setup process and overall tweaking of your site.

Of course, you can simply dive in and tweak things around on your own. Also, Hostinger's web hosting control panel, hPanel, offers a powerful solution for beginners and professionals.

Like Bluehost, Hostinger's services also provide top-notch security features to fortify websites from potential security threats. Hostinger offers its LiteSpeed cache engine – which is a reliable solution amongst its peers such as Apache, NGINX or Cloudflare protection.

You’ll receive a free domain of your choosing, a free SSL certificate, and the solution lets you create up to 100 domain-based email addresses at no additional cost. WordPress acceleration features are also present and are specifically tuned for faster WordPress performance.

If you ever run into trouble, Hostinger has a dedicated WordPress customer support team available 24/7.

Read our full Hostinger review

WP Engine has been around for over a decade, providing managed hosting solutions specifically for websites using the WordPress CMS.

When we tested the service, we found it easy to use. WP Engine has a relatively simple dashboard that includes all the features you get when you commit to a specific WordPress hosting package.

One of the things we found the most unique is WP Engine's customizable plans. When we tested the managed WordPress hosting plan, we were able to add up to 25 additional sites at an extra cost. While it was pricey, it was good to have the option to do so. We were also able to add automated plugin updates, an extra layer of security, and site monitoring for an extra set of costs.

WP Engine's managed WordPress hosting solution costs $20 for the Startup plan, which includes one site, 10 GB storage and 50 GB of bandwidth per month. It also has a Professional, Growth, Scale and a Dedicated Custom package. For the ecommerce solutions for WooCommerce, the Professional package costs $50 and comes with three sites, 15 GB storage and 125 GB of bandwidth per month.

Interestingly, the only package that comes with 99.9% uptime SLA is WP Engine's Dedicated Custom plan. WP Engine also offers a 60-day money back guarantee for all new Startup, Professional, Growth, Scale and ecommerce Dedicated Custom plans, but all other premium and custom plans are not included.

Read our full WP Engine review

Most web hosts offer only a few WordPress plans, and in some cases, even these might be set up to point you in a particular direction. You might see an underpowered plan, an overpriced one, and a special deal on the mid-range plan they really want you to buy. That makes it easy to decide, but it also limits your upgrade options if your site grows over time.

InMotion Hosting is unusual in offering six WordPress plans, covering everything from small personal blogs to resellers and big business. Figuring out which is the best product for you will take a little more thought, but at least there's room to upgrade – or downgrade – if your circumstances change.

Better still, InMotion hasn't artificially limited the low-end plans by removing key features. Even the baseline WP-1000S plan – which costs $4.99 per month initially (on the 3-year option), $8.99 on renewal – gives you 50GB of SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth and email addresses, preinstalled WordPress, SSL, backups, automatic updates, SiteLock security, cPanel site management, and extras like BoldGrid and WP-CLI. The only significant issue is InMotion's suggestion that the plan works best for blogs with up to 20,000 monthly visits, and even that won't be a problem for many smaller sites.

Upgrading your plan gives you some extras – such as premium themes and plugin subscriptions, a dedicated IP address, and support for hosting more sites – but it's mostly about giving you more resources.

There are cheaper deals around, but in previous reviews, we've found InMotion to be reliable, professional, and honest, so in short, any price premium is likely to be worth paying. You don't have to take our word for it, though – an exceptional 90-day money-back guarantee gives you plenty of opportunity to find out for yourself (and the confidence to offer that length of guarantee period is reassuring).

Read our full InMotion Hosting review

ScalaHosting offers an impressive range of WordPress hosting plans that all include free SSL, unlimited email accounts, daily offsite backups, as well as free one-click WordPress installer. 

Keep in mind though, if you need features such as free domain, real-time malware protection, dedicated IP address and OpenLiteSpeed caching, you'll have to opt for the pricier WordPress hosting plan ScalaHosting offers.

Its cheapest plan comes with 10GB NVMe SSD storage in its New York data center that promises to deliver up to ten times faster website speed than regular SATA SSDs. 

The web host also promises to migrate as many sites as you ask for free, while many providers limit you to one, and a few don't offer free migration at all. ScalaHosting's servers are optimized for WordPress performance, with custom security rules to block '99.9% of the web attacks'.

We found it straightforward to get set up on ScalaHosting too. Once we picked a plan, including our preferred billing cycle, and selected our ideal data center then paid, we were ready to begin hosting our site. We also found that some of ScalaHosting’s strengths include its approach to security and impressive performance. Its own SPanel locks installation files for security, restricting hacker access to the server to upload malware.

ScalaHosting currently offers an anytime unconditional money-back guarantee (something we haven't seen with many other we hosting services). This means any pre-paid and unused web hosting services will be 100% refunded. If you're a newbie to WordPress hosting, ScalaHosting offers a great deal of support too from live chat to its YouTube knowledge channel.

Read our full ScalaHosting review

Bluehost has created its own VPS-based architecture to deliver optimum WordPress performance via NGINX, a custom PHP-FPM setup and intelligently allocated resources through KVM hypervisor. (If you're not a hosting geek, this just means Bluehost has taken the time to optimize the low-level setup of its platform for WordPress, rather than simply making do with a standard configuration.)

The company doesn't waste time by pretending to offer 'unlimited' resources, and instead tells you exactly what you're going to get. For the Basic plan which starts at $2.75 per month for the first term (renewing at $8.99), this means 50GB of SSD storage, a single website, and a free domain for one year.

