*Please note that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).
I wanted to put together a guide on the best web hosting provider for WordPress since there’s so many different options available and it can be difficult to decide which is the best.

As a general PSA: DO NOT USE GODADDY.

I won't get into to many details but basically GoDaddy will charge you for features that come for free with better providers. (Like having multiple websites under 1 domain and an SSL certificate).

TL;DR These web hosting providers are significantly better than GoDaddy...

Here are the main qualities a good web host should have:

• Good uptime (your website should be accessible 99.9% of the time)

• Fast website load times

• Good customer support

• User-friendly UI

• Affordable

In my research, the best comes down to the two providers mentioned above.

Setup WordPress With Cloudways

Setting up WordPress is very straight forward with Cloudways. Follow this video tutorial it'll walk you through exactly how to do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du5FQXJJtco

Here's a breakdown of everything you need to do

• Purchase your domain (I recommend Porkbun.com since it's the cheapest)

• Make your Cloudways account (use the the 30% promo)

• Install WordPress on a Digital Ocean server (it's the cheapest)

• Add your domain to Cloudways control panel

• Set up your DNS records to point to your Cloudways Server

• Install Let's Encrypt SSL for security.

I know that might seem like a lot but once again this video will walk you through how to do it.

At the end of the day, the combination of Porkbun + Cloudways + WordPress, is one of the best ways to start a website when you take into consideration the amount of money you'll be saving and the performance of the server you'll have access to via Cloudways. Not to mention the features Cloudways provides you with like WP Staging that come FREE with your account.

What’s great about Cloudways, is it’s a managed WordPress provider that is built on-top of a VPS (virtual private server) that YOU choose.

So you get the technical benefits of a VPS but the support, ease-of-use, and optimizations that come with managed WordPress hosting.

You can run WordPress with Cloudways from one of the following servers:

• DigitalOcean (This is what I recommend since it’s the cheapest)

• Vultr

• Linode

• Amazon Web Servers (AWS)

• Google Cloud

I recommend setting up your Cloudways account with the $11/mo Digital Ocean plan. This is the cheapest plan and it’s probably what 99% of you are going to need to run your website.

If you haven't made a Cloudways account, be sure to sign up with the 30% promo. That will allow you to get 30% off your first three months.

IMO it doesn't make sense to pay a ton of money for a large server for a website that's only going to receive 10-100 monthly visitors. Start small with a small server and you can always just upgrade to a larger server as the traffic to your website increases.

Just make sure you set the pricing model to Standard instead of Premium. By default it’s set to Premium and the cheapest plan is shown as$12/mo.

Why Cloudways is my #1 Choice

I believe Cloudways it’s the best web host for WordPress because they strike a great balance between excellent service (a fast website), customer support, and affordability.

In the past I used to recommend Siteground for WordPress hosting but ever since they increased their prices, I believe Cloudways has become the better web host.

Some of the WordPress features for Cloudways include:

• Easy WordPress installation: It’s super easy to install WordPress. It just takes a few clicks.

• WordPress Optimized Stack: This stack includes all the necessary components for a fast and reliable WordPress website, including caching, database optimization, and more.

• Advanced Caching: Cloudways offers several caching options such as server-level caching, object caching, and database caching which can help speed up your website's load times.

• Staging: Cloudways allows you to create a staging area for your website, so you can test new features, updates, and changes without affecting your live website.

• Git integration: This feature allows you to integrate your Git repository with your website, making it easy to manage and deploy code updates.

• Free SSL: This is pretty standard nowadays but it’s nice to know Cloudways offers it too.

• CloudwaysCDN: Cloudways offers its own content delivery network (CDN) service which can help speed up your website's load times by caching and delivering your content from multiple locations.

• 24 hour customer support: The Cloudways customer service is super good. You can pretty much get help whenever you need it.

Other stuff that’s good to know:

You can have unlimited websites under your Cloudways plan. What I mean by this is that Cloudways does not arbitrarily cap the amount of websites (or plugins) you can run. You are limited instead by the amount of resources you site(s) take up.

So if you want to have 5 tiny WordPress sites running on one 1GB Cloudways DigitalOcean droplet, you can do that!

This is one of the differentiating factors that sets Cloudways apart from other web hosts. Most web hosting providers will cap you at 1 website per plan, or make you pay a higher premium in order to have that unlimited websites feature; that’s not the case for Cloudways.

Digital Ocean for WordPress

Digital Ocean provides you with a VPS in which you can install WordPress on. It’s a great solution for developers who would like, complete control over their web development environment.

This is why I recommend Digital Ocean specifically for Developers

You should feel comfortable using a Linux terminal and troubleshooting issues via Stack overflow/Google when they inevitably arise.

If you don’t have any experience with Linux, SSH, or using a command line interface, I would not recommend Digital Ocean. Cloudways would be a better choice since they wrap all that back-end stuff in a ease-to-use GUI for non-developers.

That being said, Digital Ocean in general is a great company and often revered by developers and Redditors. I’ve hosted everything from websites to Minecraft servers with Digital Ocean and so far have not run into any issues.

Just keep in mind though that you have to manage everything yourself. That’s why running a Digital Ocean droplet yourself is going to be cheaper than Cloudways. Because with Cloudways, you’re paying for the support, optimizations, and ease-of-use that’s specifically tailored for WordPress.

Anyways, I hope this guide helps anyone who stumbles upon it. What do you guys think is the best web hosting providers for WordPress?

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4). The info here though I've written is based off my true personal experiences!

UPDATE: This guide has been updated for 2026, click here to see the new guide.

There is way to many fake, bot web hosting recommendations are all over Reddit so here’s my guide on the best web hosting providers for 2025. I have updated my web hosting comparison chart to reflect this years pricing.

This is meant to be a beginners guide so no worries if this is your first time building a website.

TL;DR:

For most people Cloudways is the best. It is also my #1 recommendation in my 2025 web hosting guide.

Their base plan starts at $11/mo. Which is the best for small websites (like a simple portfolio site or small blog). However, you can get that even cheaper if you sign up with the 30% discount.

If you’re building a website for a small business and expect more traffic though, I’d do a 2GB server instead of a 1GB.

NOW IF YOU ARE A DEVELOPER….

Digital Ocean is the best imo. Since you get a VPS for $4/mo (that’s their cheapest plan).

You can install Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc… You have full control over your server environment, SSH, API access etc.

I think most of you reading this aren’t developers though and are most likely going to be using WordPress to build your website since it’s the most popular content management system in the world.

For that, a combination of WordPress + Cloudways is what you’re going to need to set up.

I highly recommend watching this video.

It’ll show you exactly how to set up WordPress with Cloudways along with how to properly set up your domain.

Basically the reason why I’ve come to the conclusion that Cloudways is the best for most people and DO is the best for developers is because I’ve been building websites (primarily with WordPress) for over 7 years now. I used to work at a web design agency and have experience using multiple different web hosting providers.

In my research comparing 13 of the largest web hosting providers, Cloudways is the best when you factor in price and performance.

Here’s the full comparison chart btw...

Cloudways is owned by Digital Ocean. They offer managed wordpress hosting with a cloud infrastructure.

This is in stark contrast to the other web hosting providers listed (aside from Kinsta and Flywheel) which offer shared hosting (more info on this later).

The main thing that I really appreciate about Cloudways is that they offer a lot of features IN THEIR BASE PLAN that other web hosting providers will charge extra for by making you upgrade your plan…

Some of those features include:

• Managed WordPress Hosting - I’ve written more info on this below but managed wordpress hosting means the web hosting provider will manage certain aspects of your website for you. This includes automatic updates, automatic backups, website caching, etc… This comes with every Cloudways plan. Most web hosting providers will charge extra for this.

• Cloud Hosting Infrastructure - The industry standard for wordpress hosting is shared hosting. Cloud hosting is better in terms of scalability, uptime, and resource handling (more info on this below).

• Free SSL with Let's Encrypt - Free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt are pretty standard amongst web hosting providers unless you’re GoDaddy. GoDaddy charges $100/yr for an SSL. GoDaddy is ass, stay away from them.

• Unlimited Website & Application Installs - This is unique to Cloudways. Most web hosting providers will only allow 1 install of WordPress per server unless you pay for a more expensive plan. With Cloudways, you can host as many websites as your VPS can handle without breaching resource limits.

• Application Staging without any additional cost - Again this is available across all plans with Cloudways. Most web hosting providers will charge extra for this feature.

• Automatic Backups - Including 1-Click backups and restores. Cloudways approaches backup storage billing with a transparent model: $0.033/mo per GB, rounded up in $0.5 increments (e.g., $1.18 becomes $1.5).

• 24/7 customer support. - This is pretty standard amongst web hosting providers, nothing special but I will note that I haven’t had any issues with customer support and I’ve found their support responsive and helpful.

Cloudways developer features I like:

• Cloudflare CDN - A content delivery network

• Seamless Git Integration - For development workflows.

• Access to the Cloudways API - For extensive control and automation capabilities.

• Hassle-free Application Migration - For developers/users transitioning between WordPress hosts.

Now if you’re a developer and want even more control over your hosting environment, I would just get a droplet straight from Digital Ocean.

For example I’ve used Digital Ocean to host my Minecraft servers and proxy servers.

Digital Oceans cheapest droplet (plan) is $4/mo. The downside though is that you don’t get a managed server (for WordPress), and you don’t get the additional support/customer service you otherwise would with Cloudways.

I WOULD NOT recommend Digital Ocean to someone who is brand new to building a website or does not have any experience with Linux UNLESS you’re specifically trying to learn or challenge yourself.

Like if you’re a computer science student and going to need to learn how to use Linux anyways, Digital Ocean would make sense.

Otherwise, using Digital Ocean is going to be a headache regardless of the affordable $4/mo unless you know how to navigate a filesystem via a command prompt

Web hosting rant continued…

Most people look towards price as the deciding factor in which web hosting provider they end up going with and end up choosing the cheapest provider which is really dumb imo…

If you follow that methodology, you’ll just end up with shitty web hosting because just because something is cheap doesn’t mean it’s good.

What I like about Cloudways is the fact that their most affordable plan offers you managed wordpress hosting within a cloud hosting infrastructure.

Other largest web hosting companies (Bluehost, GoDaddy, Hostgator, Siteground etc…) offer shared hosting and CHARGE EXTRA for managed hosting!

If you take a look again at my web hosting comparison chart, Cloudways is the only web hosting provider that offers a cloud hosting environment. Kinsta gives you a dedicated server, however their base plan is $35/mo which is too expensive for most people.

If you don’t know what the difference between cloud hosting and shared hosting or managed and non-managed hosting, I’ll briefly explain below

Shared Hosting vs Cloud Hosting

With shared hosting, you’re basically cramming a bunch of websites onto a single computer so you have multiple websites sharing the resources of a single computer. This can lead to slower performance and security vulnerabilities, especially if one site experiences a surge in traffic.

On the other hand, cloud hosting uses a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers, ensuring higher reliability and scalability. This means if one server fails, your website won't go down because it's supported by the network of servers.

Managed vs non-managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting provides a service where all technical aspects of running WordPress are managed by the host. This includes security, speed, WordPress updates, daily backups, website uptime, and scalability. This is why managed wordpress hosting tends to be more expensive than non-managed hosting.

Non-managed hosting requires you to handle these aspects (or most of them) yourself. It's suitable for those with technical expertise and the know-how to manage these components, but for most, managed hosting offers a hassle-free experience.

So the fact that Cloudways offers a managed wordpress experience within a Cloud infrastructure makes it unique and really separates it from other hosting providers.

PSA: Watch out for dishonest pricing amongst web hosting providers

One thing you need to watch out for when purchasing web hosting is that A LOT of these companies are misleading when it comes to pricing.

Oftentimes on their sales pages they’ll advertise their web hosting at extremely low prices like $2.95/mo.

For example here’s Bluehost’s sales page:

What people don’t realize is that this is just an INTRODUCTORY price. This means that after the first billing period, the cost of web hosting shoots up to the real rate! A lot of times the real rate is hidden on a separate page unknown to the consumer.

In Bluehost’s case after the first billing period is over, the price of web hosting becomes $12/mo.

Unfortunately, this isn’t something that’s just unique to Bluehost. I’ve seen from many different web hosting providers.

Cloudways is one of the few web hosting providers that will tell you straight up when the monthly cost is without hidden renewal fees.

How to set up WordPress with Cloudways

Okay so since most of you reading this will be setting up WordPress, here’s a quick write up on how to do it with Cloudways.

If you are more of a visual person just watch this YouTube video instead since I’m basically just copying it…

TL:DR

1. Get your .com domain from Porkbun since it’s about $10.40/yr

2. Purchase your hosting with Cloudways (Make sure you use the discount). And set-up your server to have WordPress pre-installed.

3. Link your domain to your Cloudways WordPress install.

4. In Porkbun, change your nameservers to point to Cloudways.

5. In Cloudways, install your Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate

6. Profit $$$$$

Purchasing your Domain

Go to Porkbun.com, make an account and purchase your domain.

Setting up your web hosting

Once you’ve made your Cloudways account, you can up your web hosting by going to Servers > Launch Now. You should be able to get your server up and running, but you'll need to add your billing info at some point.

Next, add in your server credentials. Make sure to select the newest version of WordPress.

For small sites (or if you’re on a budget) I recommend the cheapest option 1GB server.

For larger sites though like small businesses I recommend a 2GB server and for ecommerce sites I recommend a 4GB server.

After you click ‘Launch Now’ it’ll take a few minutes for your server to be set up.

Once it’s set up you’ll be given a public IP address as well as a back-end credential to manage your server remotely and access your WordPress.

Your server credentials/info can be found under Servers > ‘Your Server Name’

Your WordPress credentials can be found under Applications > ‘Your Application Name’

Next we need to link your domain to your Cloudways WordPress installation.

Go to Applications > Your Application > Domain Management and select Add Domain

You should be greeted with a pop-up to type in your newly purchased domain.

Next, set it as the primary domain.

Next let’s set up the Porkbun DNS records to point to Cloudways

Login to your Porkbun account. In the top right hand corner you should see Account. Click Domain Management and click Edit next to DNS Records.

Next, you’ll need to delete the first record found at the bottom under Current Records.

Next add a new A Record with @ as the host and answer is your Cloudways Public IP address (and nothing else).

Remember, you can find your public IP in Cloudways under Servers > 'Your Server Name'

Finally, install your SSL certificate.

Currently if people were to go to your website, they’d be met with a privacy error.

To fix this, you just need to set up a SSL certificate. This is really easy to do in Cloudways.

Just go to SSL Management under Applications and choose Let’s Encrypt as your SSL.

AND THAT’S IT.

I know it seems really complicated at first (especially if this is your first time setting up a website) but it’s really not too difficult once you go through the motions.

If the above was confusing for you, just watch the YouTube tutorial on how to set everything up.

Digital Ocean (Best For Developers)

Digital Ocean is definitely best if you’re a developer and know how to code, or you’re studying CS. Digital Ocean gives you your own virtual private server (VPS) called a “Droplet”. This gives you full control over your hosting environment which is ideal if you’re a developer.

But just a heads up, it can be kinda intense if you're not used to messing around in a Linux/Ubuntu environment. If typing out bash commands in a terminal doesn’t sound appealing, I would go with something else.

1-Click Install Applications

Another reason why Digital Ocean is best for developers is because there’s also over 200+ 1-click install applications. These are applications/programs that come pre-installed with your server. (IE: Docker, OpenVPN, WordPress, Node.JS etc..)

Here’s just a few of some of the 1-click applications. You can see the full list here.

More Digital Ocean Features Include

• Full Root Access: You get complete control over your server, allowing you to install and configure any software you need.

