Over the past 10 years of running my blog here (and reaching 500,000+ monthly readers), I’ve learned the importance of using only the best web hosting plans to power my blog and keep this site running—to bring in more readers and generate more side income.
The real challenge when trying to find the best hosting plans for you blog though, is sifting through all the noise out there.
That’s why I’ve compiled this comparison of plans from only the most reliable hosting companies in the industry—with a focus on (1) affordability and (2) speed & reliability.
Because here’s the thing, good hosting will help your blog load ultra fast without breaking the bank each month… and if you can do that, then you’re in a great position to create quality content and rank your website higher in Google search results (thus bringing more readers to your blog).
Based on my rigorous testing and evaluations, here are my picks for the best web hosting plans to choose from this year.
17 Best Web Hosting Plans for Bloggers in 2025 (Affordable Hosting Plans Compared)
- Dreamhost Web Hosting Plans: $2.59/mo
- Bluehost Web Hosting Plans: $2.95/mo
- GreenGeeks Web Hosting Plans: $2.95/mo
- SiteGround Web Hosting Plans: $2.99/mo
- ScalaHosting Web Hosting Plans: $2.95/mo
- HostGator Web Hosting Plans: $3.75/mo
- AccuWeb Hosting Plans: $3.99/mo
- Hostinger Web Hosting Plans: $2.49/mo
- HostPapa Web Hosting Plans: $2.95/mo
- iPage Web Hosting Plans: $1.99/mo
- Namecheap Web Hosting Plans: $1.98/mo
- Cloudways Web Hosting Plans: $14.00/mo
- A2 Web Hosting Plans: $2.99/mo
- InMotion Web Hosting Plans: $2.29/mo
- GoDaddy Web Hosting Plans: $3.99/mo
- Kinsta Web Hosting Plans: $35.00/mo
- WP Engine Web Hosting Plans: $10.00/mo
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase using my one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep things like my 25,000 word ultimate guide to starting a blog free of charge to you. Know that I also only recommend hosting companies I personally stand behind.
As we look at our selection of the best plans for bloggers, we’ll be comparing several factors that’ll help you choose the right hosting plan for your needs.
The crucial factors in what constitutes being one of the providers on the market today includes:
- Features
- Performance (including uptime and loading speed)
- Customer support
- Price
Whether you’re just starting your blogging journey or already a veteran, you need to have a great hosting plan to back up the quality of your content. Using the wrong plan is not only a waste of your money, but it’ll also lead to your blog struggling to gain traction.
Now without further delay, let’s dive into my list of the best web hosting plans for bloggers.
First up on our list of the best plans for bloggers this year, is Dreamhost. They’re ranked first for very good reason—not only are their hosting plans the best combination of extremely affordable, fast and reliable—but this company is also one of the longest-running hosting providers on the Internet, having been founded in 1996.
Currently, Dreamhost is home to over 1.5 Million+ WordPress blogs and website owners. A true testament to the platform’s reliability and the reputation they’ve built over the past couple decades. To top it off, Dreamhost is also one of only three hosting companies that’s recommended by the makers of WordPress themselves—making their plans amongst a select few to come with the official stamp of approval.
So what exactly does Dreamhost offer inside their hosting? Let’s dig in.
Performance
One of the reasons Dreamhost has fast become one of the best web hosting services, is their exceptional performance. With impressive load times of around 0.719 seconds and strong server response times, your visitors will have a great experience on your blog. Plus, you can employ some of their (free) recommended performance WordPress plugins to speed up your load time even more.
Uptime
Dreamhost knows that every second your blog is offline can affect your traffic and revenue. That’s why they guarantee 100% uptime, something quite unique in the hosting world. And to back up that claim, they promise to compensate customers for any downtime your website experience. So if you’re looking for one of the best plans as far as uptime is concerned—then Dreamhost stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Customer Support
With an extremely efficient (and fast) customer support system, you can sleep easy with confidence that Dreamhost will never leave you in the lurch if you encounter any technical problems. Customer support comes in the form of 24/7 live chat for quick fixes from their team of WordPress pros and email support (for more complex troubleshooting), the latter of which promises a response time of no more than 24 hours.
Pricing for Dreamhost’s Hosting Plans
As with all other aspects, Dreamhost’s pricing for their plans is also in a class of its own—starting at just $2.59/mo (for an annually billed plan), especially their industry-leading 97-day money-back guarantee. Another unique feature of how their plans are priced, is that they are one of the very few reputable hosting companies to have a true month-to-month payment plan that starts as low as $4.95/mo.
Here’s what the pricing structure looks like for Dreamhost’s two main hosting plans:
Dreamhost’s starter hosting plans actually offer 2 different levels of shared hosting plan options—the Shared Starter (best starting point) and Shared Unlimited (as you begin to grow your blog and get more regular readers coming in).
Their best-bargain plan, Shared Starter, includes:
- 1 Website
- Free Domain included
- Unlimited Traffic
- WordPress Pre-Installed
- Fast SSD Storage
- Free SSL Certificate (to secure your blog)
- Free Domain Privacy (to protect your contact information)
- 3 Year, 1 Year & Monthly Options
- 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee
As your blog grows and you begin generating a meaningful amount of traffic (and income)—you’ll want to upgrade to one of their more robust plans that affords you faster load times, more storage, the ability to host more websites and more.
That’s when their VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting plans come into play.
Dreamhost’s highest-tier VPS Hosting Plan adds features like:
- 8 GB Ram
- 240 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate(s)
- Unlimited Email @ Your Domain
- 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee
For many bloggers (myself included), Dreamhost is responsible for helping me to launch my blogging career—and they’ve lived up to their name by offering the best web hosting plans on the market when it comes to balancing reliability, speed and price.
Not only do they offer one of the cheapest plans in the industry, but their feature sets, reliability and level of customer service make them top-notch.
If you’re just getting started on your own blogging journey today—then Dreamhost is my #1 recommendation for the best web hosting plan to get you off and running.
You can learn more about Dreamhost and compare their plans right here.
Ask any veteran blogger to recommend their best plans of choice—and Bluehost will come up more than most other hosting companies.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you use one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep my in-depth content free of charge for readers (like you).
The reason for that is simple—Bluehost truly does offer some of the best plans for bloggers when it comes to affordability, features specifically curated for bloggers and the high-touch level of customer support when it comes to technical WordPress questions. Having been around since 1996, Bluehost has accumulated a lot of experience in the web hosting market, and they now combine price and value nearly perfectly.
So how does one of the biggest hosting companies fare in terms of how their individual web hosting plans are structured?
Performance
Based on several tests, Bluehost comes out as one of the top contenders as far as site performance goes. With load times that range between 0.046 seconds to 3.43 seconds depending upon where you’re located in the world, your website will load fast with a Bluehost hosting plan.
Uptime
With the industry average for uptime being around 99.59%, Bluehost’s 99.99% average places it amongst the top-performing companies in this category.
Customer Support
Need help with technical issues concerning your hosting plan or with WordPress challenges? Bluehost won’t disappoint in this aspect, as they offer class-leading 24/7 support via phone, live chat and email. You’ll also find their lively forum very helpful, as is the wealth of knowledge they provide through their how-to guides, articles and FAQ section.
Pricing for Bluehost’s Hosting Plans
Apart from their 30-day money-back guarantee, Bluehost’s plans are some of the most competitive on the market from both a price and feature standpoint. Regular pricing ranges from $5.45/mo to $13.95/mo. However, you can get special deals (like mine right here) that reduce those prices to as little as $2.95/mo.
