How to Create a Website With WordPress

Creating a website used to be a massive project. Expensive, too.

Businesses needed to work with an online marketing agency that would charge them tens of thousands of dollars to build the site. If you wanted a professional-looking site, that was your only option.

Things have gotten a lot cheaper and easier. The most popular option— which only costs a few bucks a month to start— is creating a website with WordPress.

There’s a number of approaches you can take to creating a website, but more on that later. Let’s dive right in.

A Step-by-step Guide to Creating a Website With WordPress

I’ve broken down the 9 simple steps to create your website from scratch.

They are:

• Step 1: Pick a name and find a domain for your website
• Step 2: Register your domain name
• Step 3: Decide what kind of site you are creating
• Step 4: Get a host for your website
• Step 5: Install WordPress
• Step 6: Point your domain to your host
• Step 7: Install a WordPress theme
• Step 8: Add content to your website
• Step 9: Continue evolving your website

You’ll easily be able to run through these steps over the next 120 minutes.

Step 1: Pick a name and find a domain for your website

Time for a tough truth: A lot of the good domain names have been taken.

Here’s how a naming session might go for you:

1. In a moment of inspiration, we think of an amazing name.
2. We hold on to this name for months, maybe even years.
3. It’s time to start the business, so we go to purchase the domain.
4. The domain is taken.
5. We try a dozen small variations of our original idea, all taken.
6. No biggie, we thought of one brilliant name, we’ll think of another one.
7. Backup idea #2 = taken.
8. Backup idea #3 = taken.
9. Backup idea #4 = taken.
10. Despair sets in.
11. We start considering names that we don’t actually like, hoping that anything is available.
12. We come up with 2 or 3 options that we don’t like at all.
13. Then we spend a week trying to come up with a name that’s both available and a name that we can live with.
14. Finally, we find one.

Websites have also become so embedded in our day-to-day lives that it’s better to change the name of the business to match an available domain than it is to pick a poor quality domain. Through this process, I almost always end up with a completely different name than I originally intended.

This is why I consider the “naming my business” and “buying the domain” steps for creating a business to be the same step. I try to only lock myself into a name once I have the domain.

We put together an in-depth guide on buying domains here.

The good news is that the rest of these steps are a breeze once you have your domain purchased. It’s the first and hardest step to create your website.

Step 2: Register your domain name

First you need to know the difference between a domain registrar and a web host.

A domain registrar is a company that specializes in buying and registering domains.

A web host, on the other hand, specializes in running servers that host websites. This is where your website “lives.”

Every web host will desperately try to get you to also register a domain through them. After all, it’s more money for them. They’ve spent most of their resources building out a hosting service, then they offer domain registration as a convenience, increase the price a bit, and collect a nice chunk of extra profit from you.

My philosophy is to buy things from businesses that specialize in that exact thing. Prices will be better and so will quality. That’s why I also use a domain registrar for buying domains and a web host for hosting. I never mix up the two.

The best domain registrar is Domain.com. That’s where I have all of my domain names.

We put together a detailed review of domain registrars here.

Step 3: Decide what kind of site you are creating

Most guides on creating a website will push you into using WordPress. It’s the most popular and flexible website builder. And that’s usually a good recommendation.

But there are a few situations where I recommend different options.

Simple Portfolio or “Business Card” Sites

Many businesses need a simple website that tells people a few things:

• Who the business is for
• What the business does
• Sometimes a portfolio that shows off some work
• Contact info

You need to communicate basic info—and that’s all. If this is what you need, Wix is your best option for creating your website. It’s incredibly simple to use and will give you a professional site at a very low price. It’s perfect for small businesses.

They’ve created the simplest and easiest website builder out there. Truly, it’s a joy to use, and makes the most sense when you just need a clean, professional-looking site that gives some basic info on your business. It’s perfect for small businesses, freelancers, and artists.

Ecommerce Sites

If you’re planning on building an ecommerce store for your site, don’t use WordPress. We have an entire post here on when to use WordPress for ecommerce and when not to. The short story: it rarely makes sense to use WordPress for ecommerce.

You can if you really want to but it’s not really the most optimal way to do so.

The best option, by far, is Wix again. There used to be more competition in the ecommerce tool space, but Wix got too far ahead of even Shopify.

If you’re going this route, we have a 9-step guide on how to create an ecommerce website. We also have a guide on how to start a store that drives real sales. Both of those guides will get you pointed in the right direction.

Blog Sites

If you know you want a blog or are planning on doing lots of content, start on WordPress. The majority of this guide is around building a WordPress website. (We also have a detailed guide on starting blogs here.)

Most websites are really just blogs. Some of the biggest, and most well-known websites on the Internet are blogs. WordPress powers over 30% of the entire internet. So it’s the only real option for starting a blog these days.

What about Joomla or Drupal? Or Typepad?

WordPress left all those other platforms in the dust about a decade ago. They’re not even legitimate options at this point. Pick WordPress — there isn’t a single situation where you’ll regret it.

When I originally started with this online thing, Drupal sites were still pretty common. I partnered up with an engineer friend of mine and we did a lot of freelance work migrating sites from Drupal to WordPress. Even back then, WordPress was a clear winner.

