6 Best WordPress Hosting Providers 2019

WordPress hosting providers are companies with servers that store WordPress website files. This allows providers to offer WordPress-specific support and features, such as one-click setup. We compared 25 of the best WordPress hosting providers to find the top six — including the best overall — based on reliability, features, pricing, and customer service.

Top 6 WordPress Hosting Providers 2019

How We Evaluated WordPress Hosting Services

For small businesses struggling to host a secure and user-friendly WordPress experience, we assessed more than 25 hosting providers to find the top six best WordPress hosting providers that meet small business hosting needs. As part of our assessment, we considered affordability, storage, bandwidth, security, uptime, and speed. Beyond these basic criteria, we preferred those that offer strong customer guidance, provide domain registration and privacy, and include professional email addresses.

Here is a closer look at our evaluation criteria for the best WordPress hosting providers for small businesses:

• Pricing: We looked for providers that offer hosting plans for less than $10 per month; we also looked for providers that have full-feature packages so that small businesses don’t have to pay for a lot for add-on features
• Easy WordPress installation: Ease of WordPress setup is essential to small businesses that need WordPress hosting; we sought out hosting providers that offer one-click WordPress installation so you can build a website in under an hour
• Storage: Most small businesses need enough storage to create and run a fully functional small business website; given these needs, we chose 5GB as our baseline
• Domain name registration: To build a website, small businesses must first purchase web hosting and register a domain name; we sought out WordPress hosting plans that offer domain registration as part of their small business plans
• Domain privacy: We looked for WordPress hosting providers that shield website owners’ personal contact information in public domain databases to keep owners from being bombarded with spam
• Site backup: Businesses want to know their content is safe if their site ever crashes; that’s why we considered WordPress hosting plans that back up website content
• Email: We preferred hosting plans that offer the email accounts small businesses need to communicate with customers
• Security: Secure sockets layer (SSL) security certificates are critical to small businesses that handle visitors’ sensitive data, like credit card information; because this is central to their operations, it was central to our reviews
• Uptime: Uptime is the amount of time a site is online, without service interruptions; we ranked our options based on their ability to offer reliable website experiences with as little site downtime as possible
• Reviews: No one can speak more to a hosting provider’s quality and service better than its customers; that’s we included user reviews for each inclusion on our list
• Customer support: We looked for hosting providers that offer the customer support necessary to help small businesses manage the more technical requirements of WordPress website management

Based on these criteria, we believe Bluehost is the best suited to serve small businesses’ WordPress hosting needs. With superior website uptimes and fully featured but affordable packages, Bluehost offers all the tools small businesses need to create a robust WordPress website experience.

Best Overall WordPress Hosting Provider: Bluehost

Bluehost is a WordPress-recommended web hosting provider. Offering a free domain, website, SSL certificate, email, and one-click WordPress installations, it provides the most features for less than $3 per month. For a similar offering through another provider, you’d need to buy a mid-priced plan. Bluehost is best for single entrepreneurs or startups that want a reliable website with as many hosting features as possible for a reasonable price.

Bluehost Pricing

With Bluehost’s Basic $2.95 per month plan, you get a website with 50GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free domain, email with 100MB of storage, and an SSL certificate. Its $5.45 per month plan includes domain privacy, unlimited websites and email, and unmetered storage and bandwidth. Its $5.45 plan also offers site backups.

Bluehost Tiered Features

*These prices reflect Bluehost’s current deal and cover only the first 36-month term.

Basic Plan

Bluehost’s Basic WordPress hosting plan starts at $2.95 per month — $7.99 for renewal — for the first 36 months and includes one free website and one free domain, five subdomains, 50GB of website storage, and unmetered bandwidth. Unlike DreamHost, at this basic package, you don’t get free domain privacy, an SSL certificate, or site backup. In addition to website features, you receive email storage of 100MB per account with five accounts included.

With only one free website, five email accounts, and 50GB of storage, this plan is best for small startup businesses or entrepreneurs who are just starting their first websites and don’t yet have a ton of daily traffic. Without an SSL certificate to protect customer data, this is made more for bloggers than for ecommerce sites.

