Good web hosting is one of the essential elements of any website. The right hosting company can provide several benefits to your business or project.
One of the biggest advantages of working with a good hosting company is their ability to improve website load time.
Fast websites enhance user experience and entice visitors to stay on your pages. The longer people are on your website, the better chances they have to buy a product, click links, or sign up to an email mailing list.
A good hosting company will also enhance your website’s SEO. Rankings will be drastically affected if a web page is down when search engines are attempting to analyze it.
There is an array of web hosting companies on the market. Many of them tout a wide variety of features and benefits, but it can be difficult to get a comprehensive understanding of the platform best for your needs.
5 Best WordPress Hosting Companies in 2020
Here’s a brief overview of the five best hosting companies for WordPress in 2020.
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1. Bluehost
In operation since 1996, Bluehost remains one of the oldest web hosting companies on the market.
The company is a WordPress recommended hosting provider known for its fast customer service and a nearly-pristine uptime record. Installations with WordPress are handled in one-click though the MojoMarketplace service.
Despite Bluehost’s strong reputation in the web hosting world, there are a few drawbacks prospective users should understand. The service is one of the few that does not offer a monthly package. A year commitment is a minimum. Users have also shared issues with MojoMarketplace’s inconsistencies with the installation.
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2. SiteGround WordPress Hosting
SiteGround is a highly popular web hosting provider among WordPress users. Like Bluehost, they are also a WordPress recommended hosting provider.
SiteGround has built a reputation for swift and effective 24/7 customer support and location-specific hosting across six data centers in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia.
SiteGround is known for its seamless WordPress installation process and favorable uptime and loading times (due to the region-specific servers).
Drawbacks to SiteGround include limited storage space with shared hosting plans, the basic UX design of the cPanel, and the higher renewal prices once users reach the end of their initial plans.
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3. GreenGeeks WordPress Hosting
The GreenGeeks hosting platform has made waves due to its eco-friendly nature. The provider offsets energy usage by 300% and is recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Power Partner.
Like some other hosting companies, GreenGeeks has data centers across the U.S and Europe, which helps customer websites load faster. Server uptime is ensured by battery backups, generators, and power grids monitored 24/7.
GreenGeeks also offers various benefits to customers who purchase shared hosting plans, including unlimited SSD storage space and data transfer.
Like many other hosting platforms, the best monthly rates for GreenGeeks WordPress hosting require longer contracts. Some users have also complained about a pricey domain renewal.
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4. HostGator
HostGator is known for its straightforward approach to web hosting. Signing up brings users to a traditional cPanel. Installation is pretty easy with the WordPress installer.
HostGator is known for its strong uptime records, but some have noted its spotty load impact time. Additionally, some argue customer support is a bit slower than other companies.
At present, HostGator is a host to well over 8 million domains. It also doubles up as one of the most popular web hosting companies in the industry. Several other advantages accrue from its use and leverage. These include round-the-clock customer support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and 1-click WordPress installation.
If you bargain well, you may also reap the many discounts that are available for anyone who purchases in bulk. Also coming along is the free SSL certificate and a domain name free-of-charge. You never have to set your eyes elsewhere but on it for your maximum returns on investments.
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5. DreamHost
DreamHost is a popular hosting platform that has made waves for its high-tech SSD servers. The company is known for its strong customer service and its simple, one-click WordPress installation.
Nevertheless, DreamHost has run into issues with gaps in response times and issues with uptime metrics. Slower load times have also drawn the ire of customers. However, DreamHost is a well-established platform that powers more than 600,000 WordPress websites while giving users free domains.
One striking aspect of DreamHost is that it really simplifies the task of web hosting. That is mainly due to the role of cheapening the task of WordPress hosting. With only one click, you get to install these vital resources and receive automatic updates thereafter.
Some other benefits you stand to accrue from this site are unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space, automatic updates from time to time, and 200% faster speeds of operations to name but a few! These are besides the zero set up fees and the cost-free domain name.
Buy DreamHost WordPress Hosting
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Features of a Good WordPress Hosting Service
It’s not enough that a hosting service features as one of the best. You need to ensure the selected hosting service has your best interests and those of your website at heart. There are several features you need to consider to guarantee this. But first…
Identify Your Hosting Needs
Choosing a good hosting service starts with understanding your hosting needs. Without understanding your needs, finding an excellent hosting service becomes harder. When making the assessment, you shouldn’t focus on the now. Plan at least 12 months in advance. Some of the sample questions that will help you determine your path and your needs include:
What kind of website do you want to build?
- What kind of platform will the website be founded on?
- Is it a blogging, organizational, portfolio, eCommerce, or any other type of website? Each type of website has varying hosting needs.
- Do you need special software to code the website?
- What are your targets in terms of volume of traffic?
- Do you intend to build one or multiple websites?