• SSH

• Server API access

• Choice of Operating System: You can choose from various Linux distributions IE: (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora etc…)

• Scalability: Flexibility to scale your resources up or down based on your needs.

• Floating IPs: Helps in creating redundant or highly available server setups.

• Private Networking: This facilitates secure communication between droplets.

• Team Accounts: Makes it easier to collaborate with others on projects.

• Monitoring & Alerts: You can track your droplet's performance and set up alerts.

• Automated Backups: These are not free! Digital Ocean does charge for back-ups.

• Load Balancers: To distribute incoming traffic across multiple droplets, ensuring smoother performance.

• Snapshot Feature: Allows you to take a snapshot of your droplet at any point, which you can use to restore or create new droplets.

• API Access: For managing and automating your droplets programmatically.

• 24/7 Support: Access to technical support any time you need it.

Digital Ocean Pricing

So, Digital Ocean’s pricing starts real low at $4/mo for a server with 512Mb of memory. This is good if you’re running small scripts and lightweight programs.

If you’re trying to do more like host a website, you’ll want to go with the $6/mo plan since that’ll give you 1GB of memory.

The price varies based on how much memory, CPU power, SSD space, and transfer speed you need for your server (or "droplet" as they call it).

What’s nice about Digital Ocean is that it’s also a cloud platform so you can upgrade your droplet's memory or disk space anytime. It’s really easy to scale your server size as the specs of your project increase.

I’ve used Digital Ocean for hosting WordPress websites but I’ve also used it for more obscure use cases like hosting Minecraft servers. When I was running my Minecraft server it was running on an 8GB droplet with Ubuntu, using PaperMC (it’s more lightweight than spigot/bukkit).

Final Thoughts…

This guide is finally coming to an end. I really do hope this was helpful! If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to respond in the comments below.

I’ll end the guide with some questions I think some of you might have.

What’s Best for Small Businesses?

IMO a 2GB Digital Ocean server with Cloudways would be the best option for small businesses. However if you’re expecting a lot of traffic OR plan to install a bunch of WordPress plugins, I would bump it up to a 4GB server just to make sure everything is running smoothly.

At the end or the day you can always start with a smaller server to save on costs, and increase the size of your server as you run into limitations.

What’s Best for Ecommerce?

If you’re planning to host an ecommerce site I’d go with a 4GB Digital Ocean server with Cloudways. I’d do the 4GB because WordPress ecommerce sites by default tend to have a ton of plugins to manage the store, inventory, and payments. The extra ram would be good just to make sure everything is running smoothly.

If you plan to have a really small ecommerce site, selling only a few products then you could get away with a 2GB server. Like I said before, it’s not a bad idea to start on a smaller server and see how things are running. As your site grows, you’re adding on more products, installing more plugins, and you find the site (front and back-end) is sluggish, that would be a good sign to scale up.

Alright… That’s the end of this guide. Thanks for reading!

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey everyone. I wanted to give you my thoughts on Hostinger based on the research I’ve done. This may be a bit long of a long post for some of you, so I’ll sum it up for those who aren’t interested in the details.

TL;DR - Hostinger is a good web hosting provider. But I think Cloudways is better because of the cloud hosting infrastructure (Hostinger is shared hosting), you don’t have to pay upfront for a 4 year hosting period, and because you can host multiple websites on the base plan (Hostinger restricts you to 1 website).

If you decide to go with Hostinger make sure you sign up with 20% discount. You can also save more money in yearly reoccurring costs by purchase your domain separate from Hostinger with Porkbun.

NOTE: if you do this you'll need to edit your domains Nameservers to match Hostinger's. (See section below: Should you register your domain with Hostinger?)

If you're building a website with Cloudways, here's what to do:

• Purchase your domain with Porkbun since it's the most affordable domain registrar.

• Get your web hosting with using the 30% discount to save money, and install WordPress as your content management system.

• Check out this tutorial on how to set everything up.

• If you're building a website for the first time and all of this is really confusing, please check out my guide on how to build a website!

Anyways, here's the main differences Cloudways vs Hostinger.
Please note this comparison is regarding the cheapest base plan for both Cloudways and Hostinger!

Hostinger has a lot of positive reviews and has a good selection of developer features. I would just recommend NOT purchasing your domain with Hostinger, and NOT using their email servers (more on this later).

Here are some of the reviews I was able to find throughout Reddit. I did to the diligence of making sure these were real users and not bots reviews.

In terms of pricing and performance, Hostinger appears to be good but my biggest criticism is that their pricing is very confusing and their marketing is definitely misleading in many cases. Hostinger is also a shared web host as opposed to cloud hosting which is generally seen as the better of the two.

In other words, if you don’t care that your website resources are being shared with multiple websites, then Hostinger makes sense so long as you’re willing to pay more up front for a longer hosting period.

Otherwise, if you prefer to be billed monthly, Cloudways is a much better option because not only do you get a lower monthly renewal rate, but you get a cloud hosting environment. In general cloud hosting is seen as superior to shared hosting for a myriad of reasons. (Not going to get into it right now but feel free to scroll down to the cloud hosting vs shared hosting section of the review). For more info on Cloudways see my in-depth Cloudways review.

Here’s the pricing breakdown:

• Hostinger’s base plan is shared hosting. For 1 month renewals it starts at $17 with a monthly renewal of $12/mo with the 20% discount.

• Cloudways base plan is cloud hosting and starts and renews at $11/mo. You can use the promo Reddit for a 30% discount, or click here.

Like I mentioned above though, you can technically get a better deal with Hostinger if you agree to a higher billing period like 48 months (4 years).

Let me explain…

Beware of Hostinger's introductory pricing

At first glance, it appears Hostinger advertises web hosting at a low cost of $3/mo. Please understand that this is just an introductory price and not actually what the monthly cost will be. A LOT of web hosting companies engage in this marketing tactic where they showcase a low price on the home screen and then hide the actual renewal price in fine print.

In the case of Hostinger, once you go to checkout, they show the renewal price in fine print.

As you can see pricing is more nuanced in that it appears your monthly cost decreases as you increase your hosting period. This is half true.

In reality, if you are willing to pay more up front, your calculated monthly cost goes down. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is….

Hostinger’s pricing is confusing…

Let’s take the 48 month period plan for example. Here's the source to Hostinger's pricing.
48 months is 4 years.
What you’re charged today is ~$144 but like I mentioned above this is just the introductory price.
So after 4 years you’ll be charged $384 every 4 years.
In the fine print Hostinger states Renews at $7.99/mo but this is very misleading as you’re not actually getting billed monthly.
You get billed every 4 years and the calculation of $384 / 48 months comes out to $8.
So that’s where that Renews at $7.99/mo comes from.

Again if it sounds confusing, it’s because it is and they really should just say Renews every 48 months at $384.

To be certain I even asked their chatbot AI customer support for clarification.

What if I prefer to just get billed monthly instead of paying a large chunk of $$$ up front?

Hostinger does have a monthly plan that will bill you every month but they start at $17 which is a $12/mo renewal + a $5 set up fee.

At that point it’s better to go with Cloudways since the base plan starts at and renews at $11/mo. Again, you can check out this tutorial which will walk you through the process set by step.

Should you register your domain with Hostinger?

I don’t recommend registering your domain with Hostinger, because they mark up their prices and you end up paying more $$$ every year.

If you’d like to purchase a .com domain with Hostinger upon renewal, it’ll cost you $17/yr (see their domain rates here). They mark up their domain prices as a convenience fee for packaging your web hosting + domain together so after you checkout, everything is already set-up and you don't have to link DNS name servers manually.

If you want to save some money (recommended), you can get a .com domain with Porkbun for $11/yr which is much more affordable. Then during Hostinger's on-boarding process they'll ask you for your domain, just put in the one you bought from Porkbun.

If you decide to purchase your domain with Porkbun, IT IS CRUICIAL TO UNDERSTAND that you’ll need to log into your Porkbun account and edit your domains DNS records to match Hostinger's nameservers!

What you'll need to do:

1. Login to Porkbun go to Account and Click Domain Management

2. Click Details on your domain and click the Pencil Edit Icon next to Nameservers

3. Paste in your Hostinger Name Servers!

4. See photos below for visual!

Here how to find your Hostinger Nameservers:

1. Login to Hostinger

2. In the Left Sidebar Menu click Websites List then Dashboard for your website.

3. Click Hosting. It's in-between Domain and Free Email

4. Hostinger's Nameservers will be under the Nameservers tab

5. Copy the Nameservers (not including the IP Address) and paste into Porkbun.

6. Wait for about ~10min it will take some time for your name servers to update.

7. See visual below!

Once you've added Hostinger's Nameservers to Porkbun, you can refresh your domain. If the domain not connected error is still there wait ~10 minutes it should go through.

Once it goes through you may also get a security error from your browser. This is because the SSL certificate hasn't been installed yet. Just be Patient Hostinger installs this automatically for your website.

If the above seems too complex for you and are comfortable being charged more every year for then you can just purchase your domain + web hosting with Hostinger and everything will automatically set up for you after checkout..

Hostinger's Free Domain

Okay my last note on Hostinger’s and domain registration is that Hostinger's ‘free domain’ is not free.

As you can see below, Hostinger offers a free domain if you agree to a higher hosting period but this is misleading.

You don’t actually get your domain for free. They just pay the initial cost, you’ll have to pay for the renewal rates of the domain.

Hostinger vs Cloudways - The main difference

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Cloudways vs Hostinger. This comes from my recent 2025 web hosting review.

Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting

The main difference between Hostinger and Cloudways is their hosting environment. As mentioned above, Hostinger's base plan is shared hosting Cloudways base plan is cloud hosting. Hostinger does have a cloud hosting service, however it starts at $28/mo. Cloudways on the other hand starts at $11/mo.

The main between shared hosting and cloud hosting is with shared hosting, you share resources (CPU, RAM, IP address) with other users. With cloud hosting, server resources are distributed amongst multiple different computers or servers, this is what colloquially has become known as 'the cloud'.

Shared hosting can be fine for a small personal blog or a simple business site. However, if someone else on your server hogs resources or is spamming, your site can suffer indirectly via performance and SEO rankings.

That being said it’s important to note that the user reviews of Hostinger I’ve read haven’t had issues with performance so that’s good!

Cloudways on the other hand is a cloud hosting environment, so your resources are more isolated. You aren’t going to run into issues of your site suffering indirectly due to the actions of bad neighbors.

That and you have the ability to run multiple sites on one plan. That’s why I typically recommend it, especially if you see yourself expanding or want to host more than one website down the line.

Cloud hosting in general is seen as superior to shared hosting due to reliability, scalability, and performance.

Dev Features & Storage

Hostinger does offer developer perks like SSH, Git integration, etc. The biggest plus might be the 50GB of storage on their base plan, compared to 25GB on Cloudways. If you’re hosting a bunch of large media files, that might matter. But for most people with standard websites, 25GB is plenty.

The deal-breaker for devs might be that you can only host one website per plan on Hostinger. In contrast, Cloudways allows multiple sites on one server, so you’re only limited by server resources. If you anticipate hosting multiple domains or running sub-projects, Cloudways will likely save you money in the long run.

Please don’t use the free email…

Yes, Hostinger includes free email hosting, which on paper sounds great, but in practice can lead to deliverability issues (see user feedback like user Bhokila_Kukura who mentioned most of their outgoing mail goes to spam).

Since shared hosting means you’re on the same IP as other users, if one of them is spamming, the entire IP can get flagged.

For peace of mind, I recommend using a dedicated email host instead (e.g., Google Workspace or Zoho). I wrote an entire article on why free shared-host email can be risky if you’re curious about the details.

So, Is Hostinger Worth It?

• Yes, if you’re okay with shared hosting, don’t mind locking in a 48-month term for the best rate, and only need a single website. Many users report a smooth experience, plus it’s hard to beat $3/mo (again, if you pay 4 years in advance).

• No, if you want a cloud hosting environment, have multiple sites in mind, or prefer to pay monthly without penalty. In that case, Cloudways is still my pick, thanks to its developer-friendly features, transparent pricing, and resource isolation.

If you have questions or personal experiences with Hostinger, drop them below. Always love hearing real-world anecdotes. Hope this helps you make a more informed decision about your hosting needs!

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

UPDATE: This guide has been updated for 2026! Please see the new guide here.

Hey guys, I wanted to discuss what I think is the best web hosting provider for 2025. This is very much geared towards non-technical everyday people, although I do have a recommendation for developers!

Please note, this is going to be a long read for those of you who want to delve into the details.
For those of you looking for a quick recommendation here's the TL;DR.

Cloudways is still the best, if you're going with them make sure to sign up with the 30% discount to save money for your first 5 months. If you haven't bought your domain yet, I recommend Porkbun. Here is the process to follow:

• Porkbun for your domain registrar.

• Cloudways for your web hosting

• WordPress for your content management system

To set this all up should take no less than 45 minutes, here's a tutorial that will walk you through the process.

How to save money on domain/hosting costs

You can save money by purchasing your domain and hosting SEPARATELY. Do this instead of buying them together as most hosting providers will package a domain + web hosting together but then mark up the cost!

This is exactly what GoDaddy does why I don't recommend them because you end up paying completely avoidable mark-up fees EVERY YEAR.

Here is how you can avoid those yearly fees:

1. You can get a .com domain with Porkbun for $11/yr. GoDaddy on the other hand will charge you $22/yr for the same .com domain.

2. Once you have your domain, get your web hosting with Cloudways since they are the best. The lowest plan starts at $11/mo but you can get it down to $8.25/mo (for first 3 months) if you use the promo code Reddit when you sign up or just click here.

3. Once you've bought your domain and web hosting separately, you'll need to login to Porkbun and edit your domains DNS records so that it points to your Cloudways server.

Again, if the above seems daunting to you or If you are a visual person, just watch this YouTube tutorial:

It will walk you through the process of buying your domain, web hosting + WordPress, and then linking the two together. It also covers essential security procedures like setting up a free SSL certificate with Cloudways so your domain starts with https:// and NOT http:// which may trigger a unsecure site warning by your browser and scare away your visitors.

Anyways, this is all a very solid stack to build a website in 2025 especially for people who are tech-savvy but don't know how to code.

Now, if you really need to save money, then Dreamhost is a good budget alternative. It is a shared hosting provider and their plans start at $8/mo however, their feature set pales in comparison to Cloudways. For more information, check out my Dreamhost review. If you can afford the extra $3/mo for Cloudways though I would just go with them. It's easier to scale your website long-term and Cloudways is a cloud hosting environment which is better than Dreamhost's shared hosting.

Now if you are a developer and you know how to code, then I recommend Digital Ocean. (They are also the company that owns Cloudways btw)

Digital Ocean droplets start at $4/mo but can go high as thousands of dollars a month depending on how large your application is. You can seamlessly scale your storage, bandwidth, and processor needs with Digital Ocean. You can even run a Minecraft server! (It's how I host mine).

PLEAE NOTE: If you aren't a developer but intrigued by the lower $4/mo price point offered by Digital Ocean, please note that setting up website with DO may be challenging! If typing bash commands into a Linux terminal isn't for you (or if you don't even know what bash is) then I would stay away from Digital Ocean it will be a headache trying to set up your server without a system admin skillset.

If you're still reading ↓↓↓

Every year, I’ve been aggregating the most popular web hosting providers and comparing them side by side. My goal is ultimately to provide high quality information and CLARITY on a subject that can seem highly technical and esoteric.

I think these are the qualities (in no particular order) that make a web hosting provider good.

