The Best WordPress Hosting 2026: 34 Tested, 10 Recommended
To find the best WordPress hosting, we’ve purchased hosting accounts from 20 popular hosting providers, deployed identical test sites, and started monitoring their performance 24/7, 365 days a year. We started this project in 2020, and we now have over 5 years of historical performance data for most hosts. Based on the last three months performance data (October 1 – December 31, 2025):
The best WordPress hosting services are Hostinger, WordPress.com, GreenGeeks, Cloudways, WP Engine, Kinsta, and Pressable. We selected these hosts from 25 companies, eliminating slow-performing hosts and recommending only reliable, faster hosting providers. We’ve provided direct links to all our performance reports generated by the monitoring tools, giving you the utmost confidence in our data-driven reviews.
Don’t have time to read 6,000+ words? Here’s our data-driven summary:
- Excellent for single-site hosting: WordPress.com ($2.75/month for life)
- Excellent for multi-site: Hostinger Business (Starts at $2.69/month)
- Excellent for unlimited sites: Cloudways ($11/month)
- Excellent for managed WordPress: WP Engine (starts at $23/month)
- Excellent for Agencies: Kinsta (up to $10,000 credits)
How we tested: 525,600 tests/year per provider, identical WordPress setups,
continuous monitoring since 2020. Want the details? Keep reading for an in-depth analysis of each provider.
(lower is better)
(higher is better)
(lower is better)
Our Testing Methodology
Independent, data-driven WordPress hosting benchmarks you can trust
Our 3-Point Testing Protocol
Standardized Test Environment
Platform: WordPress 6.8.2 across all tests
Theme: Twenty Twenty-Five default theme
PHP Version: 8.3
Plugins: Akismet, Rank Math SEO, Contact Form 7,etc
Why Standardization Matters: Identical setups ensure fair apples-to-apples comparisons.
Same content and configuration across all hosting providers tested.
Data Transparency
• Performance metrics collected January to December annually
• Q1-Q2 data provided for recent performance trends
• Purchase invoices: hostingstep.com/invoices
• Detailed Testing methodology: hostingstep.com/methodology
• Changelog updates: hostingstep.com/changelog
Why Our Reviews Are Different
Best WordPress Hosting – WordPress.com
WordPress.com is one of the best WordPress hosting providers we’ve tested. It has outperformed all other 25+ hosts in speed, uptime and load handling tests. It comes with edge caching CDN, the only shared host to offer this at the modest price of $2.75/month. Another unique feature is their “automated datacenter failover. If your data center goes down, the site will still be live with contents delivered from the secondary data center. By this way, the host offers you 100% uptime guarantee.
Earlier versions of WordPress.com had certain limitations, but now they’re lifted off. You can install whatever WordPress themes or plugins you need. You can create unlimited posts and pages, in simple terms, you can host your site as you host on any 3rd party hosts like Bluehost or Hostinger.
The plan starts at $2.75/month and stays the same forever, meaning there are no surprise renewal fees. You’ll also get a free domain. There are no visitor limits on any plans. You read it right, let the traffic be 1000 or 100,000 visitors, you can stay on the same plan with no overage fees.
The downside: each plan comes with single site hosting and if you plan to host multiple sites, you need to buy another $2.75/month plan. That’s the reason we recommend them as excellent for single site hosting.
Best WordPress Hosting [Overall] – Hostinger
Hostinger is an excellent shared WordPress hosting for beginners and small businesses to get started. It is one of the few hosts that allows multi website hosting on the starter plan itself. Their Premium plan performance is top notch with strong speed and uptime, while their Business plan is excellent at load handling, matching the performance of premium hosts like WP Engine and Kinsta but only at the 1/3rd of the price.
The major uniqueness of Hostinger is its enormous inode limits. Most companies offer limited inodes per plan and once you hit it, you need to upgrade to a higher plan. But Hostinger offers the highest inodes of 400,000 to 2,000,000 among any of the companies in the industry. This alone makes Hostinger a solid choice for us to recommend.
Hostinger plan starts at $1.79/month with up to 3 websites hosted, making it the ideal choice for small business website owners. Unlike other companies, Hostinger allows you to stack the introductory discount for up to 4 years, providing a longer saving period.
I recommend their premium plan for websites just getting started, and their business plan for sites already receiving traffic.
WordPress hosting for small business – ScalaHosting
ScalaHosting is our recommended web host for small businesses. It has excellent speed, uptime and load handling capabilities. It also recorded one of the highest server hardware test scores, indicating they are never limiting their server resources like CPU, RAM, database operations, etc.
It comes inclusive with all features, meaning you don’t need to pay separately for email hosting, backups or malware protection. It has got its three datacenters in the USA region located at Dallas, Seattle and New York. So in any part of the country, you can find the closest data center to host your websites.
The major uniqueness is that there are no bandwidth limits. You can look at any other hosts and you’ll probably see traffic limits for each of the plans but at ScalaHosting, you can bring any number of traffic and ScalaHosting will serve them with no overage fees.
Second uniqueness is that there are no inode limits. If you have an existing host or pick any popular host and search for “{host name} inode limits” you’ll see the limit ranges from 200,000 to 600,000 based on the plan and once the limit has been hit, your hosting plan will stop working or be put into limitations.
