Testing The 12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers

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I took the 12 fastest Wordpress hosting providers on the planet and put them through 5 vigorous tests to see who really is the fastest.

Pay attention:

Because the results of what I’m about to share…

 Could save you thousands of dollars in wasted WordPress hosting cost’s this year.

Choosing fast hosting solution is absolutely critical to the success of your business site, because if your WordPress website loads slowly you will suffer from-

  • Lower search engine rankings
  • Higher bounce rates
  • Lower page view numbers
  • Lower conversion rates
  • Lower profits

Not only is site speed a critical factor for your visitors, but it’s also a confirmed Google ranking factor and it’s not often Google confirms an SEO rankings factors definitively.

But what does all of that mean in the real world?

Well you can use this calculator from Google to find out. For me, it meant that I would increase my bottom line by $28,464 if I increased website speed by 1 second-

estimated revenue loss

So you need to make sure you are actually choosing the fastest Wordpress hosting provider which is absolutely critical because if you get it wrong, the consequences for your WordPress site could be far-reaching.

We’ve also seen some pretty bold claims from WP Engine recently stating their new Google C2 Infrastructure is “40 percent faster than anyone else in Wordpress”

WP Engine claiming they offer the fastest wordpress hosting by 40%

As you can imagine…

That led to some pretty heavy backlash which was doubled down by the founder blocking a number of industry leaders that asked them to provide data to back up their claim.

wp engine social backlack

On top of that:

WP Engine’s article also says…

wp engine c2 plan rollout

But that is also very misleading!

Because they don’t consider the $290 per month Scale plan hosting package a “premium” plan and they are VERY shy about sharing pricing for their “40% faster than everyone else” C2 setup-

wpengine c2 pricing

But, I’ve got some great news for you.

After jumping through many many many hoops, I was able to get a site set up on the new WPEngine C2 platform for $600 per month-

wpengine google c2 pricing

So I am very much looking forward to putting the “40% faster than every Wordpress host” claim to the test because they are 1,100% more expensive than the next cheapest web host in this test.

This is also likely to be the only independent testing you’ll see of WPEngine’s new C2 hosting service because of the high pricing and the many barriers they have in place to get setup.

And just to add to the controversy:

Kinsta recently migrated all their customers to the same C2 Google Cloud Platform that WP Engine are claiming victory over-

kinsta wordpress hosting performance boosts

But the key difference between the web hosting companies Kinsta & WP Engine…

Is that with Kinsta, the new C2 platform is default on all of their web hosting account plans which start from $30 per month versus the $600 per month cost and special setup requirements of WPEngine.

Kinsta c2 pricing

So with all this controversy over who actually are the fastest WordPress hosts…

…I decided to put 12 fast WordPress hosting providers to the test.

12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies You Should Look Into

I decided to test the 12 fastest WordPress hosting providers by comparing how they performed in terms of load speed, support and price.

The last time I tried to find the best managed Wordpress host, I only compared 7 hosts.

So this time I have increased this to 12 of the fastest WP host to find great hosting solutions.

Here’s a quick introduction to each host-

1. Kinsta (www.kinsta.com)

Kinsta

Kinsta is a premium WordPress hosting provider who is obsessed with fast speeds and top security. It uses a Google Cloud platform across its 24 data centres meaning a speedy and secure transfer of data.

Some of Kinsta’s best features are:

  • DDoS detection
  • Hardware firewalls
  • Uptime monitoring
  • SSL support and free SSL certificate
  • Free site migration
  • Daily backups
  • Development staging areas
  • KeyCDN included

And they have a super user-friendly dashboard with access to 24-hour support from real WordPress experts at just the click of a button.

Pricing And Plan Information

Kinsta has plenty of options when it comes to choosing a plan and they all come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The Starter Plan is priced at $30 per month and provides-

  • The hosting of 1 site
  • Up to 20,000 monthly visitors
  • 10GB of SDD storage
  • A 50GB CDN limit

Other plans include Pro which is $60 per month, Business which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $100 per month and Enterprise which has 4 tiers you can choose from starting at $600 per month.

2. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)

siteground

Siteground offers multiple types of hosting and their Managed WordPress Hosting services are welcomed by those on a smaller budget and they are recommended by some big names such as WordPress itself and Yoast.

Siteground offers:

  • Free SSL certificate
  • Daily backups
  • Email services
  • Staging tools
  • Free CDN
And they also commit to a 100% renewable energy match with their data centre (Google Cloud).

Pricing And Plan Information

They often have promotions running so you may see even lower prices available and all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The current Siteground Managed WordPress plans are-

  • StartUp – $6.99 per month (reduced from $14.99) and you are allowed 1 site, 10,000 monthly visitors and 10GB of webspace.
  • GrowBig – $9.99 per month (reduced from $24.99) and you are allowed unlimited sites, 20,000 monthly visitors and 20GB of webspace.
  • GoGeek – $14.99 per month (reduced from $39.99) and you are allowed unlimited sites, 100,000 monthly visitors and 40GB of webspace.

Keep an eye on the pricing and try and lock the prices in for a longer period of time if you can afford the upfront payment.

3. WP Engine (www.wpengine.com)

WP Engine

WP Engine is a well-known host that caters specifically to WordPress sites. They boast of being the best platform for hosting a WordPress website and do offer a pretty good sales pitch.

With WP Engine plans you get-

  • A CDN included
  • A free SSL certificate
  • Daily backups
  • A staging area
  • 24/7 support available

We will see if the hype is real…

Pricing And Plan Information

WP Engine has 3 set plans you can choose from which can be paid monthly or yearly. You can usually get a better deal if you go with the yearly option.

  • StartUp – $30/month gives you a 25,000 monthly visits allowance, 10GB of storage, 50GB bandwidth allowance for 1 site.
  • Growth – $115/month gives you a 100,000 monthly visits allowance, 20GB of storage, 200GB bandwidth allowance for a maximum of 10 sites.
  • Scale – $290/month gives you a 400,000 monthly visits allowance, 50GB of storage, 500GB bandwidth allowance for a maximum of 30 sites.

Custom plans are for those sites that are expected to receive more than 400,000 monthly visits and you need to discuss with a sales specialist to get a quote.

4. WPX Hosting (www.wpxhosting.com)

WPX

WPX Hosting offers a fantastic managed WordPress hosting service that has been proven to provide speedy load times backed up by an excellent level of support.

Their plans include:

  • 24/7 expert support
  • Free custom-built CDN
  • Free SSL
  • Free migrations
  • Daily backups
  • DDoS Protection
  • Staging Area

And WPX Hosting CoFounder Terry Kyle is committed to using the success of this hosting provider to care for and improve the lives of hundreds of cats and dogs every day.

So as well as investing in a great service you are also contributing to the running of Every Dog Matters.

Pricing And Plan Information

WPX Hosting plans are pretty competitively priced and all offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy.

  • Business – $24.99/month which covers you for 5 websites, 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth.
  • Professional – $49.99/month which covers you for 35 websites, 40GB of storage and 200GB of bandwidth.
  • Elite – $99/month which covers you for 5 websites, 10GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth.

The monthly price gets reduced if you purchase the yearly subscription.

5. A2Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers a ton of different budget-friendly hosting services. Their managed WordPress hosting packages include some pretty cool features that keep up with the other premium hosting services on the market.

Such as:

  • Free staging area
  • Free SSL certificates
  • Malware protection
  • DDoS protection
  • Daily backups
  • Cloudflare included

And they are available 24/7 to assist with any questions or problems you may have.

Pricing And Plan Information

A2 Hosting provide a lot of hosting services but as we are focusing on WordPress hosting then I will run through their managed WordPress hosting plans-

  • 1-Site costs $11.99 and gives you 10GB of storage
  • 3-Sites cost $18.99 and gives you 20GB of storage
  • Unlimited sites cost $36.98 and gives you 40GB of storage

And all plans use A2 Hostings Turbo servers, which boast of being up to 20x faster.

They also have a pretty impressive ANYTIME money-back guarantee.

6. BlueHost (www.bluehost.com)

Bluehost

Bluehost is a well-known hosting provider that was founded by Matt Heaton in 2003. They offer professional managed WordPress hosting services that are designed to help build and grow their client’s websites.

All Bluehost WP Pro plans include-

  • An unlimited number of sites
  • A staging environment
  • Unlimited web storage
  • A free SSL
  • A CDN enabled
  • Spam protection
  • And much more

And all this is backed up by 24/7 customer support meaning you can pick up the phone or send a quick message anytime day or night and have no worries about needing help fast from a different time zone.

Pricing And Plan Information

Bluehost offers 3 WP Pro managed WordPress hosting plans-

  • Build – $19.95 a month
  • Grow – $29.95 a month
  • Scale – $49.95 a month

Each plan offers a different level of some pretty impressive features, there are no traffic limits on these plans and they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Want to see how Bluehost stand up against its competitor SiteGround? Check out my post SiteGround vs Bluehost.

7. Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)

Cloudways

Cloudways is a cloud-based hosting platform that teams up with a selected provider to offer a good balance between functionality and affordability.

Cloudways plans offer-

  • 24/7/365 Customer Support
  • Free SSL
  • CDN
  • Free migration
  • Dedicated Firewalls
  • 24/7 monitoring
  • Automated backups
  • Staging environment

…as well as a bunch of other helpful features.

They have been featured on some pretty notable websites like Forbes and PC Magazine.