Using these questions, you can get a clear idea of what the perfect hosting service should offer. When considering hosting services, it’s always cheaper to pay annually, which is why you need to plan 12 months ahead and pick a hosting service that aligns with your interests.
Determining your needs makes it easier to quantify the features of every hosting service and select the one that will provide the most comprehensive hosting package for your WordPress website.
Here are some of the top features to consider when looking for the best and most reliable hosting service provider for your WordPress site.
Security
Digital threats are at an all-time high. Going forward, these threats are only going to increase. Managing such threats and reducing exposure is a top priority. That calls for top-notch security features from your hosting service.
A high-quality hosting service offers comprehensive security features for your website to protect yours and your customer’s data. For websites that process payments, SSLs are a vital part of the security features to ensure secure payment transactions for your customers.
Customer Support
The best hosting providers have teams of experts to get you out of murky situations. The best of the best make customer support a priority with round the clock availability, swift and helpful responses, and fast solutions. If you work with a WordPress hosting provider that places top-dollar value on customer support, you’re assured of efficient assistance every time you have problems or questions that you can’t resolve by yourself.
Upgrade Options
You need a hosting solution that scales with your website as time passes. A good hosting provider should support the growth of your website every step of the way.
When starting, it makes sense to cut costs and start with shared hosting. But as the website grows, you need to improve the security of your website and storage capacity. This calls for an upgrade to a dedicated or VPS hosting. When choosing a hosting provider, ensure your preferred host can accommodate the future growth and demands of your website.
Specific Services
Web hosts that offer a shared Linux Hosting Server will market themselves as WordPress hosting services. But there’s more to hosting WordPress sites than having a Linux Hosting server.
These services include WordPress optimization, patching, and virus removal from WordPress websites and more.
These services might not apply to new WordPress sites. But as the website grows, they become a critical aspect of the success and sustainability of your website.
At every stage of growing your website, it’s always recommended to work with a hosting provider with services that are tailored to your websites and its requirements.
Extras and Performances
The extra features and the level of performances that are provided by the company concerning matters a great deal. A good site has to allow you to coopt numerous extras by way of the plugins and interfacing. Then again, it has to add some values to the sire itself and the accompanying resource.
For these to happen, you may have to first and foremost ascertain just what you need from these sites yourself. Then, go around seeking and comparing the product offerings by the many dealers that be. See to it that the dealer you have in mind also provides other allied services.
Cost/Pricing
Needless to say, you must also factor the costs or the pricing of the host you have in mind. Leveraging the services of a hosting company need not be a life and death affair. Instead, it is something that should fall well within your domain of affordability.
To enable this, you must first and foremost ascertain your own financial strength. Then, go ahead and compare the prices of the many dealers who are around. As always, narrow your pick to that hosting company that provides the necessary services at the cheapest rate.
Optimization
This refers to the techniques and approaches that are implemented on the sites hosted to make the same fully functional and truly effective. Your ideal company has to be in the position to provide these as part of the backend support services when called upon to do that.
Also, that company has to be in the position to share the goal with you and listen to ‘your side’ of the story. That is the only guarantee that it shall do a comparatively great job and satisfy your own needs as need be. Need we add that it has to be equipped with the best professionals?
Research
Outside the core roles of hosting your site, a great company should also go beyond that to conduct some thorough research or relevant analytics. That is to aid you in keeping pace with any developments and staying well ahead of the game as considered necessary.
That is a sure way of making much more from the firm than what you would naturally garner under normal circumstances. Also, it goes beyond that to even see to it that you accrue the highest returns on your investments. Have we noted the benefit of maximizing your dollars?
Monitoring
It is not uncommon for your site to sustain attacks and other kinds of damages from whichever sources. To guard against these issues, your host has to provide backend monitoring services. Thus, it is imperative that the company you have in mind be capable of monitoring your site’s activities as well.
Some of the backend tasks and services that the company is to provide under this banner are the antivirus, security logs, round-the-clock hotline, and contact tracing, to name but a few! The company has also to be on standby whenever and wherever the call may need.
Speed
Lastly, a great hosting company has to avail its services at a pace that is faster than usual. The pace has to be applicable in both directions i.e. the upload and the download directions. You do not want to waste too much of your time to have your way.
On the same note, the strength of the network as a whole has to be guaranteed. That is because there is usually the tendency to losing network if and when the pace is higher than usual. Also, of note should be the reliability of the entire network infrastructure as a whole.
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Conclusion
Internet users looking for reliable web hosting services have several options. There is a wide range of 2020’s Top WordPress Hosting Company with strong reputations and a history of reliability.
While legacy hosting providers like Bluehost or SiteGround often attract the most attention, GreenGeeks WordPress hosting is the best for 2020. With an eco-friendly attitude, guarantees for server uptime, generous storage space, and an easy-to-use design, the company is a top all-around option without any glaring weaknesses.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