Bluehost offers a more generous selection of plans (and features within each of them) compared to other companies in the industry. Here’s how their two best hosting plans stack up:
With the Basic plan (budget-friendly) you get:
- 1 Website
- 10 GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Standard Performance
- 1 Included Domain
- 5 Parked Domains
- 25 Sub Domains
The Choice Plus plan (with their best features) also gets:
- 3 Websites
- 40 GB SSD Storage
- Free SSL Certificate
- 1 Included Domain
- Unlimited Parked Domains
- Unlimited Sub Domains
- Domain Privacy
- Daily Site Backup
- Access to Spam Experts
Not sure about which Bluehost hosting plan you should settle for?
After personally testing and running some comparisons between their plans, I highly recommend the Choice Plus Plan for 2 reasons:
- Larger storage
- Domain privacy (for enhanced security)
However, whichever plan suits your blogging plans for the year to come, one thing is for sure—Bluehost offers some of the best plans on the market.
Moreover, their plans are backed by a customer service team that goes above and beyond the call of duty to help new bloggers with WordPress troubleshooting issues, technical challenges and any other questions that come up as you’re just starting your blog.
GreenGeeks is a (comparatively) small hosting company with around 300,000 customers, headquartered in California since launching in 2006. Their claim to fame is their massive effort to provide only eco-friendly hosting plans to their customers.
To back this up, here’s an excerpt from their homepage, “Since our launch in 2008, GreenGeeks has been the industry’s leading eco-friendly web hosting provider, putting back 3 times the power we consume into the grid in the form of renewable energy. We are based out of Los Angeles, California with a global workforce that provides a better hosting experience to customers from over 150 countries.”
It’s easy to think that a company like GreenGeeks could be a one-trick pony, but that’d be an incorrect assumption. They may offer an eco-friendly set of plans, but they’re also able to provide competitive features that all great hosting companies invest in. GreenGeeks has a lot to offer and we’ll go through a full comparison, so you can decide if this hosting company aligns with you.
Performance
One of the things that GreenGeeks prioritizes is performance. The company integrates new technologies to make sure that they provide faster load times on all of their hosting plans for customers. In fact, they were one of the first companies to invest in adding the newest PHP 7 protocol. Their load time ranges from .452 seconds to .9 seconds according to most third party testing. They also have multiple data centers that you can choose from with any of their hosting plans, so you can get the best service possible in your area.
Uptime
GreenGeeks consistently has a 99.9% uptime, ranking it amongst the very highest uptimes for hosting companies.
Customer Support
GreenGeeks offers a variety of ways to contact them for support. Depending on your preference, you can open a ticket, use live chat, call, or use email for support questions. They also offer an extensive knowledgebase if you’d rather search for the answer yourself.
One thing to be aware of about their customer support is if your questions become more difficult, you may have to use their customer support ticket to get an answer. This happens when your queries go outside of the scope of basic questions and require a more technical response. This can be a little annoying if you want an immediate response, but the wait time isn’t long and the staff is knowledgable and helpful.
Pricing for GreenGeeks Web Hosting Plans
GreenGeeks is a very affordable option for bloggers looking to get their sites off the ground with affordable plans. Like most hosting companies though, in order to take advantage of their lowest prices—you’ll have to commit for multiple years. Therefore, their lowest cost hosting plans are for a three-year commitment.
GreenGeeks lowest tier hosting plan starts at $2.95/mo, while their top-tier hosting plan runs $8.95/mo.
Here are some of the features offered with both their top and bottom WordPress-oriented hosting plans.
Lite Plan
- 1 Website
- 1-Click App Installer
- 50 GB Web Space
- Unlimited Data Transfer
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free Domain Name for 1st Year
- Free Wildcard SSL
- PowerCacher Included
- Free Website Transfer
- Free Email Accounts
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Sub & Parked Domains
- Free CDN Integration
- Hardware & Power Redundancy
- Pro-active Server Monitoring
- Real-time Security Scanning
- Automatic App Updates
- Enhanced SPAM Protection
- Nightly Data Backup
- Free SSH and Secure FTP Access
Pro Plan includes many of the same features plus:
- Unlimited Websites
- 1-Click App Installer
- Unlimited Web Space
- Unlimited Data Transfer
- Free Domain Name for 1st Year
- Free Premium Wildcard SSL
- Free Dedicated IP
- 4X Performance
GreenGeeks packs their best plans with features and really has a lot to offer for a comparatively lower-priced hosting company.
A few of the features that stand out most include: free SSL with any hosting plan, unlimited bandwidth and a free domain name for your first year. Their nightly backups and security features are also a couple of their most notable (complementary) offerings. Be sure to use my free domain name generator tool if you’re not quite sure what to choose for your blog yet.
If you’re looking for a hosting company that uses renewable energy—without having to sacrifice performance and quality—then GreenGeeks will have your best hosting plans.
SiteGround is another long-established company that’s loved by many bloggers and WordPress users from around the world. That’s for several good reasons as you’ll soon see. Started in 2004, the company now boasts of hosting over 2 million blogs globally—and has often been named the best WordPress hosting company in the industry, being one of just a small handful of hosting companies given a stamp of approval by WordPress themselves.
SiteGround is very popular in the hosting space because they have a reputation for offering some of the most reliable plans around. And if you’re moving to their servers from another hosting company, they offer free migration. Apart from that, here’s what else you can expect from SiteGround’s plans.
Performance
SiteGround has some of the best web hosting plans as far as performance is concerned. And that’s particularly true for their impressive load speeds. Third party server speed tests regularly reveal that SiteGround’s response time is between 0.056 and 0.138 seconds. That’s dependent on your location in the world, but those are impressive results nonetheless.
Uptime
Uptime isn’t something you need to worry about when using one of SiteGround’s plans. Their servers boast a 99.9% uptime.
Customer Support
As for customer support, SiteGround is solid in this area too—after all, they’re veterans in the industry. Depending on which of their plans you’re on, you can get support by phone, chat or ticketing system that takes the conversation over to email.
Pricing for SiteGround’s Web Hosting Plans
While SiteGround isn’t the cheapest option on our list of the best web hosting plans here, their hosting plans are still very affordable—ranging from $2.99/mo up to $7.99/mo for their best hosting plan.
Their pricing is definitely not the cheapest compared to Dreamhost and Bluehost, but then again—neither is the quality of their hosting and overall service that kicks your value up quite dramatically. Their plans are well worth the investment and are still considered budget-friendly.
Let’s briefly look at what you get with SiteGround’s best plans.
Their first plan, StartUp (the most budget-friendly) gets you:
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Web Space
- Approximately 10,000 monthly visits
- Free WordPress Install
- WP Auto-updates
- Free WP Migrator
- WP CLI and SSH
- Free SSL certificate and HTTPS
- Free Email
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Unmetered Traffic
- Free Daily Backup
- Unlimited MySQL DB
GoGeek, the highest-tier plan, upgrades you to:
- Unlimited Websites
- 40 GB Web Space
- Approximately 400,000 monthly visits
- Free WP Transfer by Experts
- WordPress SuperCacher
- Advanced On-demand Backup
- 1-click WordPress Staging
- Add Collaborators to Sites
- Advanced Priority WP Support
- The Most Server Resources
- Pre-Installed Git for WordPress
- Manage White Label Hosting and Clients
SiteGround takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of building your blog with their feature-rich hosting plans.
Besides everything their plans come with from a technical standpoint, you also get:
- Free pre-installed WordPress (after signing up with one of their web hosting plans)
- A site-building wizard to teach you the basics of starting a blog
- Auto-updates of software, themes and plugins
- Hands-on support for all of your blogging questions
One pretty big caveat to note about SiteGround’s plans though, is that if your website crosses the usage thresholds for the hosting plan you’re on, your blog may temporarily be taken offline. That’s a pretty major bummer in the event that you get a spike in traffic from a press feature or guest blog post, but their support team is very responsive and can help quickly remedy this if it happens (usually by upgrading your hosting plan).