Pricing And Plan Information

Cloudways offers hosting with different infrastructure providers, for this article we have tested using Digital Ocean so I will run through those available pricing options-

  • $10/month gets you 1GB of RAM, 25GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth
  • $22/month gets you 2GB of RAM, 50GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth
  • $42/month gets you 4GB of RAM, 80GB of storage and 4TB of bandwidth
  • $80/month gets you 8GB of RAM, 160GB of storage and 5TB of bandwidth

And they have a ‘No Lock In’ policy meaning you don’t get tied up in contracts.

8. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)

DreamHost

Dreamhost is an award-winning hosting platform that was originally founded in 1996.

They have been widely known as leaders in the web hosting industry so it will be interesting to test them against some of the newer kids on the block.

Dreamhost managed WordPress hosting plans include-

  • Unlimited email
  • 1-click staging
  • SSL certificate
  • Daily backups
  • 24/7 WordPress support
  • Free automated WordPress migrations

And the two higher-tier plans include Jetpack Professional too.

Pricing And Plan Information

Dreamhost has a good range of pricing on its plans meaning they can appeal to all budgets.

  • DreamPress – $16.95 covers 100,000 monthly visitors and 30GB of SSD storage
  • DreamPress Plus – $24.95 covers 300,000 monthly visitors and 60GB of SSD storage
  • DreamPress Pro – $71.95 covers 1,000,000+ monthly visitors and 120GB of SSD storage

And all the plans have unmetered bandwidth and like most of the other hosts, they also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

9. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com)

GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a well-known domain registrar but they are also a pretty popular web host too and has customers all across the globe.

Their WordPress hosting plans include-

  • 99.9% uptime promise
  • CDN boost for fast load times
  • Free business email for the first year
  • Access to free themes & plugins
  • Free 24/7 customer support
  • One-click migration tool

The higher-tier plans also offer regular malware scans and removal as well as a free SSL certificate.

Pricing And Plan Information

Here are the current pricing plans but ensure to double-check the renewal prices before you purchase-

  • Basic – $6.99 and you get 1 website with 30GB of storage and is recommended for up to 25,000 visitors a month
  • Deluxe – $9.99 and you get 1 website with 75GB of storage and is recommended for up to 100,000 visitors a month
  • Ultimate – $12.99 and you get 1 website with unlimited storage and is an unlimited number of visitors a month
  • Ecommerce – $15.99 and you get 1 website with unlimited storage and is an unlimited number of visitors a month but this has a bunch more features to warrant the higher price.

Not a bad set of plans to choose from.

10. GreenGeeks (www.greengeeks.com)

GreenGeek

GreenGeeks is a hosting platform who pride themselves on providing an eco-friendly but fast and secure hosting service.

Their plans boast-

  • Unlimited space
  • Unlimited data transfer
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Free domain name for the first year
  • Nightly backup
  • Free CDN
  • Unlimited email accounts

And if the name wasn’t a giveaway… GreenGeeks focuses on giving back to the environment by having a 300% green energy commitment on all plans.

Pricing And Plan Information

GreenGeeks currently have a special price on plans so be sure to check on their website for any pricing updates-

  • Lite – $2.95 (normally $9.95) which covers 1 site and unlimited web space
  • Pro – $5.95 (normally $14.95) which covers unlimited sites, unlimited web space and 2x performance.
  • Premium – $11.95 (normally $24.95) which covers unlimited sites, unlimited web space and 4x performance and a free dedicated IP

And they offer the standard 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try them out with peace of mind.

11. LiquidWeb (www.liquidweb.com)

liquid-web

LiquidWeb is another old-timer in the web hosting industry, they were first founded in 1997 and they pride themselves on their 99.999% uptime.

Nexcess has joined LiquidWeb and now take care of their managed WordPress hosting plans through their high-performance cloud which includes features like-

  • No traffic limits
  • Daily backups
  • A staging site
  • Automatic SSL
  • Unlimited email accounts
  • Their own data centres

And they back all this up with 24 hour support.

Pricing And Plan Information

LiquidWeb offers a wide range of plans, here’s a quick look-

  • Spark – $19/month. With this you get 1 website, 15 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Maker – $79/month. With this you get 5 websites, 40 GB storage and 3 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Designer – $109/month. With this you get 10 websites, 60 GB storage and 4 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Builder – $149/month. With this you get 25 websites, 100 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Producer – $299/month. With this you get 50 websites, 300 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Executive – $549/month. With this you get 100 websites, 50 GB storage and 10 TB bandwidth allowance
  • Enterprise – $999/month. With this you get 250 websites, 800 GB storage and 10 TB bandwidth allowance

They are so confident in their services that they offer 14 days free hosting without even asking for a credit card!

12. Pantheon (www.pantheon.io)

PANTHEON

Pantheon is a web hosting company that advertises lightning-fast speeds through a combination of hosting and its WebOps platform.

Their plans include some great features like-

  • 24/7/365 support from WordPress experts
  • Automated backups
  • CDN included
  • Maintaining a 99.99% uptime
  • Managed HTTPs

Can they live up to their claims in the tests I am going to put them through! We will see shortly.

Pricing And Plan Information

Pantheon offers two fixed price plans-

  • Basic – $41 per month (or $29 per month if paid annually) this plan covers 25,000 monthly visits and 20GB SSD storage.
  • Performance – This plan has many tiers ranging from $160 per month to $916 per month (or $114 per to $687 per month if paid annually). And ranges between 25,000-300,000 monthly visitor allowance and 30-200 of SSD storage.

And a third plan called ‘Elite’ which you can chat through with a web expert before getting a quote.

Best WordPress Hosting Logos

Each WP host was tested “out of the box” with the recommended setup to recreate the customer hosting experience and hosting needs as closely as possible.

HOST PLAN MONTHLY RENEWAL PRICE WEBSITE SLOTS CDN INCLUDED?
A2 Hosting 1-Site Turbo $32.59 1 No
Bluehost WP Pro Build $27.95 Unlimited*** No
Cloudways*** Digital Ocean $22 Unlimited*** No
Dreamhost DreamPress Plus $29.95 1 No
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Basic $14.99 1 Sucuri
GreenGeeks Ecosite Premium $24.95 Unlimited*** No
Kinsta Starter (C2) $30 1 KeyCDN
Liquid Web Personal $29 1 No
Pantheon Basic $50 5 Fastly
SiteGround** StartUp $11.95 1 Cloudflare Free
WP Engine* Startup $35 1 Stackpath
WP Engine C2* New C2 Platform $600 1 Stackpath
WPX Hosting Business $24.99 5 WPX Cloud

A few things you should know before we get started:

*The WP Engine benchmarks were first taken on their startup hosting plans. Then we upgraded the hosting packages and they migrated the domain to the new C2 architecture (with a different IP) where we took a second set of benchmarks.

** SiteGround is only being tested here with the recommended free Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) enabled.

*** Cloudways is more self-managed with System Admin Panel knowledge required.

**** Unlimited managed WordPress hosting is rarely unlimited and managed WordPress hosting companies TOS make sure it very clear that any account exceeding normal usage will be billed, restricted or disabled.

How The Wordpress Hosts Were Tested

I built a test blog to the following specifications-

  • 11 high resolution photos
  • 1,000 words of dummy content
  • Astra theme
  • Elementor plugin

And then cloned that across each of the 12 Wordpress hosts so that every web host had an identical install of Wordpress.

Then I ran 5 distinct tests across these sites-

  • Test #1 – GTMetrix website speed (from 7 global server locations)
  • Test #2 – Pingdom Tools website speed (from 7 global server locations)
  • Test #3 – Load Impact stress test (500 simultaneous visitors)
  • Test #4 – WP Performance Tester (a plugin that tests raw server management configuration performance)
  • Test #5 – Support quality (I installed a false flag virus on each site)

So without further ado…

 Let’s find out who offers the fastest Wordpress hosting solutions once and for all.

Test 1 – GTMetrix Loading Speed

I ran each of the test blogs through GTMetrix from each of the 7 global locations.

To make sure all caches were primed, I ran 3 passes of GTMetrix for each test site, for each server location (there’s data center locations for all your target audience) and averaged out the results-

wordpress hosting speed test gtmetrix

Test #1 Conclusion

Unlike last year, the results of this were incredibly close this time around.

Both WPX Hosting (0.8 seconds) and Pantheon (0.81 seconds) are literally neck and neck in 1st and 2nd place.

Interestingly Kinsta in 3rd place need double the time (1.60 seconds) than 1st and 2nd place did to load the site.

But shockingly the new WP Engine C2 environment delivered similar results to the basic hosting plan despite costing hundreds of dollars more per month.

The GTMetrix Test Winner:

It’s hard to declare either WordPress hosting company a winner here but I think WPX Hosting wins purely because they cost $24.99 per month whereas Pantheon costs $50 per month.

Test 2 – Pingdom Loading Speed

Next, I wanted to run a similar site speed experment but this time using Pingdom tools.

I followed the same order process by running 3 passes for each test site, for each server location (there’s a ton of data centers) and then took an average of the results that look like this-

Best WordPress Hosting Pingdom

Test #2 Conclusion

Interestingly the top 4 hosts are unchanged in this test and came out in exactly the same order as test #1 above.

Both WPXHosting (357ms) and Pantheon (359ms) were neck and neck yet again with 3rd place Kinsta (835ms) trailing behind.