At ScalaHosting, you’ll get unlimited inodes on your plan. It includes email hosting at no additional cost, giving an all inclusive hosting solution with no upsells. You’ll be supported 24/7 with live chat with humans, no AI things involved.
Optimized WordPress Hosting – GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is the fastest shared hosting without a CDN. It outperforms every other shared hosting service we’ve been testing, except WordPress.com, which comes with edge CDN. But, if you look at the number of sites allowed per plan, GreenGeeks absolutely outperforms it with unlimited site hosting on pro and premium plans, while WordPress.com is limited to one site per plan.
It has datacenters in Chicago and Montreal in the North American region. So, if you’re looking for a hosting business in this region, go with GreenGeeks.The caching is pre-optimized with every new WordPress installation, so your site will be faster from day one.
Another advantage of GreenGeeks is its simplified cPanel dashboard. It is feature-rich, you just need a click to navigate between features, unlike traditional cPanel, where it takes multiple clicks to reach the settings. It is on par with the premium interface we usually get with hosts like WP Engine or Kinsta, except for the pricing, where you can enjoy such a premium experience for $3/month.
GreenGeeks is ideal for beginners, first-time WordPress users, bloggers, and environmentally conscious users, as well as anyone starting a WordPress site seeking a balanced performance, simplicity, and competitive pricing. GreenGeeks plants one tree for every new hosting account.
WordPress hosting for beginners – HostArmada
HostArmada is our latest entrant into the top recommended WordPress hosts. It is only next to GreenGeeks across all performance tests. Since GreenGeeks has limited data centers (Chicago), you can try HostArmada, which has 11 global data centers with 4 in the North American region (Dallas, Newark, Fremont and Toronto).
The plan starts at $1.99/month with all inclusive features and no upsells. You’ll get email hosting, security like malware protection, daily backups and all powered by no AI, human customer support. Like all shared hosts, their plans are differentiated by features and the top “WP Speed Reaper” plan gets the ultimate specs yet priced affordably, including the renewals.
Affordable WordPress Hosting – DreamHost
DreamHost is recommended as our most affordable WordPress hosting provider. The starter plan (Web Hosting Launch) at $2.89/month allows you to host 25 websites, making it the cheapest per site hosting plan you can find on the internet. They are slightly slower than our above recommended shared hosts, but none of them beats DreamHost in affordability. It has got DCs in Oregon and Virginia in the USA to host your sites.
If you are a freelancer, small business agency or managing the hosting on behalf of clients, DreamHost gives you major savings in your hosting expenses. Low pricing doesn’t mean average services. DreamHost comes with a modern control panel, an AI website builder to launch your website with a single click and all security features.
Best WordPress Hosting – WP Engine
The best managed WordPress hosting to host 10+ sites is WP Engine.
It offers an elite speed, uptime and load handling performance. The most impressive is their load handling, as it surpassed every host except Pressable.
Honestly, we haven’t recommended WP Engine in the last four years due to its slow performance. However, things changed in mid-2024 with visible performance improvements across all the metrics. When they introduced Edge caching, TTFB improved immediately. However, I remained skeptical about the uptime and load handling, which can’t be improved with edge caching alone. To my surprise, we saw massive improvements in uptime, and load handling was the best we’ve experienced, indicating there is a major overhaul of WP Engine infrastructure.
WP Engine includes everything you expect from a managed WordPress host. They have automated backups stored for up to 30 days, as well as staging, development, and production environments, global data center locations, security fixes, and Layer 3+4 DDoS protection, among other features.
Their plan starts at $20/month, but our recommended plan is Growth at $87/month, which allows 10 sites hosting, bringing the cost down to $10 per site, giving maximum savings for users.
Best For: WP Engine is ideal for business sites, high-traffic blogs and critical WordPress applications where performance and reliability are more important than pricing.
Best for WooCommerce Hosting – Kinsta
If you are looking for the best managed WordPress hosting, check out Kinsta. It has strong performance scores in speed, uptime and Load handling. But its major uniqueness is its server hardware test score. If you are running a resource hungry site like WooCommerce stores, LMS or an admin dashboard with multi-author setup, Kinsta should be your only choice. These kinds of sites can’t fully utilize edge caching and Kinsta excels at handling these uncachable requests. Though WP Engine and Pressable excel at offering fast cached pages, Kinsta is consistently good and outperforms them in this setup.
Another uniqueness is that Kinsta allows you to host across all Google Cloud regions, whereas WP Engine, though using the same Google Cloud setup, allows only very limited datacenter options of Iowa and South Carolina in the USA. With Kinsta, you can choose between Iowa, South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Dallas, Oregon, Los Angeles, Utah and Las Vegas. Likewise, let it be Europe or the Asia-Pacific, Kinsta offers the maximum locations to host your sites closer to your targeted audiences.
It also includes Application Performance Monitoring (APM), where you find critical issues on your site. New Relic is the industry’s best APM tool and it costs $100/month. This feature itself brings back the invested money in Kinsta hosting.
The plan starts at $30/month and the first month is free to try with nothing to pay.