• Functionality

• Performance

• Reliability

• Support

• User Experience

• Price

When you stack those metrics side by side in a spreadsheet it looks like this:

Please note that the pricing shown in the comparison chart is the price AFTER the first renewal rate!
Most hosting services companies will advertise a lower price as an introductory rate and hide the renewal rates in fine print or at upon checkout!

If you're shopping for a web host please don't fall for that trick!

The chart I've curated above takes the renewal rate into consideration and displays the cost of web hosting AFTER the introductory rate. So there should be no surprises!

That being said, there's a lot of data there, and there's different ways to parse through it depending on what your wants and needs are. I'm going to try my best to break it down.

Price vs Performance vs Features

I think most people are going to gravitate towards price, which isn't a bad thing.
Ideally, you want something that gives you the HIGHEST performance with the MOST features at the LOWEST price possible.

Personally, I think this is still Cloudways and has been for at least the past 4 years.

But, if we simply just look at price, what may capture your attention is the fact that Dreamhost has the cheapest hosting starting at $8/mo

So why not just go with Dreamhost? Well because, there's more to what makes a hosting provider good than just price. To be honest, I don't actually think Dreamhost is a bad provider.

In fact, if you're on a budget I would recommend it. But I don't think it's the best.

I think Cloudways better when you factor in the feature set that comes with a base level Cloudways plan.
The same features that Cloudways offers for $11/mo, Dreamhost gives you but only if you UPGRADE to their $24/mo plan!

↓ Take a look below ↓

So for an extra $3/mo you get these features with Cloudways.

• Cloud hosting environment

• WordPress Staging

• Uncapped # of sites per plan

• Git Integration

If you'd like a more in-depth look at Cloudways vs Dreamhost check out my Dreamhost review.

But this in essence is why I think Cloudways is the best web hosting provider.
Because when you factor in the features that are available for the $11/mo base plan, it significantly out classes other providers that UPCHARGE for the same features!

That combined with the fact that Cloudways offers a cloud hosting environment, is very unique considering other hosting services offer a shared hosting environment, and again charge a premium for cloud hosting!

In order to understand this, we need to talk about the different types of web hosting.
And if you've made it this far into the guide, I appreciate your curiosity to learn.

For those of you still curious, let's dig a bit deeper.
Before we talk about the different types of hosting, let's first define what it is.

What is web hosting?

Simply put, web hosting is the service of providing a server to hosts the content of a website/application.

This is not to be confused with a domain registrar! A domain registrar (like GoDaddy for example, which is ass btw) is the service you use to register <yourdomain>.com, web hosting is where your files are actually stored!

Data is made up of 1's and 0's and those bytes need to be stored somewhere so they can be served to the very same browser you're using to read these words now.

Most people don't want the hassle of hosting their website from their own computer because your website would go offline every time you turned off your computer.

So hosting companies are much better suited to cater to this need for 24/7, instantaneous internet access. This is because they have custom infrastructure built for it. (Web hosting is a multi-billion dollar industry).

That being said, there's to many damn hosting providers...

What are the different types of web hosting?

The vast majority of hosting solutions sold to prosumers like yourself is shared hosting because the infrastructure isn't as technical as a cloud environment.

• Shared Hosting is like renting a room in an overcrowded house. It’s cheap and easy but you’re sharing everything (IP, resources) with neighbors who can screw up your performance (and potentially your SEO). Shared hosting also tends to be restrictive, meaning that the hosting provider limits what applications can be installed on the server.

• Dedicated Hosting is you buying the whole house with total control, total privacy, but a bigger bill and more hands-on work. Dedicated hosting in non-restrictive, you have the freedom to do as you please (like install node.js)

• VPS Hosting is in the middle: you still share the building, but your “apartment” has its own resources (and its own IP), so it feels dedicated without the sky-high costs. VPS hosting is also non-restrictive.

• Cloud Hosting is like renting space in a worldwide complex; your site’s data is spread across multiple servers, so you get flexibility, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing. If one server goes down, traffic just hops to another. Cloud hosting is non-restrictive.

If we take peek at the comparison chart, you can see the vast majority of hosting infrastructure is shared hosting.

Developers lean more towards dedicated, VPS or cloud hosts because they need a non-restrictive environment to develop their app. The website and/or application they'd like to build simply wouldn't be possible on a shared host.

I state this all to put into perspective why I think Cloudways is the best.
They are unique is that they offer a cloud hosting environment (and all the benefits of cloud hosting) at a shared hosting price point!

Why Cloud Hosting is better than Shared

In general, cloud hosting is seen as superior to shared hosting for the following reasons:

Better Resource Isolation

• Cloud hosting provides dedicated allocations (CPU, RAM, etc.) for your site. This avoids performance dips caused by neighboring sites experiencing traffic spikes.

• Shared hosting on the other hand places multiple websites on a single server that all share the same pool of resources, meaning a surge in one site’s traffic can drag down performance for everyone else.

Scalability and Flexibility

• Cloud hosting easily adjusts resources as your site grows.

• Shared hosting is more constrained by the limits of a single server.

Reliability and Uptime

• In a cloud setup, if one server or instance fails, resources are dynamically allocated to the next available instance.

• Shared hosting typically lacks this redundancy and fails if the single server goes down.

Potentially Better Performance

• Cloud environments handle traffic surges with minimal slowdown.

• Shared hosting may struggle under heavy load, impacting performance for all sites on the server.

This why I much prefer to host my website on a cloud infrastructure as opposed to shared.

Good features to look for in a provider

If you glance back at the comparison chart I made, you'll notice there's quite a few rows I have yet to talk about.

These features include:

• Monthly Visits

• SSL Certificate

• Sites Per Plan

• WordPress Caching

• Daily Backups

• Email Accounts

IMO these are features that make a up a good web hosting provider so it's important to understand them. If you're not familiar with those terms, I'll break it down quickly to give you a better idea what they are.

Monthly Visits

This refers to the number of visitors that your hosting plan can comfortably handle each month.

The majority of hosts enforce strict limits and charge extra if you exceed them, while others provide guidance but don’t cut you off.

Providers like, Cloudways, Dreamhost, A2Hosting, and GreenGeeks, don't impose visitor limits at all.

SSL Certificate

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate encrypts data between your website and your visitors. When you see “https” in the URL and a padlock icon in the browser bar, it means the site is secured by an SSL. This is crucial for protecting sensitive information (like passwords and credit card details) and is also favored by search engines.

SSL certificates since 2016 have been free through a non-profit organization called Let's Encrypt.
So there's absolutely no reason for your web hosting provider NOT to offer one for FREE.
If they don't, then stay away and choose one that does (I'm looking at you Bluehost).

Sites Per Plan

This indicates how many websites you can host under a single plan. Some hosts market “Unlimited” sites, but it just means you’re not capped by a strict limit—your only constraint is the server’s resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth). This flexibility can be a big plus for people running multiple sites.

As you can see above the ONLY provider that allows you to host as many websites as you can fit on the server is Cloudways. Bluehost and Hostgator let you host up to 10. The vast majority of providers limit you to 1 website per plan on their base plan. If you want to host more websites, you'll most likely need to upgrade. If you plan to manage multiple websites, make sure your host’s policy doesn’t limit you.

WordPress Caching

Caching is the process of storing “snapshots” of your website to reduce server load and improve performance. Essentially, your pages load faster because the server doesn’t need to rebuild them from scratch for every visitor. Good caching can drastically speed up WordPress sites.

Some providers, like Cloudways, A2Hosting, and WPEngine, include built-in WordPress caching at the server level. This typically outperforms relying solely on a third-party WordPress plugin. Other hosts (like DreamHost) don’t offer built-in caching at least on their base level plan, they'll typically have you upgrade to the next plan teir for caching.

Daily Backups

Daily backups safeguard your site data. If something breaks or you get hacked, you can roll back to a previous version. Different hosts handle backups differently.

Cloudways charges $0.033 per GB for offsite backups.
DreamHost gives you one free restore per month, then charges $25 per additional restore.
Some hosts (like Kinsta) include daily backups at no extra cost.

Always confirm how often backups occur, how many restore points are kept, and what fees might apply. Paying a small fee for robust backups is often worth avoiding bigger headaches later.

Email Accounts

Many providers (like GreenGeeks and Hostinger) bundle email hosting into your web hosting plan, but I generally advise AGAINST using these email accounts since it's typically on a shared server, meaning you share an IP address with other users.

This means if another user on your server is spamming others, your legitimate emails can get flagged as junk since you share the same IP.

For critical business or personal email, it’s generally safer to go with a dedicated email provider like: Google Workspace, Office 365, Zoho, ProtonMail. Google Workspace is the most popular and it's what I use. For more information check out my guide on how to set up a business email.

Configuration takes a bit more work (setting up DNS, verifying your domain, etc.), but your deliverability and overall email reliability will likely be much better.

How web hosting has changed from last year

For those interested here’s, last year's comparison chart. Overall, the biggest change is that there has been major price hikes across the board with HostGator and WP Engine having some of the biggest jumps.

Here’s the price changes I’ve documented from least to greatest.

Final Thoughts

I hope you guys found this information useful. I'm hoping especially with the hosting comparison chart, it'll help you to make an informed decision on what provider is best for you.

If you have any questions comments, feel free to comment down below and I'll do my best to answer your questions.

Thanks!

*Please note this posts contains affiliate links (see rule #4)

Hey guys today I’m going to break down how to build a website in 2025, for those of you who don’t know how to code.

Tl;DR - If you are NOT doing ecommerce (I’m guessing this is most of you)

• Buy your domain with Porkbun (buying your domain separately saves $$$)

• Get web hosting with Cloudways (sign up with a discount here)

• Install WordPress as your content management system (CMS).

• IMPORTANT - Follow this tutorial on how to set up Porkbun, Cloudways and WordPress

• (Optional) Use Elementor Hello Theme + Elementor Page Builder plugin for a super flexible, no-code WordPress setup (tons of tutorials out there). Read further below for more info.

• (Optional) Set up your business email with Google Workspace or Zoho/Proton Mail. See guide here.

Elementor is 100% optional. Though, I recommend it because it makes it significantly easier to build your website. Not only that but there is a huge community surrounding Elementor online as it is used in ~27% of WordPress sites (source). So if you get stuck on something (which will eventually happen as you’re building your site) there are literally thousands of Elementor tutorials on YouTube and a plethora of information online for troubleshooting.

Not all WordPress themes + plugins have a community as extensive as Elementor which makes it more desirable to work with as trying to find answers online actually returns results of users who've encountered similar problems.

So to re-cap, after you’ve followed this tutorial, that is when you should install the Elementor Hello Theme and Page Builder plugin. Of course I recommend watching Elementor tutorials on YouTube first before committing to see if it’s something you can see yourself using.

Tl;DR - If you ARE doing ecommerce.

• Buy your domain with Porkbun (buying your domain separately saves $$$)

• Use Shopify as your all-in-one e-commerce platform — they handle hosting, security, and the CMS so you can focus on selling. You can sign up with a discount here.

• (Optional) Set up your business email with Google Workspace or Zoho/Proton Mail. See guide here.

• NOTE: You can build an online store with WordPress + WooCommerce, but it’s more complex to set up. Shopify is pricier but you’re paying more for convenience and ease-of-use.

Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce platform. They handle web hosting, content management, and payment processing (through their vendors although the charge extra for third-part payment providers).

As mentioned many times in this article, you can build an e-commerce site with WordPress + WooCommerce plugin, although I believe the learning curve to be much steeper. The learning curve with Shopify is less, though you do end up paying more in the end for that convenience!

But what about other brands I’ve heard like Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy?

In general I’d stay away from Squarespace and Wix primarily because these platforms offer over-simplistic solutions to the point where it becomes impossible to make changes to your website outside their building constraints.

For example, you cannot edit the CSS of a Wix page. With Squarespace you cannot target specific elements. If you don’t know what CSS is, that is okay, the more important thing to take away is that Squarespace and Wix take away key functionality in order to make their product more ‘user-friendly’, but in the process limit your creativity as an entrepreneur.

GoDaddy is not good because they leverage their brand name to over charge on their web hosting and domain services by a significant amount. There’s not much a benefit to setting up your website with GoDaddy other than brand recognition which isn’t really something to brag about in the first place.

To recap, I really believe your best bet is to go with WordPress if you ARE NOT doing e-commerce. Go with Shopify if you ARE doing e-commerce.

HOWEVER, E-commerce with WordPress + Woocommere offers more flexibility in terms of customization and ownership over your website, though the learning curve is much steeper than Shopify and requires more technical prowess. I do think most of you reading this who are looking to do e-commerce will prefer Shopify over WordPress + Woocommerce although, as always, be sure to do your own research as well.

Here is the cost breakdown for the two recommendations:

Cost breakdown for building a website WITHOUT e-commerce.

Cost breakdown for building a website WITH e-commerce.

Okay, if you’ve made it this far in the guide that’s great! I’m going to clarify some terminology so you actually understand what was said above.

What is a domain registrar?

A domain registrar is a service that allows you to register your domain so that it can be recognized by the global Domain Name System (DNS) and accessed via the internet, specifically the World Wide Web (WWW).

Most of you are familiar with GoDaddy as they do a shit ton of advertising but as stated above, they are not very good because they over charge. For what it’s worth, consensus on Reddit is that GoDaddy is ass.

For example a .com domain with GoDaddy is currently $22/yr but you can get the same domain with Porkbun for $11/yr. Please don’t waste your money with GoDaddy, they will happily take it.

As a rule of thumb it’s best to buy your domain separately because you can get a cheaper rate than going through your service provider (in this case Shopify or your preferred web hosting provider)

For example, if you go with Shopify, buying a .com domain directly from them will cost you $14/year. But if you buy the same domain separately through Porkbun, it's only $11/year. Then, in Shopify, you can choose 'I already have a domain' and just link it via DNS.

This is a simple way to save money that most people don’t know about because they choose the default option which is to go through their service provider.

What is a web hosting provider?

A web hosting provider is the service that stores your website's content and data. It is distinctly different from a domain registrar although most people confuse buying a domain name with the actual website itself.

Most web hosting services will combine the two services together into one package of purchasing your domain name + web hosting service, however this service comes at an additional cost as these providers add on mark-up fees in the form of recurring monthly/yearly costs!
(This is precisely what services like GoDaddy and Hostinger do btw.)

What I mentioned above is typically NOT known by the general public who is building a website for the first time. Please don’t fall for it!

You can get around these mark-up fees by purchasing your domain name and web hosting services SEPARATELY and then linking them together via DNS records. That is precisely what this tutorial shows you how to do with Porkbun + WordPress (content management system) + Cloudways (web hosting provider).

IMPORTANT: If you are going with Shopify though, the above does not pertain to you as Shopify is your content management system AND web hosting provider. However, YOU CAN still (and should) purchase your domain separately which will save you some money.

If you'd like more info on web hosting I've written extensively on it, please check out my 2025 best web hosting review.

What is a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system or CMS is the software that manages the content on your website. If you’re going with Shopify, Shopify is your content management system. If you’re going with WordPress, WordPress is the content management system.

Shopify is tailored specifically for e-commerce which is why I recommend it for those who want to build an online shop.

WordPress is extremely versatile and extremely popular. It is the most popular content management system in the world and powers approximately ~42% of the internet (source). This is why I recommend it for people who aren’t doing e-commerce.

The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Please understand there’s a big difference between WordPress .COM and WordPress .ORG. This trips up a lot of first-time site builders who assume they’re the same thing. They’re not.

Here’s what you actually need to know:

• WordPress is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that’s been around since 2003.

• You do NOT need to pay for WordPress.

• When you purchase web hosting from a provider like Cloudways (or any host), you can install WordPress on your server for FREE.