The Pingdom Test Winner:

So just like in test #1 we can easily declare that both WPX Hosting and Pantheon are more than twice as fast as the rest of the managed WordPress hosting providers.

Test 3 – Load Impact

Isolated site speed testing is one thing, but it doesn’t tell you how hosts perform under stress.

So I wanted to know how each web host would handle 500 simultaneous visitors using Load Impact.

The problem with this test is WordPress web hosting providers often block it because they think it’s a DDOS attack and because all of my testing was done anonymously across each hosting account, I didn’t want to submit a live chat support ticket to the system administrator and disable the protection.

So I created a new page on each of the sites with 1,000 words per piece-

Then I setup Load Impact to test each page with 500 simultaneous visitors.

These are the results for those hosts that didn’t automatically block the test-

Best WordPress Hosting Load Impact

Test #3 Conclusion

Pantheon (4ms), WP Engine (17ms), WP Engine C2 (23ms), Kinsta (24ms) and WPX hosting (26ms) were the managed hosting providers that performed exceptionally well.

With that said, each of the hosts performed well under load and each of them demonstrated that they can comfortably handle larger simultaneous high traffic sites.

But Pantheon really stole the show here!

And while I would have loved to be able to get the data on the hosts where the tests failed, I couldn’t have done that without tipping off the support team members that they were being tested.

The Load Impact Test Winner:

Hats off to the Pantheon team for achieving the kind of stability under load, that is a serious achievement. However WP Engine, Kinsta and WPX Hosting all held their own.

Test 4 – WordPress Performance Tester

All of the tests so far have been served up from cached results but this test is designed to test the website performance of the actual server itself for each WordPress site.

To do that I am going to use the Wordpress Performance Tester plugin from Kevin Ohashi who invites WordPress hosting companies to pay to take part in his annual testing.

This stress tests server resources by doing a number of things-

  • Math – 100,000 math function tests
  • String Manipulation – 100,000 string manipulation tests
  • Loops – 1,000,000 loop iterations
  • Conditionals – 1,000,000 conditional logic checks
  • MySql – basic mysql functions and 1,000,000 ENCODE() iterations
  • $wpdb – 250 insert, select, software updates and delete operations

Once it has finished crunching all of the data, it outputs 2 distinct metrics to measure performance-

  • Execution Time – how long it took to do all of those tests (lower is better)
  • Queries Per Second – how many queries per second processed (higher is better)

I let the server monitoring plugin loose on each of the test blogs, this is how it went down-

Best WordPress Hosting Performance Tester

Test #4 Conclusion

What I love about this test is that a lot of hosts hide behind heavy web design caching because there’s a big difference between a server rendering a cached page and actually having to think about things.

As you can see Pantheon (3.82 seconds) really fell behind the pack here despite being top competitors in all of the previous tests.

And for the first time, we can see a clear difference in performance between WP Engines offerings with the new C2 platform showing a significant increase in performance.

WPX Hosting (0.696 seconds), Green Geeks (0.81 seconds) and Siteground (0.965) all put in sub 1-second high performance respectfully.

The WordPress Performance Tester Winner:

It looks like Kinsta (0.538 seconds) have made significant improvements this year with their new C2 platform offering a high performance of 23% faster execution time and a 31% more queries per second over last years testing.

Test 5 – Support Quality

Finding the fast Wordpress hosting provider is one thing, but unless that is backed by an incredible customer support team you’re going to face problems.

Each of the tested hosts are managed Wordpress hosts and self-proclaimed Wordpress site experts (except CloudWays & Pantheon).

So I wanted to put the speed and quality of support of each WP hosting account to the test by asking them to solve 3 common problems that most people have faced-

  • Problem #1 – Would they take care of website transfers?
  • Problem #2 – Would they remove malware on my test site? (I infected each site with a false flag triggering virus)
  • Problem #3 – Would they stop other sites hotlinking my images?

I sent the same questions on a support ticket to the customer support of each host to see how they would react and this is what happened-

Best WordPress Hosting Support Comparison

Test #5 Conclusion

Although WP Engine wouldn’t offer free site migration, they do offer a free plugin that should help with the process.

But in general, as you can see from the results, the quality of live chat customer service that each managed hosting provider offers really separates the cream from the crop.

The Support Team Winner:

The only host that offer free migrations, free malware cleanup AND took control of the hotlinking problems was WPX Hosting. However they don’t offer phone support and everything is done via 24 7 live chat email & email accounts.

Wordpress Hosting Key Features Compared

So after the 5 tests, I can compare the most important features you should be looking for when choosing a WordPress host.

We’ll take a look at these key features:

  • Price per month
  • Sites allowed
  • Speed
  • Customer support
  • Migrations

  • Daily backups
  • SSL certificates
  • Staging Environment
  • Email hosting
  • Trust Pilot rating

Take a look at this comparison table and scroll across to see all the hosts.

WP Engine / C2 WPX Hosting Kinsta A2 Hosting Dreamhost Cloudways Siteground Pantheon Bluehost Go Daddy Liquid Web Green Geeks
Monthly Price $35 / $600 $24.99 $30 $32.59 $29.95 $22 $11.95 $50 $27.95 $14.99 $29 $24.95
Sites Allowed 1 / 1 5 1 1 1 unlimited 1 5 unlimited 1 1 unlimited
Speed Slow Fast Fast Slow Slow Normal Slow Fast Normal Fast Normal Slow
Support Poor Excellent Excellent Average Average Poor Average Poor Average Poor Poor Average
**Migrations Plugin Free Free Free/Paid Paid Free/Paid Paid Unclear Paid Paid Free Free/Paid
Backups Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily Free Daily
SSL Certificate Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Free SSL Yes Free SSL Yes
Staging Area Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No
Email Hosting No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No No Paid No Yes
Trust Pilot Rating 3 Stars 5 Stars 5 Stars 4 Stars 4.5 Stars 4.5 Stars 5 Stars No reviews 1.5 Stars 4.5 Stars 4 Stars 4.5 Stars


 

**Migrations: Free/Paid = First site free and any after paid.

The Worst Things About Each Host

Despite the results of the managed WordPress hosting tests, no host is perfect and each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages.

And what is the right choice of web hosting services for me, might not be the right choice of WordPress hosting services for you.

So here is what I don’t like about each of the featured WordPress hosting providers-

WP ENGINE

WPX HOSTING

  • No phone support
  • No VPS hosting options
  • No Git support
  • Back end control panel could be easier to use

A2 HOSTING

  • Expensive per site with this hosting plan
  • Unimpressive speed
  • $25 per site migrated if not coming from cpanel
  • Malware removal $125 per site cleanup
  • Free CDN not included

DREAMHOST

  • Among slowest hosts in this test
  • CDN not included
  • Migrations will cost $99 per each site
  • Malware removal $199 per site cleanup

CLOUDWAYS

  • No email support
  • Control panel not user friendly
  • No free malware removal
  • Site migrations $25 per site after 1st free transfer
  • Limited support performance in above tests
  • CDN not included

SITEGROUND

  • Unimpressive speed in these tests
  • No free malware removal
  • $30 per site migration
  • Pricing virtually triples in year 2
  • No staging hosting environment on base plan
  • After first month, no monthly payment option
  • No real CDN on base plan (free Cloudflare doesn’t count)


KINSTA

  • Expensive per site
  • No phone support
  • No email accounts – additional costs with Google Apps or your chosen provider
  • List of banned plugins
  • Expensive for multiple sites
  • No live chat for pre-sales questions

PANTHEON

  • Expensive per site
  • No free site migrations offered
  • No free malware removal
  • Limited support help in above tests

BLUEHOST

  • To migrate a site $149.99 for up to 5 sites
  • Slow speed in this comparison
  • CDN not included
  • Malware removal for $500+ per year
  • Poor customer ratings

GODADDY

  • Migrations $99.99 per site
  • Malware removal $359.99 per year
  • Poor customer ratings
  • Limited support performance in above tests

LIQUID WEB

  • Expensive per site
  • Average speed in this comparison
  • No free malware removal
  • CDN not included
  • Limited support performance in above tests
  • No email accounts – additional costs with another provider etc

GREENGEEKS

  • Slow speed in this comparison
  • Site migrations $15 per site after 1st free transfer
  • CDN not included

There is no such thing as perfect right?

The Fastest Wordpress Hosting Is…

WPX Hosting (Cost: $24.99 per month) offers the fastest Wordpress hosting based on my testing. They came out on top with a high performance for both of my loading speed tests as well as a solid performance in the Wordpress performance benchmarker testing. Read my full WPX Hosting review to learn more about them.

Pantheon (Cost: $50 per month) was hot on their heels during both of the WordPress speed tests, dominated the load impact testing but seriously fell short in the Wordpress site performance benchmark and support tests.

Kinsta (Cost: $30 per month) also put in a solid performance top to bottom including speed, performance, load and customer support. Take a look at my detailed Kinsta review to learn about my favourite feature.

(If you’re looking to switch hosting to improve not only your speed but also your core web vitals, I highly recommend this one).

So if I had to rank them-

  1. WPX Hosting
  2. Kinsta
  3. Pantheon

Why?

Because despite Pantheon delivering lighting fast load times, they really fell short in the support area and that is really what separates the cream from the crop and their hosting plans price per month is one of the highest.

