The Fastest WordPress Hosting (summary)
Web Hosting Company
Coupon Code
Price Per Month
Why Recommended?
Website Link
Get 73% discount on yearly plans!
From
$4.95/month
Fantastic general purpose host, fast, well priced, very flexible
WPSPEEDFIX ($25 FREE Credit)
From
$10/month
Lightning fast, one of the best performance for $$ hosts on the web BUT a little more complex than a standard host
From
$30/month
Good balance between features & performance.
FASTHOSTING (50% off month 1)
From
$24.99/month
Probably the best value managed host, excellent for blogs and content sites
$30/month
Highly Scalable, Managed WP Host, Great For Mid Size Sites, Several European Locations
From
$35/month
One of the original managed WordPress hosts – more expensive but scales very well
Why Site Speed & Fast Hosting Is Critically Important
Your website hosting is the foundation of everything you do online. Your SEO and Google Rankings, the performance of your Adwords and Facebook ads and the volume of enquiries, calls, emails and sales your site generates are all tied to the quality and performance of your hosting.
On this page you’ll find the hosts we use, trust and recommend on a daily basis. At least half the sites we review are slow because they’re on cheap or low quality hosting and fixing their speed issues is largely a job of moving them to a better hosting provider.
- Rank Higher in Google – Google have publicly stated that loading speed is now part of their ranking algorithm…don’t lose out to the competition because of something so simple as site speed.
- Stop Bleeding Money on Ad Spend – if you’re paying for traffic and your site is slow you’re probably burning ad spend and losing money. A faster site=better ROI on ad spend, it’s like free money!
- Higher Conversions – slow sites are a huge conversion bottleneck. It’s friction in your sales funnel. If your site is slow your conversion rate isn’t as high as it should be and your website, order process and funnels aren’t working as hard for you as they could be.
Siteground is an excellent general purpose host. It’s a fantastic option if you have multiple low traffic sites and want a fast host that won’t break the bank.
One thing that sets them apart versus cheap cpanel and shared hosts is that they have a more advanced caching capability powered by Memcached.
Most of the sites we see on Siteground are low to mid range Woocommerce sites, small business sites and smaller web agencies using the reseller plans.
Key Features:
- Best Option If You Have Several Sites With Low Traffic
- Can Host Non-Wordpress Sites & Email Too
- Host Multiple Sites (not charged on a per-site basis)
- High Quality Caching Capability particularly at this price point
- Best all rounder and general purpose host
Be Mindful Of:
- Server load, there’s a tendency for people to stick too many sites on a low end plan
- TTFB – we’ve seen this vary quite a bit depending on the plan you’re on, we recommend Cloudflare APO ($5/mo)
- Depending on your configuration you need to be mindful of their image optimization as it may generate webp images for browsers not supporting webp
- For bigger Woocommerce sites you probably want to look at a dedicated server
Cloudways
Cloudways is by far the fastest host we’ve ever worked with. They’re different to most hosting platforms in that they combined the power of a dedicated server with an easy to use management console that effectively makes them a Managed WordPress Host.
They’re the fastest because of what they call their “Thunderstack”. A highly optimized server configuration that is built for speed.
Not only are they the fastest host, they’re generally the cheapest too simply because you can squeeze so much performance from a Cloudways server.
You can host multiple sites on the same server and typically you’ll pay $10 or $11 per month for a server that can handle upwards of 3000+ visits a day.
On a site with a fast theme and minimal plugins typically we can get a Cloudways site loading in 500-800ms and often faster.
**Use the coupon code WPSPEEDFIX to get $25 off your first invoice.
Key Features:
- The Fastest WordPress Host By A Long Way
- Host Multiple Sites (not charged on a per-site basis)
- Advanced Caching Capability
- Dedicated Server In A “Managed” Style Environment
- Dirt Cheap!
Be Mindful Of:
- Not Cpanel
- A Little More Complex Than Other Hosts
- Support Is Just OK
- No Email Hosting
Rocket.net
Fast WordPress host with edge caching from Cloudflare built right in!
- Priced from: $30/mo
- Disk Space Starts at: 5GB
- Backup System: Automatic daily backups and Manual backup points
- Admin Console: Custom
Key Features:
- Edge caching built in
- Fully managed WP host
- Good for higher traffic sites
Be Mindful Of:
- Higher priced
- Not super flexible
- Weird traffic model
WPX Hosting
WPX is the best value Managed WordPress Host. Their servers are nice and fast, you get a staging area, backups, email hosting and while there’s no Cpanel, you do get a similar feel from their WHMCS powered management console.
