When it comes to websites, speed is crucial. How quickly your website loads impacts on the growth and health of your website. Speed is important, and you wonder which is the fastest hosting for WordPress, it’s crucial to keep this area under consideration.
47% of the consumers expect your site to be loaded in 2 or lesser seconds, while 40% of the visitors will abandon your site taking more than 3 seconds. That means after an average of 3 seconds loading time, you will lose a great amount of credibility and interest.
According to Neil Patel
Additionally, the sustainability of your website mostly relies on the hosting provider you choose. Now that you know the significance of loading time and hosting for WordPress, let’s take the plunge and help you choose among the winning web hosting sites.
Fastest Web Hostings for WordPress
We did a thorough examination of various WordPress hosting providers and monitored their performance. For this reason, we collected two metrics—Load Time and Time to First Byte. Here load time is defined as “the time from when the user started navigating to the page until the Document Complete event (usually when all of the page content has loaded).” Time to First Byte refers to the time it takes for the first byte from your server to arrive, signifying how responsive a host’s server is.
Furthermore, on the basis of our findings, here are some of the fastest hosting providers for WordPress. Certainly, this will give you a better idea about them and will help in making a better and informed decision regarding your web host.
1. SiteGround – Fastest Hosting for WordPress
| Plan Tested: | Startup |
| Load Time: | 0.713s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.344s |
SiteGround is a popular WordPress hosting. If you are looking for the fastest WordPress hosting, then it is a great choice. It is a hosting service that is recommended by the WordPress.org community. Also, it is the premium solution that SiteGround provides are appreciated and popular among the web hosting community.
Founded in 2004, it has grown to a large network of 800,000 domain names all over the world. They are well-known for their high-quality performance and incredible speed.
SiteGround’s hosting infrastructure makes use of a number of technologies for optimizing performance. The serves and data centers of SiteGround are at various places around the world for optimized local speed and best loading times. Some of the features that bring the speed and 99.99% uptime to SiteGround include the following:
Pros:
• Solid State Drive (SSD)
The technology for data storage that SiteGround provides to its customers is SSD, which is faster than HDD.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN is a system that enables webpages delivery to users on the basis of their specific geographical locations. SiteGround makes use of Cloudflare, which is known to have the most number of connections to internet exchange points globally. This means your users get smooth content delivery.
• Caching
SiteGround also provides optimized performance and speed by offering its customers SuperCacher. What this does is that it helps in speeding up WordPress sites through three levels of caching.
• HTTP/2
SiteGround supports HTTP/2 protocol. The protocol is a revised edition of the HTTP protocol and has reduced latency. This helps in improving the loading speed of the website in most browsers.
Moreover, apart from these features, SiteGround also offers automatic updates, efficient 24/7 support, automatic WordPress updates, free WordPress transfer, and free SSL certificate.
• Plans
SiteGround offers three main plans starting from $3.95 per month for 10GB of disk space. The other two plans, i.e. the GrowBig and GoGeek plan offer 20GB and 30GB of space and are priced at $5.95 per month and $11.95 per month respectively.
For those just starting their website, the StartUp package is ideal, which allows around 10,000 monthly visitors. The range of visitors for the other two hosting plans is 25,000 and 100,000 monthly visitors for the respective packages.
Cons:
• It is a shared host, which means you do not have an independent CPU
2. Bluehost
| Plan Tested: | Basic |
| Load Time: | 0.0893s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.414s |
Plan Tested: Basic
Load Time: 0.893 s
Time to First Byte: 0.414 s
Another popular hosting provider that usually small business owners and bloggers opt for, is Bluehost. One of the few web hosts that are officially recommended by WordPress.org community, Bluehost has a number of features that make it a popular choice. Also, it is simple to use with little or no performance issues. It provides free SSL, 24/7 customer support, WordPress staging environment, and easy installation of WordPress amongst other major features.
Having said that, Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosts that started its operations in 1996. It has become the largest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting. When it comes to speed, the following are some of the features that Bluehost offers:
Pros:
• Solid State Drive (SSD)
Like SiteGround, Bluehost also makes use of SSD, which gives a faster performance when it comes to storing and retrieving data.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Bluehost also makes use of Cloudflare, which is a powerful Content Delivery Network. It is known to have the most number of connections to internet exchange points globally. Also, Cloudflare is a great way of handling the increased traffic.
• Caching
Bluehost uses NGINX+ caching which performs faster than Apache that was used previously.
• HTTP/2
Bluehost also supports HTTP/2 protocol. The protocol is a revised edition of the HTTP protocol and has reduced latency. This helps in improving the loading speed of the website in most browsers.
Additionally, hosting plans of Bluehost start from $3.95 per month for basic and starter websites for the first year. The other plans are priced at $5.95 and $13.95 per month that provide more storage and additional features. For small to mid-size websites looking for good hosting, Bluehost is a good option to consider.