Other than that, SiteGround definitely offers some of the best plans around—making them more than worth considering for hosting your blog.
ScalaHosting isn’t the most popular provider out there. It’s been around since 2007, and although it’s been on a steady growth path over the years, it’s still not quite as big as the industry’s most prominent names. However, this doesn’t mean it’s lagging behind in quality. Far from it, in fact.
ScalaHosting’s portfolio of services covers everything from cheap shared plans to powerful cloud VPS solutions. Bloggers trying to start a new project will likely be looking at the more affordable end of the scale, where they can find a total of four WordPress-optimized hosting packages.
Three of them are based on a shared environment. These will struggle once you start registering more meaningful traffic, but they can be an excellent launchpad for your project. All accounts come with a one-click installer, meaning you can set up WordPress and start working on your new blog immediately.
When you outgrow the confines of the shared plans, you’ll move to a cloud VPS. ScalaHosting prides itself in being one of the leaders in this hosting segment. Over the years, they’ve innovated and implemented some of the most advanced virtualization technologies, making their solutions powerful, flexible, and easy to use.
Case in point: the SPanel web hosting control panel. It’s a fully featured server management platform with an intuitive graphical interface for creating email accounts, managing databases, files, domains, and more. SPanel was developed by ScalaHosting themselves, and it was designed to work with their cloud VPS infrastructure. The idea is to ensure that website management doesn’t require advanced technical skills.
Sounds good, but it will amount to nothing if ScalaHosting doesn’t fare well in the aspects of the service we’re looking at today. So, let’s see how they’re getting on.
Performance
Quite a few measures have been taken to ensure the speed of websites hosted on ScalaHosting’s servers. The hardware, for example, is updated regularly, and technologies like NVMe SSD storage are implemented to ensure fast and reliable performance.
It shows as well. Speed obviously depends on many factors, but tests show that websites hosted by ScalaHosting can be loaded within 0.3 to 0.6 seconds, making the provider one of the fastest on the market.
Uptime
ScalaHosting’s sysadmins have invested a lot of time into ensuring their customers’ websites are online for as much of the time as possible. The cloud infrastructure powering Scala’s VPS solutions is a good example.
The virtual servers are deployed on a vast network of physical machines. If one of the nodes fails, the rest will take up the slack and keep downtime to a minimum. ScalaHosting are confident that this, coupled with other precautions they’ve taken, will do the job.
So much so that they advertise a 99.9% uptime guarantee on their website. Unlike other hosts, they have included it in their terms of use, along with the refund rates you’re eligible for in case they fail to keep their promise.
Customer Support
ScalaHosting’s technical support team can be reached via live chat and tickets. There is no phone support, which may be considered a disadvantage by some.
However, an abundance of communication channels means nothing if the support agents aren’t responsive and quick. ScalaHosting’s techies are among the best on the market in that respect.
The company promises that live chat inquiries receive a response within the first 30 seconds, while the first reply to your ticket can be expected within 15 minutes of its submission. No other company is bold enough to make such claims, and the best thing is, there seems to be some substance behind them.
ScalaHosting’s pages on platforms like Trustpilot are awash with five-star reviews, and most of them revolve around the quality of ScalaHosting’s customer support, which, according to many, is exceptional.
Pricing for ScalaHosting’s Web Hosting Plans
ScalaHosting’s shared plans provide a very accessible way to start a new blog. Dubbed “Mini,” their most affordable package costs just $2.95 per month on a three-year cycle. It’s cheap, but it’s also deployed in a shared environment.
Another veteran web hosting service provider, HostGator, takes the 5th slot on our list of the best plans for bloggers. Founded in 2002, the company boasts of over 8 million websites housed on their servers, making them one of the bigger players in the industry.
So what attracted 8 million+ customers over to choosing HostGator as their plans of choice?
Performance
While HostGator’s performance is great overall, it does depend a bit on where you’re located in the world. The closer you are to their servers, the better the performance. Speed tests have shown average load speeds ranging from as fast as 0.69 seconds to as slow as 8 seconds.
Uptime
HostGator’s uptime stands at 99.9%, well above the industry average. Definitely one reason their plans are loved by their customers.
Customer Support
As a HostGator customer, you’ll never be stuck on a problem for long, as they have one of the best customer support organizations in the industry. You can easily get support any time of day, 7 days a week throughout the year by phone or live chat. Their resource library also has a wealth of video tutorials and articles to walk you through any uncharted technical territory along your blogging journey.
Pricing for HostGator’s Web Hosting Plans
Another reason HostGator is so popular is the fact that their plans are very affordable. Because of their 60% discount that’s available through select affiliates like me, their hosting plans are almost always priced between $3.75/mo and $6.25/mo.
Add to this their impressive 45-day money-back guarantee and they deserve their ranking amongst the best hosting plans for bloggers who are on a budget. And that’s not all—HostGator offers one of the few plans that actually allow you to pay month-to-month.
So what do you get with each of HostGator’s plans?
Their lowest-priced Hatchling plan gets you:
- Free Domain Name
- One-click WordPress Installation
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free SSL Certificate
The Baby plan gives you the same as the Hatchling plan plus:
- 2 Domains (which is great if you run multiple websites)
With the Business plan you get everything from the Baby plan plus:
- Daily Website Back-up
- Domain Privacy
HostGator also throws in many other handy features with every plan, including:
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Domain registration
- One-click instals
If you’re looking for a time-tested hosting company that offers some of the best plans on the market, HostGator fits the bill.
And while their hosting plans don’t stand too far out from the crowd in terms of feature offerings, they are a good budget-friendly choice that still has a solid all around reputation in the industry.
AccuWeb Hosting is a US-based web hosting provider with 18+ years of experience in the industry, and an impressive 95% customer satisfaction rate. Since launching in 2003, they’ve become widely known for their range of budget-friendly plans in more than 14 locations around the world. Whether you are looking for a personal website hosting or looking for a feature rich hosting plan, they have reliable, fast and budget-friendly options.
Performance
AccuWeb’s performance and speed rating sit right up at the top of the pack. In around 70% of the most common server locations around the world, AccuWeb ranks very high in performance. For our test with their South Africa data center, a mid-weight eCommerce website was fully loaded in 1.3 seconds (on average) in Australia–an impressive test.
Uptime
AccuWeb reports an uptime of around 99.97% on any of their hosting plans.
Customer Support
With the option to submit a lengthy support ticket or start a live chat if you’re experiencing an issue that needs immediate attention, AccuWeb prides themselves on quick response times when you reach out (waiting just a few seconds as opposed to 20-minute long live chat waits with other hosting companies).
Pricing for AccuWeb’s Hosting Plans
AccuWeb isn’t the absolute cheapest host out there, but it’s always very affordable. Their basic WordPress hosting plan starts at just $3.99/month. You’ll get hosting for one WordPress site, free daily back-up, free business email accounts and much more.
Moving up the market a bit, AccuWeb also has one of the most competitively priced VPS hosting plans on the market—with their basic VPS plan starting at just $5.99/month.
All shared hosting plans cover a 30 money-back guarantee and VPS plans come with a 7-day money-back guarantee. So, you’ll have plenty of time to evaluate their performance for yourself.