Best Mid-Range WordPress Hosting – Cloudways
If you are looking to upgrade from a shared host and are not willing to pay for managed WordPress hosting at $30/month, then choose Cloudways. Its plans start at $11/month and can host an unlimited number of sites. You’ll be limited by the CPU and RAM of your plan. Their speed and uptime are excellent, but load handling is getting slower on their 1GB RAM plans. I recommend starting with a 2GB plan if you require faster load handling and for regular sites, 1GB RAM plans are more than enough.
We’ve been testing their three popular cloud providers, DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode. Based on the last five years of data, we recommend Vultr HF the most, which starts at $16/month.
It has a custom control panel on par with WP Engine or Kinsta. Some of the greatest perks include the Breeze caching plugin, which works similarly to WP Rocket, and can be installed on an unlimited number of sites. You can also get Cloudflare Enterprise Edge caching CDN at $4.99/domain.
WordPress Hosting For Agencies – Kinsta
Kinsta is our recommended WordPress hosting for agencies. Their agency perks can’t be matched with any other hosts. First, agencies can receive up to $10,000 in credits based on factors such as client volume, existing portfolio, and growth potential. These credits can be used during client site onboarding. Second, agency sites can get a free hosting account to host their very own business websites, adding more savings options.
It offers strong performance in speed, uptime and load handling. My favourite part of using Kinsta is the option to host clients closer to their visitors through their 37 global data centers. Their latest automatic WordPress update feature will save agencies a lot of human work: it will automatically run WordPress updates, and if something breaks after the update, it will revert to the previous version and notify you of the issues. If the site doesn’t break out, the update will be applied automatically.
Fastest WordPress Hosting – Pressable
Pressable is the fastest WordPress hosting we’ve ever tested. It has outperformed all other managed hosting providers in all the performance tests. Most other hosts use Cloudflare for DNS and Edge cache, but Pressable got its own infrastructure for CDN and DNS, which conveniently outperforms WP Engine and Kinsta. Especially at load handling, Pressable recorded the lowest response time, making them the ideal choice for sites with high real-time traffic.
Technically, each site comes with 5 Base PHP Workers and expands up to 110 PHP workers, so auto-scaling will never be an issue.
It comes with Geo-redundant High Availability Cloud, meaning your sites are replicated across multiple data centers in real time. If your site goes down due to a primary datacenter failure, it stays live through its other datacenters. In this way, the company guarantees 100% uptime SLA, the only WordPress host to do so.
You’ll get all the regular perks, like unlimited free site migration, malware removal, automatic managed updates, backups, and 24/7 customer support with an average initial response time of ~4 minutes. Pricing starts at $20.83/month when paid annually and $25/month on a monthly plan.
Our Top WordPress Hosting Picks At a Glance
Hand-picked based on 12+ months of continuous performance testing across 17 hosting providers
Best WordPress Hosting UK
The best WordPress Hosting in the UK based on performance is WP Engine. While we haven’t extensively hosted companies with UK data centers, our recommendations are based on the tests done with US data centers as you will get very similar results. WP Engine and Kinsta uses Google Cloud and Cloudflare Edge caching CDN on all its datacenters inlcuding UK. Hostingers runs its own datacenters while Cloudawys uses DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode datacenters in USA and UK. We picked the following list of best WordPress hosting providers, which come with a UK data center location.
WP Engine
TOP PICKUses Google Cloud’s London data center and Cloudflare CDN edge caching. Our top recommendation for its faster TTFB, uptime and great load handling capabilities.
Hostinger
BEST VALUEUK data centers with great speed and uptime. Slightly average at load handling, but considering the price factor, they offer the best value matched with performance.
Kinsta
PREMIUMUses the most powerful Google Cloud Virtual machines, offering better and faster backend performance compared to WP Engine.
Cloudways
FLEXIBLEChoose between five cloud providers for UK hosting. London DC from DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud and AWS. Vultr offers two locations (London, Manchester).
Note: Recommendations based on extensive performance testing and data center availability in the UK region.
WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison Table
| Rank | Web Host | Cost |
TTFB
(lower is better)
|
Uptime
(higher is better)
|
Load Test
(lower is better)
|
Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared Hosting ($1-5/month) | ||||||
| 1 | $2.75/mo | 344ms | 100% | 16ms | First & only shared host with edge caching CDN • Same renewal price guaranteed | |
| 2 | $2.95/mo | 417ms | 99.98% | 26ms | Best & Fastest shared hosting, outperforms all other shared hosting providers. Consistently top performing since we started testing them in 2021. | |
| 3 | $2.69/mo | 491ms | 99.99% | 31ms | Best “Value for money” hosting with option to create up to 25 websites on starter plan. | |
| 4 | $1.99/mo | 533ms | 99.99% | 131ms | The only shared host to offer Premium Cloudflare CDN with Argo routing, best for sites with global traffic. Cheapest price to get started with option to host 10 sites on starter plan. | |
| 5 | $1.79/mo | 512ms | 99.96% | 79ms | 12 Global data center options (highest), good at load handling but frequent downtimes are concerning. | |
| 6 | $2.24/mo | 471ms | 99.94% | 141ms ⚠ | Decent TTFB performance, with uptime and load handling concerns | |
| 7 | $3.99/mo | 658ms | 99.95% | 147ms | Well-known brand, Slowest TTFB performance among all hosts, concerning downtimes, good at load handling. | |
| 8 | $3.75/mo | 620ms | 99.83% | 152ms ⚠ | Popular brand but poor at every performance front. | |
| 9 | $2.49/mo | 489ms | 99.55% | 1068ms ⚠ | Good TTFB, but severe load and uptime issues. | |
| Mid-Range Hosting ($10-20/month) | ||||||
| 1 | $11/mo | 441ms | 99.99% | 98ms | 5 cloud providers, unlimited sites, best option for businesses who have outgrown shared hosting. | |
| 2 | $14/mo | 387ms | 99.99% | 68ms | Only host to offer Google Cloud + DNS + CDN Edge caching infrastructure. Google CDN Edge caching offers the industry leading cache hit ratio even compared to Cloudflare Enterprise. Lacks advanced features like on WP Engine and Kinsta. We are hosted here. | |
| 3 | $20.83/mo | 375ms | 100% | 41ms | Excellent results on testing tools but real-world performance is not quite satisfactory. Their CDN is inconsistent with low cache hit ratio for first time visitors. With a slow control panel, they are not so value for money. | |
| 4 | $17.60/mo | 480ms | 99.99% | 60ms | Best for sites that require higher bandwidth (Starts at 2TB). Support should be improved. | |
| 5 | $16.95/mo | 653ms | 90.79% | 223ms | Managed WordPress host, severe reliability issues, newly integrated BunnyCDN didn’t make any difference in speed. | |
| Premium Hosting ($20+/month) | ||||||
| 1 | $20.83/mo | 335ms | 100% | 12ms | Automatic datacenter failover with real-time replication • 100% uptime SLA | |
| 2 | $23/mo | 354ms | 99.99% | 19ms | The overall best WordPress hosting for real business websites which requires best speed, reliability, and load handling capabilities. We are testing WP Engine since 2021 and this is first year (2025) we are recommending them, thanks to it’s massive tech stack upgrades in the last 12 months. | |
| 3 | $30/mo | 446ms | 99.96% | 27ms | Offers the fastest backend performance (benchmark tested!). They are also the solid option for agencies as the company offers up to $10,000 in hosting credits and free hosting for agency websites. | |
| Providers Under Evaluation | ||||||
| – | $25/mo | 368ms | 100% | N/A | Excellent TTFB and uptime, but load test blocked. So, we can’t evaluate them fully. | |
| – | $1.99/mo | 459ms | 99.99% | 44ms | Infrastructure transition – evaluation expected Q4 2025 | |
Testing methodology: TTFB measured from 22 US locations • Load test: 0-100 concurrent users • ⚠ indicates 4xx/5xx errors during load testing • Rankings based on overall performance score (TTFB 40%, Uptime 40%, Load handling 20%) + unique selling proposition (USP)
Real-World Performance Testing: Identical WordPress sites deployed across all hosting providers • Benchmarking Tools: Pingdom synthetic monitoring and Loader.io • Test Site Setup: Twenty Twenty-Four theme, standardized plugins (Akismet, Contact Form 7 and Rank Math) • Key Metrics Measured: TTFB (speed), uptime and load handling response time.
WordPress Hosting Performance: Q1-Q2 2025 vs 12-Month Average
Outage Context
WP Engine: Outage due to scheduled server update for their next-gen platform.