Additional features for all plans include free SSL, unmetered MySQL DB, a site analytics dashboard, as well as unlimited parked/subdomains. There is also the Bluehost Marketplace where users can access premium themes and plugins at exclusive prices. New Bluehost accounts will also get a free service called Blue Spark, which is designed to help newcomers with everything WordPress-related as well as a free website migration service. Also, with WordPress migration plugin you can move your websites with ease.

The Plus plan which starts at $5.45 per month for the first term (renewing at $11.99) adds unlimited websites and website space, and additional features like spam protection, free CDN and a WP staging environment. The Choice Plus plan costs $5.45 per month for the first term (renewing at $16.99) and adds even more features. It's good to know that Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you feel the service fails to deliver. 

If you need more power, Bluehost offers Managed WordPress Hosting that has been optimized for WordPress websites, with prices starting at $9.95 per month. These plans have many additional features including malware detection and removal, JetPack site analytics, business review tools and more (along with unlimited everything), making them compelling offerings. 

Features for all plans also includes domain privacy and protection, daily scheduled backups, and a 30-day free trial of Microsoft email.

Read our full Bluehost review

Web giant IONOS seems to have a hosting product for every possible need, and WordPress is no exception. Novice users can try out its service for a nominal $3 a month ($4/month after the first year), yet the plan still outperforms many competitors. 

The bundled 25GB of storage means you won't be running out of space in a hurry, for example. There are no bandwidth or visitor limits, and you can set up as many email accounts as you need.

IONOS offers the core WordPress management functions that you would expect: a setup wizard, preinstalled plugins, automatic updates, and 24/7 support (including by telephone). Also, you get a personal consultant free of charge, a smart touch indeed. 

All this is built on a capable platform – NGINX, PHP 7.2, OPcache, up to 2GB RAM guaranteed – to enhance your blog's performance.

Like Bluehost, Hostinger and InMotion Hosting above, IONOS includes SSL, email and even a free domain in its plans, which is a ridiculously good value at this price.

If you're a WordPress novice, it might be worth paying for the plan for an initial year, claiming your free domain, and taking the time to learn how the blog works. When your time is up, you can then renew if you're happy, or if you're not, use your knowledge and experience to find a better product more suited to your needs.

IONOS isn't just about newbies, though: there's value for more demanding users, too. In particular, the Unlimited plan gives you unlimited WordPress sites and storage space, unlimited databases (1GB max), and unlimited email accounts (2GB each). Bonus features include a Wildcard SSL, SiteLock malware scanning, along with the RailGun content delivery network (aiming to help your website load faster), and the price looks good at $16 per month ($8/month for the first year). 

Read our full IONOS review

HostGator made the list because it delivers powerful hosting plans for a fair price, generally speaking, and its managed WordPress range is no exception. The Starter product may only cost $5.95 (or $3.98 with our promo code) per month for three years, and $9.95 afterwards, but you still get a free site migration, an SSL certificate, automatic malware detection and removal, unlimited email addresses and unmetered storage and bandwidth, plus it can handle up to 100,000 visits a month.

Ramping up to the high-end Business plan gets you more CPU power, support for up to three sites and 500,000 visits a month, yet still costs only $9.95 ($9.18 with our promo code) a month for the first three years, then $22.95 monthly afterwards.

Smart caching and a CDN are on hand to enhance your website's performance, 24/7 support helps keep your site up and running, and surprise bonus features include free domain privacy to protect from identity theft and reduce annoying spam.

We've had good experiences with HostGator's service, but if you're not so lucky, there's a generous 45-day money-back guarantee as a safety net. As with other hosting companies, this won't cover any domain registration fees, but it's still a better deal than you'll often find elsewhere.

Choosing the best WordPress hosting package can seem like something of a minefield when it comes to decisions over low-level details and other nuances of some of the offerings out there. 

However, you might not need anything particularly complex, and that being the case, with no particular special requirements in mind, you can simply opt for a reliable web host with capable mid-range products that can handle everything most folks need.

Read our full HostGator review

Nexcess, a subsidiary of Liquid Web, offers great performance and features for its price and we found it to be one of the more easier WordPress hosting services to use.

Its managed WordPress hosting plans promises to take care of hosting related issues like backups, security checks, updating WordPress, and more. Nexcess offers seven managed WordPress hosting plans that range widely in price and capabilities. Its cheapest plan (although not as cheap as Bluehost's managed WordPress hosting plan) offers 15 GB storage, 2TB bandwidth, and the ability to host one site for $13.30 per month. On the more pricey scale however, its Enterprise plan lets you host up to 250 websites, and comes with 800GB storage, as well as 10TB bandwidth for $699.30 per month.

We found Nexcess' dashboard to be clear and relatively simple to use. It gives you access to all of your WordPress website's tools and features, which we found to be extremely helpful and easy to navigate. Nexcess also automatically backs up your site every day, plus you get the added bonus of manually creating an on-demand backup when you need it.

Nexcess offers 24/7 support on all of its plans, and we found the live chat support to be quick and generally helpful. Its phone support however, was not as responsive in our test of the service. Email and ticket support is also available. 

Nexcess also offers a visual comparison testing when applying updates, which is a feature that not every WordPress hosting provider offers.

If you are looking for a managed WordPress hosting provider that will ease your workload, Nexcess could be the candidate for your needs, and with its current offer of 30% off the first three months on selected managed WordPress hosting plans or two months free when you commit to a plan annually, it's worth giving this host a shot.

Read our full Nexcess review