Now when I come across a site on any of these other tools, it’s kind of exciting. It’s like finding an ancient artifact. “This still exists!? How fascinating!”

Don’t use any of these other tools, stick to WordPress.

Everything Else

If you’re not sure or have another vision for your site outside the categories above, use WordPress. It’s one of the most flexible platform out there. It will do ecommerce, it’ll do simple portfolios, it’ll do massive content sites, it’ll do Fortune 500 marketing sites, it’ll do it all.

You might have to customize it more than other platforms in some situations but you can make WordPress do whatever you want it to. And just about anyone in online marketing knows their way around WordPress so you’ll be able to find plenty of people to help you when the time comes.

Whether you want to build your site by hand or you have an online marketing agency to do it for you, you should still build on top of WordPress. It’ll shortcut programming work and let you edit basic items on your site without having to edit code. I’ve managed marketing sites of venture-backed tech startups that employed dozens of engineers — we still had our marketing site built on top of WordPress. It’s the standard choice.

Step 4: Get a host for your website

Now it’s time to get into the weeds a bit. The next steps really depends on your actual goals.

If you want an ecommerce site, skip the rest of this guide and follow our guide on creating an ecommerce site.

For everything else, keep following this guide!

So WordPress is the tool that you’ll use to build your website. But you also need a web host. That’s the actual server that will store your site and make it available to anyone who visits.

Every website on the Internet is on web host. And the best place to go for most people is Bluehost.

We have an entire guide here that goes through all the best web hosts.

Hosting plans usually start around $5/month.

Step 5: Install WordPress

Bluehost offers a great one-click installation feature for WordPress.

The benefit is it’s incredibly simple to integrate the web host with WordPress. It should be clearly available when you log into BlueHost.

Step 6: Point your domain to your host

Let’s do a quick recap.

• You bought your domain using a domain registrar.
• You signed up for a hosting plan.
• You installed WordPress on your host.

Now you’re going to connect all that stuff together by pointing your domain to your host. Then when people go to your domain, they’ll end up on your website.

There are a few technical settings you need to apply. This involves configuring a few nameserver settings on your domain registrar for your domain. Your host will give you the correct settings; you’re looking for their nameserver settings.

If you’re confused, just reach out to a customer service rep from the host and they’ll help you out.

Once you have the nameserver info from your host, go into your domain registrar and configure those settings for the domain that you want to point at your site. Once you’re done, it’ll look something like this:

Step 7: Install a WordPress theme

WordPress is the heart of your website. It keeps your website alive and running. Treat it well and it will treat your business well.

WordPress uses themes to determine how your website looks. This makes it really easy to change how your site looks without having to rebuild your site from scratch. Swap out your old theme for a new one and ta-da! Your design will look completely different.

These days, I purchase all my themes from StudioPress.

Heads up, WP Engine bought StudioPress and now includes all the StudioPress themes in its hosting plans. WP Engine is more expensive but it’s perfect for serious bloggers. It’s a great way to save money on your theme if you are planning on building a large site to begin with. WP Engine is another one of our recommended hosts if you’re looking for the best. The downside is that WP Engine tends to be more expensive than other hosts. It’s probably overkill if you are just starting out, or creating your first website.

Back to themes, are there other options?

You betcha. ThemeForest and Pixelgrade has a marketplace of WordPress themes. There are literally tens of thousands of themes to pick from. They’re usually in the $30–60 price range. When looking for theme, I rank them by the most popular or the highest rating. Then I pick one I personally like.

After you’ve purchased a theme, go to the WordPress Theme settings and upload your theme. The Theme settings are under Appearance in the WordPress sidebar menu. You’ll have to click through “Add new” and “Upload Theme” in order to see this option to upload:

Go ahead and upload the .zip file you received when you purchased your theme.

After it’s uploaded, you’ll also have to click “activate” on the theme in WordPress to make it go live.

Step 8: Add content to your website

Now it’s time to create individual pages for your site.

You’ll do this within WordPress.

WordPress has two types of content: pages and posts.

Think of posts as blog posts that are published under a “blog” section of a site. If you’re not planning on having a blog, then you can skip posts entirely.

Pages are the more permanent pages on your website. Like your About or Contact Us pages. When you’re first creating your website, you want to get a batch of pages live so your site feels real.

Every website has a few standard pages you should create:

• Homepage – Your WordPress theme usually has settings for this page.
• Contact Page – Create a new page and install a WordPress form plugin so you can add a form to the page.
• About page – Tell your story and why you’ve started your business.
• Product or services pages – For the main services or products that you’re offering, it’s a good idea to create a dedicated page for each.
• Blog – If you’re building a blog, make sure all your posts get listed here.

This list will get you started. You can always add more later.

Step 9: Continue evolving your website

You now have a nice looking, fully functioning site.

But I’m not going to lie, there’s a lot of extra configuration you can do to your site: you can add WordPress plugins that upgrade your site, build out a blog, add an email list, grow traffic, the list is endless.

You don’t have to do any of this extra stuff — it’s all optional. It depends on your priorities and goals.

A website is an ever evolving thing. The way it looks after you first create it, won’t be how it looks a couple months later. At least that is the case if you are actively working and growing your website.