Cons:
- The renewal rates of Bluehost is on the higher side
- Site migration is not free, which is a service that many web hosts offer for free
- Great for low to mid traffic sites, for larger sites, it is not the best solution
3. HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting
| Plan Tested: | Starter |
| Load Time: | 0.795s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.323s |
HostGator is yet another hosting platform that is popular in the web hosting providers market. It hosts more than 10 million domains and is considered as a good option for high traffic websites that need faster loading times. Founded in 2002, it was acquired by Endurance International Group, which is a company that owns a number of hosting providers.
Pros:
Following are some the features that HostGator makes use for optimal performance and speed:
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
To keep the site fast and for faster loading, HostGator makes use of a content delivery network.
• Low-Density Servers
Low-density servers help your website boost its speed. HostGater makes use of these to ensure high speed and faster load time.
• Multiple Caching Layers
Using multiple layers of caching also helps in bringing speed and decreased loading time.
• Super Charged Cloud Architecture
HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime. It offers free migration SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, storage, and email. The customer support is available 24/7 so you can contact them any time you have a technical problem or any query.
Cons:
- Customer support response time is slower
- Restoring from backups requires payment of an additional fee
4. InMotion Hosting
| Plan Tested: | WP-1000S |
| Load Time: | 0.855s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.320s |
Another popular shared hosting provider for WordPress, InMotion has a customer base of more than 300,000 domains. Founded in 2001, the hosting company has established itself as a trusted web hosting company.
Also, it offers some really good uptime, speed, and performance when you get their services. The average uptime of InMotion is around 99.95, while it also offers fast loading time with an average page loading time of 855ms.
Moreover, there are a number of technologies that it makes use of to ensure faster performance and optimal speed. These include the following:
Pros:
- SSD Storage
Similar to the above mentioned hosting for WordPress, InMotion also supports every single server by SSD drives, instead of traditional HDD drives. Since SSD drives are chip-based, they are significantly faster at retrieving data stored on them. This implies that loading times are faster.
Multiple Data Centers
Another element that distinguishes it from other hosting for WordPress is instead of having a single data center for the entire country, they have multiple data centers. They ask their customers to choose a location that can best serve them, on the basis of where the site owner will have more customers or visitors. You can test which data center will work the best for your location and can give you faster service and can choose it.
Max Speed Zones
Apart from having multiple data centers, they also have Max Speed Zones, which mainly refers to geographical locations within a specific range of their centers. If a site owner is within their Max Speed Zone, InMotion claims that your website runs 6 times faster.
- NGINX
InMotion uses NGINX server alongside Apache. Apache is used as the main web server by InMotion and Nginx as a proxy. This means that when a request for a page comes, Nginx first checks if the page requested has been cached. If the page has been cached, Nginx will serve the cache version. This helps in increasing the page load speed to a considerable extent since neither PHP nor MySQL is required to generate that page.
99.95% Uptime
Uptime is another important aspect to look for in hosting for WordPress. If your site experiences downtimes on a regular basis, it may significantly impact on your Google ranking. InMotion guarantees their customers with 99.95% uptime and also ensure that if they fail to deliver, they will provide one month worth of credit into your account.
- Plans
There are 6 different WordPress hosting plans that InMotion offers to its customers. Starting from $6.99 per month to $105.69 per month, the plans differ in terms of price on the basis of the storage space, number of visitors, and different features that they offer. For small blogs and startups, the WP-2000S plan may suit the most allowing 50,000 monthly visitors and 80 GB SSD storage for $9.99 per month.
For large websites that bring heavy traffic, the WP-Dedicated plan by InMotion may be a good option with a dedicated server that provides full control of specific dedicated resources at a price of $105.69 per month.
Apart from these features, InMotion hosting offers unlimited disk space, free data backups, free no-downtime website transfers, unlimited email accounts, and free domain registration. It also comes with pre-installed WordPress, which means you do not have to install it.
Cons:
- The prices are a little on the higher side
- No datacenter present in Asia. InMotion datacenters are located only in America. Although the response of InMotion servers is quite well, if they had a datacenter located in Asia, the response time may have been faster.
6. WP Engine
| Plan Tested: | Startup |
| Load Time: | 0.750s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.310s |
Another award-winning platform for digital experience, WP Engine is a trusted place for large businesses to small ones. Founded in 2010, more than 60,000 customers, which include Yelp and New Relic, trust this platform for their high-traffic WordPress sites. Moreover, WP Engine has a number of notable features that make it one of the most popular hostings for WordPress sites.
Pros:
WP Engine makes use of various top-notch technologies to deliver performance and speed. Some of them are mentioned below.
- CDN Services
WP Engine has partnered with StackPath to provide all of their customers’ access to a content delivery network. CDN is free with all the plans and helps considerably in improving site speed since servers are spread all over the world. These servers work together to deliver site content to users based on their geographic location.
