Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Some Quick Fine Print
- Why Should You Worry About Your Website Speed?
- WordPress Hosting Comparison Testing Methodology
- The Fastest WordPress Hosts You Need to Know
- Fastest Overall WordPress Host
If you want to rank #1 on Google, then you need to have the fastest WordPress hosting. For most brands and companies, that means using the fastest web hosting that consistently delivers speedy service every single time. Customers do not wait around anymore (if they ever did!). When someone clicks on your link, they expect the page to load immediately. If it doesn’t, they will simply click their back button and find products or services with someone else.
Basically, if you have a slow website, you are funneling traffic away from your online presence, and right into the stores and offices of your competitors. That’s how important website speed is to your brand and your bottom line. With all the WordPress hosting services and options out there, how does a busy business owner figure out which one is the right platform for them?
The good news is that we have done all that hard work for you. We’ve personally tested (and re-tested) some of the biggest and best WordPress hosts out there, so we know exactly which ones you should consider, and which ones you shouldn’t. Do you feel like we missed your favorite WordPress Hosting Provider? Drop us a message, and we’ll see about getting them added to our comparison! Scroll on down to see which WP hosts are worth the price of admission, and which ones aren’t. With all the data you need to know for sure…
Some Quick Fine Print
With any list of products or services, people might wonder whether they’re really fair and objective. For that reason, we want to let you know a few things right upfront.
First, we have not been paid by any of the hosting providers listed below to write these reviews or make these recommendations.
Second, here at Cut Throat Marketing, we use Cloudways to host the websites that we build for our clients.
We’d also like to point out that we’re an affiliate of Cloudways. This means that we may receive a commission for anyone that signs up for their service after clicking a link on our website. With those quick disclaimers out of the way, let’s get into the good stuff!
Why Should You Worry About Your Website Speed?
With very few exceptions, website speed is one of the most important factors for search engine optimization, ranking, and customer conversion. For example: a major national retailer found that for every second they shaved off their load time, their conversions increased by 2%.
This alone should tell you a few things:
- People do not wait around for slow websites to load. When a web page takes longer than they expect, they click their back button and shop elsewhere. To put it another way: Slow pages means high bounce rates.
- Speed is a major factor when it comes to overall user experience. Like everything else in the 21st century, people want and expect the service to be quick from start to finish. Slow websites create bad customer experiences. If you can’t provide them with a good experience, they’ll go to someone that can. This is arguably more so the case when it comes to shopping online, as it takes zero effort for that user to take their business elsewhere.
- Not only do people dislike (and even avoid) slow websites, but Google also considers page speed to be a very important factor for their search engine rankings. In fact, page speed has become enormously important for SEO. You can have great content and do everything else right, but if your website loads slowly, the hard work you did for search engine optimization likely won’t amount to very much.
WordPress Hosting Comparison Testing Methodology
Now we have a solid understanding of why website loading speed is so important, to your customers, your bottom line, and to Google’s search engine rankings. Keeping that in mind, we can dig into the details of different WordPress hosting platforms, and determine which ones work best when it comes to overall speed, load time, and more.
Here’s how we personally tested each and every WordPress host on this list:
We built a WordPress site on the hosting platform.
Each website contained:
- 250 words of written content
- 1 video (via iframe)
- 4 images
We ran 5 speed tests using GTMetrix to find:
- Average load speeds
- Time to first byte (TTFB)
What Are the Fastest WordPress Hosts? Here They Are.
Without further ado, here are the fastest WordPress hosts and hosting platforms that we tested.
Fastest Overall WordPress Host
1. Flywheel
The fastest host that we tested was Flywheel. After testing the WordPress site we built on their servers, we discovered that they had the fastest average page load time, as well as the fastest “time to first byte” (or TTFB).