When you’re ready, these guides will walk you through the extra stuff that’s worth considering:

• Want to improve SEO? Check out The Best SEO Plugins for WordPress and 5 Easy Steps to Creating a Sitemap For a Website
• Want your site to load faster? Read The 5 Best WordPress Cache Plugins
• Want to get more readers? See Brand New Blog. No Traffic. Here’s What to Do. and The Best Email Marketing Services
• Want to learn how to blog from the pros? We’ve collected years worth of blogging content in our mega post Everything About Blogging

Our General Take On Building a Website

Don’t get confused by all of the different options for creating a website.

For a more in-depth look at how we think about this, check out our preliminary guide on how to create a website.

WordPress is King

Again, I highly recommend to build your website with WordPress— especially if you’re making a blog or a business site.

Some of the biggest websites on the Internet are built on WordPress. TechCrunch, The New Yorker, Variety and MTV News, just to name a few. There’s a reason for that: They’re the best CMS out there — bar none.

It’s an open source platform that allows you to run your website with very little technical expertise. It’s also the most popular blogging platform, so there are hundreds of thousands of smaller websites that use WordPress.

WordPress is used by 33.4% of all the websites, and has a content management system market share of 60.3%.

Much of our content is centered around WordPress because we use it for all of our websites outside of Ecommerce.

Here’s the guide on how to create your website on WordPress.

Wix for Ecommerce

For Ecommerce, we like Wix — which is an Ecommerce website builder that allows you to get an online store up and running quickly.

The reality is that creating and running an online store can be a huge pain. Wix takes that pain away. That’s probably why they are growing so quickly.

Here’s the guide on how to create your website on Wix.

The Dozens of Other Options

If you’re reading this right now, then you most definitely fall into the category of someone that should be using WordPress or Wix.

In rare cases, it might make sense to create a website using Squarespace or a similar website builder.

In other (very) rare cases, it might make sense to have a custom-built website.

More Guides On Creating and Managing a Website

Below, a master list of all our best resources on creating a website.

For general information:

How to Plan Out Your New Website

How to Buy The RIGHT Domain Name – A Detailed Guide

How to Develop Your First Brand Identity on a Budget

The 5 Best Website Builders

The 5 Best Domain Registrars

10 Trending 2019 Website Color Schemes

9 Places To Get Website Images (Paid and Free)

The Best Website Fonts That Go Together in 2019

13 Website Design Best Practices

7 Reasons Why You Do NOT Need to Hire a Website Designer

The 22 Key Elements of a High Quality Website

How Much Copy Should You Write on Your Homepage?

10 Contact Page Techniques That Make People Contact You

How To Create an About Page That Matters

How to Make a Wix Website in 6 Easy Steps

For useful information on optimization as your site gets up and running:

Website Speed

Website Usability

Website Security

Website Mobile Friendliness

5 Easy Steps to Creating a Sitemap For a Website

Should You Switch Your Site to HTTPS? Pros and Cons

The Top 10 Principles That Boost Your Website Loading Time

More about web hosting:

You need a web hosting provider in order to have a website.

We recommend Bluehost for most people. For advanced WordPress users, with high traffic websites, it could make sense to move to WP Engine at some point.

More about The Best Web Hosting Companies here.

Here are some additional guides to help you learn more about web hosting:

The Best Web Hosting for WordPress

The Best Free Web Hosting

The Best Cheap Web Hosting

The Hidden Costs of Website Hosting

More about analytics and reporting:

An analytics tool is important if you want to know what’s happening on your website. It tells you how much traffic you’re getting, where it’s coming from, and what people do on your site. Google Analytics is the standard. That’s what we use for Quick Sprout.

Read more about why Google Analytics is the best.

Installing Google Analytics is easy. Consuming the reports is a bit more complicated.

Here are some guides to help:

The 2 Website Analytics Tools Pros Actually Use in 2019

Setup Google Analytics in 3 Steps – The Beginner’s Guide

10 Vital Customizations to Make in Google Analytics

A Guide to Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets

How to Track Your Leads with UTM Parameters

More about building and optimizing with WordPress:

A WordPress website is basically made from what’s called a WordPress Theme and WordPress Plugins. All of the features of your website will come either from the theme or the plugins you install.

To help you get started, we reviewed all of the best WordPress Plugins across the most popular categories.

Here’s an in-depth review for each category:

Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

Best WordPress Gallery Plugin

Best WordPress Backup Plugin

Best Form Plugin WordPress

Best WordPress Cache Plugin

Best WordPress Security Plugin

Best WordPress Calendar Plugin

Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress

Best WordPress Popup Plugin

Best WordPress Directory Plugin

Best WordPress Booking Plugin

Best Membership Plugins for WordPress

Best Social Media WordPress Plugin

Useful information for ecommerce websites:

If the primary purpose of your website is to sell products, you’ll need an ecommerce website. We recommend keeping it simple and going with Wix.

Check out our review of the Best Ecommerce Platforms, to get a comparison to the other options out there.

Get the step-by-step on how to start an online store.

Our guide on how to create an Ecommerce website.