The Most Attractive Features:
- Unlimited websites
- Pure SSD storage
- Free SSL
- Free migration
- Free domain registration
- Full root access
- 24/7/365 expert technical support
- Daily and free weekly backups
- 14+ server locations
- Free business email accounts
- No question asked money-back guarantee
Final Verdict:
AccuWeb manages to provide an impressive mix of resources, power and affordability into each of their web hosting plans–and can support traffic-heavy websites as you grow. If you’re thinking about AccuWeb, you should also consider comparing KVM vs VMware for your VPS hosting needs as they’ll be competitively priced and feature matched.
If price is your #1 consideration in a hosting plan, then you should definitely look at Hostinger. They’re one of the cheapest options currently available on the market, and even better—you won’t have to sacrifice quality for a good price if you choose one of their extremely affordable hosting plans to power your blog.
To be fair though, Hostinger won’t provide as many bells or whistles as most of the other best hosting plans (like Dreamhost or Bluehost), but they’ll give you high-speed hosting for a very competitive price. While you might think their low prices mean they’re a new or small company, the opposite is actually true. Hostinger has been around since 2004, and claim to have over 29 million users in 178 countries, making them one of the larger companies in the space today.
But how do they stack up against some of our other best hosting plans on this comparison list? Let’s take a closer look.
Performance
Hostinger has a surprisingly fast load time for a provider of budget hosting plans. Their average load time is 0.369 which is well above industry standards. In fact, there aren’t many providers that match this quick of load time. Hostinger also provides a strong server response time making their overall performance very competitive.
Uptime
Hostinger has a strong uptime of 99.91%, which is well above the industry average, so you know you’re in good hands when it comes to reliability.
Customer Support
One thing that sets Hostinger’s customer support apart is they offer a multilingual support team. Hostinger communicates through live chat using an instant messaging platform called Intercom. Live chat is available 24/7/365. In addition, Hostinger has a knowledgebase packed full of helpful content with blogging advice that includes things like Getting Started, Domains, Billing and more.
One downside to the customer support system is that you must log in before accessing the live chat support. That means if you’re interested in contacting Hostinger for information before signing up, you’ll be somewhat limited. You can still submit a ticket without being a customer, though.
They also don’t offer phone support, which can be a downside for bloggers who prefer to communicate over a quick call.
Pricing for Hostinger’s Web Hosting Plans
As we already mentioned, Hostinger is likely going to offer the most budget-conscious plans you can use for your blog. Their current prices range from $2.49/mo to $8.99/mo. That’s an incredibly low price to work with and can be a great option if you’re a new blogger working on a tight budget.
Now, let’s go through their lowest and highest paid plans to see what you’ll get with Hostinger.
For shared hosting, Hostinger’s cheapest hosting plan is the Premium plan. Here’s what it offers:
- 100 Websites
- 1 Email Account
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free SSL
- Weekly Backups
- Automatic Website Migration
- WordPress Auto Updates
- AI Website Creation
Hostinger’s highest-paid hosting plan is Cloud Startup Hosting. This is what you get:
- 300 Websites
- 200 GB NyMe Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Daily Backups
- Unlimited Free SSL
- Free CDN
- Dedicated IP Address
- Priority Support
Hostinger is a great choice for those that want to start a blog, but don’t want to invest much money upfront. They offer quality performance and ongoing support to their customers, too.
If you’re choosing their cheapest hosting plan though, it’s important to realize that you’ll have certain limitations—and other blogging-related costs may add up, since you’ll have to pay for them separately (or from other vendors). For example, you will be limited to 100 GB of SSD storage with Preimum hosting plan.
Another thing to note is the low introductory price of $2.49/mo for their low cost hosting plan does come with a 4-year commitment.
That’s a long time to commit to a recurring payment for hosting. Once the 4 years have passed, you’ll start paying a higher price for your hosting plan—but that’s far enough into the future that you can worry about planning for what to do later.
Either way, Hostinger does truly offer an amazing deal for their hosting plans. But, in my opinion—it’s worth signing up for their higher-tier hosting plans (which are still very affordable) right from the start, so you can lock in the low rates with their hosting plans that offer more flexibility, additional features and an all around better experience.
HostPapa is an independently owned hosting company based in Canada. While they’re relatively small compared to many of the other companies here, they launched back in 2006 and service hosting plans for over 200,000+ websites owners.
Much like a few of our other picks for the best hosting plans here, HostPapa is slightly geared towards providing hosting plans to small business owners.
Also like GreenGeeks, HostPapa focuses on providing eco-friendly hosting plans for their customers—as their hosting plans are powered by 100% renewable energy. They share, “We promote the development and use of wind & solar energy resources by purchasing green energy certificates to offset all the power we use in our data centers and offices. By putting equivalent clean energy back into the grid, we effectively reduce our carbon footprint and support renewable energy initiatives.”
Though HostPapa isn’t a large company, that may arguably be their greatest competitive advantage in the hosting industry. They provide very high-quality security and tech support to their customers at a level you’ll be hard-pressed to find with other plans. Now, let’s review HostPapa and see how they compare.
Performance
HostPapa-powered websites have average load times of around .759 seconds according to third-party testing, which ranks them right in the middle of the pack.
Uptime
HostPapa offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which comfortably places them in the top rung of plans for this category.
Customer Support
Customer support is one of the features that HostPapa is most proud of. They claim to have customer support members that truly care about their customers. Not only that, but they also seek to provide experienced tech support to help their customers answer important questions—with the goal of helping every customer make the best choices for their business.
HostPapa uniquely offers a 30-minute, one-on-one call with a “squad” expert to help new customers become familiar with the tools and features of their best hosting plans. Another helpful feature, is that they offer multilingual customer support in English, Spanish, French and German. Their customer support is available 24/7 and they can be reached through support tickets, phone, email and live chat. On top of that, they also offer an extensive knowledge base and library of self-help tutorials & videos for customers on any of their hosting plans.
It’s one thing to make promises about strong customer support—and it’s another thing to actually deliver. In HostPapa’s case, they really do deliver on their promise. They get high praise for their customer service, and this is often the top reason other customers so regularly refer people their way.
Pricing for HostPapa’s Web Hosting Plans
HostPapa offers three levels of shared hosting plans starting with their “Starter” plan and ending with the “Business Pro” plan.
The Starter Plan has an introductory price of $2.95/mo and the Business Pro Plan has an introductory price of $12.95/mo.
To get the introductory pricing though, you must sign up for a three-year commitment. At the end of the introductory period, the renewal prices will be $8.95/mo and $17.95/mo. These renewal rates are far from the lowest-priced plans on our list, but their features do go above and beyond. Let’s take a closer look.
Here’s some of what HostPapa’s Starter Plan includes:
- 1 Website
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free Domain Name Registration
- 10 Email Accounts
- Email virus scanning
- SpamAssassin spam protection
- SpamExperts
- 500 MB Individual Mailbox Storage
- 5,000 MB Overall Mailbox Storage
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL
- PHP 5.6, 7.0 (Choose Your Version)
- WordPress (1-click setup)
- Custom Cron Jobs
- Enhanced SSD drives
- Cloudflare Content Delivery Network
- 2 Hosted Domains
- DNS Management
- Server firewall, Monitoring, and Intrusion Detection
- Brute Force Detection
- DDoS Attack Prevention and Responses
The Business Pro Plan includes many of the same features plus:
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- 1,000 MB Individual Mailbox Storage
- 10,000 Overall Mailbox Storage
- Faster Premium Servers
- Fewer Accounts on Server
- Enhanced Performance
- Unlimited Hosted Domains
- Advanced Security Features
- Domain Name Privacy Protection
- Premium Wildcard SSL Certificate
- Automatic Website Back up (1GB)
- SiteLock Detect
There are some notable differences between the lowest and highest tier hosting plans with HostPapa. For example, the Business Pro plan includes domain name privacy protection. This addition significantly bring up the overall value of this hosting plan. The Business plan also provides an automatic website back up and faster servers.