Kinsta: First longest outage in four years due to Cloudflare connectivity issues, not server-related.
Hostinger, Cloudways, GreenGeeks: Standard operational outages during monitoring period.
| Host | Rank | Price | Perf (80%) | Value (20%) | Final Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress.com | 1 | $2.95 | 7.65 | 2.0 | 9.65 |
| GreenGeeks | 2 | $2.95 | 6.53 | 2.0 | 8.53 |
| ScalaHosting | 3 | $2.95 | 6.35 | 2.0 | 8.35 |
| Hostinger Business | 4 | $3.69 | 6.93 | 1.4 | 8.33 |
| Hosting.com | 5 | $2.99 | 6.28 | 2.0 | 8.28 |
| HostArmada | 6 | $2.49 | 5.97 | 2.0 | 7.97 |
| Pressable | 7 | $25.00 | 7.83 | 0.1 | 7.93 |
| InMotionHosting | 8 | $2.99 | 5.90 | 2.0 | 7.90 |
| FastComet | 9 | $1.79 | 5.87 | 2.0 | 7.87 |
| WP Engine | 10 | $23.00 | 7.64 | 0.2 | 7.84 |
| Hostinger | 11 | $2.99 | 5.81 | 2.0 | 7.81 |
| DreamHost | 12 | $2.95 | 5.74 | 2.0 | 7.74 |
| Templ.io | 13 | $14.00 | 7.31 | 0.4 | 7.71 |
| GoDaddy Managed WP | 14 | $10.99 | 7.13 | 0.4 | 7.53 |
| NameCheap | 15 | $1.98 | 5.50 | 2.0 | 7.50 |
| Interserver | 16 | $2.50 | 5.42 | 2.0 | 7.42 |
| Bluehost | 17 | $3.99 | 5.82 | 1.4 | 7.22 |
| Cloudways Vultr HF | 18 | $16.00 | 6.47 | 0.2 | 6.67 |
| Kinsta | 19 | $30.00 | 6.53 | 0.1 | 6.63 |
| Cloudways Vultr | 20 | $14.00 | 6.12 | 0.4 | 6.52 |
| Cloudways Linode | 21 | $11.00 | 6.08 | 0.4 | 6.48 |
| HostGator | 22 | $3.75 | 5.07 | 1.4 | 6.47 |
| Cloudways Premium | 23 | $14.00 | 5.96 | 0.4 | 6.36 |
| Liquid Web MW | 24 | $10.00 | 5.80 | 0.4 | 6.20 |
| Cloudways Standard | 25 | $11.00 | 5.77 | 0.4 | 6.17 |
| ChemiCloud | 26 | $2.49 | 4.15 | 2.0 | 6.15 |
| EasyWP | 27 | $3.88 | 4.65 | 1.4 | 6.05 |
| SiteGround | 28 | $3.99 | 4.64 | 1.4 | 6.04 |
| Rocket.net | 29 | $25.00 | 5.53 | 0.1 | 5.63 |
| Ionos | 30 | $4.00 | 4.20 | 1.4 | 5.60 |
| NameHero | 31 | $2.24 | 3.56 | 2.0 | 5.56 |
| DreamHost DreamPress | 32 | $16.95 | 4.62 | 0.2 | 4.82 |
| WPX Hosting | 33 | $20.83 | 4.54 | 0.2 | 4.74 |
| GoDaddy | 34 | $5.99 | 3.47 | 0.8 | 4.27 |
| Host | TTFB | TTFB Sc | Uptime | Uptime Sc | Load ms | Load Err% | Load Sc | Global | Global Sc | HW | Perf Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress.com | 357 | 9 | 100.00% | 10 | 16 | 0% | 10 | 208 | 10 | 6.8 | 7.65 |
| GreenGeeks | 416 | 8 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 26 | 0% | 10 | 453 | 7 | 5.0 | 6.53 |
| ScalaHosting | 465 | 7 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 48 | 0% | 9 | 501 | 7 | 8.8 | 6.35 |
| Hostinger Business | 478 | 7 | 99.98% | 9 | 31 | 0% | 9 | 223 | 10 | 7.4 | 6.93 |
| Hosting.com | 462 | 7 | 99.98% | 9 | 43 | 0% | 9 | 544 | 7 | 5.5 | 6.28 |
| HostArmada | 454 | 7 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 32 | 0% | 9 | 642 | 6 | 5.1 | 5.97 |
| Pressable | 341 | 10 | 100.00% | 10 | 12 | 0% | 10 | 231 | 10 | 6.7 | 7.84 |
| InMotionHosting | 537 | 6 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 31 | 0% | 9 | 740 | 5 | 7.4 | 5.90 |
| FastComet | 525 | 6 | 99.98% | 9 | 78 | 0% | 8 | 521 | 7 | 4.8 | 5.86 |
| WP Engine | 367 | 9 | 100.00% | 10 | 27 | 0% | 10 | 169 | 10 | 6.5 | 7.64 |
| Hostinger | 472 | 7 | 99.98% | 9 | 245 | 0% | 6 | 495 | 7 | 7.4 | 5.81 |
| DreamHost | 495 | 7 | 99.96% | 8 | 147 | 0% | 7 | 520 | 7 | 6.1 | 5.74 |
| Templ.io | 381 | 9 | 100.00% | 10 | 58 | 0% | 8 | 214 | 10 | 7.5 | 7.31 |
| GoDaddy Managed WP | 361 | 9 | 99.98% | 9 | 35 | 0% | 9 | 139 | 10 | 3.8 | 7.13 |
| NameCheap | 462 | 7 | 99.98% | 9 | 150 | 0% | 6 | 574 | 6 | 5.0 | 5.50 |
| Interserver | 462 | 7 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 80 | 0% | 7 | 864 | 4 | 5.3 | 5.42 |
| Bluehost | 520 | 6 | 99.95% | 7.5 | 170 | 9% | 6 | 345 | 9 | 9.6 | 5.82 |
| Cloudways Vultr HF | 424 | 8 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 96 | 0% | 7 | 444 | 8 | 7.6 | 6.47 |
| Kinsta | 469 | 7 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 40 | 0% | 9 | 416 | 8 | 8.8 | 6.53 |
| Cloudways Vultr | 421 | 8 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 168 | 0% | 6 | 444 | 8 | 4.3 | 6.12 |
| Cloudways Linode | 438 | 8 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 295 | 2.1% | 5 | 444 | 8 | 7.2 | 6.08 |
| HostGator | 523 | 6 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 152 | 0.7% | 6 | 904 | 4 | 9.6 | 5.07 |
