The Best WordPress Hosting 2025: 17 Tested, 7 Recommended

Let’s say you’re looking for a new WordPress Hosting Provider! You search for “Best WordPress Hosting” and Twenty tabs later, you’re drowning in a sea of “Expert” lists that all recommend different hosts as #1. But somehow… you’re still unsure about picking that “best host” for your business.

Then you go search forums like Reddit and read multiple threads, you’ll see each one of them recommends their favorite hosting company as the best. You’ll end up more confused. Ultimately, you will likely choose a WordPress hosting provider that is well-marketed rather than its performance outlook. This is the story of most business owners seeking their ideal WordPress hosting in 2025.

Enter Hostingstep, where we do something unique that no other site does. We use our own funds to buy hosting accounts, install identical WordPress sites and test them 24/7, 365 days a year. No random “best hosting” list influenced by affiliate commissions. All our recommendations are based on real performance data obtained from our test sites, which you can fully verify.

To find the best WordPress hosting, we measure what actually matters: how fast the site loads, how often it stays online and goes down and how it handles traffic spikes. Here is what we brought you the top seven WordPress hosting providers, out of 17 hosts we’ve tested so far.

Best WordPress Hosting – WP Engine

The best WordPress hosting overall is the WP Engine. It offers an elite TTFB performance of 356ms, the fastest among all the hosts we have tested. Their uptime also stands out, with 100% uptime as of the data collected as of March 31, 2025. The most impressive part of WP Engine is its load handling capacity. It handled our load test with a response time of just 19ms, outperforming all other hosts we’ve tested. In total, WP Engine surpassed all 17 other WordPress hosting providers in every performance metric.

Performance Metrics (Jan – Feb 2025):

• TTFB: 356ms (Elite tier)
• Uptime: 100% (Perfect, zero downtime)
• Load Test: 19ms (Elite handling)
• Hostingstep Performance Score: 10.0/10 (Excellent)

Our historical record shows that WP Engine has made several improvements to their infrastructure, addressing shortfalls such as slow TTFB that they previously experienced. The major improvement comes from integrating Cloudflare edge caching, which significantly improved their overall performance across all tests. There are things like Uptime that can’t be fixed with Cloudflare and WP Engine did a great job in improving their uptime, which indicates they have upgraded the servers along with better resources.

Regarding features, 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. 

Pricing:

• Startup: $20/month (25,000 visits, 10GB storage, 75GB Bandwidth)
• Professional: $105/month (75,000 visits, 15GB storage, 150GB Bandwidth)
• Growth: $290/month (100,000 visits, 20GB storage, 240GB Bandwidth)
• Scale: $730/month (400,000 visits, 50GB storage, 550GB Bandwidth)

Best For: WP Engine is ideal for business sites, high-traffic blogs, WooCommerce stores, and critical WordPress applications where performance and reliability are more important than pricing.

Best WordPress Hosting for Small Business – Hostinger

Hostinger is our recommended WordPress hosting for small businesses, with a performance score of 7.1/10. Their performance is somewhat mixed, with TTFB falling in the average tier at 464 ms and load handling at 256 ms, categorized as “Needs Improvement.” Their uptime has been 100% so far in 2025.

Performance Metrics:

• TTFB: 464ms (Average tier)
• Uptime: 100% (Perfect, zero downtime)
• Load Test: 256ms (Needs Improvement)
• Performance Score: 7.1/10 (Good)

What makes Hostinger well suited for small business owners is its pricing. Small business owners are price-sensitive and expect the best value for money. Hostinger fits this category well with long-term introductory discounts and affordable renewal pricing. Their starter plan is priced at $2.99/month, which is similar to most shared hosts. However, Hostinger offers this pricing for a 48-month billing cycle, while most shared hosts limit these discounts to only 36 months. 

Again, take the renewal pricing: The Hostinger plan renews at $7.99/month, while all other shared hosts can be renewed for only over $12/month. Hostinger makes the deal even better for small business owners as it allows hosting 25 websites on the starter plan, while most hosts limit only one site hosting on the starter plan. Thus, I believe Hostinger is a strong choice for small business owners starting in 2025.