Both WPX Hosting and Kinsta over-deliver in this area and have a great reputation for taking control of problems (whilst maintaining a 99.9% uptime guarantee) and solving them…

…while both being best value with lots of disk space and nearly 50% cheaper in price than Pantheon with a 30 day money back guarantee.

Best WordPress Hosting

And as for WP Engine’s claim that they are 40% faster than everyone else in Wordpress, well they are barely 20% faster than themselves and both their $30 monthly hosting plan and new C2 $600 monthly hosting plan failed to perform against cheaper hosts.

 So there you have it, if you want to choose the best Wordpress hosting… the winner is WPX Hosting.

And don’t forget, a faster WordPress website will result in-

  • Happier visitors
  • Lower bounce rates
  • Higher page view numbers
  • Higher search engine rankings
  • High traffic sites conversion rate

And last, but most importantly-

 Higher profits.

What Other People Say…

I came across an interesting thread the other day in a Facebook group-

wpx hosting feedback from other people

So that double confirms it!

WPXHosting is the best Wordpress hosting!

Which leads me to an important question…

…have you had any good or bad experiences with any of the featured hosts?

Answers in the comments please along with your name and email address! In the meantime, take a look at the website hosting resource site FAQs below.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the fastest hosting for WordPress?

I run tests across a range of the fastest WordPress hosts every year. In my latest round of testing, I declared WPX Hosting as the best host, followed by Kinsta in second (who host this blog) and Pantheon in third.

What is the fastest web hosting?

The fastest WordPress hosting service for a WordPress site is WPX Hosting (at the moment). I ran speed tests across 12 different hosts and WPX Hosting came out on top with both Kinsta and Pantheon closely behind them. Read the full post for the full case study results.

How much does it cost to host a WordPress website for a year?

If you want to host your site with a premium provider that is fast, includes an excellent set of features and truly expert support – you can expect to pay $249 a year with WPX Hosting and $300 a year with Kinsta. Look at my A2 Hosting review if you need a cheaper option.

What are the most important web hosts features?

The most important features to look for are daily backups, on demand data backups, a free CDN & free SSL certificate, email hosting, free malware scanning, free malware clean ups and excellent support.

264 Responses

  1. Rudi
    7.8.2022

    Hi there,

    I might be biased here, but if you compare fast WordPress hosting, you should really include 20i – not only really fast, but 100% run on renewable energy, lots of extras and true autoscaling (just to name a few features). Let me know if you need any more info, would be happy if this in included in your test.

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 13th, 2022 at 8:28 am

      If I ever do another round of testing, I will try to include it. Thanks for the suggestion.

  2. zouakpedro
    6.2.2022

    Bluehost and GoDaddy test site redirect to +18 site

    wpserver08(dot)xyz
    wpserver12(dot)xyz

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 8th, 2022 at 8:03 am

      Thank you for the heads up! We have removed those links.

  3. Jeroge
    5.23.2022

    I found a blazing fast wordpress hosting, and could you take it into your test lists? In my experience, it overtakes Wpx a lot, which calims itslef the fastest. Hope you can test it and put the result in the benchmark. The hosting is called Rocket, and its url: https://d.pr/PtP5VZ

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 23rd, 2022 at 8:47 am

      I know this hosting, and you’re right; it’s actually pretty fast.
      If I ever do another test, I’d include it for sure!

  4. Devid T
    1.2.2022

    Thanks for sharing informative content!

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 3rd, 2022 at 2:56 pm

      No problem!

  5. Howard
    10.27.2021

    Hi Matthew,

    Long time no see.
    I read your blog since 2013, and very happy to see you’re still sharing.
    Hat off to you!

    And thank you for this another useful and professional review.
    I bought wpx via your link, cheers!

    Best,
    Howard

    • Matthew Woodward
      October 29th, 2021 at 9:31 am

      Thank you, Howard, for following my blog for so long. I appreciate it!
      Wish you all the best!

  6. Megan
    8.18.2021

    WPX is SO helpful! I am not particularly techy, and have run into so many issues on my site. I know if I mess it up, help is just a message away. The issue is generally resolved within 5 minutes! Plus, the hosting really sped up my slow site.

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 19th, 2021 at 5:37 pm

      Glad to hear about your experience with WPX. Thanks for sharing with us!

  7. Maccus
    8.4.2021

    Really Like Your articles. Thanks for sharing such types of informatics article. keep sharing.

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 4th, 2021 at 9:25 am

      Thank you- Glad you found this blog post useful.

  8. Russ
    7.18.2021

    I have tested wpx hosting and several of the other mentioned hosts above, and I certainly would not rate wpx as highly.

    Yes they may have fast servers, but I found the customer support rather lacking.

    Ironically, the best customer service/support I found was also one of the cheapest hosts I tested (GURU), their (Litespeed) servers also out performed better than many of the more expensive hosts.

    Another shady tactic I have noticed with WPX, they will get a bunch of people to make positive comments on a facebook post, then disable comments and boost that post as an ad. So nobody else can comment or disagree.

    The absolute worst of this bunch (that I have tested) are Siteground, who I would never touch again with a barge pole, followed closely by GoDaddy.

    here are my reviews/tests if you are interested.
    https://michaels.me.uk/category/reviews/hosting/

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 19th, 2021 at 8:41 am

      Thank you for sharing your opinion and reviews with us. I really appreciate it!
      I just wanted to point out that I compared/tested these tools on their performance (speed) ONLY.
      This is why WPX is rated number #1. It was the tool that performed the best through my tests.

  9. CatalystPR
    7.1.2021

    Ours is a wp site, but the loading speed is very low.
    We are working on ways to improve it. will update once we are above par.

  10. Dark
    6.9.2021

    It’s a very nice detailed Thanks for sharing

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 9th, 2021 at 8:53 am

      No problem!

  11. Popeyes menu
    5.20.2021

    Thanks for sharing this informational article…

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 21st, 2021 at 8:07 am

      No problem!

  12. Aishwarya Jadhav
    5.17.2021

    Please give me a trial

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 19th, 2021 at 1:41 pm

      What trial are you talking about?

  13. Sehrish
    5.17.2021

    Mathew you are doing great, keep posting nice articles.

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 19th, 2021 at 1:45 pm

      Thank you Sehrish!

  14. Sheharyar Riaz
    5.17.2021

    Your blog is amazing. Thanks for sharing with us.

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 19th, 2021 at 1:45 pm

      No problem!

  15. Sheharyar Riaz
    5.5.2021

    Really nice post…

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 10th, 2021 at 7:38 am

      Thank you, Sheharyar Riaz!

  16. John
    5.5.2021

    Have not hosted with any of the above, but would you mind reviewing HostArmada?

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 5th, 2021 at 7:57 am

      I added it to my list- Thanks for the suggestion, John!

  17. Sudhanshu Waghmare
    4.11.2021

    Nice

    • Matthew Woodward
      April 12th, 2021 at 9:48 am

      Thank you!

  18. Nikita
    4.3.2021

    No words to explain this post. I am very excited about reading time because I found in this article real information, and it is containing a much more useful method. You know I am facing one small issue past some days finally I solved my problem after reading this post. Thanks so much for sharing as like rich full content.

    • Matthew Woodward
      April 5th, 2021 at 9:35 am

      Glad you found the solution to your problems, Nikita!

  19. Horus London
    3.16.2021

    Hello,
    Great review indeed. Can you test the host: NazwaPL – it’s the number one host provider in Poland. The performance is good, the price is perfect, the customer service is crap. But I would like to see your opinion.
    My website is built with this provider and is doing well.

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 17th, 2021 at 8:46 am

      Added it to my list! Thanks for the suggestion.

  20. Chris
    3.10.2021

    I appreciate the detailed data-driven review. Well done. I can’t help but notice that it is approaching 2 years old. A lot could have changed since 2019. It would be helpful for all the people about to discover this article to know which host is actually winning in 2021 -vs- the results of 2019 tests..

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 12th, 2021 at 8:58 am

      Yes, you’re right. A lot can change in 2 years. I’ll try to do other tests this year, but as you can imagine, running tests like these takes times, investment and money to do, so I can’t promise anything!

  21. C-M
    3.4.2021

    UK based blog reviewing US hosting companies. I’m guess because they pay the most in affiliate fees.

    Doesn’t make the findings any less valid, but I found it curious given the domain name used, and everything being in dollars. It wouldn’t make sense for a UK focused or European focused blog to be using US servers. That would actually be slower.

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 5th, 2021 at 8:45 am

      Uk based but with visitors from all around the world (UK, US, India, Australia, Canada etc).
      Using US dollars, in this case, is the easiest solution.

  22. shadi
    2.19.2021

    The article was very useful. thank you

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 19th, 2021 at 10:23 am

      No problem!

  23. saimymill
    2.12.2021

    Hi Matthew,
    Thank you for your research!
    it is very informative. the data you provide very validly. thank you very much for sharing such a piece of great knowledge. keep sharing…
    Thanks

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 15th, 2021 at 10:42 am

      No problem! Glad it helps!

  24. Sander
    2.8.2021

    What host do you use currently (8 feb. 2021) for this site?

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 8th, 2021 at 10:24 am

      For my blog, I am currently using Kinsta :)

  25. Joseph Quinn
    1.31.2021

    Hi Matthew, excellent case study which you presented really well.

    I’d be curious to learn how flywheel stacks up to the rest but I realize it would be impossible to cover every single host out there and put it all into one post.

    That being said you provided some quality data for anyone looking to choose a hosting company.