| Cloudways Premium | 447 | 8 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 284 | 2.5% | 5 | 418 | 8 | 4.9 | 5.96 |
| Liquid Web MW | 528 | 6 | 99.94% | 7 | 60 | 0% | 8 | 434 | 8 | 7.2 | 5.80 |
| Cloudways Standard | 451 | 7 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 282 | 2% | 5 | 425 | 8 | 4.7 | 5.77 |
| ChemiCloud | 618 | 4 | 99.95% | 7.5 | 1068 | 4.2% | 3 | 612 | 6 | 6.1 | 4.15 |
| EasyWP | 490 | 7 | 100.00% | 10 | Failed | 56.8% | 0 | 645 | 6 | 6.7 | 4.65 |
| SiteGround | 632 | 4 | 99.97% | 8.5 | 170 | 0% | 6 | 833 | 4 | 8.4 | 4.64 |
| Rocket.net | 380 | 9 | 99.97% | 8.5 | Failed | 100% | 0 | 229 | 10 | 7.5 | 5.53 |
| Ionos | 545 | 6 | 99.99% | 9.5 | Failed | 65.4% | 0 | 725 | 5 | 7.2 | 4.20 |
| NameHero | 491 | 7 | 99.88% | 5 | Failed | 56% | 0 | 611 | 6 | 3.7 | 3.56 |
| DreamHost DreamPress | 599 | 5 | 99.94% | 7 | 221 | 0.1% | 6 | 727 | 5 | 6.1 | 4.62 |
| WPX Hosting | 483 | 7 | 99.99% | 9.5 | 10 | 51.63% | 0 | 611 | 6 | 6.5 | 4.54 |
| GoDaddy | 751 | 3 | 99.99% | 9.5 | Failed | 68.8% | 0 | 755 | 5 | 3.8 | 3.47 |
| Component | Weight | Scoring |
|---|---|---|
| TTFB (US) | 18.75% | <350ms=10, 350-400=9, 400-450=8, 450-500=7, 500-550=6, 550-600=5, 600-700=4, >700=3 |
| Uptime | 18.75% | 100%=10, 99.99%=9.5, 99.98%=9, 99.97%=8.5, 99.96%=8, 99.95%=7.5, 99.94%=7, <99.90%=5 |
| Load Test | 18.75% | <30ms=10, 30-50=9, 50-80=8, 80-150=7, 150-250=6, 250-500=5, >500=3, Failed(>50% err)=0 |
| Global TTFB | 18.75% | <250ms=10, 250-350=9, 350-450=8, 450-550=7, 550-650=6, 650-800=5, >800=4 |
| Hardware | 5% | WPBench score (out of 10) |
| Intro Price | Score |
|---|---|
| Under $3/mo | 10 |
| $3-5/mo | 7 |
| $5-10/mo | 4 |
| $10-15/mo | 2 |
| $15-25/mo | 1 |
| $25+/mo | 0.5 |
| 9-10 | Elite |
| 7-8.9 | Strong |
| 5-6.9 | Average |
| 3-4.9 | Below Average |
| 0-2.9 | Poor |
💰 Shared Hosting Under $5/mo
| Host | Rank | Price | TTFB | Uptime | Load | Global | Perf | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1WordPress.com | 1 | $2.95 | 357 | 100% | 16ms | 208 | 7.65 | 9.65 |
| 2GreenGeeks | 2 | $2.95 | 416 | 99.97% | 26ms | 453 | 6.53 | 8.53 |
| 3ScalaHosting | 3 | $2.95 | 465 | 99.97% | 48ms | 501 | 6.35 | 8.35 |
| 4Hostinger Business | 4 | $3.69 | 478 | 99.98% | 31ms | 223 | 6.93 | 8.33 |
| 5Hosting.com | 5 | $2.99 | 462 | 99.98% | 43ms | 544 | 6.28 | 8.28 |
| 6HostArmada | 6 | $2.49 | 454 | 99.97% | 32ms | 642 | 5.97 | 7.97 |
| 7InMotionHosting | 8 | $2.99 | 537 | 99.99% | 31ms | 740 | 5.90 | 7.90 |
| 8FastComet | 9 | $1.79 | 525 | 99.98% | 78ms | 521 | 5.86 | 7.87 |
| 9Hostinger | 11 | $2.99 | 472 | 99.98% | 245ms | 495 | 5.81 | 7.81 |
| 10DreamHost | 12 | $2.95 | 495 | 99.96% | 147ms | 520 | 5.74 | 7.74 |
| 11NameCheap | 15 | $1.98 | 462 | 99.98% | 150ms | 574 | 5.50 | 7.50 |
| 12Interserver | 16 | $2.50 | 462 | 99.99% | 80ms | 864 | 5.42 | 7.42 |
| 13Bluehost | 17 | $3.99 | 520 | 99.95% | 170ms | 345 | 5.82 | 7.22 |
| 14HostGator | 22 | $3.75 | 523 | 99.97% | 152ms | 904 | 5.07 | 6.47 |
| 15ChemiCloud | 26 | $2.49 | 618 | 99.95% | 1068ms | 612 | 4.15 | 6.15 |
| 16EasyWP | 27 | $3.88 | 490 | 100% | Failed | 645 | 4.65 | 6.05 |
| 17SiteGround | 28 | $3.99 | 632 | 99.97% | 170ms | 833 | 4.64 | 6.04 |
| 18Ionos | 30 | $4.00 | 545 | 99.99% | Failed | 725 | 4.20 | 5.60 |
| 19NameHero | 31 | $2.24 | 491 | 99.88% | Failed | 611 | 3.56 | 5.56 |
☁️ Mid-Range Hosting $5-15/mo
| Host | Rank | Price | TTFB | Uptime | Load | Global | Perf | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Templ.io | 13 | $14.00 | 381 | 100% | 58ms | 214 | 7.31 | 7.71 |
| 2GoDaddy Managed WP | 14 | $10.99 | 361 | 99.98% | 35ms | 139 | 7.13 | 7.53 |
| 3Cloudways Vultr | 20 | $14.00 | 421 | 99.99% | 168ms | 444 | 6.12 | 6.52 |
| 4Cloudways Linode | 21 | $11.00 | 438 | 99.99% | 295ms | 444 | 6.08 | 6.48 |
| 5Cloudways Premium | 23 | $14.00 | 447 | 99.99% | 284ms | 418 | 5.96 | 6.36 |
| 6Liquid Web MW | 24 | $10.00 | 528 | 99.94% | 60ms | 434 | 5.80 | 6.20 |
| 7Cloudways Standard | 25 | $11.00 | 451 | 99.99% | 282ms | 425 | 5.77 | 6.17 |
| 8GoDaddy | 34 | $5.99 | 751 | 99.99% | Failed | 755 | 3.47 | 4.27 |
🚀 Premium Managed WordPress $15+/mo
| Host | Rank | Price | TTFB | Uptime | Load | Global | Perf | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Pressable | 7 | $25.00 | 341 | 100% | 12ms | 231 | 7.84 | 7.93 |
| 2WP Engine | 10 | $23.00 | 367 | 100% | 27ms | 169 | 7.64 | 7.84 |
