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 Q4 2025 data from October 1 to December 31, 2025:
The best WordPress hosting services are Hostinger, WordPress.com, GreenGeeks, WP Engine, Kinsta and Pressable. We are recommending these selected companies out of 34 hosts we’ve tested and eliminated every other slow performing hosts.
We’ve included the direct links to the performance reports generated from our testing tools, giving you the utmost confidence in our data-driven reviews.
Recommended WordPress Hosting Providers
Our Testing Methodology
Our Standardised Test Environment
WordPress Version: 6.8.2
Theme: Twenty Twenty-Five WordPress theme
PHP Version: 8.3
Plugins: Akismet, Rank Math SEO and Contact Form 7.
Data Transparency
• Purchase invoices: https://hostingstep.com/invoices
• Detailed Testing methodology: https://hostingstep.com/methodology
• Changelog updates: https://hostingstep.com/changelog
Best WordPress Hosting – WordPress.com
WordPress.com is one of the best WordPress hosting providers we’ve tested. It has outperformed other 34 hosts in speed, uptime and load handling. 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 feature of Hostinger which no one discusses is their enormous inode limits. You can search for {host name} inode limits by replacing {host name} with any of providers name that comes to your mind. You’ll end up learning Hostinger offers the highest inodes limits across their plans starting from 400,000 to 2,000,000 inodes.
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. Most companies offers limited inodes and once you hit the limit, they’ll try to upgrade you. However, with the high inodes limits, the probability of upgrading to higher plan is negligible at Hostinger.
Hostinger plan starts at $1.79/month (with Hostinger Coupon) with 3 websites and 20GB storage. 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 business plan for established sites with existing traffic above 10k per month.
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 got datacenters in Chicago, Montreal in North American region. If you have got businesses around these region, choose GreenGeeks. All the new WordPress sites installation comes with pre-optimized caching setup, offering faster load times from day one.
Another advantage of GreenGeeks is its simplified dashboard. It has got all the features of cPanel into a simple yet elegant dashboard where you can manage most of the cPanel tasks in few clicks.
GreenGeeks is ideal for beginners, especially the first time WordPress users and environmentally conscious users who are seeking to start a WordPress site with balanced performance 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 more than 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 2024 with visible performance improvements in WP Engine across all the metrics. When the edge caching is added to their tech stacks, the TTFB improved greatly but still I was skpetical about their average uptime performance between 2021-23. To my surprise, our test site uptime also improved and now they are consistently clocking 100% every month. We believe WP Engine did a good overhaul to their infrastructure.
WP Engine includes everything from daily automated backups stored for up to 30 days, staging /development / production environments, global data center locations and Layer 3+4 DDoS protection.
The plan starts at $27/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.
Kinsta allows you to host your site from 27 data center locations. 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 like 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 27 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 34 hosting plans
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 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 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
| 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)
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.
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: 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, the highest 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 these selected best WordPress hosting out of the 34 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.
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 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:
February 19, 2026: Removed old performance data, improved readability.
January 9, 2026: We have refreshed the rankings for 2026 with new hosts which we have started testing in Q3-Q4 2025. With this, our total number of monitored hosts increases from 20 to 34.
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.
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.
Mohan Raj is the founder of Hostingstep.com, where he oversees the independent testing of 25+ web hosting providers. He conducts 525,600+ performance tests per year across 60+ global locations to measure TTFB speed, uptime, load test, core web vitals, and hardware benchmarks. Each provider is tested using independently purchased hosting accounts, backed by verifiable data.