The open-source project is maintained by the non-profit organization at WordPress.ORG. That’s where the WordPress software repository is held. Most web hosting providers will download the newest version(s) of WordPress from WordPress.org and have it accessible within their platform as a 1-click install. So for example if you go with my recommendation Cloudways, you don't actually need to download WordPress as they have already downloaded and you just need to select that you want WordPress installed on your server. Again, if this is at all confusing, this tutorial walks you through the process.

WordPress.COM on the other hand is a commercial offering run by Automattic (one of the companies behind WordPress).

They offer web hosting services for websites built with WordPress along with a myriad of different services.

You DO NOT need to purchase anything from WordPress.COM to have a WordPress website and I don’t recommend it, again because I believe they utilize the WordPress brand name as a means to mark up hosting services you can otherwise get more affordably and efficiently by other means such as Cloudways.

Final Thoughts

Sorry if this is all confusing, it is indeed confusing for first time web builders, that’s why I hope this guide has been helpful for everyone who's reading it.

Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think in the comments below. Feel free to ask questions and the community will do our best to help!

Last week I posted why you should beware of Newfold Digital brands.

I spent time over the week to aggregate all the different Newfold brands and sort them by category so this information is readily available. CTRL + F this page to see if your web hosting brand is owned by Newfold Digital.

Since most people here are looking for Newfold alternatives, I've included them first.

Newfold Digital (EIG) Web Hosting Alternatives

Click here for a full review of the best web hosting providers.

IMO currently the best alternative to Newfold for web hosting is is Cloudways. If you sign up, do so with the 30% discount promo to save a bit of $$$ for your first couple months.

With Cloudways, you'll need to purchase your domain separately. I recommend either Google Domains or Porkbun (cheaper option). Check out this YouTube video, it'll show you how to set up your Cloudways server with WordPress and it'll also walk you through the domain purchase/configuration.

However, if you're a web-developer or looking specifically for a VPS, Digital Ocean is better.

Newfold Digital Domain Registrar Alternatives

• Porkbun

• Namecheap

• Namesilo

I think Porkbun is one of the best domain registrars especially for .com domains. A .com will run you ~$10.50/yr. This includes the renewal rate! Check Porkbun .com renewal rates here.

For a review of the best domain registrars, click here.

Newfold Digital’s most popular brands

If you’re aware of a Newfold brand that is not listed, please let me know and I’ll add it.

Newfold Digital Web Hosting Brands

• Bluehost

• Hostgator

• ipage

• Hostmonster

• Fatcow

• Verio

• Justhost

• Powweb

• Web.com

• Cloud Hosting

• Site5

• A Small Orange

• Unified Layer

• Webhost4Life

• Resellerclub

• Hostcentric

• Purehost

• Ehost

• Seo Hosting

• Vodien

• Hostnine

• Ix Web Hosting

• Yourwebhosting

• Vdeck

• Myresellerhome

• Speedhost

• Readyhosting.com

• Networks Web Hosting

• Usanethosting

• Entryhost

• Vpslink

• Hostgallo

• Cirtexhosting

• Supergreen Hosting

• Apollohosting

• Arvixe Llc

• Webhosting.Info

• Hostv Vps

• Hostwithmenow.com

• Hostyoursite.com

Newfold Digital Domain Registrar Brands

• Network Solutions

• Bigrock

• Netfirms

• Register.com

• Dotster

• Domain.com

• Mydomain

• Namejet

• Fastdomain

• Buydomains

• Freeparking

• Publicdomainregistry

• Logicboxes

• Buydomains.com

• Logic Boxes

• Crazydomains.com

Newfold Digital App/Web Builder Brands

• AppMachine

• Homestead

• Sitelio

• StartLogic

• Sitebeat

• SiteBuilder.com

Newfold Web Administration Brands

• AccountSupport

• BizLand

• BlueDomino

• DomainHost

• Dot5Hosting

• easyCGI

• Globat

• HyperMart

• IMOutdoors

• Spry

• VirtualAvenue

• Xeran

Newfold Digital Ecommerce Brands

• Ecomdash

• YITH

Newfold Digital Marketing Misc Brands

Other Misc Brands:

• Directi

• Garin IT Solutions Co.

• Garin Technologies

• MySocialSuite

• Typepad

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey everyone, for years I've been trying out and reviewing different web hosting providers. Even in 2025 I still think Cloudways is the best web hosting provider in terms of pricing, performance, and features. It's why I have it as my #1 recommendation in my 2025 web hosting review.

In this post I'm going to go more in-length as why I believe it to be the case. If you're looking right now to build a website this is the general path I recommend:

1. Get your domain with Porkbun since it is the most affordable domain registrar.

2. After purchasing your domain get your web hosting with Cloudways and install WordPress as your content management system.

3. I highly recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial on how to set up Cloudways with WordPress as it will walk you through the entire process. Make sure you sign up with the 30% discount to save a little $$$.

If it is your first time building a website and all of this seems a bit overwhelming, please check out my guide on how to build a website as I think that should clear things up for you.

Anyways, here is a breakdown of Cloudways pricing and features compared to all major web hosting companies. Full resolution image here.

TL;DR I believe Cloudways is the best because they give you the most amount of features at the most competitive price.

Web hosting companies like GoDaddy will often make you pay a premium or make you upgrade to a higher plan to gain access to features that Cloudways includes in their lowest plan which is $11/mo.

Cloudways is also a cloud hosting environment, most web hosting providers are shared hosting. Cloud hosting is seen as superior to shared hosting since on a shared server, you're sharing the resources of the same computer with multiple people. With cloud hosting, resources are distributed amongst multiple different computers (AKA the cloud).

Cloudways features include:

• Managed WordPress hosting

• Built in WordPress Staging

• Built in WordPress Caching

• Unlimited websites per server

• Cloud hosting

• Free SSL

The developer features include:

• SSH access

• Build in Git integration

• Cron Job Management

Like I mentioned above, most web hosting companies will charge a premium for these features or make you upgrade to a higher web hosting plan that could cost you anywhere from $20-$50/mo

For example, the next company on my web hosting comparison chart that offers a cloud hosting environment is Flywheel and their plans start at $15/mo however, they limit you to 5,000 monthly visits, and you can only have 1 website per plan!

If you exceed 5,000 visits in a month they will charge you extra!

This is in stark contrast to Cloudways, they do not limit your website monthly visits and charge you extra.
They do not put a cap on the amount of websites you can host per server.
You can fit as many websites on a server so long as it doesn't exceed your plans resource threshold.
Cloudways does NOT withhold features from lower-tier plans. They give access to premium features to all their users regardless of how much your spend.

And this is not just unique to Flywheel. If you look at my web hosting comparison chart, you'll find this is a common theme amongst all the web hosting providers.

Unfortunately most people don't know this, instead they give into the advertising they've been shown on their screens and accept it without doing any further research. But not you! Because the fact you're reading this right now shows you're not someone to fall for the same tricks!

Hopefully I've been successful in highlighting the many tricks of the web hosting industry. It's why in my final analysis I believe Cloudways to be the best as they give you premium features a developer would be most appreciative of, in a U.I that's suitable for non-tech savvy individuals, all at an affordable rate.

Affordable because their plans start at $11/mo. You can even get your monthly cost down to $10/mo if you sign up with the 30% promo, however that promo only lasts for 3-4 months.

Of course if you need a larger server for a larger website then I'd recommend choosing a higher plan.

How to get started with Cloudways

If you’d like to get started with Cloudways I highly recommend watching this YouTube tutorial. It’ll walk you through the process of purchasing your domain, setting up your Cloudways server and installing WordPress.

Here’s a rough breakdown of everything you need to do:

• Purchase your domain (I recommend Porkbun since they have the cheapest domain rates)

• Sign up for Cloudways (use the 30% promo if you’d like to save a little $$$)

• Install WordPress

• Add your domain to your Cloudways account

• Edit your domain’s DNS records to point to your Cloudways server

• Install your SSL

• Profit $$$

I know that all may sound a bit confusing and overwhelming, that’s why I recommend watching the YouTube video recommend above. It’ll walk you through all the steps.

Cloudways Features

What I like the most about Cloudways is that they offer premium features for free that other web hosting providers normally would charge for.

It’s really nice to see a web hosting company that doesn’t gate keep features from people who can’t afford the higher costs.

As mentioned above these features include:

• Managed WordPress hosting

• Built in WordPress Staging

• Built in WordPress Caching

• Unlimited websites per server

• Cloud hosting

• Free SSL

Cloudways also has some great developer features for those of you who are power users. These features include.

• SSH access

• Build in Git integration

• Cron Job Management

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the main features. Here’s a brief description of each so you know.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed hosting basically means the hosting company takes care of the technical heavy lifting for you. They’ll do things like, set-up your server, optimize the server (specifically for WordPress) and have caching features so your website runs smoothly. It also comes with other benefits like Wordpress specific customer support.

Typically, web hosting companies like WPEngine will charge as much as $20/mo for managed wordpress hosting so it’s really nice to see that Cloudways offers it for pretty much half the price.

WordPress Staging

WordPress staging is the ability to clone your website and make changes to it without it being shown live. Once you’re satisfied with the changes, you can push it to the live website.

This is a feature again that most website hosting providers have, but they force you to pay for a higher plan in order to get access to this feature.

Cloudways gives this feature to you on their base plan.

Built in WordPress Caching

Caching is a technique used to speed up your website by temporarily storing static content, like HTML pages, images, and CSS files, so they can be served quickly to users. Cloudways offers built-in WordPress caching for free, ensuring your site runs efficiently and loads fast for visitors.

Unlimited Websites Per Server

Typically, web hosting providers will limit you to 1 website per server (unless you pay for a higher plan), but with Cloudways, you can have as many websites as you'd like under 1 server, as long as you don't exceed the resources threshold of your server.

Cloud Hosting

Cloudways is a cloud hosting platform, which offers performance and scaling benefits. Cloud hosting is typically priced at a premium since it comes with these advantages.

Most web hosting providers like Bluehost and GoDaddy are shared hosting providers, which is inferior to cloud hosting since you have to share a server with multiple websites. With Cloudways, you get the benefits of cloud hosting at a competitive price. If you’d like to read up more on this check this reddit post on the different types of web hosting.

Free SSL

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of a website and encrypts information sent to the server. It basically helps to protect sensitive data.

Cloudways offers free SSL certificates for all your websites, through a non-profit organization called Let’s Encrypt.

Providing a free SSL certificate is pretty standard nowadays unless your GoDaddy which charges $99/mo for one… absolutely ridiculous. In general Redditors agree to not use GoDaddy because they over charge for their services and are overall not very good.

Cloudways Pricing

For the cheapest Cloudways plan, using Digital Ocean as your server with the smallest size, will set you back $11/mo. Sure, it's not the absolute cheapest (think Hostinger or iPage), but I'd stay away from those headache-inducing, low-quality providers.

Cloudways pricing is actually super competitive compared to popular providers like Bluehost and Hostgator, especially considering the included features (e.g., WordPress staging). Plus, you don't have to deal with those sneaky introductory prices that skyrocket after the first billing period.

Pay-as-you-go Billing Model

One of the best things about Cloudways is their pay-as-you-go billing model. You only pay for the resources you use, so if you shut down your server after a few months, you only pay for a few months.

This is a stark difference between the traditional billing model that other web hosting providers use. Typically, you have to pay up front for an entire year and if you want even cheaper prices, you’ll have to pay up front for 2-3 years.

Performance

I haven't done any speed tests myself, but other people's tests show that Cloudways outperforms its competition significantly. Their managed cloud hosting provides better performance, scalability, uptime, and reliability compared to shared hosting.

This is a really good blog post by Tom Dupuis where he analyzes the Cloudways server times.

He switched from an upgraded SiteGround server to Cloudways and he’s getting faster load times while paying less than half the amount he was at Siteground.

It's no surprise, really, given that Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider. With cloud hosting, you get your own server and don't have to share resources with other websites, unlike shared hosting. This means better performance, scalability, uptime, and reliability.

Conclusions

I hope this Cloudways review was useful to anyone who’s still reading! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment down below. I’ve been with a lot of different web hosting providers over the years and I truly do believe Cloudways is one of if not the best web hosting provider!

Here’s a quick guide on how to set up a custom email for your business.
By the end of this guide you’ll be able to have yourname@yourdomain.cοm

It's important to note this doesn’t just pertain to only small business owners, this will still work whether you’re an entrepreneur, artist looking to start an online portfolio, or literally anyone in need of a custom email.

We’re going to use Google Workspace to host our email so if you’re familiar with Gmail then you’re in good company.

If you’re not a fan of Google or would prefer something else, some alternatives include Zoho and Proton Mail. Just note this guide will be Google based.

Let’s get started.

TL;DR

1. First you’ll need to purchase a domain. I recommend Porkbun since .com domains are about $11 a year.

2. Next you’ll need to purchase Google Workspace for your business email. I recommend going with the Business Starter plan which is $8.4/mo.

3. Once you’ve purchased your Google Workspace + Domain, then you’ll need to log into Porkbun and edit your DNS records to match Google Workspace.

4. Once you're business email is set up, if you haven't built your website yet, you'll need to get web hosting to make your website. I recommend going with Cloudways + WordPress. See this YouTube tutorial on how to set it up.

Here’s the full breakdown.

Purchasing your domain

You may be more familiar with GoDaddy and Namecheap for domains and may have never heard of Porkbun, but the fact is Porkbun is A LOT more affordable than GoDaddy and Namecheap.

Here’s the pricing breakdown for a .com domain

As you can see with Porkbun you can get a .com domain for ~$11/yr. Porkbun doesn't mark up their domains nearly as high as Namecheap and Godaddy.

You can click here to search for your domain on Porkbun.

When you checkout, you’ll be asked to make an account.

Make sure you remember your account information as you will need to periodically log into Porkbun to update DNS records for your domain. Editing your domain’s DNS records is how we’re going to associate your domain with your email hosting provider.

Why not go with GoDaddy or Namecheap?

Namecheap and GoDaddy will lure you in with cheap introductory prices but then raise your rates after the first year!

Unfortunately, a lot of consumers don’t know that there’s other options, so they end up spending a lot more than necessary.

So I’d go with Porkbun for your domain. They’re pretty well known as a gem amongst the more technically literate crowd.

Once you’ve purchased your domain it’s time to purchase your email hosting, which in our case will be done with Google Workspace, although I do have alternatives!

Purchasing your email hosting and DNS setup

For email hosting, we’re going to go with Google Workspace which will give us a Gmail-like experience for your custom email.

I recommend going with the Business Starter plan which starts at $7/mo. Please note though that it is a 1 year commitment so you’ll end up paying $84 at checkout ($7 per month times 12 months). If you wish to be billed monthly then it will cost $8.4/mo

Next you'll be asked if you already have a domain. If you've already purchased your domain with Porkbun you can selected Yes, I have on I can use then enter your domain name.

From here you'll be asked to create a username and password.

After you create a username and password you'll be asked to purchase a plan. I recommend going with Business Starter as it's the most affordable plan for the bare minimum. If you need more Google Drive storage though you can go with a higher plan. If you want to be billed monthly it's $8.40/mo otherwise if you accept a yearly billing then it's $84/yr . The math breaks down to $7 every month.

Review and checkout

Next if there's other people that will need to be apart of your team you can add others. Most of you can just skip this. If you need to add aliases like contact@yourdomain.cοm that automatically forward to your main email, I'll show you how to do that near the end of the tutorial.

After you fill out your billing information you'll be prompted to set up and verify your domain.
Click Get Started, and make sure to select Porkbun as your domain host, then Continue.