More useful guides on building an Ecommerce website:

WordPress Ecommerce

How to Transfer Your Website to Shopify

Best Ecommerce WordPress Themes

Best Ecommerce Website Builder

Checkout Process Design

Ecommerce Color Schemes

How to Create a Trust Seal On Checkout Page

Tips on starting a blog:

When you really break it down — most websites are blogs, and blogs are websites. They have become one and the same. The most popular blogging platform is WordPress, and that is also the same platform we use for any other website, blog or otherwise.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog specifically, and that is why you’re trying to figure out how to create a website…we have over 40 guides on blogging.

Here are the blogging guides specific to getting started, and building your blog:

How to Start a Blog

Best Blogging Platforms / Blog Sites

Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Blog Design

11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog

The Top 12 Tips for Running a Successful Video Blog

10 Lessons Seth Godin Can Teach You About Blogging

100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Blogging

Creating Your Own Website: In Summary

Creating your website might seem overwhelming at first. It really comes down to starting with these simple steps:

1. Is your primary purpose to sell things on your website? If yes, then focus on Wix, if no, then focus on WordPress.
2. Use the guides on Quick Sprout to help you through the process. It’s a learning curve for sure. Taking the time to set up everything correctly will help you grow your business and your traffic much faster later on.
3. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly via email with questions. We’ll help however we can.

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Best Web Hosting Providers

Want to jump straight to the answer? The best web hosting provider for most people is definitely Hostinger.

The hosting provider you choose is paramount to the success of your website.

Using first-hand experience as a starting point, I waded through all the dependable hosting options and narrowed it down to the best web hosting providers.

Featured Web Hosting Partner

Hostinger offers the most affordable premium hosting plans. With plans starting as low as $1.39/month you will not find a better deal. Plus get a FREE domain name and SSL certificate when you sign up for premium today.
Get The Best Deal

Read in-depth reviews of these below — plus, tips for saving money, the best types of hosting for different situations, and my method for picking the right web host.

The Top 10 Best Web Hosting Providers

1. Hostinger – Most Affordable Hosting Plans Overall
2. Bluehost – Best Web Host for Beginners
3. DreamHost – Most Affordable Month-to-Month Plan
4. HostGator – Best for Lean/Minimal Needs
5. GreenGeeks – Best Eco-Friendly Hosting
6. SiteGround – Best for Making Your WordPress Site Speedy & Secure
7. A2 Hosting – Fast & Reliable Shared Hosting
8. InMotion – Best VPS Hosting
9. WP Engine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting
10. Nexcess – Best for scaling and growth

#1. Hostinger – Most Affordable Hosting Plans Overall

Visit Hostinger

• Starts at just $1.39/month
• Month-to-month pricing
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 30-day money back guarantee

Get an 85% discount

Hostinger is the best choice if you’re looking to save money.

In fact, their lowest plan is $1.39/month. That’s rock bottom.

All of these rates are promotion, so they’ll go up at renewal. But you’re able to lock in these ridiculously low prices on a longer subscription.

They offer four years of hosting for $1.39/month if you pay for the four years upfront. That’s an amazing deal.

Even after the promotional pricing ends, the pricing is still super low. The single-site plan only costs $2.99/month, one of the lowest rates in the industry. In fact, it’s about the same as Bluehost’s promotional pricing.

The best part? Hostinger doesn’t feel like cheap hosting.

From the marketing to the UI for managing your site, it’s a premium host with a deep roster of features on every plan.

Hostinger also offers a separate plan just for email hosting. That starts at just $0.99/month.

The uptime, site speed, and support are all pretty good too. They have a 99.9% uptime guarantee along with 24/7 support whenever you need help.

#2. Bluehost – Best Web Host for Beginners

Visit BlueHost

• Normally $8.99/month
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• Recommended by WordPress
• 30-day money back guarantee

Get a 63% discount

Bluehost is one of the most popular and best choices for web hosting.

That’s because they offer great shared web hosting solutions at incredibly affordable prices. They’re also tailor-made for folks who are new to website building.

Shared hosting starts $8.99 per month, but there are major discounts if you are a new customer. You can sign up for three years and lock in the price of $2.75 per month. That’s a good deal, especially with everything you get.

If you get stuck or have a problem, they have 24/7 support by phone or live chat. They list their support number and live chat options right on their site, so you can reach out for help within two clicks.

Bluehost also offers fantastic analytics and SEO tools to help you optimize your site’s performance—while attracting more visitors.

Their SEO tool that scores and tracks how well your website is ranking for specific keywords. This gives you a good idea of how you should optimize your site for the best search rankings.

They also offer hosting that will support whatever direction your business grows.

Let’s say you start with a standard shared hosting plan and want to install WordPress. They have an easy 1-click install to make that happen.

If your site keeps growing and you want to upgrade to managed WordPress hosting to speed up your site and improve security, they have that too.

Or, if you want to get more control by upgrading to VPS or dedicated hosting, they have plans for both.

Bluehost covers everything you could possibly need from a host. That’s what makes them the best for beginner website creators.

If you start with them, you’ll never need to switch to another service.