Plus Plan

Bluehost’s Plus plan starts $5.45 per month — $10.99 for renewal — and offers unlimited subdomains along with unmetered storage and bandwidth. Whereas the basic plan has five email accounts, this plan has unlimited accounts. However, you need to upgrade to receive site backup, which protects your data from deletion or hackers.

With unmetered storage and email addresses, this plan is best for small businesses with more than five employees, each needing their own email account. Without site backup to protect customer data, however, it’s not great for ecommerce sites, but it adequately serves websites that are garnering some traffic and publish content regularly. With added email accounts, all employees can easily collaborate on content and respond to reader questions/comments.

Choice Plan

The Choice plan starts at $5.45 per month but renews at $14.99 per month after 36 months and, like the Plus plan, offers unlimited websites and email accounts, unmetered storage and bandwidth, a free domain, an SSL certificate, and domain privacy. In addition to the Plus plan’s features, it also offers automated site backup for more security.

This plan is best for growing small businesses that must protect customer data because they have an ecommerce element to their websites. With both site security and automated backup, businesses can protect customers’ credit card information, and recover valuable data should the site be compromised. If you are primarily looking for a hosting plan that offers site backup and security, you might be better off with HostGator’s entry-level plans.

Customer Service

Bluehost offers 24/7 access to customer support via phone or live website chat. You can contact a dedicated specialist by visiting their customer support contact page. If you have a problem with site speed, web security — or have a general question — it has a separate phone number and chat feature for each problem type. Still, users say customer support can sometimes be slow to respond.

What Bluehost is Missing

Bluehost doesn’t have site backup or domain privacy in their smaller plans, which other providers like HostGator and DreamHost offer. They also aren’t reported to have the best response times when it comes to customer support.

What Users Think About Bluehost

Customers say that switching between plans is not seamless and can come with some frustrations, like miscommunications and temporary downtime in plan features. They also feel that customer support is slow to respond to issues. They like that they can get such a great price for the first three years of doing business with Bluehost and that their site speed is fast.

Where to Find Bluehost

To learn more about Bluehost hosting, visit its home page and click on its WordPress hosting tab. You can also try its services for just $2.95 with a 30-day, money-back guarantee by clicking the “Get Started Now” button on its home page. Click here to get started.

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Best WordPress Hosting Provider for Reliable Uptime: DreamHost

DreamHost is a WordPress hosting provider that stands out for its 100%-uptime guarantee. Plus, its Shared Starter and Unlimited plans offer a full-breadth of features — including site security and daily backups—for a more affordable price than most other providers because users share bandwidth with other businesses on the same server. Given its reliability and extra features, DreamHost is the best option for ecommerce brands that depend on high uptime for sales, as well as critical information and news sites that need to be accessed at any time.

DreamHost Pricing

DreamHost’s Shared Starter plan is $2.95 per month and includes one website, unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, domain privacy, daily site backups, and a free SSL certificate. Its Shared Unlimited $7.95 per month plan includes a domain and email with 2GB of storage. Lastly, its $16.95 per month DreamPress plan adds an additional 30GB of storage.

DreamHost Tiered Features

*Shared hosting means that you share your server with other websites; your space is limited by how much others are using.

**Solid-state drive (SSD) storage means your website files are hosted on high-performance, solid-state drives, offering up to 200% better performance than traditional drives.

Shared Starter

This plan is just $2.59 per month and includes one free website, SSD shared storage, unmetered bandwidth, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and daily site backup. Unlike Bluehost, it doesn’t offer email, a free domain, or subdomain. You can purchase a domain for less than $12 a year, however. Because you share bandwidth with other businesses, when other businesses’ use excessive bandwidth, it can slow your website speed.

Since DreamHost offers 100%-guaranteed uptime and comparatively fast site speeds, this plan is best for websites with a lot of traffic and time-sensitive content like news sites or medical communication sites. With an SSL certificate, site backup, site speed, and reliability, but more limited shared bandwidth, it’s also great for ecommerce sites that need security to receive payments but don’t get a ton of traffic.