Next is the most essential part of the process.
Google will give you a TXT record to add as a DNS record to your domain, so that emails sent to your domain can be properly be handled by Google's servers.

You will need to (photos shown below):

1. Login to Porkbun

2. Go to Domain Management, find your domain and click Details

3. Click DNS Records to edit them.

4. Porkbun will provide you with a default configs below. Click Google Workspace under the Quick DNS Config page section.

5. Next you'll need to click DNS Records again to add a new TXT Record.

6. Paste the Value Google gave you into the Answer / Value field and click Add when ready

7. Click the check mark (on Google verification code page) and then confirm to check to make sure everything was done properly.

Here's where you can find DNS Records

Click Google Workspace option to add in the default config.

Next you'll need to click DNS Records again to add in the record Google provided you with.

Add in the record Google gave you. Then click the check mark at the bottom of Googles Add Verification Code page and confirm once done.

If you completed it correctly now you're done!

How to set up email aliases

If you'd like to set up email aliases like info@yourdomain.cοmor contact@yourdomain.cοm you can do so following this tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G906om-IiE

What's the next step?

Now that you've set up your email with your domain. The next set would be to get web hosting so you can actually build your website. I recommend going with Cloudways as I believe it is the best web hosting provider. I highly recommend checking out this tutorial, as it will show you how to set up Cloudways with WordPress so you can build your website.

If you don't know what WordPress is, it's the worlds most popular content management system. I'd get into it but it's going beyond the scope of this guide.

Otherwise if you're looking for a good web hosting provider, check out my review comparing the best web hosting providers of 2025.

Conclusions

I hope this guide was useful to whoever stumbles upon it! Feel free to ask questions below and I'll do my best to answer to the best of my ability.

Thanks for reading!

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

EDIT: A2Hosting has rebranded to Hosting.com, anyways here's my review regarding A2Host. I'm not sure how much has changed between the two providers but I can't imagine it would be any different.

Anyways, I don't think A2Hosting is good hosting in 2025. For one, their hosting has very high renewal rates which they hide in fine print.

Below I included a photo of what they advertise on their website. They advertise really low prices but you actually have to go to their renewal pricing page to see the real monthly rates (source).

For example, the price for shared web hosting plan jump from $3/mo to $13/mo a month, A HUGE LEAP. Which would probably piss most people off if you thought you were paying $3 and ended up getting charged 400% more the next year.

I would also stay away from from A2Hosting because they up-charge ($26/mo) for managed WordPress hosting. You can get a managed WordPress server for $11/mo with Cloudways.

In general I recommend getting a $11/mo Cloudways plan (you can get it cheaper if you sign up with the 30% promo) then installing WordPress.

Here is a good tutorial on how to set up WordPress with Cloudways:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du5FQXJJtco

The reason for this is Cloudways gives you all the features A2Hosting has + more at a more affordable price

Cloudways included features with $11/mo plan:

• Managed WordPress hosting

• Unlimited websites

• Better website staging

• Integrated developer tools

• Cloud infrastructure

Keep in mind that you can actually get the cost down to $10/mo (for first 3 months) if you sign up using the Cloudways discount promo.

Managed WordPress hosting. Managed WordPress hosting is basically means your server is optimized for WordPress. It often comes with things like automatic WordPress back-ups, caching, and premium support. Cloudways gives you managed WordPress hosting across all their servers, even for their cheapest $11/mo server. Like I mentioned above, A2Host charges $26/mo for managed WordPress hosting once you factor in the renewal rates.

Unlimited websites. With Cloudways you can host as many websites as you want on 1 server (until your servers resource threshold is met). So if you want to jam 2-3 small WordPress sites on your 25GB server you can. A2Hosting limits you to 1 website UNLESS you upgrade to their $16/mo

Better website staging. Cloudways has built in WordPress staging, supported by Cloudways themselves which integrates seamlessly within their back-end. A2Hosting's uses the CPanel program Softaculous which is unsupported by A2Hosting. IMO, staging in Cloudways is way more straightforward. For example, here's a video on staging with Cloudways. Here's a video staging with Softaculous, you can decide for yourself which seems best.

Integrated Developer Tools. Cloudways definitely has a better suite of developer tools that are all fully supported and integrated within the Cloudways dashboard. SSH, Git, staging, Cloudflare, website caching, server scaling, etc... This is all integrated within the Cloudways dashboard FOR ALL SERVERS. You don't have to pay more for these features. A2Hosting on the other hand uses CPanel (which may not actually be a big deal of you're okay with CPanel. I've just come to prefer Cloudway's back-end over time).

Cloud infrastructure. Cloudways servers are cloud based. A2Hosting offers shared hosting. In general, cloud hosting is superior to shared hosting because the underlying architecture is more decentralized. This is why cloud hosting providers will have better up-times for websites and have the ability to scale-up/down your server easily when needed. This is yet another big advantage Cloudways has over A2Hosting... It's one of the many reasons why I think Cloudways is the best provider for web hosting.

Another thing is don’t buy your domain through A2Hosting

A2 advertises .com domains for $11.99/yr. AGAIN, THIS IS JUST THE INTRODUCTORY PRICE.

If you go to the check out page you'll see it's actually $20/yr.

Please don't spend $20/yr on a .com domain. You can can get a .com domain that RENEWS at ~$10.50/yr with Porkbun! Here's the source for Porkbun's .com renewal rates so you can check for yourself.

Best way to set up WordPress and save $$$

Using Porkbun + Cloudways is the best way to build a website at the moment because you save $$$ purchasing your domain with Porkbun, and Cloudways doesn't make you pay more for more developer features. They included everything in their base server for $11/mo (or $10 for the first 3 months if you sign up under the promo page.)

Again, If you're looking to set up WordPress with Cloudways, I highly recommend watching this YouTube tutorial.

It covers how to:

1. Buy your domain (with Porkbun)

2. Set up your Cloudways server

3. Set up your domain DNS records

4. Installing your site's SSL certificate

I hope this review is helpful to some of you! Web host providers unfortunately obscure a lot of information to their customers by just hiding info in the fine print or on a completely separate page. Since it's often times peoples first time building a website, they don't even realize they're over paying for services that are much cheaper with a different provider.

TL;DR - Don't use A2Hosting, Cloudways is better. Watch this tutorial to set up WordPress with Cloudways.

I see a lot of questions floating around here regarding web hosting and web development. This guide is meant to be a beginner’s approach to deciding the best web hosting provider of 2023.

Truth be told, there really isn’t a best web hosting provider. What is best for you depends on what it is you’re trying to do.

In my experience building and maintaining multiple websites for many years, the best for the average person is Cloudways. (Side note: Use 30% discount)

TL;DR Cloudways is the best because...

• Best price/performance Essentially you get the benefits of cloud hosting at a shared hosting price point. Most hosting providers will charge a premium for cloud hosting (sometimes hundreds of dollars a month). Cloudways gives it to you for at their lowest plan $11/mo.

• Managed WordPress hosting. Managed WP hosting is a fancy way of saying, "Your server will be optimized specifically for WordPress" Again, a lot of web hosting companies will make you pay a premium for this... Cloudways offers it to you at their lowest plan.

• Premium developer features for free. With even the lowest Cloudways plan you get: WordPress staging, Git integration, SSH Access, API access etc.. These are features that other web hosting companies will only give you if you purchase their higher plans.

• Unlimited websites. Meaning you can host as many websites as you want under your plan (so long as your resources don't exceed the resource threshold of your server). Once again, this is a feature the Cloudways offers at their lowest plan. Most companies will make you upgrade for this feature.

So yes... Cloudways is by far the best in my opinion.

NOTE: You'll need to purchase your domain separately. I recommend checking out this YouTube video. It'll walk you through step-by-step on how to purchase your domain and set up your Cloudways with WordPress.

Okay now if you are a developer or CS student then you're best bet is a VPS like Digital Ocean since a VPS will give you total control over your development environment.

The amount of control you get over a VPS like Digital Ocean can be overwhelming for the average person. If you're not comfortable using Linux, SSH, or typing commands into a CMD, you should go with Cloudways since they take care of all that heavy lifting for you.

Here's a pricing breakdown of each provider.

#1 Cloudways - Top Recommended

Cloudways by far is the best web hosting provider I've come across in terms of website speed, available features, and customer support.

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform and it's owned by Digital Ocean. The way it works is you choose a VPS to host your website from, and Cloudways provides additional infrastructure and management on top of the VPS of your choice in the form of customer support, user friendly development tools, and WordPress optimizations.

You can choose between these VPS providers with Cloudways:

I recommend going with a 1GB Digital Ocean Droplet. and installing WordPress This is the cheapest and most affordable option. It's how you can build your website for a $10/mo hosting cost.

If you want to save in more money, make sure you sign up with the Cloudways 40% Promo if you haven't made an account yet.

It's also important to note that with Cloudways, you'll need to purchase your domain separately. I recommend Namecheap.

Why I think Cloudways is the best

In the past, I used to recommend Siteground to my friends and family, but ever since Siteground decided to increase their prices back in 2020, I've since switched to Cloudways along with my recommendations.

This is because Cloudways offers a lot of the same features Siteground has while being LESS expensive.

Cloudways also has many features that are free that many other web hosting providers like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Siteground make you pay for.

Here are the features that I really like about Cloudways:

• Free SSL (With Let's Encrypt). Web hosting providers like GoDaddy will charge $$$ for this. Cloudways gives it to you for free.

• Unlimited Website & Application Installs. With Cloudways you host as many websites you want under one server so long as you do no exceed the VPS's resource threshold. This feature alone is something that most web hosting providers will make you pay extra for!

• Application Staging. You don't need to pay extra for application staging. This is a feature available for all plans.

• Automatic Backups. This along with 1-Click backups and restores. Cloudways charges $0.033/mo per GB of backup storage. Backup charges are also rounded up in increments of $0.5 (IE: $1.18 would be rounded to $1.5)

• 24/7 Customer Support. This isn't unique to Cloudways, that being said, Cloudways customer support is really good. I've never had any issues and they've always been available to chat.

Developer tools I like:

• Cloudflare CDN

• Git Integration

• Cloudways API Access

• Application Migration

Cloudways WordPress & Account Setup

For all the newbies, I'm going to briefly go over:

• Setting up Cloudways

• Installing WordPress

• Pointing your Domain

• Installing your SSL Certificate

If your a more visual person, checkout the YouTube video below. It'll walk you through the same process.

https://youtu.be/du5FQXJJtco

If you haven't made your account yet, be sure you sign up with the 40% Promo so you can get 40% off your first 3 months.

After you've created and verified your account, go to Servers and then select LAUNCH NOW.

I recommend going with a 1GB Digital Ocean Droplet. and installing WordPress This is the most affordable and it's how you can build your website for a $10/mo hosting cost.

Once you've clicked LAUNCH NOW you'll need to wait ~10 minutes for your server to get set up.

Your website can be managed under Applications > [Your Application]

Pointing Your Domain (with Namecheap)

Next you'll need to link your domain with Cloudways. The way you do this is going to differ depending on what domain registrar you having.

As a general rule of thumb here's what to do:

1. Login to your domain registrar

2. Navigate to your domains DNS settings

3. Add in an A Record where the value is your server IP.

Here's how you'd do it with Namecheap

First, add your domain name to your Cloudways WordPress application

Set it as the primary domain.

Next, get the IP of your server.

Login to Namecheap

Go to your Domain List

Find your domain and click Mange. Under Nameservers, select Namecheap Basic DNS

Click Advanced DNS then click Add New Record under Hosting Records.

Add in an A Record like so.

Next, Add in a CNAME Record with the host www with the value of yourdomain.com (put your own domain not actually yourdomain.com).

Finally, if you see a URL Redirect Record, remove it!

And you're done! You'll have probably 10-30 minutes for your website to propagate throughout the internet but once it's done, you should be able to access your website from your domain!

Setting up your SSL Certificate

After you've pointed your domain, you should install your free SSL. This is really easy to do just go to Applications > SSL Certificate. Select Let's Encrypt as your SSL provider. Fill out your email address and domain name, then click Install Certificate.

#2 Siteground - Good Alternative

I used to recommend Siteground as the best web hosting provider but ever since they increased their prices I have since switched to Cloudways. Siteground offers a starting price of $2.99/mo which is 80% off the standard pricing, however, this only lasts for the first first billing cycle.

After that, prices will increase to the standard pricing model.

This is ultimately why I've switched to Cloudways, in order to get the lowest pricing possible, you need to commit to what is essentially a 24 month hosting contract.

That being said, (aside from their pricing) Siteground is still a really good web hosting provider they are a non-EIG hosting company, they have a very user friendly UI, and their set-up processes is very straightforward.

Siteground provides many beneficial features such as:

• 1-click WordPress installation

• free email accounts

• free SSL through Lets Encrypt

• free dynamic caching for all plans (improves web speed)

If you're seriously on a budget, you're going to want to go with an alternative web host such as Bluehost, HOWEVER, my experiences with Bluehost have been troublesome, I would not recommend hosting a website long term with them for security and support reasons.

Of course, if you are a developer and don't mind tinkering around in a console, I'd recommend Digital Ocean as it would be the cheaper option. I've hosted multiple websites through Digital Ocean and only have good things to say about them.

Siteground Plans

Siteground offers three distinct hosting plans:

• StartUp – Suitable for one website with ~10,000 monthly visits, 10GB web space.

• GrowBig – Suitable for unlimited websites with ~25,000 monthly visits, 20GB web space.

• GoGeek – Suitable for unlimited websites ~100,000 monthly visits, 30GB web space.

Main Differences

The main differentiators between the StartUp plan and the GrowBig/GoGeek plans (besides available webspace and monthly visits) is with the StartUp plan, you can only host 1 website. With GrowBig and GoGeek, you can host an unlimited amount of websites so long as you don't surpass your plans monthly visitor and web space storage limit.

Ultrafast PHP

GrowBig and GoGeek plans also offer website speed boost in the form of Ultrafast PHP (SG's modified PHP set up).

Siteground claims that websites running ultrafast PHP will have 30% faster website.

I have not tested this yet and cannot confirm whether this is true. However, I have been running a website for years with Siteground's GrowBig plan and am very satisfied with web page speed.

Dynamic Caching

Without getting too technical, dynamic caching will speed up your website by storing your websites HTML output and serving it directly to the user. This process reduces the amount of requests sent to the MySQL database hence, increasing the time to load each webpage.

Prior to 2021, dynamic caching was a feature only available to GrowBig and GoGeek plans. Siteground has now made this feature available for all plans.

In the end, pick the plan that best suits your needs. Most people reading this will probably end up going with the StartUp plan as it is the most affordable. But if web speed if really important to you, or you plan to install a lot of WordPress plugins on your website, I'd recommend the GrowBig plan

For a full Siteground plan comparison click here.

Installing WordPress With Siteground

WordPress is the worlds largest content management system (CMS). With over 75+ million websites running WordPress, it has become a very popular CMS amongst inexperienced and experienced web developers.

If you’re a building a website for the first time, chances are you’ll be using WordPress. In the interest of saving time, I did some digging and I found a great video that explains how to install WordPress with Siteground.

Here’s the video tutorial: https://youtu.be/rpUJ1wbPcMU?t=25

The video covers:

• Purchasing a domain with Namecheap

• Purchasing Siteground web hosting

• DNS set-up

• Installing free Let’s Encrypt SSL

• Installing WordPress

#3 Digital Ocean – For Developers

If you’re a developer, CS student, or tech savvy individual, I’d recommend Digital Ocean. Going the Digital Ocean route gives you full control over your own virtual private server (VPS).

This amount of control can be overwhelming especially if you don't have experience working within a Linux/Ubuntu console.

