15 Aug The Best WordPress Hosting

Starting your own website? Want to know the best value hosting for your money? This blog will tell you what hosting is the best WordPress hosting for your new website!

The Best WordPress Hosting

If you are a business and you plan to sell products online, you are going to have certain “needs” for your website hosting. You will need extra speed, security and the availability to handle potential (hopefully!) traffic spikes. If your website is going to be just for your family blog, then you might just need to start simple with hosting. Either way, we will give you the best tips and tricks and ultimately our number one pick for WordPress hosting.

What is WordPress Hosting?

Every website is actually “sitting” or downloaded on a computer somewhere. That’s right, when you access facebook.com or any other website you are actually virtually getting access to someone else’s computer and having it shot down from a satellite and displayed on your computer screen. The computer your website “sits” on is called a server. Hosting providers (or companies that provide people with virtual computer space for their websites) have access to a lot of these servers and they sell storage on those computers to the public. So when we talk about what is “the best WordPress hosting” service, we are actually talking about “what’s the best company to hire with the best computers for my website.” If you want more “website basics” we suggest clicking here to watch a YouTube video series made by BlueHost.

Our Number One Pick for WordPress Hosting Services!

At Mesa Digital Marketing we love WP Engine hosting. They are a “managed” hosting service. This means they take care of all the administrative know how and we get awesome website services. Awesome services like great speed, security, customer services, automatic backups and more! Prices start at $29 a month so yes they are a little more expensive (click here for 20% off). We will cover less expensive options like GoDaddy, ($12.50 for a year of hosting and $8 a month after that) but we strongly believe in the idea “you get what you pay for”. So, here are a few of features that really make WP Engine worth the money.

Benefits of WP Engine WordPress Hosting

1. Customer Services. It is always refreshing when you call a company a few times start to get the same assistants on the phone. They are a big company but they have highly qualified staff ready and willing to help you with your questions. They have often helped us even with WordPress tips and tricks unrelated to hosting. Call them up and ask for advice! They will be happy to help out 🙂
2. Automatic backups AND one click restore. Most people spend either a ton of time or a ton of money (or both) on their website. Nothing is worse then having it crash or getting a bug you just can’t fix. This is gone with WP Engines automatic backup feature! Plus, can always click backup and then go crazy on that new plugin you wanted to try. If it breaks everything, just rollback and try again!
3. Speed. Everything is fast. If you have tried other budget hosting services you will feel the difference with WP Engine’s setup. Yes they are still on shared hosting, but they have it setup more efficiently and on better equipment so you get a better result. We have seen this speed through Pingdom speed tests, Google speed test and just through comparing activities like trying to upload larger files and plugins on WP Engine verses other budget hosting services.
4. Free SSL certificate. SSL certificate gets your domain name to be https: instead of https:. It will give you site a green lock in the address bar which helps with SEO (click here to read more about SEO in another post) and general site credibility for your viewers. It is also relatively simple to setup. If you run into any troubles, customer support will walk you through it.
5. Security. WP Engine doesn’t allow certain plugins just to help keep things secure. Plus you have the SSL certificate. They also have their own set of rules and settings to help prevent any malicious attacks to your site and user(s) data.

Other Great Hosting Options

Not interested in paying $30 a month for hosting. We don’t blame you because we ‘ve been there. We started with HostGator. They are great too! They are less money and they have great features like extra or unlimited domains (maybe you need two websites!), easy subdomain setup, CPanel admin settings, etc. Here are our suggestions if you are thinking you want to go with a cheaper solution.

The Cheapest WordPress Hosting Solution

From what we have researched and experimented with, GoDaddy hosting is the cheapest hosting services you can get. You can get up and running (with a free domain!) for about $12.50. That twelve bucks gets you a years worth of hosting and a free domain name (domains are usually $15 ish a year). Also it is a nice perk to have your hosting and domain name with the same provider. After the first year, you will be charged $8 month for hosting. There are options to pay more up front and get a better long term deal.

Again, the one detail we wanted to reiterate here is that you get what you pay for. We have noticed it takes longer to upload media, themes and download plugins. We have had troubles accessing GoDaddy hosting management system several times. Crashes do happen. Security and speed are not at there finest and there isn’t any automatic backups. However you can pay $2 a month and have automatic backups enabled. There isn’t a one button restore though. In other words, if you needed to have a backup of your site restored, you have to go through their customer service or have a 3rd parter help get it fixed.

WordPress Hosting That’s Not Too Cheap

We started a business hosting account with HostGator for $45 for an entire year with “unlimited” domains and bandwidth. It was a offer we don’t think is around anymore because what we see most often now is more around $95 for the first year and then around $9.95 a month after you renew. Again, you save if more per month the more months you purchase upfront. You can get 3 years of hosting for about $160. This also comes with automatic backups and some extra security services. There is also an inexpensive option to purchase an SSL certificate for you around $20.

In addition, our experience with HostGator customer services has been good. They have been quick to pick up and help. However, HostGator has had crashes and we have seen errors as we have used their services.

Hosting Wrap Up

There you have it! Still have questions? Comment below or send us an email. We know there are tons of other hosting services, but hopefully this review of some of the most popular services helps you get started. Good luck!