Here are some of the many great features of Flywheel for WP hosting:
- Autohealing technology
- “Flycache”
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Fast and reliable site performance
- Complimentary malware removal
- Automatic WP updates
- Backups every night (automatically)
- Around the clock customer support
- Seamless collaboration
- Streamlined functionality and workflow
- Offers great scalability on their servers
WordPress Hosting Honorable Mentions
2. Namecheap
In our tests, Namecheap came out boasting some solid speed (third overall), as well as all of the following features:
- Cheap domains
- Inexpensive hosting
- Performed well among top tier hosting providers
- WordPress installed in under 90 seconds
- Hosted on Namecheap Cloud
- Scale easily as your visitors grow
- High uptime guarantee
- Use any domain name you want
- Offers Managed WordPress ready to go
- Intuitive dashboard for managing your WP sites
- Very secure
- Quick backup and restore tool
- SFTP
- Database Access
- CDN
- SSL
3. Cloudways
If you’re looking for a WordPress hosting provider that excels in every way, we recommend Cloudways above the rest. Here are the main features of Cloudways WordPress hosting:
- Complete control of your servers.
- 5 different hosting providers, each with multiple data centers throughout the world.
- Vertical scaling to adjust the amount of available processor cores, memory, and storage available to your website on-the fly.
- Unlimited websites per server.
- New Relic Application Performance monitoring built in.
- Ability to control what version of PHP, and MySQL are running on the server.
- Scheduled website backups, with the ability to set your own backup time, and frequency. Built in off-site backups mean your data is safe, even if your site gets hacked.
- Built-in bot protection to block commonly used bots and website exploits.
- Github Integration
- Free migration tools to seamlessly move websites into Cloudways
- Capable of hosting just about any website built on just about any content management system
- We host a couple custom built APIs to automatically handle data for multiple customers on Cloudways
- Laravel
- Magneto
- Drupal
- OpenCart
- PrestaShop
- Joomla
The only real drawback to this one is the technical ability required. This is due to the need for spinning up virtual servers on different cloud hosting platforms, then running the applications directly off of them. Of course, if you hire a team to do this work for you, then you don’t have anything to worry about!
WordPress Hosting Features Comparison Chart
WordPress Website and Hosting Speed Tests
To give you the full picture, here is the list of WordPress hosts, from fastest to slowest. We’ve also provided some helpful details on each provider’s features, hosting offers, and how they performed through the speed tests we performed.
Flywheel
Out of all the WordPress hosts we tested, Flywheel was the fastest. It came in at 1.74 seconds on average, with a lightning fast TTFB of 64 milliseconds. If speed is the only thing you cared about, then Flywheel WordPress web hosting is a good option to consider for your business.
Their plans start as low as $13 per month, and they will move all your websites over to their servers for free. Not all hosts do that, so it’s a very nice service. While they may not have all the robust features of Cloudways, they’re far and away the speediest WP hosting platform that we tested.
Cloudways
The second fastest (and our personal favorite) is Cloudways web hosting. They soar in at 1.88 seconds on average, just barely under Flywheel’s speed. Cloudways has a slower time to first byte, but they more than make up for it with overall loading time.
As mentioned above, we believe that Cloudways makes the best total package when it comes to website hosting with WordPress. They offer 24/7 support, managed security, automated backups, and real-time monitoring around the clock. These services (and many more) make Cloudways the #1 host for peace of mind, and our professional web host of choice for every site we build for our clients.
Namecheap
Next up is Namecheap. They came in third overall for average page loading times, right behind Flywheel and Cloudways. While sites do run quickly on their servers, they are not the most robust platform. If cost is as important to you as speed, then Namecheap is a good alternative to the others on this list. At under $4 a month, it’s definitely a hard price to beat.
On top of the attractive pricing, Namecheap also offers easy domain purchasing and registration, professional email for your company, website security, and overall simplicity of use.
WP-Engine
Coming in fourth is WP-Engine. They pride themselves on speed, as the others do, but they also put a huge emphasis on WordPress hosting in particular.’ When you sign up with WP-Engine, you also get Premium WordPress themes and Genesis framework, all included in the cost of your hosting. Genesis is a topnotch WordPress framework that can cost a pretty penny on its own. Including it is a very nice touch.