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 1st, 2021 at 9:36 am

      Thanks, Joseph! Cheers!

  26. Fayez Alnaji
    1.26.2021

    Oh My Oh My
    Mathew, Hats off to the best blogger ever…

  27. sale courses
    1.24.2021

    Great plugins and good platform of hosting

  28. mrdehnavi
    1.23.2021

    Great review Matthew. Do you think WPX are a good bet for ecommerce or membership type sites also?

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 28th, 2021 at 11:27 am

      WPX, Kinsta.. great hosting providers!

  29. Hannes
    1.19.2021

    Believe that your contribution here is the first that has dealt so clearly with this topic. You can clearly see that you really went out of your way to get it all right in the end. In the end, you did that too.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 20th, 2021 at 9:24 am

      Thanks, Hannes! Cheers!

  30. Steven
    1.13.2021

    I have been with WPX hosting for about 1.5 years. I had been happy with their hosting and the live chat support was excellent. However, recently my site suffered from a 503 error (unsure of the reason). Unfortunately, this also occurred on the weekend. A support ticket was created and was ‘escalated’ to the Security & Optimization department. But this department only works weekdays from 9am to 6pm. FIVE DAYS later and I’m still waiting for my site to be fixed. I’ve persisted with my questions about why it has taken so long and been met by similar responses “Our Security & Optimization team will reach you back in their working hours(09:00 AM – 06:00 PM GMT+3).” I’ve also been accused of being too persistent and that “Pushing us to do this “faster” will not help us in any way, you as well” My site has been down for five days and I’m losing money and organic search. How can I not be persistent? They also give me absolutely no explanation or information on why the 503 error occurred. I’m in the dark and they don’t want to shed any light. They say it isn’t a DDoS but they do seem to blame me and say that “It seems the website has overloaded its resources.” So I’d say speed is great but it certainly isn’t everything. I have been hurt by this latest issue and I am considering changed hosts. Kinsta seems a good alternative.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 15th, 2021 at 10:18 am

      So sorry to hear about your bad experience!
      Kinsta is a great host.
      In fact, this blog is hosted with Kinsta (and I don’t plan to change it anytime soon).

  31. Mark
    12.31.2020

    Great review Matthew. Do you think WPX are a good bet for ecommerce or membership type sites also?

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 15th, 2021 at 10:22 am

      Hey Mark! Yes WPX is a good bet as well as Kinsta :)

  32. Kim Koh
    12.23.2020

    I’ve been using WPX for a few months and am fairly happy with the performance and customer support. I wish I had more control over my account and the features, especially when it comes to changing settings and customizing something on the backend.

    It’s a great hosting company, and I’d say it’s suitable for those who don’t want to mess with backend stuff at all.

    Anyway, thanks for putting this extensive comparison post together, Matt! Learned so much about other web hosts.

    Cheers,
    Kim

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 23rd, 2020 at 9:40 am

      Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Kim! Cheers!

  33. David P
    11.28.2020

    Great article. In the process of looking for viable alternatives to InMotion. Thanks for taking the time to research all of this. Incredibly helpful.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 30th, 2020 at 2:23 pm

      No problem! Happy to share my experiments/tests with my readers!

  34. Dan
    11.27.2020

    I can tell you that WPX hosting are absolute rubbish. First of all they don’t tell you a lot of things of what they don’t allow that normal hosts do like access to the db with scripts.

    Their support I found it to be very bad a lot of times but better than most, and very arogant.

    I am surprised you recommended them and I joined them because of your review but to be honest with you this one disappointed me the most.

    I have 2 accounts with them and both had issues, which they never resolve, they don’t apologise and I have seen their CEO responses on trustpilot to be very arogant.

    Keep up the good work

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 27th, 2020 at 4:14 pm

      Hey Dan! I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with them.
      I had a lot of positive feedback about them, plus, WPX hosting performed very well on my tests (this is why I recommend it).

  35. Sander
    11.22.2020

    Hi Matthew,

    I like your WP hosting tests! However could you also do a test for a WooCommerce, LMS or Community or Membership Wordpress website. So a WP website type that is more demanding and have a lot of uncachable content.
    Now the speed part of your Hosting tests are mainly a “who’s best at caching static content” contest…

    And could you please include the following WP Hosting companies / plans next time?

    1. Cloudways with Vultr
    2. Cloudways with Vultr High Frequency (HF)
    3. Gridpane with Vultr HF
    4. Closte
    5. Kinsta Business
    6. Kinsta Enterprise 1

    Keep up the good work!

    Thanks,

    Sander

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 23rd, 2020 at 12:21 pm

      Hey Sander! Thanks for the suggestion- I’ll do my best.

      • Sender
        March 10th, 2022 at 2:16 pm

        Cloudways with Vultr High Frequency (HF) performing well nowadays. please do a test for us, thanks

        • Matthew Woodward
          March 11th, 2022 at 8:37 am

          I’ll add your suggestion to my list!

  36. Max
    11.18.2020

    Would be interesting to see a comparison of small hosts that offer a good performance/service and don’t break the bank…
    underdogs of the market.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 18th, 2020 at 9:26 am

      Do you have any names to suggest?

  37. Mark
    10.13.2020

    WPX is okay at best.

    Lots of weird stuff like:
    > staging server setup is clunky. definitely not seamless like Kinsta or WPE
    > no beta URL for sites not ready to go live. Do they seriously think I’m going to walk my clients through editing their Windows Hosts file? Ummm…. no
    > no unique URLs for CDN
    > for CDN to work you have to have two A records setup one for @ and another for www. This creates issue a landing page redirect chain which only adds more delay to load times.Umm

    • Matthew Woodward
      October 14th, 2020 at 10:53 am

      Hey Mark – Thanks for your feedback.
      In this test, my main objective was to see which host (from the list) was the FASTEST, not the best.
      So I focused on speed tests and that’s it.
      But you’re right, there are some features that could be improved!

  38. Sahilesh
    9.29.2020

    Thank you for sharing valuable information. please keep sharing more posts.

    • Matthew Woodward
      September 29th, 2020 at 8:58 am

      No problem Sahilesh!

  39. Tent Depot
    9.23.2020

    it’s really nice and meaningful. It’s a really cool blog.

    • Matthew Woodward
      September 23rd, 2020 at 10:05 am

      Thank you!

  40. ako.su
    9.18.2020

    best article nice information about wp hosting. thanks for sharimg

    • Matthew Woodward
      September 21st, 2020 at 9:43 am

      Thanks!

  41. alisbha khan
    9.9.2020

    I love this article it’s amazing

    • Matthew Woodward
      September 9th, 2020 at 9:46 am

      Cheers!

  42. Maulik Shah
    9.7.2020

    Your blog is amazing. Thanks for sharing the hosting information. waiting for more blogs.

    • Matthew Woodward
      September 7th, 2020 at 10:57 am

      No problem! Are you using one of these hosts?

  43. Becky
    8.29.2020

    Thanks for taking the time to do the research and write this beast!! I just signed up for WPX to test them out, moving from Siteground.

    Thanks again!

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 31st, 2020 at 9:35 am

      Nice, Becky! Any first impression of WPX you would like to share with us?

      • Becky
        September 8th, 2020 at 10:00 am

        They are awesome so far! I peppered the guy on chat with pre-sales questions before signing up. Then, when I had questions after signing up, the same chat system and guy were what I used. I LOVE THAT!

        They also email you important details all wrapped up nicely (think nameservers, IP address, FTP login, etc) that made it so easy to get the info I needed.

        And finally, they support a nonprofit to help homeless animals, not trying to just alleviate the problem but to eliminate it entirely! What a wonderful company to work with so far!

        • Matthew Woodward
          September 9th, 2020 at 10:30 am

          Hey Becky – Thank you for your feedback, it’s most appreciated.
          Hope it would help others to make their decision!

  44. Semayoon.P.P
    8.24.2020

    U r recommending WPX and Kisnta. Then why about A2 hosting?

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 24th, 2020 at 9:29 am

      Hey Semayoon – If you would have read the full article, you would have seen how A2 hosting has performed my tests.
      Overall, A2 hosting is not the fasted hosting provider but it offers other great features!
      I suggest you read my review dedicated, here: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/reviews/a2-hosting/ to get more detailed information.

  45. shaoor
    8.23.2020

    I love this so much information thank you very much

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 24th, 2020 at 8:54 am

      Cheers!

  46. Aquif Shaikh
    8.19.2020

    Just a bit of an update for you. Silver lake has sold majority of its stake in GoDaddy last year. So GoDaddy has nothing to with WP Engine. Though I do agree, WPX is any day better than WP Engine.

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 21st, 2020 at 9:19 am

      Interesting – Thanks for the update Aquif

  47. priya datta
    8.18.2020

    Good analysis. It’s effective. Website speed depends on hosting.

  48. Steph
    8.15.2020

    Thanks for such an informative review Matthew. I just finished closing my account with Siteground after a nightmare experience. Doing so much research was only frustrating because everyone thought their own hosting co were the bees knees, which was super confusing for a newbie like me….and I smelt BS. So after a painful several days of learning hosting ropes and doing more research, coming across this article was such a relief. Thanks. Going to try WPX. Already been on customer service chat to ask more questions. Must say they are absolutely not pushy compared to any of the others, nor the blog/affiliates. Cheers!

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 17th, 2020 at 9:48 am

      I am glad that my article helped you out!
      Hope you’ll have a good experience with WPX – Let us know!