#3. DreamHost –  Most Affordable Month-to-Month Hosting Plan

Visit Dreamhost

• Unlimited traffic and free migration tool
• Month-to-month pricing at $4.95
• Recommended by WordPress
• 4.6/5 rating from Trustpilot

View the Latest Deals

DreamHost offers stellar month-to-month pricing along with very solid hosting performance.

In fact, their month-to-month plans start at $4.95/month. This plan includes 1 website with unlimited traffic, along with a free SSL Certificate—a great deal.

They also offer one-year and three-year contracts start at $2.59/month that allows you to save even more money. Even though it’s not the lowest on this list (check out Hostinger below for the lowest contract hosting plans), it’s still a good deal.

Overall, their month-to-month pricing makes them a perfect choice for those who aren’t sure about a longer term commitment for any reason.

Along with great prices, DreamHost also stands out for the way they manage their web hosts. They don’t use the standard cPanel that most hosts use. Instead, DreamHost offers a completely custom control panel to manage your website. This is great for developers who want more control over their websites.

There is a catch: It makes things much more difficult to migrate off DreamHost. However, migrating to DreamHost is easier than ever though.

Their free migration plugin lets you migrate in a few steps. You’ll also be able to scale your hosting as your site grows.

If you run a nonprofit, I highly recommend DreamHost. They offer one free Unlimited shared hosting plan for 501(c)(3) organizations. That’s a deal you cannot beat.

DreamHost is another one of WordPress’s three recommended hosts, and includes some managed WordPress hosting in its basic shared plans. It also offers a managed plan with more bells and whistles called DreamPress. It does have an industry-leading free trial period — a full 97-day money-back guarantee.

Customer service is a little less traditional: email support is available 24/7, but live chat is only on during business hours. If you want technical support over the phone, you have to pay an additional $9.95.

However, if you spring for either the DreamPress Plus or Pro managed WordPress plans, phone support is included along with other premium features.

Sign up with DreamHost today for the lowest price in hosting without a long-term commitment.

#4. Hostgator – Best for Lean/Minimal Needs

Visit Hostgator

• Normally $8.95/month
• Month-to-month at $10.95
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 45-day money back guarantee

Get a 61% discount

HostGator is best for any business that’s looking for simple websites.

If you don’t need a boatload of extra features from your web hosting provider, go with HostGator.

I’m talking about websites or portfolios where you just need a visitor’s contact info. Or maybe you just need an about page. Or a landing page to collect leads.

HostGator offers an extensive list of how-to guides for technical support. If you don’t find the answers you need, you can turn to phone, live chat, and email support.

Unlike some hosts, HostGator does include support in all its plans. If you want a hosting plan that’s cheap and includes support, this is the host for you.

If you want to get your hands dirty, there is a bit of a learning curve to take advantage of their advanced options.

HostGator does offer Windows hosting in addition to Linux, as well as a variety of options to upgrade, including cloud hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress, and a dedicated server. Shared hosting plans start at $2.64/month with a three year contract.

If you’re interested in trying HostGator, I recommend taking full advantage of the 45-day money-back guarantee and testing out their support thoroughly before committing.

Overall, this is a great web host for simple deployment and uses like a company website that doesn’t necessarily see a ton of traffic each month. However, with VPS options, it’ll allow you to scale if you need.

#5. GreenGeeks – Best Eco-Friendly Hosting

Visit GreenGeeks

• Normally $9.95/month
• Free Domain Name
• Free Wildcard SSL
• Unlimited Web Space

Get Started for $2.95/mo

GreenGeeks is the eco-friendly alternative to other web hosting providers.

What’s that mean? It means they’ve used renewable energy to power their web hosting services.

Aside from being good to the planet, their web hosting services are top notch. They offer fast speeds, solid uptime, and great solutions for:

• WordPress Hosting
• WooCommerce Hosting
• Reseller Web Hosting
• Virtual Private Servers
• Shared Hosting

Bottom line: They’re a fantastic option for eco-conscious businesses and websites.

Here’s a look at their prices for shared hosting.

Like other hosts, they provide an automatic 1-Click WordPress Installer and auto-updates to keep your WordPress site up to date.

They also provide daily backups and advanced security features in order to help you keep your data safe and secure.

GreenGeeks also stays up to date with the latest technology like PHP7, SSD, CDN, and more. This helps make sure your website always stays fast and secure.

They also offer 24/7 support available by phone, chat, or via their ticket system. They are typically very quick to respond and can assist with a wide range of issues.

I’m a big fan of GreenGeeks for their great service and dedication to helping the planet with their environmentally-friendly web hosting plans. If you’re looking for a “green” hosting company, GreenGeeks is just what you need.

#6. SiteGround – Best for Making Your WordPress Site Speedy & Secure

Visit Siteground

• Starts at $4.99/month
• Free SSL, email, CDN, & backups
• Recommended by WordPress
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Get a 63% discount

Fast loading times are paramount if you want your website to gain traction. Nine out of ten potential page visitors will bail if a site takes five seconds or longer to load.

SiteGround is built to deliver top-class speed to its customers, as well as rock-solid security. And particularly for WordPress sites.

It starts with the technology their hosting is built upon. SiteGround utilizes Google Cloud to maintain swift and stable connections, and their SSD persistent data storage ensures low latency.