For pricing, they cost about 10x as much as the discount host Namecheap. Monthly, you can start at $30, but the prices get up to nearly $300/month for high capacity platforms.
10 Web
In the middle of the pack, we have 10 Web. One of their most touted features, other than speed, is their connection to Google Cloud. They run their entire web hosting platform on the Google Cloud, with 1-click installation and hourly backups of your site.
10 Web also claims that any website built and hosted on their servers will get a 95+ speed score, which comes directly from Google. That is remarkably high. Their connection to the Google Cloud no doubt assists with this speed increase. If you want ease of use and hosting directly served by the Google Cloud, then 10 Web is the way to go.
Amazon Lightsail
The world may use Google to search. But the content everyone experiences is more often than not hosted on Amazon. Boasting robust servers and the processing power of a company like Amazon, they are certainly one of a kind.
That said, they are in the bottom half of our speed tests, with an average load time of over 2.5 seconds. That’s nearly a full second slower than Flywheel and Cloudways. As you know, every single second counts toward the bottom line. Because of this, even with their cheaper pricing options, we recommend a faster host than Amazon can offer at this time for WordPress hosting.
Hostinger
Another discount option is Hostinger. At just $1 a month, you are not likely to find someone that beat their overall pricing. Even so, we cannot recommend Hostinger for those that want to optimize their site for speed. Hostinger tied with Amazon Lightsail at 2.56 seconds for their average page load speed time.
As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Hostinger may be super cheap, but those plans come with a lot of strings attached, such as limiting your website’s bandwidth to just 100GB. Due to these reasons, we do not put our stamp of approval on Hostinger. This is only for those on incredibly tight budgets who do not need many features.
Dreamhost
One big name in WordPress hosting is Dreamhost, but unfortunately they do not match up with the others we tested when it comes to speed.On average, Dreamhost was one of the three slowest web hosting platforms we tried, coming in at over 3 full seconds on average. That’s practically an eternity when it comes to page speed. Their pricing is competitive, but their user interface is difficult to maneuver (a common issue with web hosts), and their overall speed scores are so slow, that we simply cannot recommend you use Dreamhost for your WP hosting needs.
GoDaddy
The biggest name in all of internet services is arguably this one: GoDaddy. You’ve probably seen their name on web ads or Super Bowl commercials touting their domain registration, web hosting services, and more. Unfortunately, they were the second slowest host we tried. At over 3.1 seconds, you might as well send a carrier pigeon to your customers instead. While they do offer a wide range of services and competitive pricing overall, there are so many other WordPress hosts that are faster and more robust, we highly recommend you look elsewhere for your business’s website hosting.
Hostgator
Finally, we have Hostgator. They’re another big name in the discount web hosting world, but when it comes to speed, they just don’t stack up with the rest. At over 3.5 seconds of average page loading time, it’s unlikely your customers will hang around to see what you actually have to offer.
They do guarantee 99.9% uptime for your site, a free SSL certificate (which is becoming more standard), and an easy installation process for your brand’s WordPress installation. Despite all of this, and cheap pricing, your website will very likely suffer from using a host that loads this slowly. We recommend you look elsewhere on this list for a speedy host that fits your budget and your web commerce goals.
WordPress Hosting Wrap Up
When all is said and done, you want to host your business’s WordPress website on a platform that can do it all. Of course, you want servers that won’t crash, solid customer support when you need it, and a monthly pricing tier that fits your company’s budget requirements. More than any of these, though, you should look for a web host that can offer you lightning fast speed, especially when it comes to page load times. For that, you won’t go wrong with a host like Cloudways.
As our professional host of choice, Cloudways does everything you need and more, with speeds that blow just about all the competition out of the water. Once you’ve gone through the details and data above, we think you’ll agree. If you have any questions about the tricky world of WordPress or web hosting providers, we are here to help. Drop us a line, and we’ll help you get your company up and running online in a flash.