Shared Unlimited

DreamHost’s Shared Unlimited plan starts at $7.95 per month and offers the Shared Starter plan features — website, shared SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and site backup — plus a domain and email with 2GB of storage. As a shared plan, you’re sharing bandwidth with other companies on the server. However, because of their 100%-guaranteed uptime, you get a refund if your site experiences downtime.

This is best for growing startup businesses with a few employees that need a solid web presence. With guaranteed uptime, an SSL certificate, exceptional site speed, a custom email address that matches your domain, and site backup, it offers a polished, this plan offers a professional web presence. It’s recommended for professional services like small financial or business coaching firms that depend on their websites to secure new customers.

DreamPress

This plan is $16.95 per month and, like the Shared Unlimited plan, offers one website, unmetered bandwidth, a domain, email with 2GB of storage, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and daily site backup. The difference is you get 30GB of SSD storage that you don’t have to share with other businesses. It can handle 10,000 to 20,000 monthly website visitors easily. Lastly, it offers one-click site restore so you can go back to previous versions of your website should your site be hacked.

This plan is great for growing businesses needing a superior visitor experience. It offers site security to protect sensitive customer data, the bandwidth and storage to host growing traffic, and the site speed and uptime to ensure visitors don’t experience frustrations that keep them from converting. This plan is best for growing ecommerce stores that regularly add to their product portfolio or marketing websites with large readerships.

Customer Support

DreamHost offers 24/7 ticket support with WordPress specialists ready to guide you as you develop your online presence from scratch. It also offers live chat support and phone call-back support. It is sometimes difficult to get someone on the phone quickly, but its live chat offers a more-or-less instant response from knowledgeable customer service representatives.

What DreamHost Is Missing

DreamHost doesn’t offer free domains, subdomains, or email in their starter plan like Bluehost does. You also have to sign up for the yearly plan to get a free domain. Lastly, you can’t get customer support over the phone very easily or quickly.

What Users Think About DreamHost

Users like that DreamHost offers very reliable WordPress website experiences via their 100% guaranteed uptime, and that its customer support is personable and knowledgeable. They don’t like how difficult it is to talk to a customer support representative on the phone and that their email services can be unreliable at times.

Where to Find DreamHost

To learn more about DreamHost’s WordPress hosting plans, visit its website and click on its “Website Hosting” menu option. If you want to ask them a question about its services, visit its home page and scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Email us” or “Chat with us.” To get started with DreamHost’s small business WordPress hosting plan, click here.

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Best WordPress Hosting Provider for High-traffic Websites: HostGator

HostGator is a WordPress hosting provider that stands out because, unlike its competitors, all of its plans include unmetered bandwidth. It also offers email, daily site backups, and extra storage as part of its entry-level Starter plan. Given its bandwidth offering and affordability — not to mention the breadth of features offered on all plans — HostGator is a good option for those who need a turnkey hosting solution for sites with high traffic, like news sites.

HostGator Pricing

All of HostGator’s WordPress hosting plans offer unlimited subdomains, email; email storage; unmetered bandwidth and website storage; an SSL certificate; domain privacy; and site backups. Its $5.95 per month Starter plan includes one website while its $7.75 per month Standard plan includes two websites and its $9.95 per month Business plan includes three websites.

Starter Plan

Its $5.95 per month Starter plan offers one website, unmetered storage, 25,000 monthly visitors, unlimited email accounts and storage, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and daily site backups. Unlike Bluehost’s most basic plan, however, it doesn’t include a free domain. With guaranteed 99.9% uptime, it falls slightly short of DreamHost’s uptime. For each month it doesn’t uphold this guarantee, you get a one-month refund.

Because this plan doesn’t offer a free domain, it’s good for businesses that have chosen website names but have yet to build their online presences. With security, daily backups, reliability, and 10,000 monthly visitors, it suits a small ecommerce site. Other businesses that could benefit are service providers that receive payments through their websites but don’t have a ton of monthly traffic like small retail businesses.

