WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, which is used to power millions of websites of all types and purposes, be it personal blogs, business websites, educational projects, online stores, etc.
If you are starting a new website, you will most likely want to use WordPress as your CMS. Not only is it completely free and open-source, it also comes with countless choices of themes and plugins to help you create a website that looks and functions exactly as you want it to without spending a fortune on custom web development.
But while the WordPress engine is free, hosting a WP site isn’t. The first step in introducing your website to the world is finding the perfect web hosting service that will host and serve your website to web users.
You have two options here; you can either choose managed WordPress hosting or regular, unmanaged hosting, each of which has its own pros and cons.
With managed WordPress hosting, you get plenty of server resources that ensure your website loads fast even when multiple visitors are browsing it at once. Managed plans also take care of updating and securing your website, as well as offering backups, caching and other essential services. In simple terms, managed WP hosting takes care of most of the regular technical duties of operating a WordPress website, giving you more time to focus on your business.
On the downside, managed plans often come at a higher price than unmanaged ones. You may also be more restricted on the things you can access and modify on the server, since many of the server-side aspects will be controlled by your host to ensure the stability and security of the server for all websites sharing it.
With unmanaged hosting, you get more freedom to change and customize your back-end, and you will also be fully responsible for updating, backing up, securing, and performing regular maintenance tasks on your website. This is more time-consuming, but you can save a substantial sum of money if you can and know how to do it yourself.
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced WordPress user, managed hosting services offer you peace of mind as most of the technical issues will be handled by an experienced support team while you can remain all focused on growing and promoting your website.
With that in mind, the following are five of the best providers of managed WordPress hosting services that are quite affordable and feature-rich:
1. Pressable
Pressable is a web host that specializes in the WordPress CMS. Their team includes experts who have extensive technical experience working with the WP platform. As a matter of fact, this company is part of the Automattic family, which owns WordPress.com and WooCommerce. In addition to regular WordPress hosting, Pressable also offers managed WooCommerce hosting solutions for e-commerce websites.
- Secure and responsive servers optimized for speed.
- 100% uptime with automatic failover.
- Automatic WordPress updates.
- Automatic caching.
- Free and premium WordPress themes included.
- Daily backups of your website.
- Free migration from other hosts.
- Easily scale up your plan’s resources.
- Easy dashboard and staging environment.
- WooCommerce-optimized plans with specialized support.
- 24/7 expert technical support.
- 30-day money-back guarantee.
2. Rocket
Rocket makes running a WordPress website super easy with their all-in-one platform. Speed and security are their top priorities and strengths. Their plans are a little pricey, but they do allow for a much higher number of website visits compared to lower limits set by other providers.
- Built-in content delivery network (CDN) with page caching.
- A nice and easy control panel with analytics, staging and other features.
- Website Firewall (WWF) that protects from online threats.
- Malware scanning and protection.
- Automatic updates of the core, themes and plugins.
- Automatic daily backups.
- Responsive 24/7 support via chat and email.
3. Cloudways
Cloudways is all about managed cloud-based web hosting services, including managed WordPress hosting. They offer you a choice between a few of the most reliable cloud service providers, including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud. Unlike other companies that have limits on the maximum number of visitors/hits included with each plan, Cloudways doesn’t have such limits and you can serve as many visitors as your plan’s bandwidth and other resources allow.
- Multiple cloud providers and locations to choose from.
- Lots of bandwidth and no limit on monthly visitor count.
- CDN and multiple caching to ensure super fast loading speeds.
- Staging, cloning, backup and restore functions easily accessible from the dashboard.
- Uptime monitoring and alerts.
- More affordable than other providers for what you get.
- Professional 24/7 support.
4. Kinsta
Kinsta offers premium managed WordPress hosting served by the Google Cloud network. They allow you to choose the data center location from different options available worldwide. Additionally, they employ a global CDN with caching service for optimized loading speed. Their plans are on the pricey side, but given the solid service they provide and the professional support you get, the prices are quite reasonable.
- Ability to choose data center location for each hosted website.
- Multisite support (offered with certain packages).
- Staging and closing tools.
- Secure network with firewall and DDoS protection.
- Automatic daily updates.
- Constant uptime checks on a daily basis.
- Scalable services as needed.
- 24/7 support provided by technical experts.
5. 10Web
10Web is an outstanding WordPress hosting platform powdered by highly reliable Google Cloud services. They are one of the most affordable providers of managed WordPress hosting with a very helpful and responsive technical support team. The “personal” package is a great starting point for a new or a small-medium size website, while advanced packages offer more resources and features for technically-demanding websites.
- Automatic updates for WordPress core, themes and plugins.
- User-friendly dashboard and staging environment.
- Automatic site migration.
- Server-side caching with guaranteed 90+ PageSpeed score.
- Multisite support in advanced plans.
- Website builder with free premium widgets.
- Automatic backup scheduling.
- Website security scans.
- Quick 24/7 support service.