  49. Scott
    8.13.2020

    I’m curious as to why Flywheel and SiteDistrict weren’t included here or on the 7 managed hosts test.

    I will admit, I need to go back and read more of this. But seeing these two missing when you claim these are the 12 fastest, seems like you are going to be wrong before you even start, and is why I didn’t read all of it yet.

    I could be wrong, but WPX boasted they were the fastest according to you, and linked to this article. I imagine Flywheel would not be the fastest, but would top a number of the ones on this list, but I’d wager that SiteDistrict would be at or very near the top.

    Otherwise, it does look like you do a fairly comprehensive set of tests to reach your conclusions.

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 14th, 2020 at 9:41 am

      Hey Scott. They weren’t in my radar this time. But I might try them in my next round of tests.
      I would appreciate you read all the article so you can see in detail how each hosting provider has performed for each test.
      It’ll help you better understand my point.

  50. ramprasad
    8.12.2020

    Grate posting thanks for sharing Use full information

    • Matthew Woodward
      August 12th, 2020 at 12:29 pm

      No problem!

  51. Makeala Jackson
    7.28.2020

    Hi Matthew,

    I’m gonna bookmark this blog definitely. Amazing comparison.

    I would also like to bring to your attention a new managed WordPress hosting, WPOven.
    Could please add that to the list as well, it will be greatly appreciated.

    Keep up the great work.

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 29th, 2020 at 9:21 am

      Hi Makeala. Sure, I’ll consider it for my next round of testing! Thank you!

  52. Erick @ Pktimes
    7.25.2020

    it’s a very useful and informative article for beginners I check your articles regularly thanks for sharing with us.

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 27th, 2020 at 10:20 am

      Hey Erik. Thank you for reading and following my blog!

  53. hafiz royanda
    7.25.2020

    nice post great web

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 27th, 2020 at 10:22 am

      Cheers!

  54. Colin
    7.24.2020

    Just curious – why not use a more realistic test site for the speed tests? E.g. use Astra and one of the importable Elementor sites. I think that gives a better picture of how a “real” site might load.

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 24th, 2020 at 10:52 am

      What do you mean by ‘more realistic’?
      Have you ever done a test like this? What results did you get?

  55. Faisal
    7.23.2020

    which hosting you are using matthew to host this blog ?

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 24th, 2020 at 10:36 am

      Kinsta! It’s written in the article ;)

  56. Jamie Hayes
    7.9.2020

    Having suffered so many issues with three Wordpress sites (Thrive Themes) on various high-level hosting plans, all with local Australian, and US hosts, I eventually read from the CEO of Thrive Themes his suggestion of WPX. Being on the other side of the planet I was nervous.
    They have offered fantastic 24/7 report and my issues have virtually gone away. It is one less thing that we have to worry about. Great performance and maintenance too.
    Plus, as I am not a tech, they never treat me as a fool.
    Thank you WPX

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 10th, 2020 at 9:08 am

      Thank you for your feedback, Jamie!
      Glad you have such a good experience with WPX.

  57. Cody Jensen
    7.8.2020

    Super valuable data on the fastest WordPress hosting. Thanks Woodward!

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 10th, 2020 at 9:47 am

      No worries. Happy to help!

  58. Bren
    7.7.2020

    Hey Matt, next year I would nominate adding Pressidium to the list. I’d never heard of them but moved my main blog to them from Siteground on a fellow blogger’s recommendation and their support has been superb. The only gripe I have is they’re fully managed so you don’t have access to your cPanel, but if you message support they literally get things done within 10 minutes. Pretty fast load times too.

    • Matthew Woodward
      July 8th, 2020 at 9:25 am

      Hey Bren. Thanks for your suggestion and feedback.
      I’ll have a look at it!

  59. Dylan
    6.27.2020

    Awesome article Matthew! I’ve switched over to WPX because of it.

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 29th, 2020 at 10:43 am

      Hey Dylan! I’m happy if I could help you to make the right decision! ;)

  60. Ravina
    6.24.2020

    Thanks for all information what you shared here through this article it is really very helpful

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 24th, 2020 at 10:38 am

      Thank you, Ravina! Glad you found this article useful!

  61. Dusan
    6.21.2020

    I’m sorry, but $30/moth for a managed hosting, for a WordPress site is not expensive. What do you want? Pay peanuts and get top hosting and support? Someone has to pay operating expenses AND earn something.

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 22nd, 2020 at 10:16 am

      Haha, I agree! It’s worth it!

  62. Gail Kingswell Trueman
    6.12.2020

    What a pity WPX don’t offer VPS

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 12th, 2020 at 3:13 pm

      Agree!

  63. Impressao 3D
    6.9.2020

    Would be great to see Closte added to this test as well

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 12th, 2020 at 1:42 pm

      Maybe next round. Thanks for the suggestion.

  64. Dashiell Murphy
    6.4.2020

    For site migration you can check out WP All-in-one migration, super simple and free for sites up to 512mb. They even have a plugin add on to allow you to transfer a larger site that have upload size limits by doing it in chunks.

    We use it for quick site migrations sometimes from staging to production, or local to staging.

    Also would be interested in seeing Pagely in one of your next testing rounds. Our company uses it for hosting and have been very happy with it. They are similar to Kinsta only with AWS hosting.

    • Matthew Woodward
      June 12th, 2020 at 2:44 pm

      Thanks for the tip Dashiell, I’ll check it out.

  65. Nevilson
    5.26.2020

    You have seriously worked a lot to gather this information, I really love it….Thanks sharing this piece of information.

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 27th, 2020 at 11:34 pm

      It was no mean feat!

  66. Himani Singh
    5.21.2020

    Indeed an amazing post. Keep up the good work.

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 22nd, 2020 at 11:12 pm

      Thanks Himani – I certainly will!

  67. Shelley Stevens
    5.13.2020

    I was hoping to see Chemicloud on your list! That’s my current host and I’m struggling to figure out if they are fast enough. This analysis is interesting and provides some great options to consider if I decide to switch. Thanks!

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 15th, 2020 at 6:58 am

      Thanks Shelley, I’ll consider them for the next round of testing.

  68. Scott
    5.6.2020

    Good review. Thank you. It would be super beneficial to list which of these hosts offer caching and other options that greatly speed up Wordpress. Such as: NGINX, LITESPEED, HTTP/2 and a lot of hosts offer their own form of server side caching as well.

    Thanks again!

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 7th, 2020 at 5:40 am

      Thanks Scott! Will see about adding more detail in the next round of testing.

    • Simon
      December 2nd, 2020 at 3:11 pm

      Interesting that Litespeed is on Kinstas list of banned caching plugins, but they do have their own solutions which seem to work according to their reviews. I don’t host with them. I’m with a smaller niche hosting company which I’d love to compare to Matthew’s list!

  69. Trabzon asansörlü evden eve nakliyat
    5.2.2020

    Thank you, valuable information

    • Matthew Woodward
      May 5th, 2020 at 4:54 am

      No problem!

  70. Salvador
    4.7.2020

    Hi. Thank you very much for your article. In my country (Mexico) there is no serious option to choose from. I am just a “newby” and after strugglin several years with a scrap like Host Gator, I do not understand how I could live with that provider. Very slow server, when I create a very simple marketing campaign from Facebook it just goes down… technical support is ok for very simple things but whenever you try to get more help (like for example a continuous fall in the server) they just do not know what to do and they just blame your applications… etc. It was just a nightmare. I am changing right now to WPX Hosting.

    • Matthew Woodward
      April 9th, 2020 at 1:33 am

      Glad to hear you are switching to WPX Hosting – they will take care of you!

  71. Jacob Jack
    4.2.2020

    Great Blog!

    • Matthew Woodward
      April 4th, 2020 at 3:39 am

      Cheers Jacob

  72. Naveen Rana
    3.19.2020

    That’s some serious article to look for. I am on WPX so it my day.

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 19th, 2020 at 6:07 am

      Haha brilliant – you made the right choice!

  73. Bright Bridge
    3.18.2020

    Good post I hope to see more!

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 19th, 2020 at 6:15 am

      There’s plenty more where this came from.

  74. GopalaKrishnan
    3.16.2020

    I would like to see your update for milesweb.in. Milesweb hosting service provider.

    Can you please rate the hosting provider as a request?

    Thanks in advance

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 17th, 2020 at 8:48 am

      I will consider them for my next round of testing. Thanks

  75. Matheus Guimarães
    3.11.2020

    I would like to see a review of the Rock Stage. They say that performance is the best on the market!

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 12th, 2020 at 10:27 am

      Thanks for the recommendation

  76. LGibson
    3.6.2020

    Would be interesting to see if any of these hosts perform differently between plans, the site ground plans specifically state that higher plans offer more resources and speed, so would be interesting to test of that’s true.

    • Matthew Woodward
      March 6th, 2020 at 11:42 pm

      Let me know your findings!

  77. ritzgupta
    2.28.2020

    This is really a great article and a great read for me. It’s my first visit to your blog and I have found it so useful and informative specially this article. Thank you

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 29th, 2020 at 11:17 am

      There’s plenty more for you to read through – welcome!

  78. Henry Roberts
    2.28.2020

    Wow thanks for doing such a thorough job, this was really well put together and informative.

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 29th, 2020 at 11:19 am

      Thanks Henry! It is certainly thorough!