Standard Plan

This plan offers all that the Starter plan offers, including unmetered storage, unlimited subdomains, unlimited email and storage, a free SSL certificate, domain privacy, and site backup. The difference is that instead of one website, it offers two websites and, instead of 25,000 monthly visitors, it offers enough bandwidth for 200,000 monthly visitors. Still, like the Starter plan, this plan doesn’t offer a free domain like Bluehost does.

This plan’s 200,000 monthly visitors’ bandwidth, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, SSL certificate, domain privacy, and daily site backup make it a prime plan for growing ecommerce businesses that distribute regionally. These types of businesses can securely receive payments and offer reliable services to plenty of site visitors. In addition, if they would like to set up two websites to serve different regions or list different types of products, they can do so.

Business Plan

Starting at $9.95 a month, this is a robust small business plan. In addition to Standard Plan features like unmetered website storage, subdomains, email accounts, and email storage as well as a free SSL certificate, domain privacy, and site backup, it offers up to three websites and bandwidth for 500,000 visitors per month. With daily site backup, you can restore your website up to three times a month to protect against any damage your site experiences.

This plan is best for well-established ecommerce stores like product resellers or those that rely on large online orders like regional business-to-business (B2B) distributors. It offers the security, bandwidth, uptime, and site backup to tolerate lots of visitors; a secure payment processes; and a smooth user experience. It can even be used for regional stores or distributors that have multiple warehouses across a region.

Customer Support

HostGator offers 24/7 customer support, 365 days a year via live chat, phone, or email. Customer support doesn’t tend to respond to customers instantly but when they do respond, usually within a day, they are extremely helpful.

What HostGator Is Missing

HostGator does not offer free domains in any of their small to mid-sized WordPress hosting plans. It also offers a slightly lower uptime guarantee than DreamHost does. Its customer support isn’t as responsive as DreamHost’s either.

What Users Think About HostGator

Users like that HostGator offers a great price for the services offered and that they can set up email through the same provider. They also like that their websites are reliable and customer support is extremely helpful. They don’t like that their websites can have some slow moments and their customer support can sometimes be slow to respond.

Where to Find HostGator

To learn more about HostGator’s WordPress website hosting, visit their home page and click on their “WordPress Hosting” tab on the header menu. If you need to start from scratch with a domain name, click on their “Domains” tab from their home page header menu. Click here to get started.

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Best WordPress Hosting Provider for International Websites: TMDHosting

TMDHosting is a WordPress hosting provider and domain name registrar with seven servers across the globe. With a global network of servers, they specialize in offering a fast user experience for websites with visitors or readership from different countries. This includes ecommerce sites, virtual booking sites, and fashion, food, travel, and even business bloggers who have international traffic.

TMDHosting Pricing

TMDHosting’s $2.95/month Starter plan offers one website hosted with a free domain; unlimited bandwidth, SSD storage, email accounts, and email storage; a free SSL certificate; and site backup. Its $5.95/month Business plan additionally offers unlimited hosted websites. For both packages, you must purchase domain privacy separately at $9.95/year.

TMDHosting Tiered Features

*Let’s Encrypt SSLs don’t verify that the site is what it says it is, but merely conveys that it fits within a certain category, such as ecommerce or personal blog/content. As a result, Google may not rank your website as highly.

Starter Plan

TMDHosting’s Starter Plan is $2.95/month with an annual contract. Included in this package is one website, unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free domain with unlimited subdomains, unlimited email accounts and storage, and site backup. Unlike Bluehost, you have to buy domain privacy at $9.99. Also, Let’s Encrypt SSL doesn’t validate the purchasing company’s identity and so may seem less secure to website visitors.

With servers in seven countries, this plan is particularly useful for startups that serve international visitors, like food or fashion blogs with a global appeal. Global servers ensure fast load times and a seamless experience no matter where the reader is. Their Let’s Encrypt certificate and site backup protect customer data. But, for ecommerce, it’s best to upgrade to the Business version to receive a standard SSL certificate that validates the company’s identity.