Not only that, but SiteGround’s innovative developers rolled out their own, better PHP solution in late 2020—Ultrafast PHP. Through it, SiteGround delivers site speeds that are 30% faster than standard PHP while also reducing time to first byte by half and memory usage by 15%.

I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math yourself—SiteGround will make your site so fast that you’ll be counting page loading times in fractions of a second rather than whole ones.

Ultrafast PHP also exemplifies SiteGround’s commitment to proactive security. They update firewall rules on this proprietary PHP weekly.

SiteGround isolates accounts on their servers, so even shared hosting customers never have to worry about one compromised account negatively impacting others.

Beyond that, they are ever-vigilant in keeping their customers’ sites secure and stable. SiteGround runs server health checks every 0.5 seconds and its AI-driven anti-bot system blocks between 500,000 and 2 million brute force attack attempts every hour.

This combination of speed and security can work for most sites. But, as one of WordPress’ recommended web hosts, SiteGround is particularly apt at delivering this performance for WordPress sites.

They add an extra level of security there, by constantly scanning for emergent platform vulnerabilities and offering auto updates.

Plus, all SiteGround plans—not just their WordPress hosting options—include one-click WordPress installation, the WP Starter site builder, and auto updates for both the WordPress platform and its plugins.

Altogether, that’s a lot of value included:

• StartUp: $4.99/month for one year, paid annually
• GrowBig: $7.99/month for one year, paid annually
• GoGeek: $14.99/month for one year, paid annually

Keep in mind that each plan will renew at a decently higher rate after one year. SiteGround also gives you options at checkout to pay for a 24-month or 36-month term instead.

However, SiteGround gives nice discounts on renewals longer than one year. Two-year renewals get a 20% discount on the base renewal rate and three-year renewals get 30% off.

So, in terms of long-term value, you’re still getting the best deal by capitalizing on their great intro rate for one year up front.

Altogether, SiteGround offers the best technology and services to host your WordPress site and keep it fast and safe for all visitors.

#7. A2 Hosting – Fast & Reliable Shared Hosting

Visit A2 Hosting

• Normally $8.99/month
• Month-to-month pricing at $9.99
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 30-day money back guarantee

Get a 63% discount

A2 Hosting stands out for their great speeds and low prices.

At every hosting tier (shared, VPS, dedicated), A2 Hosting beats other hosts on speed. If you’re coming from another shared web host, you’re likely going to see an improvement in loading speed once you migrate to A2.

With their Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans, you’ll get access to their Turbo Servers. They boast that it’s 20x faster than their other servers and includes:

• 40% faster AMD EPYC CPU performance
• 2x faster to first byte
• Manage 9x more traffic
• 3x faster read/write speeds with NVMe drives

A2 Hosting also has a 99.9% uptime commitment on all plans so you know you’ll have a reliable host that won’t be down often.

They offer free site migration with each plan too. If you’ve set your site up on a bad host and want to migrate, this is a fantastic deal. It’ll save your dozens of hours trying to get your site rebuilt. The A2 Hosting team takes care of it for you.

Like many of the other web hosts, there are 1-click installs for all the popular CMS tools like WordPress, Magento, and Drupal.

Note: Their startup plan includes only one website.

If you plan on hosting multiple websites, you’ll need to get the Drive plan which is an extra $2/month after the promotional period ends.

One trick to save money with A2 Hosting: the promotional prices end on renewal. To lock in the 63% discount for as long as possible, go for the tri-annual billing which will bill for three years at once. You’ll get 2 years of hosting for free.

#8. InMotion Hosting – Best VPS Hosting

Visit InMotion Hosting

• Normally $7.99/month
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• Free and unlimited email
• 90-day money back guarantee

Get a 57% discount

InMotion offers truly excellent technology, a wide assortment of plans, and a legion of longtime customers.

InMotion also gives you a massive self-help knowledge base. So if there’s something wrong, there’s probably a guide out there to help you.

The customer support is also among the best. Don’t believe it? Try for yourself. InMotion’s 90-day free trial period for shared hosting is one of the longest around and gives you plenty of time to test out InMotion’s support team.

InMotion’s plans are really straightforward and almost identical. As you upgrade, you’ll get faster servers and extra databases, websites, and subdomains. It’s a straightforward approach I like, especially for small businesses and websites that aren’t overly complex. No pushy upsells or confusing tiers to worry about.

Even the entry-level plans have excellent customer support. It’s 24/7 via 5 communication channels: phone, chat, email, tutorials, and Q&A, which were actively answered.

I also appreciate that none of this support is hidden or hard to find. The phone number is broadcast at the top of the page and the chat support login is easy to find in your admin panel.

There’s nothing more annoying than 24/7 support that requires you first unearth the contact methods on your own. It’s a waste of time and tells me exactly what I need to know about the host.

I also appreciate that the support is available at your level — whether you’re just starting and need someone to walk you through the ultimate basics with a friendly and supportive demeanor, or you want someone who can talk specs and technical nuances like a pro, the InMotion support has you covered.

InMotion also has some of the best VPS hosting options. They even have two types of VPS hosting so you can get the exact amount of support or flexibility that you want:

InMotion regularly runs promo pricing, with deals that start as low as $5/month. Normal pricing for shared hosting bumps up to $8–$9/month after the initial contract is up.