Use of EverCache Technology
To deliver speed and for handling traffic without any downtime, WP Engine has a scalable WordPress architecture called EverCache, which performs aggressive caching and updates instantly whenever something new goes up on your website. This helps in delivering site content fast to anywhere around the world.
Page Caching Memcached
Apart from using EverCache, this hosting for WordPress also comes with Page caching, Memcached, and object caching. WP Engine caches everything from pages to feeds, which makes the site loading really faster.
99.95% Uptime
Like all other hosting providers for WordPress, WP Engine also guarantees 99.95% uptime and it lives up to the promise.
In addition to these features, WP Engine also guarantees site security to such an extent that they also fix your site for free in case it is hacked. Furthermore, easy one-click staging setup, free backups, free SSL, and 24/7 support from WordPress experts are some of the pros of WP Engine.
- Plans
WP Engine Startup plan starts from $35 per month with a money-back guarantee of 60 days. It allows 25,000 visitors per month with a storage space of 10 GB. If you get their service for the entire year, you can save $70. The other two plans start from $115 per month and $290 per month, while they also offer a custom made package.
For large business customers, the custom package can allow millions of visitors per month, a local storage space of 100 GB, and 400 GB+ of bandwidth per month.
Cons:
- With all the options and features they offer, WP Engine’s pricing is no doubt expensive.
- Some themes and plugins are not allowed in WP Engine
- Additional charges are to be paid if you exceed the number of visitors or storage allowed on your plan.
- Also, if you want email hosting or your own domain, you will have to look for a third party and pay for that separately.
6. Kinsta
| Plan Tested: | Starter |
| Load Time: | 0.611s |
| Time to First Byte: | 0.287s |
Kinsta, powered by Google Cloud Platform, is one of the top hostings for WordPress. If you are willing to pay a high price for the fastest WordPress hosting, Kinsta has one of the best-performing servers and configurations for running a fast WordPress site. Since Kinsta runs on Google Cloud Platform, it means that your website will run on the infrastructure of Google when you choose Kinsta as your hosting.
Additionally, it also uses all the right technology for ensuring that your WordPress site loads at a higher speed and as smooth as possible. These include the following:
Pros:
Nginx
As mentioned earlier, Nginx performs faster than Apache that was used previously. It gives Kinsta customers the speed that they look for.
- CDN
Kinsta has partnered with KeyCDN, which is an amazing HTTP/2 and IPv6-enabled content delivery network. It is a leading European CDN provider with its headquarter in Switzerland. It is a solid reputation of making CDN services very accessible and has an extensive global network that Kinsta users benefit from.
- Built-in Caching
The presence of the built-in caching service also helps in speeding up. The service does not require the need for installing a third-party caching plugin. The built-in caching performs four types of caching and comes with its own caching plugin.
It also uses PHP 7 and LXD software containers that also help in enhancing the speed of the website that is hosted by Kinsta. Moreover, its uptime performance is also good with 99.99% uptime guarantee. Free migration, daily backups, and developer-friendly features, and intuitive dashboard are some of the additional features of Kinsta.
Kinsta Plans start from $30 per month that allows 20,000 visits and 10 GB of disk space. For more traffic, the Pro plan of Kinsta allows 40,000 visits and 20 GB disk space for $60 per month. There are various business plans and enterprise plans of Kinsta that start from $100 per month.
Cons:
- Prices of their plans are on the higher side
- It is not super flexible.
- No Email hosting is offered
Now You Can Decide Which Hosting for WordPress is the Fastest
There are a plethora of hosting companies that can serve everyone’s budgets and needs. But, with so many options available, selecting the fastest hosting for WordPress for your site is even tougher. It is, hence, important to identify your goals first. This will help in selecting the right company on the basis of your requirements and budget.
The top WordPress hosting companies with good load times are mentioned above with all their details and features. On the basis of your goals, you can decide which of the hosting for WordPress best suits your needs. If you are looking for a combo of the best price with performance, Siteground is a great option that will deliver you with great speed without being a strain on your pocket.
The 5 Essential Properties to Look Into
We all need to know that there are several WordPress hosting providers to choose from making it a little tricky and confusing to choose one. As a result, when selecting a hosting provider, it is vital to consider these important factors:
1. Speed
A good rule of thumb in this regard is that your website should take not more than 1 second to load. If the loading time is higher than that, it is not a wise decision to invest in that host.
2. Uptime
Uptime below 99.95% on a constant basis means the web host is not worth the money. This is an important thing to check when you choose a hosting
3. Server Requirements
There are some WordPress server requirements that the hosting provider needs to meet. It is vital to find out if the hosting provider meets those needs.
4. Customer Support
24/7 live chat to help you with WordPress related queries is always an important area to consider when choosing a web host.
Make sure you check out our review of which hosting provider has the best customer support.
5. Pricing
Pricing should be fair and upfront. The lesser the cost, the better it is but the speed and uptime should not be compromised.