All of the HostPapa hosting plans have something called “unmetered bandwidth.” While this sounds like freedom at first, unmetered doesn’t mean the same thing as unlimited. There are limitations to how much bandwidth your hosting plan will allow—so take a closer look at the details when you sign up.
HostPapa states that they won’t limit the amount of visitor traffic or content on your site, as long as your blog complies with their Terms of Service. They go on to say if your website demands too many resources though, they’ll notify you, take corrective action, or ask you to choose a hosting plan that better fits your needs and usage.
HostPapa’s terms of service are admittedly a bit ambiguous about this point, stating disruptive use as, “generating a daily, weekly or monthly volume of network traffic that is excessive in relation to amount of network traffic typically generated by HostPapa’s other clients who’ve purchased similar hosting services.”
Limiting bandwidth use is not uncommon with hosting companies, but it’s something to be aware of when searching for your best hosting plan.
If you expect a high level of traffic, or large volume of content to live on your site within a relatively quick period of time—you should start right away with their higher-tier hosting plans—or consider other hosting companies that offer unlimited (or higher) bandwidth.
For bloggers and small business owners looking for the best customer service, multiple websites and eco-friendly plans, HostPapa is worth looking into.
iPage is another one of our popular hosting companies on this list—having been founded over 20 years ago, in 1998. It’s one of the oldest companies in the hosting world, and they currently host over a million websites on their various different plans.
With a focus primarily on hosting plans for individuals and small businesses, they work hard to provide an easy-to-use web platform—designed specifically for non-technical customers to use without getting overwhelmed.
On top of their user-friendliness, iPage’s plans also come with some of the most features (and bonus extras when you sign up with them). Now, let’s dig into the details of their best hosting plans.
Performance
Load times on blogs that are hosted with iPage are fairly average, ranging from .0787 seconds to 2.6 seconds based on third party tests.
Uptime
iPage has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, like many of our companies here that work hard to deliver the best web hosting plans.
Customer Support
iPage offers a variety of ways to contact their support team including ticketing (email), live chat, phone and a knowledge base with tutorials and walkthroughs. However, one thing that does come up in customer review boards, are occasional complaints about slow response times, unhelpful answers or even unresolved tech issues. This isn’t the experiences of iPage’s average customer, but the fact that it does happen sometimes—should signal that customer support isn’t their strongest attribute.
Pricing for iPage’s Web Hosting Plans
Currently, iPage has one shared hosting plan option available for an introductory price of $1.99/mo, making it one of the lower cost options on our list.
Like most hosting companies though, once the introductory price expires, your bill will go up—in this case, to $7.99/mo. Also like most hosting companies, in order to lock in the lowest rate with their hosting plans, you’ll have to sign up for a 3-year commitment.
iPage offers a shared hosting plan, two WordPress hosting plans and one VPS hosting plan. That being said, the primary plan you should be considering if you’re just launching your website, is their Shared Hosting Plan. So, let’s take a closer look at iPage’s primary plan.
What iPage’s Shared Hosting Plan offers.
- Free Domain for 1 year
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Scalable Bandwidth
- Unlimited Domain Names Allowed
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Free SSL Certificate
- Customizable Email Address with Your Domain ([email protected])
- Enhanced Security Suite
- vDeck Control Panel
- 24/7 Network Monitoring
- Visitor Statistics/Site Traffic Reporting
- Two Data Center Locations
- Cisco Routers Using BGP4 protocol
- UPS Power Backup & Generators
- WordPress 1-click installer
As I mentioned earlier, iPage has some pretty helpful freebies they build into their hosting plans—including a free SSL certificate and a free domain name for the first year, making it one of the cheapest plans on the market with these features included (at least for your introductory period).
iPage is primarily focused on small businesses and individuals, making them a smart good choice if you’re just starting a blog and you don’t have a large budget yet.
Founded way back in 2000 by the current CEO, Richard Kirkendall, Namecheap is another well-established hosting company that deserves a top spot on this list for offering some of the best web hosting plans in the industry (especially when it comes to cheap hosting plans).
Recently recognized as one of America’s fastest-growing companies on the Inc 5,000 list and boasting of over 10 million domains registered on their servers, they’re definitely doing something right.
Performance
Namecheap first and foremost excels at helping you register domain names. Their foray into hosting plans, has been a smart (and much welcomed) move in more recent years, especially seeing that they offer an above average product in terms of the performance their plans pack. Speed-wise, third party tests showed an average load speed of 0.83s. Not the best, but still above industry average.
Uptime
Thanks to state-of-the-art shared infrastructure, Namecheap boasts a 100% uptime. And like with Dreamhost, if for some reason your website is offline due to a fault on their end, Namecheap promises compensation in the form of account credits.
Customer Support
For a company that’s been in business for close to 20 years, excellent customer support is something to be expected. And Namecheap doesn’t disappoint with their ultra high-level customer support that features:
- 24/7 access to live chat
- A ticketing system for more complex or ongoing issues
- An easy to use (and understand) value-packed knowledge base with step-by-step tutorials
Pricing for Namecheap’s Web Hosting Plans
Namecheap has carved out a name for themselves for providing well… cheap plans. They go as low as $1.98/mo. But in this instance (to be fully transparent) low price and comparatively lower quality do go together. So if you’re on an ultra tight budget, Namecheap’s lowest-tired hosting plan could be a good move for you right now—but once you’re generating some income from your blog, it’d be smart to upgrade hosting plan with them.
Namecheap’s lowest-priced plan, the Stellar, gets you:
- 20GB of storage
- Hosting of up to 3 websites
- Unrestricted bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- 50 MySQL databases
- Optional free website domain name
- Privacy protection
The Stellar Plus (their most popular plan) adds on:
- Unlimited websites
- Unmetered SSD
- Automatic backup
A notable addition that comes with the Stellar Business plan from Namecheap is their cloud storage access. They also offer their Supersonic CDN, which leverages a global network of high-performance servers. Images, videos and other files get delivered from the storage location closest to your users—which means super fast website speed for more satisfied visitors.
All of their hosting plans come with a rock-solid 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try out their plans and see for yourself if they’re a good fit for you.
Cloudways is a cloud-based platform that provides complete managed WordPress hosting for bloggers. It’s perfect for you if you don’t want to get into the technicalities of tasks like managing a server. Ease of use is one of its strengths, making it one of the best web hosting platforms for bloggers with little or no technical knowledge.
Let’s quickly look at what Cloudways has to offer as core features of their plans.
Performance
Cloudways providers have 50+ data centers located across the globe. And since all of them use cloud computing, their servers are easily scalable. This ultimately means you can quickly scale your server size to handle any spikes in website traffic, database queries, or web application usage. This also translates to very fast load times, with tests giving results as fast as 0.4 seconds—faster than most top-ranked companies.
Uptime
Similar to most platforms on our list, Cloudways boasts of a superb uptime of 99.99%, making it a reliable option for those looking for the best plans that’ll keep your blog online at all times.
Customer Support
Customer support is a critical element when dealing with anything technical—like building a website. Cloudways certainly doesn’t disappoint in this respect, as their support team is easily reachable via live chat or the company’s great ticketing system. You can also request a call back and speak directly to customer support via phone (as long as it’s during business hours). Cloudways also has an active community ready to share knowledge, tutorials and skills.
Pricing for Cloudways Web Hosting Plans
One thing that sets Cloudways apart from other companies is that they have a pay-as-you-go pricing model. This means you only pay for the actual hosting resources your blog uses. That means there are absolutely no hidden charges involved—and their hosting plans start as low as $14.00/mo.