Business Plan

At $5.95/month with a minimum year-long contract, the Business plan offers many of the same features that the Starter Plan does, including unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free domain and unlimited subdomains, unlimited emails and storage, and site backup. It also offers unlimited websites and an SSL certificate that encrypts your data, verifies your website’s purpose, validates your business as the domain purchaser, and helps you better rank in Google.

This plan includes more robust security for ecommerce stores or websites that require the sharing of private information, such as webinar companies, marketing services, and personal-assistant businesses. With the ability to host unlimited websites, companies can dedicate separate websites to different product niches or brick-and-mortar locations, and the standard SSL certificate offers more credibility to increase Google ranking and sales.

Customer Support

TMDHosting offers quite an impressive customer support service. You can contact them day or night, 365 days a year via a ticket submission system. You can expect a response within 15 minutes of when the ticket is submitted. Their live chat support can be accessed through their website and is responsive, friendly, and knowledgeable. In addition, they will expertly install modules, apps, and templates on your website for free.

What TMDHosting Is Missing

TMD is missing a standard SSL certificate in their Starter package, something that other providers like HostGator, Bluehost, and DreamHost offer. In addition, most other providers offer free domain privacy, whereas TMDHosting charges an addition $9.99/year. Many other providers also offer three or more pricing tiers for more small business options.

What Users Think About TMDHosting

Users praise TMDHosting’s customer service as fast, knowledgeable, and very responsive. They say it even offers extra support to new online businesses that need to install website themes, modules, or plugins but don’t know how. They didn’t like that there are automatic renewals of contracts that people must opt out of.

Where to Find TMDHosting

To learn more about TMDHosting’s WordPress hosting, visit their home page and click on WordPress Hosting. You can also try their services for 60 days with no risk by signing up here.

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Best WordPress Hosting Provider for Multiple Websites: InMotion

InMotion Hosting offers WordPress hosting services with domain registration starting at $7.26 per month. It stands out because of its impressive six plans — three of which we highlight in this article — allowing businesses to grow from a small startup all the way up to large, multiple-site companies. It is best for growing brick-and-mortar franchise businesses like restaurants, stores, or resellers that need multiple websites to represent new stores as they open.

InMotion Pricing

InMotion’s $7.26 per month plan offers one website and 40GB of storage. Its $11.38 per month plan hosts two websites with 40GB more storage. Lastly, its $15 per month plan hosts three websites with a total 120GB of storage. All plans offer one domain, 100 subdomains, an SSL certificate, site backups, and unlimited bandwidth and email.

InMotion Tiered Features

WP-1000S Plan

The WP-1000S plan starts at $7.26 per month when you sign up for a two-year plan. Included in that package are one website, 40GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, a domain with 100 subdomains, unlimited email, an SSL certificate, and site backup. Unlike many other providers’ plans at this tier, it does not offer free domain privacy; you must purchase it separately for $12.99 a year.

This plan is best for startups building their first website, like freelancers, consultants, or new brick-and-mortar businesses. Suitable for up to 20,000 monthly visitors, this plan’s free website, domain name, unlimited email accounts, and SSL certificate mean your online presence will look professional and offer a secure experience.

WP-2000S Plan

InMotion’s $11.38 per month plan — when you purchase two years of service — offers all that the WP-1000S tier plan does, including a free domain, 100 subdomains, unlimited email accounts and storage, an SSL certificate, and site backup. However, it offers two websites instead of one, and twice the storage (80GB). You still have to purchase domain privacy separately at $12.99 per year.

This plan is best for websites with approximately 50,000 monthly visitors, like established ecommerce sites or expanding brick-and-mortar stores. For example, if you’ve just opened a new brick-and-mortar location, this is a great plan for building a second website for the new location. It is pricier than most packages at this tier — see Bluehost or DreamHost — and you must pay even more for domain privacy.