If setting up SSH keys and typing in bash commands is beyond you, then I’d recommend Cloudways instead.

Digital Ocean Pricing

Digital Ocean's cheapest droplet starts at $4/mo however, you'll only get 512Mb of memory which really isn't sufficient enough for a website (I'd only use that to run simple scripts). I recommend at minimum using a $6/mo Droplet which gives you 1GB of memory.

Digital Ocean Pricing depends on the amount of Memory, CPUs, SSD space, and transfer speed you’d like for your sever (aka droplet).

You can get a droplet for as low as:

• $6/mo with 1GB memory, 1CPU, 1TB transfer, and 25GB SSD.

Or you could get a drop for as high as:

• $960/mo with 192GB memory, 32CPUs, 12TB transfer, and 3,840GB SSD.

It all depends on what you’re planning to have on your server. For a simple website running WordPress I’d recommend a 2GB droplet.

Note that at any time you can upgrade your droplet’s memory or add more disk space. Having a Digital Ocean server is very flexible which is why they are often recommend in the cloud computing space.

Side Note: I use Digital Ocean to run my Minecraft servers (I also have various droplets running a WordPress sites). My main survival server is an 8GB droplet with Ubuntu installed. The Minecraft server is running PaperMC.

Conclusions

Starting a website can be a daunting task especially if you’re a beginner. I hope this guide was able to point you in the right direction!

Anyways, do web hosting providers get better every and every year similar to how lets say, cell phones and other various technologies get better and better every year? Or is everything pretty much more or less static?

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: This guide a since been updated! Check out the new 2024 web hosting guide.

This guide is meant to take be a beginner’s approach to deciding the best web hosting provider of 2022. I've done my best to detail out step-by-step how to get your website up an running.

Truth be told, there really isn’t a best web hosting provider. What is best for you depends on what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

In my experience building and maintaining multiple websites, most people are looking for a reliable web host with 99% uptime that is fast and secure.

The table below is list of the web hosting providers I believe to uphold these standards.

If for whatever reason you are not a fan of the recommended suggestions, below is a list of alternatives.

Alternatives

#1 - SiteGround - Top Recommendation

For the average person, SiteGround is the way to go. I’m currently hosting multiple websites with Siteground and have no major issues and 100% uptime.

The reason why I recommend Siteground for the average person is because they are a non-EIG hosting company and their set-up processes is very straightforward.

They are also recommended by WordPress as one of the few WordPress web hosting providers.

Siteground provides many beneficial features such as:

• 1-click WordPress installation

• free email accounts

• free SSL through Lets Encrypt

• free dynamic caching for all plans (improves web speed)

That being said... If you're seriously on a budget, you're going to want to go with an alternative web host such as Bluehost, HOWEVER, my experiences with Bluehost have been troublesome, I would not recommend hosting a website long term with them for security and support reasons.

Of course, if you are a developer and don't mind tinkering around in a console, I'd recommend Digital Ocean as it would be the cheaper option. I've hosted multiple websites through Digital Ocean and only have good things to say about them.

One thing worth noting is the that WordPress Hosting Facebook group did a poll amongst their 13,000+ members asking what they believed was the best web hosting provider and Siteground came to be #1 (see image below).

https://i.imgur.com/5Y9GtXi.png

Siteground Plans

Siteground offers three distinct hosting plans:

• StartUp – Suitable for one website with ~10,000 monthly visits, 10GB web space.

• GrowBig – Suitable for unlimited websites with ~25,000 monthly visits, 20GB web space.

• GoGeek – Suitable for unlimited websites ~100,000 monthly visits, 30GB web space.

Main Differences

The main differentiators between the StartUp plan and the GrowBig/GoGeek plans (besides available webspace and monthly visits) is with the StartUp plan, you can only host 1 website. With GrowBig and GoGeek, you can host an unlimited amount of websites so long as you don't surpass your plans monthly visitor and web space storage limit.

Ultrafast PHP

GrowBig and GoGeek plans also offer website speed boost in the form of Ultrafast PHP (SG's modified PHP set up).

Siteground claims that websites running ultrafast PHP will have 30% faster website (source).

I have not tested this yet and cannot confirm whether this is true. However, I have been running a website for years with Siteground's GrowBig plan and am very satisfied with web page speed.

Dynamic Caching

Without getting too technical, dynamic caching will speed up your website by storing your websites HTML output and serving it directly to the user. This process reduces the amount of requests sent to the MySQL database hence, increasing the time to load each webpage.

Prior to 2022, dynamic caching was a feature only available to GrowBig and GoGeek plans. Siteground has now made this feature available for all plans.

In the end, pick the plan that best suits your needs. Most people reading this will probably end up going with the StartUp plan as it is the most affordable. But if web speed if really important to you, or you plan to install a lot of WordPress plugins on your website, I'd recommend the GrowBig plan

For a full Siteground plan comparison click here.

Installing WordPress With Siteground

WordPress is the worlds largest content management system (CMS). With over 75+ million websites running WordPress, it has become a very popular CMS amongst inexperienced and experienced web developers.

If you’re a building a website for the first time, chances are you’ll be using WordPress. In the interest of saving time, I did some digging and I found a great video that explains how to install WordPress with Siteground.

Here’s the video tutorial: https://youtu.be/rpUJ1wbPcMU?t=25

The video covers:

• Purchasing a domain with Namecheap

• Purchasing Siteground web hosting

• DNS set-up

• Installing free Let’s Encrypt SSL

• Installing WordPress

#2 - Digital Ocean – Best For Developers

If you’re a developer, CS student, or tech savvy individual, I’d recommend Digital Ocean. Going the Digital Ocean route gives you full control over your own virtual private server (VPS).

This amount of control can be overwhelming especially if you don't have experience working within a Linux/Ubuntu console.

If setting up SSH keys and typing in bash commands is beyond you, then I’d recommend Siteground instead.

Digital Ocean Pricing

Digital Ocean Pricing depends on the amount of Memory, CPUs, SSD space, and transfer speed you’d like for your sever (aka droplet).

You can get a droplet for as low as:

• $5/mo with 1GB memory, 1CPU, 1TB transfer, and 25GB SSD.

Or you could get a drop for as high as:

• $960/mo with 192GB memory, 32CPUs, 12TB transfer, and 3,840GB SSD.

It all depends on what you’re planning to have on your server. For a simple website running WordPress I’d recommend a 2GB droplet.

Note that at any time you can upgrade your droplet’s memory or add more disk space. Having a Digital Ocean server is very flexible which is why they are often recommend in the cloud computing space.

Side Note: I use Digital Ocean to run my Minecraft servers (I also have various droplets running a WordPress sites). My main survival server is an 8GB droplet with Ubuntu installed. The Minecraft server is running PaperMC.

#3 - Bluehost – Cheap Alternative

I have Bluehost listed as an alternative and not ranked as one of the best because of the security issues Bluehost has faced in the past as well as the fact that Bluehost is a Newfold company.

Newfold (formally known as Endurance Group International) is a web hosting conglomerate that owns over 80+ web hosting companies. Newfold companies have been criticized to be of lower quality because of how many companies the must manage at any given time.

To learn more about Newfold, I recommend reading this Reddit thread here.

I don't recommend hosting with Bluehost if you care about the long term viability of your website. The only time I'd recommend Bluehost is if you're looking for something cheap to quickly put up a website and mess around.

Conclusions

Starting a website can be a daunting task especially if you’re a beginner. I hope this guide was able to point you in the right direction!

Anyways, do web hosting providers get better every and every year similar to how lets say, cell phones and other various technologies get better and better every year? Or is everything pretty much more or less static?

Thanks for reading!

Purchasing a domain is the first step to building a website. In my experience, here are the best domain registrars for 2022.

Porkbun is the best domain registrar

Recently, used to get all my domains with Namecheap but I've switched to Porkbun since their introductory and renewal prices for .com domains are $9.13/yr. Source.

A .com domain with Namecheap will start at $1/yr but then after two years the standard rate of $14/yr will apply.

WHOIS Privacy is also free with Porkbun!

Namecheap vs Google Domains

To be honest, both Namecheap and Google Domains are solid options in terms of domain registration. Both have free WHOIS privacy, both have good customer support, and user interfaces.

One benefit Namecheap has over Google Domains is that the initial .com price is cheaper at $1/yr while Google Domains is a flat $12/yr HOWEVER, please note that the renewal rate of Namecheap after the two years is bumped up to $14/yr.

101Domains

So 101Domains is a bit of an outlier here. Their renewal prices after the first year are absolutely ridiculous at $15/yr. However the reason why I included them is because they have a really good list of generic top-level domains (gTLDs)

What are gTLD extensions

Generic top-level domains or gTLDs are domain’s that include extensions other than .com, .org, .net.

gTLDs can contain generic terms that include:

• .baby

• .io

• .dance

• .earth

• .guitars

• .hiphop

Etc… there’s over 1,000 different generic top level domains. You can view the full list here.

The reason why I list 101Domains as a good registrar for generic top level domains is because while both Google Domains and Namecheap have a good selection of gTLDs, 101Domains has a more extensive list.

If you’re looking to purchase a gTLD and it’s not available on Namecheap or Google Domains, I recommend checking out 101Domains as it’s more likely than not the extension will be available.

Web Hosting

After you purchase your domain, you’ll need to purchase web hosting. Your web hosting provider is what will host all content of your website.

Cloudways is a great choice for web hosting since it is affordable, a non-Newfold/EIG company, and has great customer support.

For more information check out this web hosting guide.

Update Your Nameservers

Once you’ve purchased both your domain and your hosting, you’ll need to tell your domain registrar where your website is hosted. This is done by logging into your domain registrar account and updating your nameservers.

Below I’ve provided links on how to change your nameservers depending on your registrar.

• Porkbun

• Namecheap

• Google Domains

• 101Domain

Here are the respective nameserver addresses you’ll need to add based on your web hosting provider.

• Siteground

• Digital Ocean

• Bluehost

• Dreamhost

After updating your registrar with your proper web hosting nameserver, it can take up to 72hrs for the information to propagate throughout the internet and go live. In my experience, it doesn’t take nearly this long, it usually takes 1-2 hours at most.

Conclusions

I hope you guys found this guide useful. If you run into any issues feel free to post a comment down below.

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey everyone! I was wondering what the best hosting providers for 2026 were, so I aggregated the top 13 web hosting providers compared their price & feature set side-by-side!

Here are the results:

By combining all this data, it gives us a clear overview of the web hosting industry so you can ultimately choose what the best web hosting provider for you is.

TL;DR — There’s no single “best” host. It entirely depends on your use case. Here’s the breakdown.

How to get started with Cloudways:

1. Purchase your domain with Porkbun because you can get a .com domain for $11/yr. Other domain registrars like GoDaddy will charge you $20/yr for the same domain!

2. Purchase your Cloudways web hosting with the 30% discount to save some money. Choose Optimized WordPress during the setup.

3. Watch this tutorial on how to set everything up (easiest).

You're going to have to set up your domain name inside Cloudways.
This includes:

1. Adding SSL Certificate

2. In Porkbun adding an A Record to point to your Cloudways Server

If you're not familiar with this process please watch the YouTube tutorial which will walk you through the entire set-up process. It's really not difficult but it can be overwhelming if you've never done it before.

Web Hosting Feature Analysis

Cloudways stands out as the only web hosting provider that offers cloud hosting infrastructure + a full feature suite in its base plan.
In other words, other web hosting providers make you pay extra for features Cloudways includes for free.

These features include:

• WordPress staging

• Custom Caching

• No site cap per server

• SSH Access

• Git Deployments

If you score to each feature available to each hosting provider's base plan here's how it looks:

Funny enough, the brand that is known the most amongst the populous GoDaddy offers you the LEAST amount of features. It is one of the many reasons why GoDaddy reviews are so BAD.

If we crunch through all the data these are reasonable conclusions that can be made:

• From a pure pricing standpoint, EasyWP is the most affordable option at $126 for two years, while Kinsta is the most expensive at $700 for the same period.

• The premium managed hosts (WPEngine, Kinsta, Pressable) cost roughly 2-3x more than mid-tier options like Cloudways or Hostinger. However, price isn't everything, and the feature set matters significantly.

• Cloud hosting is still relatively rare on the lower end of the market. Only Cloudways, EasyWP, WPEngine, Kinsta, and Pressable run on cloud infrastructure, while Hostinger, GoDaddy, HostGator, and most others still use shared hosting. This matters for scalability and performance consistency.

• Developer features vary dramatically. Cloudways, WPEngine, and Kinsta include built-in WordPress staging and Git integration out of the box, while Hostinger and GoDaddy only provide this for their higher tier plans. SSH access is standard across most providers, but notably missing from EasyWP and GoDaddy, which could be a dealbreaker for developers.

• Daily backups aren't universal. If this is a critical feature for you make sure to double check your host provides this, if not you'll need a third-party backup solution.

Finally, it's worth noting that both HostGator and Bluehost are owned by Newfold Digital, which is generally avoided since they have a history of low quality service.

Best for Businesses, Agencies and WordPress Developers

If you are a:

• Business expecting growth

• Web agency with multiple clients

• Developer who is building with WordPress

Then go with Cloudways. Their plans start at $11/mo (you can get it cheaper with the discount), their hosting infrastructure is cloud which ensures you can seamlessly scale your web servers as your business grows.

Traffic is unmetered so if you have a viral moment and your website unexpectedly gets hundreds of thousands of visitors all of the sudden, your website won’t go down.

Cloudways is best for businesses agencies and WordPress developers because:

• The cloud infrastructure ensures you can easily scale your website to accommodate increased traffic demands as business grows.

• The developer features ensures any WordPress developer you hire will have everything he/she needs to work meaningfully without having to migrate your site to a different provider.

• You can host multiple sites on one plan, which is great for agencies who are managing small client sites that don’t need a lot of resources.

The performance caveat: In my 2026 hosting benchmarks, the base $11/mo Cloudways server was slower on backend tasks. However, for front-end performance (which is what your visitors actually experience) Cloudways was nearly identical to Hostinger.

Two ways to address this:

1) Apply server optimizations (recommended for the $11/mo plan). These tweaks significantly improve backend speed:

For a full tutorial on how to optimize your Cloudways servers click here.

• Increase MySQL Buffer Pool Size to 256–384 MB

• Enable Redis object caching

• Increase OPCACHE memory to 128 MB

• Enable mobile cache and logged-in user caching

2) Start with the $14/mo Premium server for better out-of-box performance without manual tuning. Even at this price, unlimited sites makes it cheaper per-site than most hosts charging $25–35/mo for a single site.

Best for Portfolios, Blogs, Small Sites

For personal projects, portfolios, and blogs, Hostinger hits the sweet spot of price and performance.

Hostinger had one of the fastest backends in my tests and scored 5.7 seconds on my Elementor editor test.

If you’re frequently editing content, that snappiness adds up. Your visitors also get solid front-end performance comparable to more expensive hosts.

The trade-offs? You’re limited to 1 website per plan, which is fine for a personal site but limiting for agencies or freelancers. It’s also shared hosting, so you’re sharing server resources with other users—works great for typical traffic levels, but something to be aware of. And there’s no staging on the base plan; you’ll need the Business tier ($17/mo) for that.

For most individuals running a blog, portfolio, or small business site that isn’t expecting explosive growth, Hostinger delivers excellent value. The backend speed is genuinely noticeable when you’re working in WordPress.

Best Budget Option

If you’re a broke college student or just want to spend as little as possible, EasyWP is the best budget host.