| 3Cloudways Vultr HF | 18 | $16.00 | 424 | 99.99% | 96ms | 444 | 6.47 | 6.67 |
| 4Kinsta | 19 | $30.00 | 469 | 99.97% | 40ms | 416 | 6.53 | 6.63 |
| 5Rocket.net | 29 | $25.00 | 380 | 99.97% | Failed | 229 | 5.53 | 5.63 |
| 6DreamHost DreamPress | 32 | $16.95 | 599 | 99.94% | 221ms | 727 | 4.62 | 4.82 |
| 7WPX Hosting | 33 | $20.83 | 483 | 99.99% | Failed* | 611 | 4.54 | 4.74 |
*WPX Hosting: 10ms response but 51.63% error rate during load test (scored as Failed)
Expert Validation
Our testing method is validated by WordPress experts:
“Very interesting WordPress hosting comparison article – the author spent quite a bit of time looking through various speed and performance aspects. If you are doing your own research, check out what things have been tested; they all make sense.” – Anton Aleksandrov, developer at WPBenchmark.io.
“Mohan Raj has put together an impressive post with WordPress hosting benchmarks that run 24/7, 365 days a year. Some interesting data points!” – Brian Jackson, Founder of forgemedia LLC and owner of the plugins Perfmatters and Novashare.
Notable Mentions
Rocket.net: It was one of the fastest managed WordPress hosting services until they blocked our simple load test benchmarks. With no performance data available, we stopped recommending them. WP Engine added Edge caching to its stack, and it has consistently outperformed Rocket.net in speed and uptime over the last 10 months. Our data shows that Rocket.net doesn’t have any advantage over WP Engine, as the latter offers better infrastructure (Google Cloud), a mature dashboard with advanced features, and quality customer support.
Liquid Web Managed WordPress / Nexcess: Liquid Web records moderate performance across all tests but falls short of outperforming its competitors in speed, uptime, and load handling. However, it offers several advantages, such as email hosting, visual regression testing for WordPress updates, and enormous bandwidth ranging from 2TB to 10TB, free auto-scaling, unlimited image optimization, and Object Cache Pro.
WPX: WPX recorded an excellent performance score in our tests. However, we noticed that first-time visitors often experience high response times, resulting in slow-loading pages. We tested their TTFB from 40 locations and the score varies from 50ms to 2.1 seconds (proof), the highest variations we’ve ever seen with any provider. This makes their CDN not as fast as recorded in our benchmark reports.
Their control panel is one of the slowest we’ve encountered, displaying a buggy loading screen for more than 10 seconds every time we navigate between tabs, making their hosting experience less than pleasant. WPX’s USP is offering 5-site hosting for $25/month, but it’s not the only option now. You could consider Cloudways (DO 2GB RAM plan), Hostinger Cloud Startup, or Bluehost Pro as alternatives with better server specs and similar performance.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting?
What’s Your Primary Need For WordPress Hosting?
Quick WordPress Hosting Recommendations
| If Your Priority Is: | And Your Budget Is: | We Recommend: |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Performance | $25+ per month | Pressable |
| Performance on a Budget | Under $5 per month | WordPress.com |
| Beginner-Friendly Interface | Under $10 per month | GreenGeeks |
| Agency Management | $25+ per month | Kinsta |
| Small Business Value | $3-$5 per month | Hostinger |
| WordPress-Specific Features | $25+ per month | Kinsta |
Understanding Performance Metrics
Our recommendations are based on comprehensive performance testing. Here’s how to interpret the metrics:
| Metric | Excellent | Good | Average | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTFB (Time to First Byte) | <400ms | 400-450ms | 451-500ms | >500ms |
| Uptime | 100% | 99.99% | 99.96-99.98% | <99.95% |
| Load Handling | <30ms | 30-70ms | 71-150ms | >150ms |
Final Verdict: The Best WordPress Hosting of 2026
While no WordPress hosting is perfect, we picked the seven best WordPress hosting out of the seventeen hosts we’ve tested so far. Our recommendations are based on extensive testing:
Best Overall: WP Engine got a perfect 10/10 performance score. Their introductory discounted pricing is the highest among their competitors. So, easily the best combination of performance and pricing to get started.