WP-3000S Plan

The WP-3000S Plan starts at $15 per month for a two-year contract. In addition to the WP-2000S plan offerings, including a domain, 100 subdomains, unlimited email accounts and storage, a free SSL certificate, and site backup, this plan offers three hosted websites and much more storage at 120GB total. You still must purchase domain privacy separately at $12.99 per year, however. Given that DreamHost offers a fraction of the storage in this tier at a higher price, this is a good deal.

With site security to accept credit cards, site backup, and bandwidth suitable for up to 125,000 visitors per month, this plan is great for brick-and-mortar stores that take website orders and ship goods, like restaurants offering delivery and retail shops with a large customer base.

Customer Support

InMotion Hosting offers 24/7/365 customer support as a part of all of their packages. You can submit a ticket, email them, live chat with them, or call them for support. Reviewers say its customer support representatives are knowledgeable, pleasant, and responsive. Many customers say representatives answer their chats immediately and problems are always resolved by the end of one conversation.

What InMotion Is Missing

InMotion does not offer free domain privacy for its free domains and, compared to other providers like HostGator, it’s expensive to add it on. Each tier is also pricier than similar plans offered by Bluehost, TMDHosting, and HostGator.

What Users Think About InMotion

Users like that customer support is responsive and knowledgeable. Customers in the United States praise its reliable and fast websites. However, some customers outside of the U.S. complain of site downtimes or slow load times.

Where to Find InMotion

To learn more about InMotion’s WordPress hosting services, click on the Web Hosting tab from its home page header menu, then on WordPress Hosting. You can also try it risk-free with a 90-day, money-back guarantee. To get started using InMotion Hosting, click here.

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Best WordPress Hosting Provider for Tight Budgets: 1&1 IONOS

1&1 IONOS WordPress hosting starts at $1 per month. It stands out as the most affordable option and offers basic packages with limited storage, email accounts, and less reliability than other top WordPress hosting services. However, for businesses needing secure website hosting to get a business running on a tight budget — like bloggers and one-employee startups — it’s a good start.

1&1 IONOS Pricing

1&1’s $1 per month Essential plan offers a website, 25GB of storage, 2.5GB of bandwidth, a domain, 10,000 subdomains, 10 email accounts with 2GB of storage, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and site backup. The $5 per month Business and $9 per month Pro plans each add a website, more storage, additional emails, and more bandwidth.

1&1 IONOS Tiered Features

Essential Plan

The 1&1 Essential plan is just $1 per month for the first year — then renewable at $8 per month — with 25GB of storage, 2.5GB of bandwidth, a free domain for the first year, 10,000 subdomains, 10 email accounts with 2GB of storage each, a free SSL certificate, domain privacy, and daily site backup. Although many WordPress hosting providers like TMDHosting offer unlimited bandwidth, storage, subdomains, and more, you can’t beat this price of $1 per month.

This plan is good for businesses that are just launching their first website. It offers enough site security for single entrepreneurs to be able to take credit card information through the website but only offers bandwidth for about 5,000 website visits per month. Although it’s a good option for testing sites to see what works and what doesn’t, a growing business would have to upgrade quickly from here.

Business Plan

At $5 per month, the 1&1 Business plan offers what the Essential Plan does, including a free domain name for a year, 10,000 subdomains, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and site backup. However, it further two websites, 100 email accounts, and 100GB of storage. It falls short of TMDHosting’s plan at this tier, which offers unlimited website storage but is closer to the standard mid-tier package like the one offered by InMotion.

With an SSL certificate, site backup, and lots of storage, this plan is suitable for ecommerce businesses that accept online payments and are branching out by starting another website to sell a new category of products. For example, a clothing ecommerce site might add a jewelry line to their product portfolio and launch a sister site for it. A sports apparel site might launch a complementary website selling sports equipment.

Pro Plan

This plan starts at $9 per month for one year. Like the Business plan, it offers an SSL certificate, domain privacy, site backup, a free domain, and 10,000 subdomains. It also offers 200GB of storage, 9GB of bandwidth, and 500 email accounts. This a gem of a third-tier package, surpassing HostGator and InMotion with more storage and free features like a domain name and privacy. It doesn’t quite add up to Bluehost’s unlimited storage and websites, however.