  79. Anushka Sarma
    2.17.2020

    Yup,
    Required fasting hosting for Wordpress website. when your web hosting will be fast then your website traffic will grow and improve…

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 17th, 2020 at 11:51 pm

      It certainly does help Anushka

  80. alok kumar
    2.15.2020

    thought WPX Hosting might need to change their home page (which they mention your test results), I’m happy they do not need :)

    Excellent review, when someone like you does these all tests and suggest the best hosting, it helps a lot for others like me.

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 16th, 2020 at 8:39 am

      Glad to hear it :)

  81. Rey
    2.11.2020

    Very interesting to see these findings. I have been using siteground and it has been great.

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 16th, 2020 at 8:53 am

      Glad to hear it Rey

  82. Dan
    2.8.2020

    informative article, helped me alot.
    plz make another article on float hosting..
    thank you for sharing…

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 8th, 2020 at 8:40 am

      Thanks for the suggestion Dan

  83. Access Technologies
    2.4.2020

    Thanks for sharing such good information with us. I hope you will share more information about wordpress hosting. Please keep sharing!

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 4th, 2020 at 5:20 am

      Keep an eye out for the next round of testing.

  84. Muhammad Waqar
    2.2.2020

    Great content as usual!

    • Matthew Woodward
      February 4th, 2020 at 6:09 am

      Cheers Muhammad!

  85. Cadet Academy
    1.30.2020

    Great information thank you for share…

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 30th, 2020 at 3:36 am

      No worries :)

  86. Jon
    1.14.2020

    I am currently a Siteground user.

    I did notice that the GoGeek plan claims to use faster servers, and the price on that plan is more comparable to WPX Hosting.

    I would have been very interested to see that version of Siteground compared.

    Still would be. :-)

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 16th, 2020 at 11:32 pm

      Thanks Jon – I’m keeping a note of suggestions to consider for my next round of testing :)

      • Vincent Tobiaz
        January 30th, 2020 at 8:37 pm

        I also agree with this 100%, big difference and have big sites on that plan and my VPS.

        Also, you must not only set up Cloudflare in SiteGround cPanel and Cloudflare account settings, but also install the WordPress plugin and apply the optimizations from it.

        • Matthew Woodward
          February 1st, 2020 at 2:49 am

          Thanks for the tip Vincent!

  87. Charles Anderson
    1.10.2020

    You have done a fantastic job. You gave us lots of information, along with examples that are very helpful for me. Thank you so much for sharing.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 12:03 am

      No problem Charles – hope you can use this testing to choose the best hosting for your site.

  88. Joseph D
    1.9.2020

    I’d like FloatHosting included in your next test. Thanks.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 12:02 am

      Will take it into consideration, thanks Joseph.

  89. danutz
    1.9.2020

    Hi Matthew next time try to include this two: namehero (great support) and hostek (fastest servers in my opininion i terms of first byte – also great support).

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 12:11 am

      Thanks for the suggestions – I will add them to the list of hosts to consider in the next round of testing.

  90. digital Hardik mangroliya
    1.9.2020

    wow sir this is amazing for me.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 12:09 am

      Great news :)

  91. Amit Kumar
    1.8.2020

    Very nice information. WPX Hosting seems to be good and reliable also. It is also worth to take control of the problems associated.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 1:18 am

      Their support team are fantastic at dealing with all kinds of issues which is invaluable and surprisingly harder to find than you think.

  92. John
    1.8.2020

    Awesome blog. It’s very helpful blog. Thanks for sharing.

    Have a wonderful day.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 11:22 pm

      Glad I could help, thanks John.

  93. gono1deals
    1.7.2020

    Great blog.Thanks for sharing.

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 11:19 pm

      Hope it helped you decide on which WordPress host is right for you :)

  94. Shekhar
    1.6.2020

    Thanks… Finally my doubt cleared…

    • Matthew Woodward
      January 17th, 2020 at 11:14 pm

      Great news – glad I could help Shekhar

  95. vijayan
    12.24.2019

    nice posting

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 24th, 2019 at 3:29 am

      Thanks very much :)

  96. Franziska
    12.23.2019

    Im on easyname and Im not sure if it is fast enough.
    My powder brows blog is loading very slow sometimes.
    you think its a good idea to change?

    xoxo
    franziska

  97. Royal Institute
    12.14.2019

    I got to know lot about WP. Thank you for sharing.

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 16th, 2019 at 2:36 am

      Glad I could help :)

  98. Stuart Macfarlane
    12.12.2019

    Please try closte.com also.
    I’d be curious to see your results as they are the provider I use!

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 14th, 2019 at 12:16 am

      Thanks Stuart, maybe in the next round of testing.

  99. akash
    12.8.2019

    Nice Information

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 10th, 2019 at 2:41 am

      Thanks for the support Akash

  100. shishu kumar
    12.7.2019

    Thanku share This Post

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 10th, 2019 at 2:45 am

      No worries :)

  101. Lawrence
    12.4.2019

    I’d love to see how Convesio compares to them

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 10th, 2019 at 2:49 am

      Maybe in the next round of tests :)

  102. Varun Sharma
    12.3.2019

    WPX is one of the best fastest wordpress hosting.

    • Matthew Woodward
      December 6th, 2019 at 5:21 am

      True that

  103. Sidd
    11.28.2019

    Great review, thanks, Matthew!
    We have moved from hosting sites on managed VPS running (LiteSpeed) to Kinsta.

    Kinsta support and performance blew are mind. We are not trying to move all of our clients to Kinsta!

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 30th, 2019 at 1:09 am

      Yes I have a bunch of sites on Kinsta, including this one! Awesome support!

  104. Adil Balti
    11.28.2019

    GoDaddy on number 4th? I heard and read a lot that GoDayy hosting is worse .

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 30th, 2019 at 1:12 am

      I guess they’ve been making some improvements

  105. Babs
    11.27.2019

    I’ve been with one hosting company (Interserver) VOLUNTARILY for years.

    The past few days have been a sign that its time to move on and this test is a superb eye-opener. I’ve been going back and forth with the live-chat attendant at WPXhosting voicing my concerns as I really really hope nothing goes wrong with the migration.

    I just wanted to leave this comment before finally paying for a plan.

    This must’ve taken a lot of time and resources on your end, thanks for going through all the troubles.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 28th, 2019 at 5:49 am

      Hey Babs, well I think you are making the right choice with WPX hosting as your hosting company. As you can see from my fast WordPress hosting tests, they come highly recommended.

  106. Alexa
    11.26.2019

    Hi There, I am curious why you did not test HostGator?

  107. Hameed
    11.26.2019

    I am using Cloudways but I am not using the Digital Ocean but rather Google Cloud.
    Even though this plan is more eexpensive I assume it would make a huge difference.
    Can you add the Google (and maybe the Amazon) servers to the test as well?

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:45 am

      Yes I’ll consider those options for next year but I suspect you are making a good choice!

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:37 am

      Hi Hameed,

      In this test, WPEngine and Kinsta were both running on the Google Cloud (new C2) and Matt included Amazon in last year’s test.

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

  108. Jamshid Nalakath
    11.26.2019

    After reading your previous reviews, I decided to go with WPX. I have 25 + sites on Flywheel. They are really good but somewhat expensive. So gave WPX a go. The problems I had was firstly with the UI. It is so gen 1 compared to Flywheel. Maybe it is because I am used to a better UI. The more important issue was that WPX dis not have a temporary site url. This was a big deal for me as there were few sites which is still in dev mode. If I wanted to host it with WPX, I had to either point the domain to the server or do some complex host configuration on my laptop, which didn’t make sense, especially when Flywheel had it so easy. So I bought a package and then had to ask for a refund. I would definitely give it another try once they sort out this issue.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:46 am

      Yes the UI could do with the help of a designer that is for sure! WPX do have a staging area now which I agree should be one of the key features for any WordPress hosting providers.

  109. Travis
    11.26.2019

    Matthew:

    The quality of the content you continue to pump out amazes me. This was a very timely topic for me because while I’ve been with SiteGround for the past year, I haven’t been impressed. Your test results confirm what my gut was telling me – that SiteGround isn’t that great. I haven’t even heard of WPX Hosting so I’ll definitely check it out. One thing that would be nice to add to your report is the background of each company – i.e. how big are they, where are there servers located, and are they independent or are they part of some conglomerate that owns numerous hosting companies. It seems all these hosting companies are great at one point and then they grow so big so fast they start to suck or they get gobbled up by a bigger company and then they suck.

    Travis

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:48 am

      Thanks Travis!

      SiteGround are actually a really good budget performer but it seems like you’ve outgrown them and the problems with them really come in at the increased renewal price at which point there are better options for the money.

      You are right about the performance of hosts changing which is why this fast WordPress hosting is an annual test :)

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:33 am

      Hi Travis,

      WPX is privately owned by myself and 1 partner, completely bootstrapped 6 years ago and not part of any conglomerate.

      Server location (apart from our own 25-location custom CDN, free to all WPX users) are Chicago, London and Sydney and we will probably add India, South Africa and Argentina in 2020, though that is still to be confirmed.

      Let me know if you have additional questions.

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

      • Martín
        November 29th, 2019 at 8:02 pm

        Wow! I’m from south America ( Uruguay), and I’m very satisfied of your service. And although the server is a bit far from my location, the performance it’s pretty good.

        But if you open a data center in the region you will definitely rocks here. And I will be the number 1 evangelizer of your service.