Their support will migrate sites for you and help you fix basic technical problems too.
This is the host to go with if you have a handful of sites, aren’t super tech savvy, want a managed hosting solution but want to keep a cap on costs.
**Use the coupon code FASTHOSTING to get 50% OFF month 1
Key Features:
- Best Value Managed WordPress Hosting
- Host Multiple Sites (IS charged on a per site basis but is cheap!)
- Includes Email Hosting
- Fantastic Support
- Good For Low To Moderate Traffic
Be Mindful Of:
- High Traffic Or High Load Sites
- Bandwidth Limit (use Cloudflare to limit bandwidth usage)
- Storage Fairly Low (10gb base plan)
Kinsta
Kinsta is a high end Managed WordPress Hosting provider and a great choice if you have a high traffic site.
Key Features:
- Lots of locations to choose from
- Secure
- Can scale upto Enterprise grade
- Daily backups
- Built on top of Google Cloud platform
Be mindful of:
- CDN can be slow, Cloudflare will be faster
- Weird bandwidth charging based on “visits”, again Cloudflare can reduce this
- Price: from $35
WP Engine
WP Engine is one of the original Managed WordPress Hosts and still one of the best on the market today.
This is the best option if you want your hosting taken care of, don’t want to deal with any tech nonsense and happy to pay for a quality hosting product.
We love that WP Engine take care of WordPress patches and updates and the staging area and backup functionality is fantastic especially if you’re running a complex site or Woocommerce.
**Use the coupon code WPE20OFF to get 20% OFF Month 1
Key Features:
- The Best WordPress Hosting
- Managed WordPress Patches & Updates
- Staging Area & Backups Along With Other Advanced Features
- Security Built Into The Platform
- Great For Complex Sites & Agency Resellers
Be Mindful Of:
- Weird Bandwidth/Usage Calculation (use Cloudflare to limit usage)
- No Email
- Performance On The Lower Priced Plans
- Can Be Pricey
Frequently Asked Questions About Hosting Speed & Performance
How do I choose the best WordPress hosting for me?
Price is one factor but shouldn’t be the only one. Your hosting location is really important as well as other features like storage space, free SSL certificate support, backups, CPU and general performance and whether the host provides email hosting.
Essentially you want to avoid choosing a host solely on price because that’s not a good indicator of how appropriate the host is for your business.
What is the difference between Shared, Cloud and Managed hosting?
Shared hosting means you’ll be hosted on a server with other sites, cloud hosting doesn’t particularly mean anything and Managed generally means some level of backup, staging site support and security.
To a large degree these are just marketing terms and you really need to look at the specific features of each plan to determine what’s right for you.
Why shouldn’t I choose the cheapest hosting?
Price is only one factor of many and shouldn’t never be the sole consideration when looking a hosting. Arguably hosting location is probably the most important as you want your site hosted closest to where most of your visitors are located.
What features should I be looking for?
Hosting location, HTTP2 protocol support, HTTPS support and free SSL certificate support, a backup system, storage capability and PHP version support are some of the important factors when deciding which web hosting to choose.
Here’s some factors for you to consider when looking at hosting:
Location – should be as close to the bulk of your visitors as possible
HTTP2 protocol support – this protocol speeds up the download of files from the web server to visitors. It was released in 2015 and many cheap hosting providers still don’t support it.
HTTPS and free SSL certificates – on the modern web you really must run your site in HTTPS encrypted mode for speed, security and website conversion. There are still some hosts who want to charge for SSL certificates. Top tier hosts have free SSL certificates built in
PHP version – PHP is the programming language WordPress runs on and your host should support the latest version. Each version is typically faster than the last one so running the hosting with the highest version the site, theme and plugins can support will be best for speed
Backups – you want *some* sort of backup system albeit we recommend you run your own backups outside of what the hosting platform provides.
Email hosting – do you need email hosting? Many providers don’t provide email hosting as there are a large number of dedicated cloud email hosting providers that do it much better and cheaper, eg Microsoft’s Office 365 suite and Google Gsuite (aka business Gmail)
Staging area – this is becoming a must have for WordPress hosting so changes and updates can be tested before going live
Support – what is your support expectation? 24/7 phone or will business hours live chat support suffice?