Pricing:

• Premium: $2.99/month (25 websites, 25k visits, 25GB storage)
• Business: $3.99/month (50 websites, 100k visits, 50GB storage)
• Cloud startup: $7.99/month  (100 websites, 200k visits, 100GB storage)
• Cloud Professional: $15.99/month  (200 websites, 300k visits, 200GB storage)

Best For: Hostinger is best suited for small businesses looking for long-term savings on their hosting bills. It offers the complete requirements of a small business (free domain, email hosting, AI builder, customer support, etc) at an affordable price.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting – Kinsta

If you are looking for the best managed WordPress hosting, check out Kinsta. It has an excellent performance score of 9.3/10 in our testing. Their TTFB is 444ms in the “Strong” rather than the “Elite” category, but they excel in two critical tests: Uptime and load testing. It recorded an uptime of 100% in 2025 while it consistently got 99.99% uptime with around 1-2 minutes of downtimes in previous years. Their load handling score is 27ms, similar to WP Engine, landing them in the “Elite” category.

Performance Metrics (Jan – Feb 2025):

• TTFB: 444ms (Strong tier)
• Uptime: 100% (Perfect – zero downtime)
• Load Test: 27ms (Elite handling)
• Performance Score: 9.3/10 (Excellent)

The reason we rate Kinsta as the best managed WordPress hosting is due to its WordPress centric features. First, Kinsta uses Google Cloud as the infrastructure partner and allows you to host the sites across all 37 global locations. Second, for critical WordPress applications, APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools are essential and Kinsta offers its APM tool for free on all its plans. Third, Kinsta uses the fastest Google Cloud servers. If you are new to this, Google offers different types of servers, each specializing in different use cases, and Kinsta uses top-tier C3D and C2 servers, which offer the fastest hardware performance based on our benchmarks.

WP Engine has this APM feature, but it is only limited to Enterprise plans. They don’t allow access to all Google Cloud locations, and they don’t use C3D and C2 servers on starter plans, which are only available on advanced plans. These are a few of the reasons we feel Kinsta deserves to be the best for managed WordPress hosting.

Pricing:

• Single 35K: First month free, then $30/month (35,000 visits, 10GB storage)
• WP 2: $59/month (70,000 visits, 20GB storage)
• WP 5: $96/month (125,000 visits, 30GB storage)

Best For: Kinsta is best suited for resource-intensive WordPress applications, online stores, membership sites, and even for blogs/small businesses where they need to choose managed WordPress hosting.

Best WordPress Hosting For Beginners – GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is our top recommended best beginner-friendly WordPress hosting. Their performance is very similar to A2 Hosting and often goes neck to neck. It offers a strong TTFB of 418ms and elite load handling of 26ms, which is only short of WP Engine and better than every other 15 hosts we’ve tested. Their uptime in 2025 stays at 99.96% as of February 28, 2025.

Performance Metrics:

• TTFB: 418ms (Strong tier)
• Uptime: 99.96% (Strong)
• Load Test: 26ms (Elite handling)
• Performance Score: 8.3/10 (Very Good)

What makes us believe GreenGeeks is the best WordPress host for beginners is their simplified cPanel. Let’s accept the fact that cPanel is great, and at the same time, it feels bloated with too many options and steps to manage your sites. As a beginner, it involves a learning curve to understand cPanel and execute any changes. GreenGeek fixes this by offering a simplified dashboard where they bring most features of cPanel within one click.

Want to install WordPress or create a staging site, or need to create and manage new email accounts, or manage security features like installing SSL, managing DNS, etc.? Everything can be done in the GreenGeeks dashboard itself without logging into cPanel. With my 10 years of experience in the industry, I see no other host that has managed to bring out this kind of simplified setup of cPanel. With this approach, I strongly believe that GreenGeeks is the best WordPress hosting platform for beginners.

Pricing:

• Lite: $2.95/month (1 website, 25GB storage)
• Pro: $4.95/month (unlimited websites, 50GB storage)
• Premium: $8.95/month (unlimited websites, 100GB storage, 4X performance)

Best For: GreenGeek is best for beginners, first-time WordPress users, bloggers, and environment-conscious users* or anyone who is starting a WordPress site and wants a balanced performance, simplicity, and pricing. *GreenGeeks plants one tree for every new hosting account.