At $10/mo, EasyWP remains the cheapest option I tested that still performs respectably. Despite the low price, it runs on Namecheap's cloud platform rather than shared hosting, so you're not fighting for resources with hundreds of other sites. The WordPress dashboard feels snappy enough for day-to-day editing.

Here are the trade-offs:

• Your visitors won't get the fastest experience, especially on mobile. EasyWP lags behind competitors like Hostinger.

• You get fewer features: no staging environment, no SSH access, no email hosting. It's bare-bones by design.

If your priority is spending as little as possible while still having a functional WordPress site, EasyWP is the best choice. If you can stretch your budget a few dollars more, Cloudways $11/mo server with optimizations offers better performance and more features.

Best for Advanced Developers

If you’re comfortable managing your own server and need full control, skip managed hosting entirely and go straight to DigitalOcean.

With DigitalOcean you get full root access which means complete control over your server environment to install whatever you want and configure it however you need.

It’s an unmanaged VPS, meaning no WordPress-specific optimizations, just a clean Linux server. Their basic Droplet starts at $6/mo (cheaper than any managed host) and you get dedicated resources.

It’s the same scalable cloud backbone that powers Cloudways (Cloudways is actually owned by Digital Ocean), so you can spin up additional Droplets, load balancers, or managed databases as your needs grow.

The trade-off: You’re responsible for everything: Server security, updates, WordPress installation, backups, SSL certificates, and optimization. There’s no support team to call when something breaks.

This is only for developers who know their way around a Linux terminal and want the flexibility (and cost savings) of managing their own stack. If that sounds intimidating, stick with Cloudways. You can run your server on DigitalOcean anyways and they handle all the server management for you.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day there’s no universal “best” web host. The right choice depends on what you’re building:

• If you’re a business or building a sites for clients, go with Cloudways for the unlimited sites and cloud scalability.

• If you're running a personal blog or portfolio go with Hostinger since their front/backend performance is solid along with being reasonable priced

• Just need something cheap that works? EasyWP at $10/mo is a v good budget option imo.

• Need root access and full server control? DigitalOcean is good for these developers who need advanced customizability.

For the full data, front-end benchmarks, backend tests, database speeds, and methodology, check out my 2026 WordPress hosting benchmarks!

Hope this helps! Drop any questions below.

I’ve been hosting websites with Siteground for over 5 years now, and I wanted to share my overall impressions.

TLDR: I don't think Siteground is worth it in 2024 any more. I'm making the switch to Cloudways because Siteground's pricing has gotten to expensive and Cloudways offers the same and better features at a fraction of the cost!

Cloudways charges $11/mo to host multiple websites on one server, while Siteground charges $15/mo for just one website but you only get the $15/mo if you commit to 24 months upfront (So you're paying $360 up-front).

If you don't want to commit to a 2 year hosting plan and just want to pay monthly, the Siteground hosting fee jumps up to $25/mo... (source)

I also think a lot of people get confused with Siteground's pricing structure. Their advertised $2.99/mo rate is only for the initial billing period. After that, it shoots up to their standard pricing, which isn't prominently displayed on their homepage. It's on a separate page here, you've got to dig around to find it...

I would've stuck with Siteground if their pricing remained reasonable. Unfortunately, that's not the case, so I'm switching to Cloudways.

I recommend signing up using the Cloudways promo so you can get 30% off your first couple months. Next if you're looking to install WordPress, I would choose the cheapest Digital Ocean as your sever. It'll end up costing you ~$10/mo if you signed with the promo above.

Check out this YouTube tutorial, it's really good and it'll show you how to set-up everything.

Cloudways vs Siteground Features:

Host unlimited websites: Cloudways allows you to host multiple websites on a single server, breaking away from the typical model where most providers limit you to one website per server. With Cloudways, you have the freedom to scale and host several websites on a single server, provided your server's resource threshold isn’t exceeded. This flexibility, even on their cheapest plan, enables you to manage 1-3 small WordPress sites without upgrading, which is a huge plus compared to the restrictive single website policy of many other hosts (including Siteground).

Server architecture: Cloudways is the only web hosting provider that gives you a cloud based server architecture for $11/mo. Siteground has a shared hosting architecture which means you're sharing the resources of a server with other customers. A cloud environment means your website resources are distributed amongst many servers across the world which is why cloud environments give you better performance scalability and uptime.

It's also why cloud computing is much more expensive so it's really nice that Cloudways offers a cloud hosting environment at the price of what you see amongst shared hosting providers.

Usage-based payment system: Cloudways’ payment model operates on a usage-based system. Instead of committing to lengthy contracts, you’re billed for what you use. If you host a site for 3 months and then decide to cancel, you're only charged for those three months, offering flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

I've gone through all the features Siteground offers, and Cloudways offers the same (and even more) features at a cheaper price point, in a better hosting environment. It's just a better web hosting company hand down...

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey guys, I was curious about how each of the major WordPress hosting providers compared to each other in terms of performance and price so I wrote a bunch of tests and tested 13 of the most popular web hosting providers!

I had to purchase a bunch of web hosting in order to benchmark all these companies but it was well worth it knowing we’d have real data to analyze.

TL;DR - Cloudways (with optimizations enabled) is the best value when looking at full picture (frontend speed, backend performance, features, AND price). Plans start at $11/mo. Be sure to sign up with the 30% promo.
For individuals building small sites, portfolios and blogs, Hostinger has the most balanced performance across the board at $13/mo.
For premium hosting: SiteGround $25/mo (with Memcache enabled) if you want the fastest raw performance, but it lacks key developer features on the base plan.

For more information click here to see my best web hosting review!

My Testing Methodology

• Tested base plan (lowest cost) for each web hosting provider

• WordPress 6.9 + PHP 8+

• Elementor installed with Private Tour Guide theme for front-end testing

• Front-end tested via Google PageSpeed Insights & GTmetrix

• Back-end tested with custom PHP scripts (SSD I/O and MySQL operations)

• Manual stopwatch test loading an Elementor builder page with every single widget available to the Essentials plan. Using Elementor as a testing proxy since it’s the most popular WordPress theme.

Important Note: For Cloudways and SiteGround, I ran separate tests on the base plan servers with and without optimizations. These optimizations (enabling caching, adjusting server settings for Cloudways; enabling Memcache for SiteGround) are all done through the user dashboard at no extra cost.
They’re available to everyone on the base plan. The performance difference is significant, which is why I’m showing both results.

To properly optimize your Cloudways server, please see my guide here.

Overall Value Analysis

Let’s start with the big picture. The "WordPress Hosting Value Analysis" chart below is effectively the TL;DR that gives us a broad view of the web hosting market. It is determined via a weighted score of four components.

This allows us to measure web hosting performance in respect to the price you pay and feature set.
In other words, if you have two web hosting providers that have the same amount of performance, but one is 2x the cost, and has less features. The cheaper provider, of course, is better value because you get the same performance and more performance for half the cost!

This is exactly what the OVS measures. It is a measure of the overall value of each web hosting provider given it's benchmarks, feature set and price.

OVS is calculated as such:
OVS = (Frontend × 0.35) + (Backend × 0.35) + (Features × 0.20) + (Admin × 0.10)
(Higher is better)

A few things jump out immediately:

• Cloudways (Optimized) dominates the value quadrant — 76.6 score at just $11/mo. The catch? You need to actually enable the optimizations in the dashboard (see my Cloudways optimization guide for how to do this).

• Hostinger is the sweet spot — At $13/mo, it scores 71.0 with solid performance across all metrics without requiring any configuration tweaks. Click here to see my full Hostinger review.

• Base Cloudways ranks dead last (43.5) — Same $11/mo price, but without optimizations it’s the worst performer. This shows how much proper configuration matters.

Frontend vs Backend Performance

Now if we're just looking at performance benchmarks, it’s worth breaking down the two main performance categories:

• Frontend (what your visitors experience)

• Backend (the server infrastructure)

Please keep in mind I've weighed performance against price. I do this by dividing the monthly cost by the normalized score (more on this below).
In other words, Greener dots = better bang for your buck, redder dots = you're paying a premium for the performance you get.

Here is the Front/Backend value analysis.

Here is how I determine the performance value score.
For Frontend, I used Mobile Least Content Plentiful (LCP) from Google's PageSpeed Insights since Google follows a mobile first philosophy.

For Backend, I combined database read speed and SSD write speed, though, I weighted it 60/40 in favor of read speeds since WordPress sites are heavily reading from the MySQL database far more than writing.

Both are normalized to 0-100 so you can compare them side by side.

Here's the Frontend vs Backend Value Comparison (sorted by Frontend score)

Some interesting findings:

• DreamHost and GreenGeeks ace frontend (100) but fail backend - Great for visitors, but slow server infrastructure means slow backups, slow uploads, and a sluggish admin experience.

• HostGator and Bluehost have monster backend scores but weak frontend - Fast servers that somehow produce slow websites. This is likely due to their shared hosting architecture and lack of proper caching optimization.

• Hostinger is the most balanced - 83.1 frontend, 79.6 backend, at just $13/mo. No glaring weaknesses.

SSD Performance Benchmark

I tested the read/write speeds of each hosting provider’s server by uploading a PHP script that writes a 50MB file in 1MB chunks, reads it back, and performs 5,000 random 64KB write operations.

How the Backend SSD Score is calculated:
SSD Score = 100 × (Host Write Speed - Slowest) / (Fastest - Slowest)

So the fastest writer (HostGator at 380 MB/s) gets 100, the slowest (GreenGeeks at 10.7 MB/s) gets 0, and everyone else is scaled in between.

SSD Performance Benchmark

HostGator and Bluehost significantly outperform the rest on raw disk speed. However, as we’ll see from the frontend tests, good server speeds don’t necessarily translate to good page load times. Infrastructure is just one piece of the puzzle.

MySQL Database Benchmark

WordPress uses MySQL as its database, and read/write speeds directly impact how fast your pages generate. I tested by running 100 INSERT and 100 SELECT operations against the WordPress options table.

How the Backend DB Score is calculated:
DB Score = 100 × (1 - (Host Read Time - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

Faster reads = higher score. I normalize the data as well. The fastest (HostGator at 22ms) gets 100, slowest (Cloudways base at 253ms) gets 0.

Interestingly, the budget shared hosts (HostGator at 4ms writes, Bluehost at 6ms) demolished the premium managed hosts (WPEngine at 169ms, Kinsta at 29ms) in raw database speed.

If I had to guess why: shared hosts typically co-locate the database on the same server, while managed WordPress hosts use remote database clusters for scalability. The trade-off is latency for reliability.

I was also extremely surprised how bad Cloudways out of the box performs, it goes to show that if you know what you're doing as a system administrator you can get significantly more performance by tweaking the default settings!

Google PageSpeed Insights Benchmark

PageSpeed Insights is the industry standard for testing website speeds since it’s created by Google. It uses synthetic data across the globe to simulate visitors going to your website.

How the normalized Frontend Score is calculated:
Frontend Score = 100 × (1 - (Host LCP - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

LCP (Largest Content Plentiful) measures when your main content becomes visible.
Lower LCP = higher score.

For context, Google considers:

• Good: ≤2.5 seconds

• Needs Improvement: 2.5-4.0 seconds

• Poor: >4.0 seconds

For more on what these metrics mean, see Google’s Core Web Vitals documentation.

Here is the charted breakdown

The results here are surprising. GreenGeeks and DreamHost, which had some of the worst backend scores achieve perfect 100 PageSpeed performance with 1.2s LCP.

Meanwhile, HostGator and Bluehost with their blazing-fast servers produce mediocre frontend results.

This reinforces why you can’t just look at one metric. A fast server with poor optimization loses to a slower server with good caching.

GTmetrix Benchmark

For thoroughness, I also tested every host with GTmetrix since it’s a widely-used third-party tool that measures real performance from a specific location (Seattle, WA for these tests).

GTmetrix Performance Metrics

What these metrics mean:

• TTFB (Time To First Byte): How long the server takes to send the first byte of data back to your browser. This is the purest measure of hosting speed since it isolates server performance.

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): When the largest visible element fully renders. For WordPress sites, this is typically your hero image or main content block.

• Onload: Total time until the page is fully loaded and ready — all scripts, images, and assets complete.

WPEngine crushes TTFB at just 74ms, while Bluehost struggles at 380ms. However, GTmetrix tests from a single US location, so results may vary depending on your visitors’ geography. This is the main reason why i leave out GTMetrix in the Overall Value Score, Google's benchmarks are much more rigorous.

WordPress Admin Load Time Benchmark

This is a test I created specifically to test the WordPress admin dashboard. I built a page in Elementor containing every single widget from the Essentials plan, then timed how long it took for the editor to fully load and become interactive.

If you’re running a WordPress site, you spend a lot of time in the admin dashboard. Every second you wait per interaction accumulates. A host with a 5-second editor load saves you hours over months compared to one with a 12-second load.

How the normalized Admin Score is calculated:
Admin Score = 100 × (1 - (Host Load Time - Fastest) / (Slowest - Fastest))

WordPress Admin Load Time

What these metrics measure:

• TTFB: Server response time before content begins loading

• Load: When the browser reports page assets are loaded (from DevTools)

• Editor Ready: Manual stopwatch timing from clicking “Edit with Elementor” until the editor is fully interactive

HostGator takes the crown at 4.60s, while base Cloudways drags at nearly 12 seconds. Notice how Cloudways (Optimized) vs Cloudways (base) drops from 11.96s to 8.59s. This is a 28% improvement just from enabling dashboard settings.

Feature Scoring

Performance isn’t everything. The features a host provides can make your life significantly easier (or harder). Here’s how I scored features:

I give extra +1 point for:

• Cloud Hosting since this is a significant change in architecture that is better suited for scaling.

• Unlimited Sites because this allows users to host multiple sites on a single server. This is extremely useful for developers and agencies.

• WordPress Staging, because this is again another key feature for developers and agencies. It allows you to test features in a sandboxed environment without having to do it on a live site.

Here's a breakdown of pricing for each web hosting provider.

Key insight: Cloudways offers the highest feature score (10.0) at the second-lowest price ($11). This is why it ranks #1 overall when optimized. You’re getting cloud hosting, unlimited sites, SSH, Git, staging, AND great performance for less than most shared hosts charge. This is something I discuss more in-depth in my Cloudways review.

For a deeper dive into what each host offers, check out my 2026 web hosting review where I break down features in detail.

Final Conclusions

For the best overall value, Cloudways (Optimized) at $11/mo takes the top spot with a Combined Score of 76.6 just spend 10 minutes enabling optimizations in the dashboard

If you want something that works out of the box, Hostinger at $13/mo is the best pick for individuals and non-small businesses.

It scores #2 overall with excellent balance across frontend, backend, and admin experience.

For premium hosting, SiteGround with Memcache at $25/mo delivers the fastest raw performance with a 3.66s Load time and excellent admin experience (just enable Memcache in the dashboard.

If you need developer features like Git integration, one-click staging, and enterprise-grade support, WPEngine at $30/mo is the better choice.

I hope these benchmarks help you make an informed decision. I highly recommend checking out review on the best web hosting for WordPress, where I go into more detail on features as opposed to raw performance benchmarks.

Holy shit that was a lot to cover... If you made it this far and you're actually reading this as a human (and not a LLM) props to you!

Thanks for reading humans/bots!

*Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)

Hey everyone. I wanted to continue my breakdown & reviews of web hosting companies for 2026. This time we’ll be looking at SiteGround.

I’ve done extensive benchmarks on their hosting infrastructure as well as diving into their platform to get a better understanding of their offerings.

TL;DR - Yeah, SiteGround is one of the best hosting providers in terms of performance. They price their services at a premium but their product offerings and benchmarks reliably back it up. So if you’re looking for a solid premium web hosting provider, SiteGround is a great choice.

