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Are you looking for the fastest WordPress hosting for your website?
Doesn’t matter if you’re starting a new business or if you already have one that’s been around for a while, speed is one of the keys to making sure that your site can grow and remain healthy. Bonus point … this will also keep your visitors active.
Looking for the right fastest web hosting can be a little tricky, though, because every host is different. They have a multitude of packages that can make you confused when you go through them. Everyone wants what’s best for their business, no matter if it’s a small or big one. And of course, one of the most important things you can rely on is the speed.
Why is speed important?
The fastest WordPress hosting will help you organise and develop your content in an easy way. A slow host not only slows down the page load for the visitors, but can slow the admin panel too. This will make your work harder and more time-consuming.
However, most importantly, a fast hosting will make your visitors feel comfortable when they try to access your site and interact with it in some way. A website that fails to load fast will cause them to go away.
Long story short, if you are looking for the fastest WordPress hosting that won’t break your bank, it is definitely SiteGround, but feel free to figure out which one is best for you by further reading the study.
The fastest WordPress hosting providers compared
In case you’re in a hurry, here are the highlights of our findings:
| Rank | Company | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SiteGround | $3.95/mo |
| 2 | WPEngine | $28/mo |
| 3 | InMotion Hosting | $3.99/mo |
The main reason we’re recommending SiteGround is because it produced some of the fastest loading times.
The full comparison
There’s also one more issue that’s not that apparent at first glance when it comes to the fastest WordPress hosting. Mainly, even if your current web host is perfectly capable of handling your average traffic numbers, what happens if you hit a really popular day? As it turns out, not all hosting plans can handle that.
Visitors are … what’s the word … moody. They just won’t spend their day waiting for a website that barely moves, and what’s more important, many of them won’t come back again if you don’t offer them some basic comfortable browsing experience.
As Dave Artz from AOL concluded in a study, page views drop off as page load times increase. The study says that:
Users in the top decile of page load times view 7.5 pages/visit. It drops to 6 pages/visit in the 3rd decile, and bottoms out at 5 pages/visit for users with the slowest page load times.
According to the same study, increasing speed will reduce the operating costs too. Phil Dixon from Shopzilla shares his experience and shows that:
A year-long performance redesign resulted in a 5 second speed up (from ~7 seconds to ~2 seconds). This resulted in a 25% increase in page views, a 7-12% increase in revenue, and a 50% reduction in hardware. This last point shows the win-win of performance improvements, increasing revenue while driving down operating costs.
According to a study undertaken by Akamai in 2009, 47 percent of visitors expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. More than that, 40 percent of people leave the page if it takes more than three seconds to load. And a one-second delay in page response can result in a seven percent reduction in conversions.
As you can see, the role of site speed is huge in business terms and can have significant impact on how successful a website can be.
Fastest WordPress hosting – factors to consider
There are a couple of important factors that you need to be aware of when looking for the right host. These are:
The size of your current audience
The size of your audience is the first thing you should look into when searching for the fastest WordPress hosting.It is important to know how many visitors your host can serve – and whether it’s going to be able to handle your growth.
With the standard hosting packages, every client has a certain space allocated on the server. Even if the host says that the space is “unlimited,” this is not exactly the case, which you will quickly find out if you read the fine print under the user’s agreement.
A huge spike in traffic will slow down your website if it’s run on a shared hosting plan. And if the spike is big enough, at some point, your site will go down completely.
Before choosing a web host, browse some online forums and reach out to the web host’s support as well. Try to look for information regarding the traffic numbers that the host can handle realistically.
The server location
This is something that’s often overlooked. But in general, to make sure that your webhost will be fast for your audience, you should pick a server that’s actually close to your audience’s geographical location.In other words, don’t host your site on the other side of the globe from your audience just because it’s cheaper.
Types of WordPress hosting
The decision of what type of hosting to select will depend on your personal requirements regarding how much work you want to be doing with your server and your site later on.
If you’re just starting out and want to see how owning a WordPress site will work for you, you can experiment with free hosts or shared hosting packages (it’s where you share the hosting space with other customers; companies like InMotion or Bluehost will give you that).
For professionals and sites that have built a larger audience, managed hosting and VPS will be the answer (with WPEngine, Pagely, or Flywheel for example). They are more pricey, but they come with a lot of features and benefits. Chief of which is that you don’t have to deal with the technical side yourself.
Fastest WordPress hosting companies you should look into
There are many hosting companies to choose from, and each of them provides slightly different services and features. We’ve made a selection of some of the more interesting ones, especially having the main goal in mind – finding the fastest WordPress hosting.
The companies here are among the fastest in the field, and they alternate from expensive to cheap, depending on your budget. They offer reliable customer support and assistance, good security, and safe backups.
SiteGround
SiteGround is a great choice when you’re looking for fastest WordPress hosting around (and also one of the few platforms recommended by WordPress.org). They offer three main plans spanning from $3.95, $5.95, to $11.95 a month, which make it a very affordable solution. As part of the most basic plan, you get 10GB of disk space, a free domain, 24/7 support, free daily backups, a free SSL certificate, and everything else you’d expect from a hosting service.