Best Mid-Range WordPress Hosting – Cloudways

If you are looking to upgrade from a shared host and are not willing to pay a premium price for a managed host, then check out Cloudways. It offers managed Cloud hosting services through five different cloud providers, and their pricing starts at $11/month. We tested their standard plan at $11/month and it recorded an average TTFB of 443 ms and 100% uptime in the first two months of 2025. Their load handling score is 128ms, which is good for WordPress sites.

Performance Metrics:

• TTFB: 443ms (Strong tier)
• Uptime: 100% (Perfect – zero downtime)
• Load Test: 128ms (Average handling)
• Performance Score: 8.4/10 (Very Good)

Cloudways gets picked in the mid-range category because of its pricing and plans. At $11/month, it allows you to host unlimited websites which is not a feature you see on shared or premium managed hosts. They have a custom control on par with WP Engine or Kinsta and it is better than cPanel. Additionally, they have their own caching plugin, Breeze, which works similarly to WP Rocket, giving you cost savings. They also have Cloudflare Enterprise offerings at just $4.99/site, which costs over $200/month when you get it from the official Cloudflare site. So, if you simply look at its outstanding pricing and its plan offerings, Cloudways is the clear sole winner in the Mid range WordPress category.

Pricing: 

• DO 1GB Plan: $11/month (1 core, 1GB RAM, 25GB storage)
• DO 2GB Plan: $24/month (1 core, 2GB RAM, 50GB storage)
• DO 4GB Plan: $46/month (2 cores, 4GB RAM, 80GB storage)
• DO 8GB Plan: $88/month (4 cores, 8GB RAM, 160GB storage)

The starting prices mentioned above are for DigitalOcean. Other Cloud providers are available at different price points, like Vultr and Linode at $14/month, AWS at $20.56/month, and Google Cloud at $37.45/month.

Cloudways is also the best WordPress hosting platform, offering AWS and Google Cloud hosting options for its customers. We say this after testing all the Cloud providers offered by Cloudways, and the performance scores are almost identical. WP Engine is the only other best option for WordPress hosting to host on AWS and Google Cloud. However, they offer AWS only on custom plans.

Best For: Cloudways is best suited for website owners who need more power and flexibility over shared hosts and are not ready for the cost of premium managed WordPress hosts.

Best WordPress Hosting For Agencies – Nexcess

Nexcess is our recommended WordPress hosting provider for agencies. They are not as fast as WP Engine and Kinsta, but they come with agency-specific features, making them a suitable and efficient option. It got an overall performance score of 8.1/10, with TTFB score falling in the average tier at 477ms and 100% uptime. The load test score is 60ms, a good score to handle any number of traffic.

Performance Metrics:

• TTFB: 477ms (Average tier)
• Uptime: 100% (Perfect – zero downtime)
• Load Test: 60ms (Strong handling)
• Performance Score: 8.1/10 (Very Good)

Some of the most common challenges faced by agencies are overage fees, limited resource limits, WordPress troubleshooting, plugin restrictions, etc. Take any managed host like WP Engine or Kinsta, they offer limited resources as they use external infrastructure providers like Google Cloud, which is not affordable. 

In the case of Nexcess, they own their data centers, so they offer enormous server resources. Their starter “Spark” plan at $17/month comes with 2 TB bandwidth, whereas WP Engine offers only up to 550GB bandwidth, and that too on the $194/month scale plan. Nexcess offers up to 10TB bandwidth on top-tier plans, indicating you don’t need to look at bandwidth issues. Next, most managed hosts limit several plugin installations but Nexcess never imposes any such thing. 

Agencies spend a crucial amount of time managing WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates. Nexcess automates this process with its visual comparison tool, which takes a screenshot before and after updating WordPress, and if the site is broken after the update, it will revert back to the update and keep you notified about the issues. They also offer a plugin performance monitor tool that monitors the site load times daily and detects performance changes if a plugin is installed or updated, saving massive time for agencies.

Let’s say you manage a bulk of sites, and this feature comes in handy, fixing the vast time-consuming tasks. Though Nexcess is not as speedy as WP Engine and Kinsta, it offers decent performance in TTFB, uptime, and load handling. So, combining them with its agency-specific features, Nexcess is a solid choice for agencies to get started. 