This plan offers encryption and site backup to accept credit card information safely. It hosts five websites, making it ideal for more established businesses that need different sites for different stores or locations. This includes franchise businesses that accept online orders or subscription purchases like delivery restaurants, magazines and news sites, and hospitality businesses like hotels.

Customer Support

1&1 offers a phone number you can call 24/7 for support. You can also contact them via email at any time, and customers usually get an immediate response. Unlike Bluehost and DreamHost, however, it does not offer live chat support. It does offer a ticketing system and provide responses within 24 hours. However, users say the support they receive via email and chat isn’t very helpful.

What 1&1 IONOS Is Missing

With some customers experiencing between two to four-day downtime periods, 1&1 hosted websites experience more downtime than websites hosted by other providers on this list. It also doesn’t offer very thorough or responsive customer support. For better customer support and more reliable uptime, consider DreamHost.

What Users Think About 1&1 IONOS

Users complain a lot about 1&1’s lack of customer support but they like that its pricing can’t be beaten, its services are easy to use, and that it also offers managed WordPress hosting so that users don’t have update the content management system on their own sites.

Where to Find 1&1 IONOS

To learn more about 1&1 IONOS’s WordPress hosting, click on its Products tab from its home page header menu, then on “Web Hosting” and on “WordPress Hosting” at the bottom of the page. From there, you can try a no-risk month of service with a 30-day, money-back guarantee. To get started with 1&1 IONOS, click here.

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“One thing to look for when it comes to small business WordPress packages is whether or not they allow you to host multiple domains and subdomains. I noticed that some of them restrict you to have one domain only, which is very limiting, especially for those that plan to launch additional websites in the future. Sometimes, for an extra dollar or two per month, you can get a package that allows you to have unlimited domains and subdomains, so don’t choose a package simply because it’s the cheapest.”

― Amine Rahal, Chief Executive Officer, Little Dragon Media

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What Are Some Free WordPress Hosting Package Features?

Many hosting packages offer free WordPress hosting features like SSL certificates that encrypt sensitive website visitor information like credit card credentials, site backup that ensures you can always access lost website information, domain names to set up your website, and email accounts to communicate with website visitors. Bluehost, DreamHost, and HostGator all offer these features.

For free hosting packages that don’t use WordPress, read our article on the 6 Best Free Web Hosting Services of 2019.

Do I Need a WordPress Hosting Provider?

If you want a WordPress site, you need a host that caters their server configurations, updates, security, and support to WordPress. WordPress hosting providers offer a more seamless user experience for your website visitors with added speed, security that covers WordPress-specific vulnerabilities, less website downtime, and one-click WordPress installs — on top of a free domain and business email accounts you can connect to your website.

How Much Does It Cost to Start a Website?

You can start a website for free through Weebly or WordPress.com using subdomains. However, for a more professional appearance, it’s best to go with a domain like www.yoursite.com, instead of a subdomain like www.yoursite.wordpress.com, which is what comes with free WordPress hosting platforms. The problem with subdomains is that your business name is placed alongside another business’s like Weebly, thereby taking attention away from your brand.

To get a custom domain without mention of another brand, you must buy a custom domain and website hosting. You can create and run a website for as little as $2.95 per month with Bluehost’s hosting plans. Each plan offers at least one hosted website and the tools you need to build it, like a custom website domain, one-click WordPress installation, business email for customer communication, security to protect online customers’ data, and industry-leading uptime.

The Bottom Line

By choosing the best web hosting companies, small businesses get all the functionality and features they need to set up and manage their business websites successfully. These include a domain name, email addresses, storage, reliable uptime, and security. With these in place, businesses from ecommerce startups to marketing service providers can create a professional online brand that attracts customers.

While there are many such providers on the market, we believe Bluehost stands out as the best WordPress hosting provider. It offers small business owners a secure and reliable small business website with a custom domain and email, domain privacy, and plenty of storage to offer website visitors a positive user experience. All of this is offered for just $2.95 per month. To get started with Bluehost, click below.

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