Best Budget: Hostinger achieved a performance score of 8.4/10, ranking as the top shared hosting provider. Their prices are often under $3/month, making them suitable for anyone looking for affordable hosting. We’re also offering an exclusive coupon for 10% off all hosting plans. (Check Hostinger Coupon)
Best Managed: Kinsta is the best and most powerful managed WordPress hosting. Their hardware offerings are second to none, making them a great host for your resource-hungry WordPress sites.
Best Mid-Range: Cloudways offers the affordability of shared hosting with the performance of managed WordPress hosting.
WordPress hosting requirements vary depending on the specific needs of website owners. A simple WordPress blog can run well on A2 Hosting or GreenGeeks, while WooCommerce, membership sites, or critical WordPress applications require maximum performance, and premium hosts like WP Engine or Kinsta are better suited.
Unlike many review sites, we don’t favor companies based on commissions. This is evident from the fact that we don’t recommend most of the popular WordPress hosting providers, even though they’re recommended everywhere else.
Which is your existing WordPress hosting provider? Does our guide help you learn something new about choosing your hosting partner? Let us know in the comments.
Changelog:
January 9, 2026: We have refreshed the rankings for 2026 with new hosts.
November 7, 2025: We’ve started testing more than 10 new hosting providers, and so far, we are impressed by WordPress.com and Pressable’s performance, as they outperform every single host we’ve tested at Hostingstep.com. So, we decided to quickly upgrade our article recommending them, as we always strive to offer the best for our visitors. We also removed Hosting.com from our recommendations because we see mixed performance and multiple better alternatives available.
September 20, 2025: Hosting.com’s uptime has improved this month. We are recommending them again, and users who are setting up an account are advised to monitor their site’s uptime using third-party tools like Pingdom or Uptime Robot to confirm the improved reliability.
August 4, 2025: We observe a decline in the performance of A2 Hosting/Hosting.com. Multiple outages have been recorded since we moved our test site to the new Hosting.com infrastructure. We will see if things will improve in the coming days.
July 5, 2025: A2 Hosting / Hosting.com: Previously tracked using A2 data centers, but the company has transitioned to new Hosting.com infrastructure. Our test site has been moved to the new data center setup. We require at least 3 months of performance data from the new infrastructure before providing reliable rankings. Expected evaluation completion: Q4 2025.
June 13, 2025: We are redefining what it means to find the “Best WordPress Hosting.” So far, we have been rating companies based on three performance scores (TTFB, uptime, and load handling). Since premium managed WordPress hosting companies include CDN edge caching, they consistently outperform shared hosting services, creating an imbalance in our top recommended list.
Based on user feedback and our traffic data, we see people are not simply looking for speed when searching for the best WordPress hosting. They prioritize pricing as a major factor in choosing a host. So, we are reworking our rating system and will split the weightage among performance scores, introductory, and renewal pricing. Additionally, we are creating a performance-to-price ratio score to compile a list of all host types, including shared, mid-range, and premium. We will be updating our post at the end of June 2025.
May 17, 2025: A2 Hosting is rebranded as Hosting.com, as part of the acquisition. There have been changes to their plans, and it’s quite confusing to know which is which. There are three hosting plans named “web hosting”, “hosting for WordPress”, and “cPanel hosting”. The plans are downgraded from “Unlimited sites” to hosting only one site per plan. This is a significant downgrade, and although Hosting.com’s initial pricing is affordable, the per-site price is substantially higher. So, we can’t offer them as an affordable WordPress hosting option. We will take some time and find a better hosting service in this category.
Excellent research. According to you which Hostinger plan is best for WordPress?
Hostinger’s Premium plan is good but Business plan is most recommended if you are running a high traffic site. Do remember, our tests are done using their starter Premium ($2.99/month) plan. We are also testing their Business plan which we will review in a separate post.
Such a detailed post, I’ve ever read on the topic. Great work. I’m looking for the Black Friday deals to start, so I can grasp some accounts!
Thanks for the appreciation, Michael. I hope our private consultation is much useful in picking the right host. We have our hosting deals page which includes the best prices on all our recommended hosts, all year around.
Can’t believe SiteGround is this much slower, been using them for a year.
I started testing SiteGround in 2020, their performance is good, but as the time grows, more accounts are getting added to their servers and it causes the overload. This is the reason for frequent outages and slow speeds. However, this is not a case with our top recommend host like GreenGeeks, as the same year I started testing them and their uptime/speed is consistent throughout these five years.
WordPress.com is way too AI focused. Can’t even speak to a person about a pre-sales question. They and their AI obsession = a big fat “No thanks!”
Hi Brad Scott, thanks for sharing your experience. I understand the frustration, and I was disappointed like you. I’ll be passing this feedback along to the team through our contacts with WordPress.com. This is also a good reminder for us. We’re adding pre-sales support evaluation to our testing methodology going forward.