One of the most crucial stages of starting a new WordPress website is choosing a web hosting provider you can depend on.
A lot of thought should be given to this decision because once you sign up with a company, you will likely have to stick with them for a while or otherwise risk losing a significant amount of money and time moving to another provider.
It is important to know where to look for honest reviews of the different hosting companies you have in mind. Most tech-savvy users don’t pay attention to what commission-driven review sites say, and instead, they consult online community sites for more impartial opinions.
One of the trusted sources where many users share their personal reviews and experiences with various web hosting companies is Reddit.
Let’s see which WordPress hosts pass Redditors’ checks and earn a considerable amount of commendations there.
Best WordPress Hosting According to Reddit
The following shortlist features four of the best WordPress hosting providers according to numerous reviews by Reddit users.
1. Cloudways
Cloudways is a managed cloud platform that allows you to host WordPress sites on a dedicated cloud server with scalable resources. You can choose from different cloud providers (DigitalOcean is what most Redditors recommend), and with just a few clicks you get your own server instance fully configured and optimized for WordPress.
This is one of the fastest hosting solutions for WordPress that you can get at an affordable price, and it’s primarily aimed at high-traffic and demanding websites.
2. SiteGround
SiteGround is a major player in the web hosting market with their main focus being managed WordPress hosting. They provide an easy onboarding process for beginners with a user-friendly platform and a very helpful support team that is available 24/7.
They offer three WordPress hosting plans that all include essential features like free SSL, automatic backups, CDN, security, caching, and others. New customers receive a massive discount on their initial term and then the regular price will be charged for service renewal.
3. KnownHost
KnownHost is another web host that is highly regarded by the Reddit community. They have solid servers and knowledgeable support agents available around the clock to handle support tickets in a timely manner.
You can choose between regular shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting. The shared hosting plans are less costly but come with more limited resources. The managed WP plans offer more server resources, which makes them more suitable for highly dynamic or large sites.
4. A2 Hosting
You gotta check out A2 Hosting no matter what your project’s requirements are because they have a diverse selection of solid low-end and high-end hosting solutions.
Their normal shared hosting plans are affordable and pack decent features for a modest/new website. If you need higher performance and increased resources, you can opt for an advanced plan that utilizes their Turbo server technology.
How to Find The Best WordPress Hosting Company?
It’s totally okay if you feel confused and lost while browsing all the reviews and recommendations of web hosts. Even experienced webmasters may have a hard time making a final choice.
It would be helpful to know what technical criteria and features you exactly want in a WordPress hosting service. This of course varies from one website to another, but in general, the following are some of the most important factors and features to keep on your checklist:
Uptime Guarantee
The most important thing you’d want from the hosting provider is to keep your website up and running 24/7 with as little maintenance downtime as possible. A serious website needs a serious uptime guarantee of %99.95 or higher.
NVMe Storage
Most hosting providers nowadays use standard SSD drives for the main storage space, but the best of them offer NVMe SSD storage. The latter gives you the highest I/O speed, which can significantly improve the loading speed of your website.
Control Panel
More likely than not, you will be offered cPanel with a shared hosting plan, which is arguably the best control panel that has a comprehensive set of user-friendly tools.
If the host uses another control panel you’re not familiar with, see if they have a live demo or check the documentation to ensure it has all the tools you’ll need to efficiently manage your website.
Automatic Backups
Unless you don’t mind losing all your site’s content and hard work due to a sudden server malfunction, you must always keep daily backups that can be quickly accessed and restored.
Automatic daily backups for the last 7 days is a safe starting point, but if you could get 30-day backups, it would be much better and safer.
Security Systems
Any reliable WordPress hosting provider should implement comprehensive security systems to protect against different security issues that target WordPress sites in particular.
Real-time malware scanning, brute force attack prevention and DDoS protection are essential security requirements for small business and e-commerce websites.
Server Resources
WordPress is known for consuming a lot of server resources since it is a highly dynamic system. The limits placed by the hosting provider on server resource usage can dramatically affect the performance of a WP website.
A few key resources to pay attention to their limits are: CPU, memory, entry processes, concurrent database connections and disk I/O.
As a general rule, the cheaper the plan you choose, the more restricted resources and lower performance it’s gonna offer, and vice versa.
References:
“Reddit: Which Hosting is Best For WordPress in 2023?” SiteWays — Medium. (https://medium.com/siteways/best-managed-wordpress-hosting-46de91d60012)
“Technical Criteria For Choosing a Web Host For WordPress.” DEV Community. (https://dev.to/geekie/technical-criteria-for-choosing-a-web-host-for-wordpress-504j)
“NVMe vs. SSD VPS Hosting: What’s the Difference?” RoseHosting. (https://www.rosehosting.com/blog/nvme-vs-ssd-vps-hosting-whats-the-difference/)
“14 WordPress Security Issues & Vulnerabilities You Should Know About.” HubSpot. (https://blog.hubspot.com/website/wordpress-security-issues)