In addition to shared hosting, InMotion offers upgrades to managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.

#9. WP Engine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting

Visit WP Engine

• Normally $30/month
• Month-to-month pricing
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 30-day money back guarantee

4 months free or 20% off

WP Engine is one of the best (if not the best) WordPress hosts out there. Full stop.

They provide a truly excellent product, that’s highly optimized for WordPress websites. If you want all the storage and speed you can get for your WP blog or online store, this is the host for you.

It does come at a price though. A fully managed WordPress host is noticeably more expensive than shared hosting providers.

WP Engine’s lowest-priced plan is $30/month, and that’s only for one 10GB site with max 25,000 visitors/month.

If you sign up for an annual subscription, you’ll save a good bit of money because they give you three months for free.

Yes, the price tag is higher than other hosts, but when you factor in what WP Engine does, it’s an incredibly appealing option for WordPress site owners.

As a managed WordPress host, WP Engine only provides service to WordPress users, which means its entire infrastructure can be optimized for WordPress. Your site will be wicked fast, there’s virtually no downtime, and lots of maintenance tasks get taken care of automatically.

Bottom line: If you want a blazing fast site where everything is taken care of automatically, you’ll want WP Engine.

Customer support is also laser-focused on WordPress, which makes for highly competent knowledgeable support staff available through tracked tickets and on live chat 24/7.

You’ll be paying more in order to get a lot more. WP Engine is the ultimate choice for any business running on WordPress. If you don’t want to waste time managing the hosting component of your website, then these are the guys to turn to.

#10. Nexcess – Best for scaling and growth

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• Managed web hosting for 9 CMS
• Great for ecommerce sites
• 24/7 customer service
• Choose from 6 different plans

Learn More

Nexcess is a web hosting solution from Liquid Web — a provider I’ve featured on my lists for best dedicated web hosting, best VPS hosting, and best WordPress hosting.

So it’s no real shock that Nexcess makes my list for best web hosts. Where they really shine is managed ecommerce hosting. In fact, they offer ecommerce hosting for:

• Magento
• Woocommerce
• WordPress
• Drupal
• BigCommerce
• Sylius
• ExpressionEngine
• Craft CMS
• Orocrm

So if you’re looking to make an online store, they should be a top consideration for you.

Their Nexcess Cloud Accelerator—a feature that adds a layer on the cloud stack that increases the speed of your websites loading time. That’s a huge boon because speed is everything when it comes to keeping your customers on your website and browsing.

They also offer a massive suite of plans for each of their web hosts. Here are the ones from just WordPress for example:

This makes Nexcess perfect for any growing business looking to scale. No matter where you are with your business, there’s likely a plan for you with Nexcess.

On top of that, they have a dedicated support team available 24/7 to help you address any technical issues as they occur. Very important when it comes to web hosting.

If you’re running an ecommerce website or if you have a startup that you know will grow quickly, Nexcess should definitely be in consideration.

Prices vary depending on which CMS platform you want to use. But their WordPress plans start at $15.84/month.

How To Find The Best Host For You

By following these rules, you’ll be happy with the host that you get and won’t have to switch any time soon.

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So how do I evaluate web hosts? What actually matters?

Let’s go through all the key items.

Site Uptime

Uptime is the most crucial component of a good web host. If your site isn’t up, you won’t make money or gain an audience.

First and foremost, you want a web host with great uptime. This means you’re site is always available and never goes down.

To try to avoid the “just trust us” promise of near-perfect uptime, most hosts provide some sort of guarantee of at least 99.9 percent uptime. However, that guarantee isn’t much of a guarantee. It just means your bill can be discounted in the event of any unplanned downtime. There’s a lot of fine print on these guarantees, too, including not accepting self-reported or third-party uptime data, and not providing refunds for downtime that was out of the host’s control (for example, a hurricane).

Site Speed

Site speed impacts everything related to your site. Want search rankings? Get a fast site. Want conversions on your site? Make it fast. Want happy users? Speed it up.

Every part of your business is impacted by the speed of your site.

When looking at different web hosts, make sure you’re choosing a host that can serve every page lickity split.

There is some nuance with site speed.

In the early days, you need a host that’s fast “enough.” It doesn’t have to be blistering fast, but it needs to be fast.

Think of Amazon. Back in the day when Amazon just sold books, their site needed to be fast but it didn’t need to be instantaneous.

Now that many people use it for all their shopping, Amazon’s site can’t be fast enough.

The bigger you get, the faster you’ll want to be. If you’re planning on building a high-traffic site, you’ll want a host that can maintain crazy-fast speeds on large sites.

Customer Support

When running your own site, web host customer support is the single most important thing a web host can offer.

Digging through use reviews doesn’t always give you a conclusive answer on the quality of support at a particular web host.

Watch out for glowing reviews on top publications, they don’t always reflect reality.

There is one true test for assessing the customer support quality at any host.

The free trial customer support test.

Pretty much every web host has some sort of money-back guarantee on their shared hosting plans, which means you can set up your website and see what you think of the service with relatively low stakes — just your time and any add-on fees you opt into, like paying for domain registration. I recommend going to town with customer support during that trial period. Get on live chat, open tickets, hop on the phone as much as possible to see if you like what you’re being served up.