Some features you’ll enjoy with a Cloudways plan include:
- Simplicity (easy UI to manage the platform)
- SSL installation
- Staging environment (for testing)
- A choice between the top cloud providers (starting at $14.00/mo)
- 24/7 expert support via live chat and ticketing
- Server and app cloning
- Monthly hosting pricing structure
- Free migration
Because it’s cloud-based, Cloudways doesn’t offer email hosting directly through their platform—but you can turn to Google Business for setting up your company email addresses and linking them to your domain without any issues.
If you’re looking for a cloud hosting platform that offers the best plans (both price and performance-wise), then Cloudways deserves to be at the top of your list of options.
Founded originally as a side project back in 2001 and based in Michigan, A2 Hosting is an independently owned and operated WordPress hosting company that’s been consistently growing in leaps and bounds because of their approachable brand, cheap and fast hosting. Although there’s no verified number of websites hosted by the company, they cite that they’re serving hundreds of thousands of customers based around the world.
Alright, now let’s take a closer examination of A2 Hosting’s core feature offerings that power all of their plans.
Performance
This is where A2 Hosting hosting truly shines. With third-party tests showing some (very simple) websites loading as fast as 0.036 seconds, their hosting platform leaves most of the competition in the dust when it comes to fast load times—though like most hosting companies, it does depend a bit upon where in the world you’re located.
Uptime
With a 99.9% uptime commitment, A2 Hosting won’t let you down as far as keeping your blog online and accessible for readers.
Customer Support
Another area that A2 proves itself to be worthy as offering some of the best hosting plans, is in customer support. They take this so seriously they’ve dubbed their customer support team the Guru Crew. You can reach the Guru Crew 24/7 throughout the year via phone, live chat and email. You’ll get speedy and efficient assistance whenever you need them.
Pricing for A2 Hosting’s Web Hosting Plans
While A2 Hosting’s pricing is slightly higher than most of the competition, it’s still affordable—and well worth it. Here’s what the pricing structure looks like for their top three plans—starting at $2.99/mo:
It’s important to note though, that when renewing your plan with A2 Hosting after your first contract period is up—pricing leaves this introductory rate and goes back to normal, which ranges from $12.99/mo to $29.99/mo—depending upon which level of plan you’re on.
So what do A2 Hosting’s top plans offer to bloggers?
The Startup plan comes with:
- 1 Website
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Transfer
- cPanel Control Panel
- Free SSL & SSD
- Free Website Builder
- A2 Optimized Enhanced Security for WordPress sites.
- 24/7 Monitoring
The Turbo plan offers the same features plus:
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited NYMe SSD Storage
- Unlimited Databases
- Free Automatic Backups
- 20x Faster Hosting
The Turbo Max plan offers all the above features, plus:
- Turbo (Up To 20X Faster)
- 5x More Resources
All of A2 Hosting’s plans come with an anytime money-back guarantee, which is practically unheard of in the hosting industry.
This is another effort by A2 Hosting to show that they always put their customers first—and that they really stand by their product.
InMotion is an employee-owned hosting company that was established almost 20 years ago, back in 2001. They provide both speed-oriented plans and domain name services, boasting a customer base of over 300,000 domains today.
InMotion also owns another company called Web Hosting Hub, which is a website design service (targeted towards beginner bloggers and small business owners) where they have around 40,000 customers who’ve signed up for their affordable web design services and hosting combination plans. They’ve been around for quite a while in this space and are a very well-known brand.
Now, let’s take a look at the specifics of their best plans and see if InMotion is a good fit for your blog hosting needs.
Performance
InMotion has a very middle of the road (average) load time of around .827 seconds according to third-party tests. You can choose from two data centers located in the United States, to get better results in your area if you’re using their higher-tier hosting plans (the VPS or business class plans).
Uptime
InMotion has an impressive 99.9% uptime rating, which sets them at the top of the pack in the hosting industry.
Customer Support
When it comes to customer support, InMotion claims to be a leader in the industry. Their support team is US-based and available to help with technical matters through either live chat, phone or email ticketing system. They also have an extensive knowledge base and community-based Q&A section available to customers on all of their hosting plans.
Pricing for InMotion’s Web Hosting Plans
InMotion has a wide range of hosting plans to choose from—including Shared Hosting (my recommendation to start with) WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated Servers and Managed Hosting.
The least expensive shared hosting plan has an introductory price of $2.29/mo when you sign up for a 3-year plan. The Pro Plan has an introductory price of $11.91/mo with a 3-year plan. After the introductory period, the Launch Plan rises to $8.99/mo and the Pro Plan goes up to $22.99/mo.
We’ll take a closer look at both the cheapest and most expensive shared hosting plans with InMotion to give you an idea of what features they offer.
InMotion’s Launch is their cheapest hosting plan. Here’s what it offers:
- 2 Websites
- Free Domain
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 10 Email Accounts
- Marketing Tools
- Automatic Backups
- DDoS Protection
- Free SSL
The InMotion Pro Plan also includes:
- Unlimited Websites
- 20X Performance
- Unlimited NVMe SSD
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Pro Level Support
InMotion is a well-established hosting provider that’s been around for many years, so they’ve honed in their hosting plans to offer unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate—nice features that not all hosting companies offer on their lower-priced plan options. They also offer a substantial 90 day money-back guarantee, which is one of the longest in the industry. Interestingly, they do require an over the phone verification for purchase, which can be a hassle (especially for non-US users).
Their plans would best suit a small business owner who’s interested in having more than one website—or a blogger who expects a high amount of traffic and doesn’t want to be concerned with crossing bandwidth constraints (since InMotion’s hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth).
GoDaddy is one of the giants amongst the established web hosting platforms—and while their plans are deserving of a spot on this list of the best hosting plans—I wouldn’t recommend them over any of our other picks in the affordable range of hosting companies (despite their £3.99/mo introductory offer).
That’s largely because their cheapest hosting plan comes with a heavily restricted feature set, and the price jumps up to £9.99/mo after your first year at the starting £3.99/mo rate. Despite their most basic plan not meeting the same standards as the other best plans here in this list, GoDaddy is still a great company. They’ve been around since 1997 and have grown to become the world’s largest domain registrar—with 14 major facilities around the world.
Thanks to their massive advertising campaigns (that include running Super Bowl spots and sponsoring NASCAR driver Danica Patrick), they’ve become synonymous with web hosting and domain registration. But does that experience and fame translate into having some of the best plans on the market?
Let’s take a look under the hood of what you’ll get with GoDaddy’s plans.
Performance
Having been in the game longer than many of the other companies on the market today, GoDaddy proves itself by offering a pretty exceptional product when it comes to performance. With load times averaging between 0.0294 and 0.517, they rank amongst the best.
Uptime
With GoDaddy servicing your plan, downtime is almost unheard of—as the platform boasts a 99.9% uptime rating.
Customer Support
GoDaddy’s award-winning customer support is one of the reasons the company has grown to be the giant it is today. That and a massive advertising budget. Reachable by phone, chat or email, you’ll get help very quickly from GoDaddy’s customer service team when you need it—regardless of the plan you’re on.
Pricing for GoDaddy’s Web Hosting Plans
Another reason GoDaddy markets themselves as “the people’s favorite” is the fact that it’s very easy to make a website with them—especially from a pricing perspective. With plans starting from as low as £3.99/month, they offer one of the cheapest introductory priced plans on the market today.