      • Giovanni Pysson
        December 28th, 2019 at 1:12 pm

        Hi Terry,

        As an EU citizen I would really love to see a real EU-location. With the BRexit UK will not be an option anymore for me. I’ve contacted support but they stated the same that their are no plans to add an EU-server.

        Personally I think you will need to keep the EU market.

      • Nathalie Kalkan
        October 11th, 2020 at 1:22 pm

        Hi Terry, I would like to thank you for the quality of your hosting (speed and support are impressive). TEN TIMES faster in WP ADMIN (I am building site so speed in admin is major concern) than my current host for same site. Same site, same size, same optimisation. Do not want to shame them by naming them here but I am not kidding. Unfortunately before the month trial was over with WPX I did have to move back to my old host with great sadness because my site is getting too big (I will need 150-200GB storage when it is finished). Any plans to offer other products? I would move tomorrow. Also thanks to Matthew for his rigorous articles. NK

  110. jeff
    11.26.2019

    Would love to see if there’s any real benefit to using “wordpress” hosting vs regular hosting and a comparison of those providers.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:49 am

      I suspect the main difference we would see is in the service and experience the support team provide and you would hope the server is specifically optimised to run the WP application.

  111. Andrew killen
    11.26.2019

    Good stuff again. Would like to see servebolt and gridpane in your tests as hosting, and cache busting urls for load time tests.

  112. Odhran B McCracken
    11.26.2019

    Great write up. I use Cloudways and I think, after read this, I’ll move my sites to WPX and give them a whirl. 1 think you missed though, Cloudways don’t have free (offsite) daily backups, they charge $0.033 per GB.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:50 am

      I suggest you take some measurements, move one site, take some more measurements and then decide if you are going to migrate everything.

  113. Kao
    11.26.2019

    You should add Lightning Base to this. They’re excellent. I use them and WPX hosting for all of my personal projects, and recommend them to my clients.

  114. Richard
    11.26.2019

    Excellent article, as always. Thanks.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:50 am

      No problem Richard! Hope you got an insight into the top fast WordPress hosting providers and see who really offers fast hosting and value for money.

  115. Peter Nyiri
    11.26.2019

    Excellent article! I was wondering if you could also write one explaining the difference between the speed test tools. Pingdom, GTMetrix and Lightspeed all give different ratings and this is really confusing. Also what about mobile performance? I recently realized mobile loading is a lot slower than desktop. Is it worth using an AMP plugin? Thanks.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:52 am

      You should learn about mobile first indexing, basically the performance of your desktop site in Google’s search results is directly influenced by it’s mobile performance.

      So if it sucks on mobile, you are paying the price with your desktop rankings.

      AMP takes away a lot of functionality, instead take a look at https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/on-page/increase-website-speed/

  116. Cloudways
    11.26.2019

    I would like to see the same test and benchmark with mid-range packages and configurations.

    Such as Cloudways on AWS.
    Was Redis setup on all platforms who provide it without extra cost? Such as Cloudways?

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:52 am

      Yes we can add some of those into next years fast hosting play!

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:25 am

      Cloudways was tested by Matt here using Digital Ocean.

      In last year’s test, Matt included AWS.

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

  117. Jared
    11.26.2019

    While I know its impossible to include all hosting companies, I would have loved to see Flywheel in this test. If you have had any experience with them, I would appreciate your feedback.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:52 am

      I have no personal experience with them but would love to include them!

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:23 am

      Hi Jared,

      If it helps, I ran my own Divi comparison earlier in 2019 and Flywheel were included in that: https://blog.wpxhosting.com/fastest-divi-hosting/

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

  118. Constance
    11.26.2019

    I’m with a2hosting still happy with them so far, their support is Excellence but then again my site is still small and there’s not much to complain about so far. I used to host with WP ENGINE years back when they started (with my other site) and thought they had too many restrictions, it actually felt like I was using WordPress.com version. Most bloggers swear by Siteground and Bluehost but they are not my favorite, I tried CLOUDWAYS at the beginning of the year using their trial for less than a month simply because their interface is not user-friendly.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:54 am

      If your URL is the one you left in the comment, you haven’t done any speed testing for a long time.

  119. Robert
    11.26.2019

    This test was so good that I had to sign up using your aff link. The timing was also perfect. Next time please add more premium hosts to the comparison like: digitalocean and eukhost.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:54 am

      Thanks Robert will do!

  120. SEO-Noob
    11.26.2019

    Hi Matthew,
    Thank you for your research!
    When you will update your research next time, could you please add more metrics, like:
    – PHP version (5, 7)
    – Server (Nginx, Apache, Litespeed)
    – HTTP protocol version (HTTP 1.1/2) (https://www.wpserver03.xyz/ – HTTP/2; http://wpserver12.xyz/ HTTP 1.1 + HTTP 2)
    – Caching plugins (now https://wpserver05.xyz/ using W3 Total Cache)

    I think this will be handy.
    Regards

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:55 am

      So you would like me to delve into the more technical specs of each host? I chose not to get too technical because most people don’t care as long as it’s the fastest.

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:20 am

      Hi SEONoob,

      To clarify, these are WPX tech specs requested above:

      PHP 7.3 is the current highest available version but 7.4 is about to hit and as soon as it is proven stable, it will be rolled out to all servers. Usually it’s very quick from new release to implementation at WPX.

      We are currently using Apache but have been testing Litespeed as an alternative for some time and are likely to switch to that in 2020.

      We do use http2

      We recommend W3 Total cache as that one is best suited to our platform.

      Let me know if you have additional questions.

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

  121. Reginald
    11.26.2019

    Interesting to see this review. I’m a Kinsta user and I do have better experience there compared to WPX Hosting. WPX is good and the email hosted is a bonus. But, it may not be for everyone. Example, my site is messed up (structurely) and it’s just too much work to fix it. Maybe in the future.

    But when this happens, you may not be able to use the full services offered by WPX. But, it is still a good web hosting company.

    Other than that, Kinsta is top notch but can be pricey when you have over 150k visitors per month.

    Cheers.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:56 am

      I am not sure what problem you have that doesn’t let you use the full services by WPX?

      (I have my sites split between Kinsta and WPX)

  122. Dave Sweney
    11.26.2019

    Excellent review and I agree with your conclusion. I have been using a combination of hosting services, but knowing that I can get free migration to WPX hosting plus free malware protection/removal is the kicker for me.

    Will WPX migrate all 5 sites you can host with them for free? When I migrate to SiteGround a couple of years ago, they would only move one site. I paid someone to do the rest…

    Another issue is the SSL certificate …Is it available for free with all these host providers? I know that SiteGround has a free version and a more secure version of SSL certificate that costs anywhere from $99 a year (with a wildcard so you can have it installed on all your sites) or more…

    My last question is how much storage do you get and bandwidth for each of the services? In my case, the sites I will move are bulky and require a lot of bandwidth as they are e-commerce stores…

    Thanks for the work putting this together (and the investment of the $600 for the WP Engine C2 hosting test!)…

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:58 am

      I am not sure how many sites they migrate but ask their support they will be able to tell you but for sure they have free SSL certificate for all your domains.

      I suggest you take a look at each plan of the hosts you like the look of because storage etc varys wildly.

    • Darren
      November 26th, 2019 at 5:10 pm

      I’m with WPX and they will migrate ALL sites into your account for free.

    • Terry Kyle
      November 27th, 2019 at 6:12 am

      Hi Dave,

      At WPX, all site migrations are free (if they don’t involve a domain change e.g. migrating a site from davesblog.com to davesamazingblog.com) and are usually completed within 24 hours, could be a little longer during the Black Friday period.

      The unlimited free SSLs are by Let’s Encrypt (co-sponsored by Google) – more info here: https://letsencrypt.org/

      Storage and bandwidth varies by plan, just click on the Pricing top menu link on the WPX site.

      Hope that clarifies!

      Terry Kyle
      CEO, WPX Hosting

  123. Peter Paul
    11.26.2019

    I thought WPX Hosting might need to change their home page (which they mention your test results), I’m happy they do not need :)

    Excellent review, when someone like you does these all tests and suggest the best hosting, it helps a lot for others like me.

    I used Kinsta earlier, but it looked expensive when my site earnings dropped. After your first review, I have migrated to WPX Hosting. It is one of the best and excellent support hosting provider with enough features (like 5 websites and 100GB data transfer with their free CDN)

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:58 am

      No problem glad to help!

      Other than the support team, how has your experience been with WPX Hosting?

  124. Ian Rance
    11.26.2019

    I have spent a year with WPX with several sites and Siteground with several more – sadly tied in to a three year deal.

    I had one site infected with Siteground who just shut it diwn and were extremely unimpressive in support. I was totally unimpressed. Whatever the infection it reappeared several times over several months despite cleaning my installs at work as well as installing expensive security plugins per their advice.

    Moved the site to WPX and the infection reappeared and was cleaned within 24 hours. Their support is second to none and the only complaint I have with them us that they don’t like recommending plugins.

    I want a divorce from Siteground – poor support and high maintenance. WPX us everything a good partner should be.

    • Matthew Woodward
      November 26th, 2019 at 11:59 am

      Yes and that is really what separates the cream from the crop – both WPX Hosting and Kinsta hosting have an “active” support team that are the fastest to take control of problems and fix them. The time and money that saves every month far exceeds the cost of the hosting.

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