Pricing:

• Spark: $17/month (1 site, 15 GB storage, 2TB bandwidth)
• Spark+: $35.83/month (3 sites, 25GB storage, 2.5TB bandwidth)
• Maker: $72.50/month (5 sites, 40GB storage, 3TB bandwidth)
• Designer: $100/month (10 sites, 60GB storage, 5TB bandwidth)
• Builder: $136.67/month (25 sites, 100GB storage, 5TB bandwidth)

Best Affordable WordPress Hosting – A2 Hosting

If you think WP Engine is pricey and need an affordable WordPress host with similar performance scores, the A2 Hosting is an excellent choice. Our A2 Hosting test site recorded an average TTFB of 439ms, which is just 83ms slower than WP Engine, falling into our “strong” tier category. Their uptime is 99.99%, and the load handling speed is 44ms, which is not as great as WP Engine’s 19ms, but it still outperforms several premium-priced hosting services. Considering the fact that A2 Hosting costs just 1/12th the cost of WP Engine, its performance scores are highly laudable. 

Performance Metrics (Jan – Feb 2025):

• TTFB: 439ms (Strong tier)
• Uptime: 99.99% (Elite)
• Load Test: 44ms (Strong handling)
• Global TTFB: 527ms (Strong)
• Hostinstep Performance Score: 8.4/10 (Very Good)

A2 Hosting has a strong history of offering the fastest performance for the last four years. Let it be the TTFB, uptime, or load handling, they performed consistently faster, making them a strong contender in the best shared hosting for WordPress. Even before speed was a thing in the WordPress community, A2 Hosting was the earliest to offer speed-optimized WordPress installations, meaning the sites are pre-optimized for speed right from the moment the site goes live. 

Coming to features, A2 Hosting plans are mainly differentiated based on storage types. Their Ignite Starter plan comes with regular SSD drives and LiteSpeed Lite server, while the Turbo plan comes with NVMe storage and LiteSpeed Pro and Plus servers. The rest of the things are pretty common, like Cloud backups, free SSL, 24/7 customer support, etc. 

Pricing: 

• Ignite: $2.99/month (1 website, 10GB storage)
• Accel: $5.99/month (unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage)
• Turbo Velocity: $7.99/month (unlimited websites and NVMe storage)
• Turbo Nitro: $14.99/month (Higher specs, Turbo servers)

Best For: A2 Hosting is best for bloggers, small businesses, and performance conscious site owners who want near-perfect performance at affordable prices.

WordPress Hosting Performance Comparison Table

Our Testing Methodology

Test Environment setup

For every hosting provider, we:

1. Purchased starter hosting plans with our own funds (check our invoices) 
2. Created identical WordPress test sites with
   1. WordPress Twenty Twenty-Four theme
   2. Active plugins (Akismet, Contact Form 7, Rank Math)
   3. WP Fastest Cache plugin for shared hosting and server-side caching on managed hosts.
   4. No custom speed optimization or code modifications to ensure fair comparison.
3. Monitored each site 24/7, 365 days a year, using the industry’s best external testing tools.

Performance Metrics measured:

1. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

• Tool Used: Pingdom Synthetic Monitoring
• Method: TTFB measured from 22 locations across North America at 1-minute intervals (total of 43,800 tests a month and 52,56,00 tests a year)
• Importance: TTFB is the most critical factor in WordPress performance. This significantly impacts the overall site speed.

2. Uptime 

• Tool Used: Pingdom Uptime Checks
• Method: Sites are checked every 60 seconds with a 30-second timeout threshold.
• Importance: No use in the fastest hosting which offers horrible downtimes. Our historical uptime data for the last five years gives the most accurate data.

3. Load Handling 

• Tool Used: Loader.io
• Method: 100 concurrent users for 60 seconds from Amazon US East data center
• Importance: Helps to understand how the server performs during traffic spikes.

Performance Score Rating System

We developed a 10-point scoring system to quantify and compare hosting performance.

TTFB (30 points):

• Elite (< 400ms): 30 points
• Strong (400-450ms): 25 points
• Average (451-500ms): 20 points
• Below Average (> 500ms): 15 points

Uptime (25 points):

• Perfect (100%): 25 points
• Elite (99.99%): 22 points
• Strong (99.98-99.96%): 18 points
• Below Average (< 99.95%): 12 points

Load Test (15 points):

• Elite (< 30ms): 15 points
• Strong (30-70ms): 12 points
• Average (71-150ms): 9 points
• Poor (> 150ms or with errors): 5 points.