As I noted though, the £3.99/month is an introductory price that you’ll only enjoy until you renew your plan after the first year—and then your plan’s price goes up to £9.99/mo after that (then making it much more expensive than other plans of their class). Now, let’s take a look at all of GoDaddy’s plans:
GoDaddy’s Basic plan starts at £2.99/mo for the first year and includes:
- 10 GB storage
- Automatic daily malware scans
- Automatic daily backups
- Free Domain
- Free SSL
- Free Email
Their highest-tier plan (Ultimate) offers the same features plus:
- 100 GB NVMe storage
- WordPress Code Optimizer
GoDaddy also makes it easy to migrate your website over from a different hosting company by offering free website migration and automatic WordPress core software updates.
With all of this being said, some very noticeable caveats of going with GoDaddy’s (cheapest) Basic plan, are that:
- You don’t get a free SSL certificate
- Access to cPanel comes at an extra cost
Both of these two features come free with similar packages from competitor hosting companies, making this a big miss in their offering lineup.
Overall, GoDaddy is a robust and reliable platform that serves their customers well, though the extremely low introductory pricing (for your first year’s hosting plan) and restricted features can come back to bite you after that first year is up—as their pricing then jumps up to being much higher than other comparable plans like what you’ll get from Dreamhost and Bluehost.
In my opinion—you’re ultimately better off going with a starter plan from a company like Dreamhost. You’ll get more features, better support and your pricing won’t suddenly change at any point in the future.
Kinsta is my #1 pick as the best managed (premium) WordPress hosting company, and I use their plans to power my blog here (now that I get 500,000+ monthly readers).
Founded just a short while ago in 2013, that makes them one of the newer kids on the block in the web hosting space, but they’ve made an incredible impact in the market—offering the best plans for sites that are able to spend a little more on hosting to get their major upgrades in speed, reliability and customer service. Once your blog is making a little money, I highly recommend upgrading your hosting to one of Kinsta’s top-notch plans.
Kinsta’s on a mission to create the best WordPress hosting platform in the world. Because of this, they’ve intentionally bootstrapped the business to avoid investor interference in the direction they take their company. They truly care more about making their customers happy as a path to building a great business—rather than focusing on returning investor profits.
Performance
Third-party testing reports average load times of between 0.798 seconds and 2 seconds, which is well above the industry average. To ensure high performance, Kinsta uses 4 types of caching—their own built-in CDN (Content Delivery Network), Ngnix, PHP 7.3, LXD software containers and MariaDB. These and other add-on features you can select make Kinsta’s web hosting plans some of the best on the market from a performance perspective.
Uptime
Kinsta has impressive uptimes of 99.9%-100%, ensuring that your blog is always up and running.
Customer Support
Because they solely focus on offering managed WordPress hosting to their customers, Kinsta’s customer support team are all experts on using WordPress. This means you get excellent customer support whenever you reach out to them. Most communication is done via online messaging (live chat or email) as the company believes it to be faster and more efficient than phone support.
Pricing for Kinsta’s Web Hosting Plans
Kinsta has a unique pricing structure in that you, more or less, get to choose a plan (out of 10 available options) that’s much more tailored to your specific hosting needs—based on a number of factors like how much traffic your blog is driving, to the number of WordPress installs and even storage space you need.
And if none of those plans suit your needs, you can get one specifically tailored to what you want. The plans range from as little as $30.00/month up to $1,500.00/mo (or more) for massive websites. Each plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
To put things in perspective, here’s what Kinsta’s Starter plan has to offer:
Their Starter plan includes a lot of amazing features:
- 1 WordPress Install
- 25,000 Monthly Visits
- 10 GB SSD Storage
- 1000 GB Free CDN
- 1 Free Premium Site Migration
- Free Unlimited Basic Migrations from Other Hosts
- Google Cloud Platform
- 20 Global Locations
- Multisite Support
- Automatic Daily Backups
- Manual Backup Points
- 14-Day Backup Retention
- Multi-user Environment
- Staging Area
- PHP 7 Support
- Free SSL Certificates
- Imported SSL Certificates
- 2 PHP Workers Per Site
- SSH Access
- White-labeled Cache Plugin
Their top-tier plan, Enterprise includes the same features plus:
- 60+ WordPress Installs
- 1,000,000 Monthly Visits
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- 2000 GB Free CDN
- 5+ Free Premium Migrations
- 30-day Backup Retention
- 16 PHP Workers Per Site
- Recommended for eCommerce website builders/membership sites
- Site Cloning
Kinsta is my top recommendation for managed WordPress hosting, because they go way above and beyond what other companies offer in the premium space. That’s why I chose them to host my blog here—their features and customer service go much further than other plans on the market.
All of that makes Kinsta stand out from the crowd, earning its ranking amongst the best plans around.
One of the first premium WordPress hosting plans to hit the scene was from WP Engine. Much like Kinsta, this company also specializes in offering managed WordPress hosting (more hands-on, higher level of service, faster speeds) and provides some of the best support in the web hosting space.
How do WP Engine’s plans fare against the competition? One of the strongest selling points of choosing a hosting plan with WP Engine to power your blog, is that they’re a very well-funded company that recently took on a large round of venture capital investment—so they’re not afraid of pushing the envelope to provide their customers with an exceptional experience. Let’s take a closer look at their plans.
Performance
Thanks to the use of CDN and MaxCDN (free on all of their plans), WP Engine offers impressive load times of around 0.582 seconds.
Uptime
WP Engine promises a 99.9% uptime. Interestingly, they don’t believe 100% uptime is possible.
Customer Support
WP Engine provides customer support via live chat for all their customers. However, phone support is only for plans above the Starter hosting plan.
Pricing for WP Engine’s Web Hosting Plans
Depending on your needs, expect to invest anywhere from £10.00/month to £114/month (or more) for the best plans from WP Engine. The great news is that all of their hosting plans come with a 60 day risk-free trial offer so that you can take them for a test run.
WP Engine offers 3 different plans to choose from—and a custom option if their standard packages aren’t exactly what you’re looking for.
The Startup plan comes with:
- Genesis Framework
- 35+ StudioPress Themes
- 24/7 chat support
- Dev, Stage, Prod Environments
- Transferable Sites
- PHP 7.3 ready
- LargeFS
- Global CDN
- Page Performance
- Automated SSL certificates
- SSH Gateway
- 25,000 Monthly Visitors
- 10 GB Local Storage
- 50 GB Bandwidth a Month
- 1 Site Included
The Scale plan adds on:
- 400,000 Monthly Visitors
- 50 GB Storage
- 500 GB Bandwidth a Month
- 30 Sites Included
- Dev, Stage, Prod Environments
- Imported SSL certificates
- 24/7 phone support
- SSH Gateway
Other features included with WP Engine’s plans include:
- Premium WordPress themes
- Ecosystem integration with top names like Amazon, Google and BigCommerce
In short, it’s clear that WP Engine strives to do more than just provide you with a good plan—they actually want your blog to succeed and equip you with a lot of tools, resources, content and support to help make that happen.
And while I’d still recommend that most bloggers opt for Kinsta over WP Engine if you’re committed to a premium WordPress hosting provider (or your blog is growing quickly in monthly readership), it’s worth evaluating all of your options before making a final decision.
The Best Web Hosting Plans for Bloggers: Which Plan is Right for You?
Picking the best web hosting plan that’s perfect for your blogging needs is no small task—particularly if you’re not conversant with all the technical jargon that gets thrown around in this space.
But with a resource like my guide to choosing your best hosting plan, your choices consist of only the most affordable, reliable and fasted plans available on the market—making it a win regardless of which plan you go with from this list here today.
So, out of all these plans, which one should you go with? Well, that depends on what you really need.
Overall Best Web Hosting Plan: Dreamhost
My #1 recommendation is to go with Dreamhost at $2.59/mo. Their web hosting plans offer the absolute best combination of affordability, speed, reliability and amazing customer service that’ll help you deliver the best experience for your readers this year. You simply can’t beat their value for the low monthly cost.