Most web hosts offer some sort of free trial period. I recommend using this time to really dig into your host’s customer support — its knowledge center and especially support staff across all channels. That’ll tell you the real story.

Traffic Volume

The amount of traffic that you get has a huge impact on the hosting that you need.

For a site that gets 300 visitors every month, pretty much any standard hosting package will be good enough. As long as your web host has strong customer support, you’re good to go.

As you get bigger, all sorts of small details start to matter a lot more.

Is the PHP on your server being updated regularly? Do you have a CDN for your content?

Is your site being backed up daily and can you restore it within 15 minutes if something goes wrong?

Do you have an SSL certificate? Can your server handle a giant traffic spike during a marketing promotion?

Whenever I have a larger site, I look for premium hosting that takes care of all this for me. And if I’m planning on building a large site, I look for a host that can easily scale to millions of visitors per month. I’m happy to pay a premium price in order to guarantee easy upgrades in the future.

Don’t skimp if you’re going big.

And if you plan to stay under 50,000 visitors/month, get a standard shared hosting package. There’s no reason to worry about the advanced stuff.

Price

While you don’t want to overpay on hosting, you definitely don’t want to underpay either.

Avoid choosing a host exclusively on price.

Most basic web hosting plans are in the $10-$20/month range. Yes, there are cheaper options. Some of them are promotional offers that go away at renewals. Others are hosting plans with terrible support and uptime.

My rule is if the price sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I also don’t worry about chasing promotional offers to save a few dollars. For every site I’ve ever managed, I used the same host without ever switching. Once you have a host you’re happy with, changing to save a few bucks isn’t going to be worth it. Promotional offers come and go pretty quickly.

Migration Features

The ability to easily and quickly migrate an existing site will save you weeks of time.

Even a basic WordPress site can be a real hassle to migrate. First you have to set up a new WordPress install on your new host. Then you need to export the database of content from your old site and import it into your new one. Finally you have to re-configure everything in WordPress like the theme, plugins, and settings.

That’s a real pain and that’s why I put together an entire guide on WordPress migration.

It is possible to skip all this.

Some hosts will offer a 1-click migration for popular site builders like WordPress.

If you’re switching hosts and handling the migration yourself, look for an easy migration feature. This is a great way to make the final decision once you’ve narrowed it down to a few final options.

Managed Hosting

Here’s how a normal host works:

• After you sign up, you get a login.
• The login takes you to cPanel. The cPanel is an app on your server that lets you manage it through a UI without needing to know how to code anything.
• You configure your server however you want.
• There’s a FTP option to upload files manually to your server.
• There are also quick options for installing WordPress and other site software if you want.
• You get full access and can do anything you want. It’s a “choose your own adventure.” Install WordPress, Drupal, Magento, or code your entire site by hand.

Alternatively, there are managed web hosts. These hosts customize the hosting environment and manage a lot more of it for you.

WP Engine is the best example, they’re a managed host for WordPress. Instead of getting a cPanel login that lets me do anything I want, WP Engine gives me a login to their custom interface that’s built to manage WordPress sites specifically.

When a web host is optimized exclusively for WordPress, three key things happen. First: It gets faster than pretty much any shared hosting provider can dream of. Everything can be tailored to making WordPress work its best, whether that’s optimizing website caching or tinkering with the command line tools. The host only needs to know how to support WordPress, as opposed to, say, Joomla and a Node server and some sort of custom-made site and on and on.

Second: Sites get more secure and stable. A managed WordPress host can build a system that predicts, accommodates, and patches all of WordPress’s vulnerabilities. That means fewer malicious attacks and less downtime.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for small businesses: Admin and site maintenance get a lot easier. And that service is vital because managed WordPress hosting is significantly more expensive than shared web hosting services.

While I give up some flexibility from not having a basic web server like other hosts, a managed host takes care of a lot of ongoing tasks that I’d normally have to handle myself.

If you have a small business site, a normal host is fine. If you’re building a larger site, a managed host will save you a ton of time in the long run and is worth the extra cost.

Conclusion

Out of hundreds of web hosting companies I have narrowed it down to my top 10 picks for the best web hosts.

If you’re inexperienced or know you’ll need a bit more guidance, look no further than Bluehost.

SiteGround is a top choice for WordPress sites that need reliable speed and security.

Looking to maximize your budget? DreamHost offers the best rates for month-to-month hosting, while Hostinger provides the lowest prices on hosting plans around without skimping on resources or features.

If you know you don’t need any extra bells and whistles from your hosting provider, HostGator is the best option for your simple website.

For websites where you need to count on fast loading speed, A2 Hosting and Inmotion are great options, particularly for shared hosting and VPS hosting, respectively.

Got serious growth on your mind? Nexcess is the hosting provider best suited to scale alongside your site.

Bluehost is one of WordPress’ recommend web hosts, but you can also get managed WordPress hosting from the specialists at WP Engine, who also come highly recommended by WordPress.

And for any companies or operations that value ethical, eco-friendly hosting, GreenGeeks is the provider whose values match your own.

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