Expert Validation

Our testing methodology has been reviewed by many WordPress experts. 

Anton Aleksandrov, developer at WPBenchmark.io (https://wpbenchmark.io/) quoted 

“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.”

Notable Mentions

WPX: The company has a very good performance score of 9.6. However, based on our personal experience, we noticed that first-time visitors are often served with very high TTFB, even within the USA regions. We don’t see such varying discrepancies with other hosts that use CDN services. Despite being a shared hosting service, their prices are higher compared to managed WordPress hosts, but their control panel is not up to the mark. 

Templ Hosting: It has an overall performance score of 9.6, similar to WPX. Templ Hosting is our primary hosting partner, where we host Hostingstep.com and other sites. They are very similar to Kinsta and WP Engine but are affordably priced at $15/month. They are the only hosting industry that offers Google Cloud, DNS, and CDN edge caching. I personally feel Google CDN edge caching is better than Cloudflare Enterprise, and that’s one of the reasons why I use Templ for my group of sites, including Hostingstep.com. 

Rocket.net: One of the excellent hosting services focused on the performance front. However, we can’t do load testing on their servers because of a security block. Since we don’t have an absolute number in their load test, we can’t fit them into our best list.

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. While we do have plans to test hosting services with sites hosted on UK data centers, our existing test benchmarks give you an idea to find your ideal WordPress hosting provider. We picked the following list of best WordPress hosting providers, which come with a UK data center location.

WP Engine: Uses Google Cloud’s London data center and Cloudflare CDN edge caching is our top recommendation for its faster TTFB, uptime and great load handling capabilities.

Hostinger: You can avail of their services from their United Kingdom data centers. They are good to use with great speed and uptime, but slightly average at load handling. But considering the price factor, they offer the best value matched with performance.

Kinsta: Uses the most powerful Google Cloud Virtual machines, offering better and faster backend performance compared to WP Engine.

Cloudways: Choose between five different cloud providers to host your website in UK region. We have tested all their cloud providers for five years, and their TTFB and load handling scores are very similar despite different cloud provider brands behind them. The major reason for similar performance is due to Cloudways optimised WordPress setup. You can choose from London DC from DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud and AWS, while Vultr offers two locations (London, Manchester)

How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting?

Final Verdict: The Best WordPress Hosting of 2025

While No WordPress hosting is perfect, we picked the seven best WordPress hosting out of seventeen hosts we’ve tested so far. Our recommendations based on extensive testing:

Best Overall: WP Engine got a perfect 10/10 performance score. Their introductory discounted pricing is the highest among its competitors. So, easily the best combination of performance and pricing to get started. 

Best Budget: A2 Hosting got a performance score of 8.4/10, the top host among shared hosting companies. Their prices are often less than $3/month, which is suitable for anyone looking for affordable hosting options.

Best Managed: Kinsta is the best and most powerful managed WordPress hosting. Their hardware offerings are second to none, a great host to run your resource-hungry WordPress sites.

Best Mid-Range: Cloudways is the best mid-range WordPress hosting with the affordability of shared hosting and the performance of managed WordPress hosting.

The WordPress hosting requirements often vary due to 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 suit better.

Unlike many review sites, we don’t favor companies based on commissions. This is evident from the fact we don’t recommend most of the popular WordPress hosting providers which are recommended everywhere else.

Which is your existing WordPress hosting provider? Does our guide help you to learn something new related to choosing your hosting partner? Let us know in the comments. 

Changelog:

May 17, 2025: A2Hosting is rebranded as Hosting.com, as part of the acquisition. There have been changes in their plans, and it’s quite confusing to know the difference. 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 price per site is substantially higher. So, we can’t fit them as an affordable hosting option for WordPress. We will take some time and find a better hosting service in this category.

June 13, 2025: We are redefining what it means to find the “Best WordPress Hosting.” Till now, we have been rating the companies based on three performance scores (TTFB, uptime, and load handling). Since premium managed WordPress hosting companies come with CDN edge caching, they consistently outperform shared hosting services.

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 look for pricing as a major factor in choosing the 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 that includes all types of hosts, including shared, mid-range, and premium hosts. We will be updating our post at the end of June 2025.