The features alone that come with Dreamhost’s plans, make them the best hosting company to get started with.
Add to that the fact that their hosting plans start at just $2.59/mo, and it’s a no-brainer to use them for hosting your blog—especially since that still ranks them as one of the cheapest hosting plans on the market (and with the best feature offerings at that price point).
If you’re ready to get your blog hosted and set up—then head over to my Dreamhost link right here and get started.
Cheapest Web Hosting Plan: Namecheap ($1.98/mo)
If what you need today is purely the cheapest web hosting plan you can get your hands on and shaving a couple dollars off your monthly cost is a meaningful move, then my recommendation is Namecheap.
Their cheapest hosting plan is $1.98/mo (you can get set up here), and it still comes with surprisingly good features built into the plan for that price point. Not nearly what you’ll get from a plan with a company like Dreamhost, but if you’re going for budget-conscious, then Hostinger’s lowest-priced plan is your ticket.
If you’ve followed along closely, you’ll notice that GoDaddy’s most basic (£3.99/mo) plan is a bit more than Hostinger’s plan too.
Here’s why I recommend Hostinger over GoDaddy when it comes to picking the cheapest plan—after your first year of hosting, Namecheap’s lowest-price plan will increase up to $3.74/mo moving forward (still making it one of the cheapest hosting plans you can get your hands on, though). Plus, the features that come with their cheapest hosting plan are actually very competitive and gets you just about everything you could want.
On the other hand, GoDaddy’s cheapest hosting plan jumps up to £9.99/mo after your first year is up. That then makes their plan way overpriced for the restricted feature set you’ll have access to.
If you need the cheapest plan on the market—choose Namecheap at $1.98/mo.
That being said, I always recommend going with Dreamhost at $2.59/mo if you can spring for a little bit more in your budget.
The gains you’ll get in terms of speed, reliability and customer service are well worth the very small additional monthly cost.
Best Breakout New Hosting Plan Recommendation: NameSilo
While NameSilo is hardly a new player in the market—with a foothold in the domain name registration market for well over a decade and managing more than 3.4 million websites today—their hosting plans have been picking up a lot more momentum in recent years, earning them a worthy feature on my list of the best plans today.
With very affordable pricing that starts at just $2.99/mo, they’re positioned as a budget-friendly hosting provider that can help you get your site off the ground without breaking the bank. If you’re still considering all of your options for web hosting out there on the market, you won’t want to miss NameSilo.
Final Thoughts: 4 Factors to Consider When Evaluating the Best Hosting Plans
While my personal experience and in-depth evaluations have shown me that these ten web hosting plans I’ve broken down for you today—are without a doubt the best hosting plans on the market right now—I know that some bloggers may still want to go in another direction with their hosting decisions.
And that’s ok! But finding a plan that fits your unique needs, ladders up to your key blogging goals and aligns with your overall blog strategy can be a little like looking for a needle in a haystack.
With quite literally thousands of hosting plan options available online (all claiming to be the best of course), settling on one can be difficult.
That’s why I want to give you the tools you’ll need to evaluate other plans if you’re continuing your search beyond here.
To help narrow down your choices, here are the four most critical factors to consider as you choose the right plan for your needs.
And as you evaluate other web hosting plans you find out in the wild, come back here to compare them against my top choices to see whether or not the claims others make really stack up well against their competition. I think you’ll find my list of the best hosting plans here to be pretty darn helpful 😉
1. Uptime
In this world, uptime refers to the time a server stays up and running—on a scale of 0% to 100%, with 100% uptime being the absolute best.
Uptime is therefore a measure of how effective a web hosting provider is at keeping their servers (and thus your blog) online.
While it’s unavoidable that every provider will at times face brief moments of downtime for a wide variety of possible technical reasons—sometimes genuinely out of their control—you should only consider plans that offer 99% or greater uptime.
Anything less and you’re practically signing up for a plan that all but guarantees your blog being offline with some regularity.
Therefore, the best plans are those that can keep your site up and running as close to 100% of the time as possible.
2. Load Speed
We’re living in an age where the speed of your content delivery places an important role online—both in terms of (1) diminishing reader attention and in (2) how important Google’s determined page load speed to be as a ranking factor in the overall blog SEO grand scheme.
Use a free page speed testing tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test the load times of a few websites who claim to use the hosing provider in question. Your ideal load speeds should come back at less than 1 second.
The simple truth is that if the pages of your blog don’t load extremely quickly, readers are going to leave and search engines like Google are going to de-value the content of your website compared to others in your niche with faster load times. Check out my list of niches for more inspiration if you’re trying to decide what to blog about.
When it comes to browsing content online, the demand for a faster, more seamless experience is only growing.
That’s why when choosing your best plan, you must consider the load time each provider promises.
Slow load times will cost you precious readers. And while there are many other factors that determine how fast your website loads (like the size of your website, your WordPress theme of choice and the optimization WordPress plugins you employ—but a good service plays a major role too.
3. Customer Service
Because of the technical nature of web hosting and blogging in general, there’s a real chance that something can go wrong from a technical perspective and solving the problem will be beyond your own personal skills.
And when that happens, you don’t want your blog to be offline, broken or looking shabby for long.
When choosing the right company to power your blog, make sure they offer some form of quick-response support on a 24/7 basis.
This is one of the main reasons why many of the plans on this list are so highly regarded—because they offer exceptional customer support. And it’s one of the primary reasons my girlfriend hosts her blog, Vegan Anj, on Dreamhost today.
4. Cost
Thanks to the stiff competition, this industry offers very affordable hosting deals for first-time customers.
However if you’re not careful which plan you choose, at renewal time, you might be shocked if you didn’t do your due diligence to investigate the renewal fees—and take a close look at how much the price of your plan increases after the introductory period expires.
Some hosting companies (like GoDaddy) will more than 10x the cost of your plan after the introductory offer expires. Not great, right?
By choosing a reputable, well-established hosting company like Dreamhost at $2.59/mo or Bluehost at $2.95/mo, you’ll already be locking in some of the cheapest hosting plans on the market (that still come with great feature sets, high uptime and strong page load speeds).
The best part? The plans from both Dreamhost and Bluehost do not increase in price after your first year of hosting—the price you see, is the price you lock in for the foreseeable future.
From a cost perspective, it’s hard to beat the plans we’ve covered in this list here today—and for the plans that have price increases after an introductory offer, I’ve taken the time to clearly highlight that for you to see.
Another final cost-related factor to consider, is what your future hosting costs will be as your website grows and you need to upgrade. For example, I’ve intentionally started by hosting my new side blog, VeganTable on a plan that won’t incur a price hike anytime soon.
While you’ll undoubtedly be learning how to make money blogging as your visitor count increases, it’s still smart to stay on a safe hosting budget.
With this knowledge and new toolset at hand, you’ll be in a better position to pick the best plan for your blogging needs.
And that, my friends, is a wrap! Thank you for reading along 🙏
Here you have my ultimate breakdown of all the best plans on the market this year.
Choosing Your Best Web Hosting Plan is Only the Beginning
After getting your hosting plan squared away, now it’s time to begin the really fun stuff.
If you’re just starting out on your blogging adventure, make sure to check out my free guide about how to start a blog. And if you’re considering starting a podcast of your own, check out my list of the best podcast hosting platforms today.
Use My Free Keyword Research Tool
Try my free AI-Powered Keyword Tool to get dozens of research-backed ideas for keywords & topics to write about on your blog today.
Want to Start Your Blog (the Right Way)?
Check out my ultimate guide: How to Start a Blog (on the Side).