Then, there are some additional features as part of the other two plans (e.g. priority support, free PCI compliance, and more). On top of that, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. Another perk that makes SiteGround a good choice when looking for the fastest WordPress hosting is their custom SG Optimizer plugin that lets you take advantage of SiteGround’s caching algorithms (the plugin comes included with your hosting plan).
WPEngine
A little bit more expensive than some of the other managed WordPress hosting plans, but it’s worth it.
They provide good services, super-fast servers, great technical and customer support.
Their hosting infrastructure is especially created to ensure your WordPress site runs fast and smooth.
The plans start at $29 a month and there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee.
As part of the $29 plan you get unlimited data transfer and 10GB of local storage.
This should be more than enough for a new website, and capable of serving up to 25,000 visitors monthly.
InMotion Hosting
One of the most popular shared hosts for WordPress, InMotion comes with an efficient price-features ratio.
The first plan starts at only $3.99 per month, which is one of the cheapest offers on the market.
What’s in it for you?
Unlimited disk space, 2 websites on one account, free data backups, free no-downtime website transfers, free domain registration, unlimited email accounts.
InMotion comes with pre-installed WordPress, so you won’t need to install it separately.
Bluehost
www.bluehost.com
This is a company specialized in professional shared hosting. It’s an official WordPress approved-hosting provider.
They provide one-click installation, automatic backups, non-stop support.
Their offer starts from $3.49 a month (provided that you’re willing to sign up for a 36-month contract), with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
This WordPress hosting is a good choice for small businesses and bloggers.
Pagely
A bit more pricey than the other solutions on this list, but it does give you a lot in return for your investment (it’s a managed hosting plan).
The basic package is $99 per month and gives you a number of perks. Just to name a few: you get WordPress pre-installed, auto-updates for your WordPress and plugins, auto backups, free CDN, and 24/7 US+UK-based support,
Pagely has been known for their WordPress-optimized hosting plans and basically giving you the fastest WordPress hosting possible, so if you’re looking for something that gives you a hassle-free experience, this might be the provider for you.
Plus, you also get to launch up to 5 websites on a single plan, and you get 25GB of bandwidth.
Flywheel
This is a WordPress hosting built for designers and agencies, but it is also friendly for less advanced folks who want to develop their websites.
The plans at Flywheel have gotten much more affordable lately, starting as low as $15/month or even $11.25/month if you’re lucky to hit one of their promotions.
You get to launch one WordPress site on the cheapest plan called “Tiny.”
And you get to serve as many as 5,000 monthly visitors on it.
Flywheel provides great speed, security, customer collaboration, and safe backups.
WPXHosting
This is what you call fast WordPress hosting, with great support and good page loading times.
They offer power and speed as the two most important keys of their company.
WPXHosting provides a one-click WordPress installation, free CDN, enhanced security, and good customer support.
The prices start at $24.99 a month.
The package lets you build 5 websites, get 100GB of bandwidth and a 10GB storage limit (all disks are SSD, which is huge for site speed).
HostGator
www.hostgator.com
Another shared WordPress hosting, which is one of the biggest online hosting companies out there. It offers some of the lowest prices you’ll find, starting at $5.56 a month (on a 36-month contract).
You can install your site in just one click, which is best fpr people who want to start their first business site.
If you need more, HostGator offers shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated server packages for both beginners and professionals at different price points.
Site5
www.site5.com
A shared WordPress hosting which is very good for the beginners who want to launch their very first site.
Site5 provides one-click installation, plans begin at $4.95 a month, and they even offer free site migration at that price point (if you’ve had your site hosted with a different company).
It’s worth noting that the cheapest plan is good for up to 10,000 visitors a month, which should be enough to get you started.
Site5 also gives you a user-friendly control panel.
How to choose the fastest WordPress hosting for you
Here’s the step-by-step for selecting a hosting package that’s going to be fast for you and your audience:
- Select one of the companiesGo through the companies listed above and get familiar with what they provide. Take note of every interesting detail about their offerings. This is where your budget comes into play.
- Check their server location to see if it fits yoursAfter you select a company, you should check their available server locations. That means you have to verify if it’s relatively close to your audience’s location. The closer, the better. This aspect is important, because it gives you better performance for the same investment. Some companies show their server locations during the sign up process, others need to be contacted directly about this.
- Choose a planAfter you decide which company is closer and also serves all your needs, you have to choose one of the plans they’re offering. The plan you need is the one that fits best your budget, your audience and your goals.
Conclusion
There’s plenty of hosting companies that can serve everyone’s needs and budgets. But this maybe makes selecting the fastest WordPress hosting for your site even tougher.
It’s important to know your business and your goals very well to be able to select the right company. Apart from that, there are also a lot of tools and services – free and premium – that can further improve your site and make it work even more smoothly.
Right now, the top hosting companies on this list are SiteGround and InMotion Hosting. They’ve proven to generate good loading times, and their servers are reliable for WordPress installs.That’s it for our view on the fastest WordPress hosting providers on the market. Feel free to share your suggestions and opinions with us! Tell us how your web host is performing in terms of speed. Is there a fast WordPress host that you would recommend to others?
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