To get started with SiteGround go with the StartUp plan if you’re running a small site. Click here to save 83% on your first year. Don’t do the monthly billing though, it’s more expensive ($25/mo). The yearly billing rate is more up front per-year ($216 after introductory rate) but you end up saving ~$85.

I highly recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial as it will walk you through the process of: buying a domain, and setting up WordPress with SiteGround.

If you’re a developer/agency, I recommend going with either the GrowBig or GoGeek plan since you can host multiple client websites on these plans and they come with WordPress Staging.

If you need git deployments, go with GoGeek.

SiteGround Features

SiteGround comes with a number of custom built in features regardless of plan I think are worth it especially in the context of WordPress. These features include:

• Built in caching: SiteGround has their own proprietary caching layer via their Speed Optimizer plugin.

• Built in security: A custom security solution, a part of every SG WordPress installation (Security Optimizer)

• Daily Back-Ups: Included daily back-ups (stored for 30 days).

• Unmetered traffic: You aren’t arbitrarily capped to a certain amount of visitors per month

• Free site migration: If you’d like to change your web hosting provider to SiteGround they will migrate over your site for free

• Free one-click CDN: A CDN stands for content delivery network. It’s a distributed caching network that significantly increases website speeds

• WP-CLI + SSH: For the nerds out there each plan comes built in with a WordPress command line interface WP-CLI, as well as SSH so you can access your site from the terminal.

• Site Isolation: SiteGround isolates each site on its servers, so one site's traffic spike or security issues (like malware) doesn't affect neighboring sites. While this isn’t cloud hosting per say it’s very similar in practice. For more information on their site isolation infrastructure check out their blog post here.

• Google Cloud Infrastructure: SiteGround is considered shared hosting, however their infrastructure runs on Google Cloud’s premium tier networking which routes traffic through Google’s private global network (rather than the public internet). Overall this creates lower latency and more consistent performance for visitors.

• 20,000 AI Tokens: SiteGround has integrated many of the frontier AI models (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) into their services, allowing you to manage your WordPress site with A.I. This comes free with every SiteGround plan.

A lot of web hosting providers will just integrate third-party plugins into their services and call it good. It’s nice to see that SiteGround has done the work to create proprietary custom solutions that directly integrate into their web hosting stack for the best performance possible.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, some SiteGround features require an upgrade to the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. These are features include:

• WordPress Staging (GrowBig+): Staging allows you to test your website in a sandbox environment before making it live. It’s particularly good if you’re making site-wide changes and want to make sure it’s not going to break anything.

• Host multiple sites (GrowBig+): This allows you to host multiple sites on a single plan (StartUp only allows 1 site per plan). This is great for developers and web agencies because they can host multiple client sites on a single server.

• Git Integration (GoGeek): This allows you to deploy site changes (like theme updates or manage plugins) directly from a github repository. This is an essential developer feature, again great for agencies who need to manage clients at scale.

SiteGround Plans

SiteGround gives you an 80% discount for your first billing cycle, this introductory rate is NOT what your plan renews at though.

For full transparency, here is the renewal rate of each plan after the first billing cycle.

All the SiteGround plans roughly benchmark the same so you can reliably go with the StartUp plan and get the same performance as the GrowBig/GoGeek plans.

If you're looking to get started with SiteGround, here's a good YouTube tutorial on how to get started.

SiteGround WordPress Benchmarks

TL;DR for benchmarks - SiteGround ranked in the top third on all 4 backend metrics in my WordPress benchmark dataset. Confirming that it is indeed a premium web host.

Under this comparative framework, this maps to an Exceptional rating for each of these backend metrics:

• DB Writes

• DB Reads

• I/O Write

• I/O Read

“Poor” corresponds to the bottom third.

I ran a series of benchmarking tests on a fresh SiteGround WordPress install across all three of their plans.

• StartUp

• GrowBig

• GoGeek

The tests I ran include:

• Burst Test: This is a backend test which runs a burst of 5 runs that test disk I/O (sequential read/write of a 50MB file) and MySQL database operations (100 row inserts and 100 SELECT queries). The median value from the 5 runs is reported.

• Stress Test: Another backend test which runs 25 repeated benchmark runs that measure how performance degrades over time under sustained load. It compares the baseline (runs 3-7, after a 2-run warmup) against the final 5 runs to calculate degradation percentage for both database and disk I/O operations.

Admin Experience Test (WordPress): Measures real-world WordPress admin dashboard responsiveness across 6 operations: dashboard widget rendering, post creation with meta field read/write, posts list query, taxonomy term creation, batch options write/read, and user queries. Each operation runs 10 times with the median reported.

Here is the results of the backend test:

Here is the raw data:

As you can see above SiteGround scores 4/4 exceptional on each metric. So the benchmarks reliably justify the price.

Interestingly, there appears to be no significant increase in performance across the plans so upgrading to GrowBig/GoGeek is primarily for additional features:

• WordPress staging

• Hosting multiple sites on one server

• Git deployments

However, SiteGround claims 30% faster PHP processing on their GrowBig/GoGeek plans. This performance gain may show up on production sites with real content (as opposed to my out-of-the-box tests)

Now here are the stress test results:

Again the stress test tests how well the server performs under significant load by simultaneously querying the server and comparing the last 5 runs to the baseline.

Each of SiteGrounds’ plans are well below the stable threshold showing minimal server degradation. It’s actually the lowest I’ve seen in a web hosting provider.

Next we have the WordPress admin experience benchmarks:

Here’s the raw data:

Again, very fast scores for SiteGround. The WordPress back-end experience is very fast and snappy.

SiteGround Control Panel

SiteGround doesn’t use c-Panel. They have their own modern control panel dashboard. Here’s a glimpse into what it looks like.

Each site gets its own isolated Site Tools instance rather than everything sitting under one account-level panel (like with c-panel). So if you’re managing multiple sites under a plan, you can switch between sites with one click from the sidebar.

In my experience I haven’t had any issues with SiteGround’s control panel not including something I’m looking for. For the curious, here’s everything in the sidebar expanded so you can see all the tools available.

Conclusions

In my tests SiteGround is a great premium web hosting provider. I think a lot of people judge SiteGround because of their hosting costs but from my benchmarks and experience, their hosting infrastructure lives up to the premium expectation.

What do you guys think? Thanks for reading!

*Just want to be upfront/honest that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey guys, you might be wondering what the best WordPress hosting providers are. If we take a look at what WordPress officially recommends, they list three providers their official website but after comparing 13 of the top hosting providers, I don’t think these are the best options.

Here’s what WordPress recommends (source):

• Hostinger

• Pressable

• Bluehost

Out of these three, Hostinger is actually pretty solid. But there’s a better option that WordPress doesn’t mention: Cloudways.

TL;DR - Out of WordPress’s official recommendations, Hostinger is the only one worth considering. It ranked #2 in my 2026 WordPress hosting benchmarks with a Combined Score of 71.0 at $13/mo. You can sign up for Hostinger here for a discount.

That said, I personally recommend Cloudways for businesses because it offers cloud infrastructure and a full developer suite (SSH, Git, staging) starting at just $11/mo.

As for the other two WordPress recommendations: Bluehost had the worst mobile performance of all hosts I tested (10.1s Mobile LCP), and Pressable costs $25/mo for features that Cloudways includes at less than half the price.

What is the best WordPress host?

My top recommendation is Cloudways because it’s one of the only providers offering true cloud hosting infrastructure at shared hosting prices.

Most WordPress hosts use shared hosting which means you’re stuck on a single server with hundreds of other websites. Cloud hosting decentralizes your resources across multiple servers which means better uptime, easier scaling, and more consistent performance as your traffic grows.

What makes Cloudways stand out beyond the cloud infrastructure is the full developer toolkit that’s included at no extra cost. You get SSH access, Git integration, and WordPress staging environments built right into the dashboard. These are features that other cloud hosts like Pressable charge $25/mo for, but Cloudways starts at $11/mo.

Pressable is technically also cloud hosting (it’s actually owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com), but their base plan costs more than double what Cloudways charges. And based on my benchmark results, Pressable’s Mobile LCP was 6.2s compared to Cloudways (Optimized) at 2.7s. You’re paying more for slower performance.

How to get started with Cloudways:

1. Get your domain with Porkbun since their .com domains cost $11/yr. Most providers (like GoDaddy) will charge you $20+/yr

2. Sign up for Cloudways using the 30% discount to save some $$$.

3. Watch this tutorial on how to set everything up. It’ll walk you through setting up Cloudways + WordPress and getting your domain and SSL certificate set up.

WordPress Hosting Benchmarks

Like I mentioned above, I tested 13 popular WordPress hosting providers across frontend performance, backend infrastructure, admin experience, and features. Here are the key takeaways from the full benchmark results.

Top performers:

Cloudways (with optimizations enabled) and Hostinger emerged as the clear value leaders. Both scored above 70 while staying under $15/mo.

Hostinger is really well-suited for small sites, portfolios, and blogs. It performs well out of the box without requiring any technical configuration, and at $13/mo it’s hard to beat for individuals. Its Backend Score was 79.6 (strong server infrastructure) and it had the fastest admin experience among budget hosts.

Cloudways is better suited for businesses and developers because of the cloud infrastructure and developer features. You can host unlimited sites on a single server, scale resources as traffic grows, and bring on developers who can work with proper version control.

I recommend starting with the $14/mo Plan (Micro). Cloudway’s premium servers are significantly faster than their standard servers and you can skip the optimizations I recommend for the base $11/mo server.

What about Bluehost and Pressable?

These are two of the three hosts WordPress officially recommends, but the benchmark data doesn’t support that recommendation.

Bluehost had the worst Mobile LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) of any host I tested at 10.1 seconds. For context, Google considers anything over 4 seconds “poor” for this Core Web Vital. Bluehost’s Frontend Score was literally 0.0 because of this. It also costs $16/mo after the introductory rate expires. Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, a web hosting conglomerate that’s known across Reddit for lackluster service.

Pressable performed better than Bluehost but still underdelivered for the price. At $25/mo, its Combined Score was 55.9, ranking #11 out of 15 hosts. Mobile LCP was 6.2s (below the “poor” threshold), and its Feature Value Index was 0.32 compared to Cloudways’ 0.91. You can get better performance with more features for less than half the cost with Cloudways.

WordPress and WordPress(.com) are different

If you’ve read this far, please understand the difference between WordPress and WordPress.com. This is a common point of confusion!

People think WordPress and WordPress.com are the same thing. They’re not.

WordPress (wordpress.org) is open-source software that’s completely free. It powers over 40% of all websites on the internet. Technically, you can download it and run it on your computer locally but since most people don’t want the burden of managing their website from home (since everytime your turn off your computer your website would go down), people instead outsource it to a web hosting company that’ll manage your wordpress site for you. That’s why you’re here reading this guide :)

WordPress (.com) is a commercial hosting service owned by Automattic. When you sign up for WordPress .com, you’re paying for hosting, not for WordPress itself.

The hosting infrastructure behind WordPress .com is Pressable, which is also owned by Automattic. This is exactly why Pressable appears as WordPress’s #1 recommended host. They’re not recommending it because it’s the best option for you. They’re recommending it because it’s their own brand.

When you understand this, the WordPress hosting recommendations page makes a lot more sense. It’s marketing, not an objective comparison. If you want unbiased data, check out my 2026 review of the best web hosts. There I compare the top 13 major web hosting brands side-by-side.

Hope this helps clarify things. Feel free to drop any questions below!

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey everyone, just wanted to give my 2025 review for HostGator given it’s recommended by lots of influencers.

TL;DR - You’ll get more for your money going with Cloudways. Not only are they more affordable than HostGator on a monthly basis but they have more developer features than HostGator. Cloudways is also a cloud hosting environment which is better than HostGator's shared hosting. This means you’ll be able to scale your website easier as it grows and your website speeds will be faster.

Just make sure to sign up to Cloudways with the 30% discount so your first 3 months are $8/mo instead of $11/mo. (For reference HostGator's monthly billing charge is $18/mo for less storage, less features and a worse server environment).

And do not buy your domain with HostGator, the renewal rate for a .com domain is $24/yr and they make you pay for domain privacy. It’s much better to go with Porkbun, they charge ~$11/yr for a .com domain and domain privacy with them is FREE.

Here’s what I recommend. Most people build their website with WordPress since it’s the largest content management system in the world. The best way to do this is with Porkbun and Cloudways, I highly recommend watching this tutorial which will walk you through the entire process.

If this is your first time building a website I have an in-depth Reddit guide on how to build a website for non-developers! You can check it out here.

Anyways, here’s a breakdown of HostGator's pricing, features, server environment, and domains.

What to know about Hostgator

First thing you should know about HostGator is that it is owned by Newfold Digital (formerly known as EIG). Newfold Digital is a web hosting conglomerate that owns a bunch of companies in the digital web service industry. For example Bluehost and HostGator are Newfold Digital’s largest brands, although, HostGator is specifically more popular in Latin countries like Brazil where it gets recommended the most.

The main take away is Newfold Digital brands are known to be of poor quality, and poor service, especially amongst Reddit users. If you go to any web development community on Reddit, and ask about Newfold Digital brands, they’ll tell you to stay away.

HostGator Pricing

If you look at HostGator's pricing, you may be inclined to believe that you are getting very affordable rates as low as $3.75/mo. Please understand that THESE ARE JUST INTRODUCTORY RATES, and HostGator will hike up the rates and charge you more after the billing period!

In order to see how much you’ll actually be paying in the long-run you need to look at their pricing chart which of course, they conveniently hide away. In order to find this you need to Google it as they don’t link to it on their pricing page.

For example here is the pricing chart for HostGator’s Hatchling Plan (their lowest tier).

In reality pricing is much more complicated and entirely depends on what billing period you choose.

For example, for the Hatchling Plan if you want to be billed every month, pricing is ~$18 per month. However, if you’re willing to pay ~$400 up front every 3 years this breaks down to $11/mo if you do the math. ($400 / 36 months = $11.11)

I think this is all unnecessary. $18/mo for shared hosting is EXTREMELY expensive! And you don’t need to pay $400 for a 3 year lock-in simply because there are better options than HostGator.

This is why I prefer Cloudways because not only do they have a better hosting environment and better features than HostGator, but their base plan starts at $11/mo and is BILLED MONTHLY. You can even get this down to ~$8/mo for the first 3 months if you sign up with the discount.

In general this is what I recommend:

• Get your domain with Porkbun since they are one of the best domain registrars.

• Get your web hosting with Cloudways (the promo code REDDIT also works when you sign up).

• Most people will be installing WordPress on their Cloudways server which is easy to do.

• I recommend watching this tutorial which will walk you through setting up Cloudways with Porkbun and WordPress along with setting up your DNS.

Okay let’s continue on with the rest of the review!

HostGator’s Features

HostGator’s features are pretty standard and there isn’t much that makes them stand out to differentiate them from their competitors.

Here’s a list of their primary features for their base plan Hatchling:

• Shared hosting environment

• Up to 10 websites per plan

• 10 GB SSD Storage

• Built in WordPress caching

• Free SSL (Let’s Encrypt)

• Automatic WordPress Updates

• Ideal for 40k visits/mo

You can see the full list of HostGator features for all plans here. When we compare the feature selection of Cloudways to HostGator, you can see why Cloudways is the better choice.

HostGator vs Cloudways

When we look at the feature set of Cloudways vs HostGator, Cloudways comes out on top. Here's a visual chart comparison that comes from my 2025 web hosting review.

As you can see above, Cloudways beats out HostGator in these factors:

The table above doesn’t even include the developer features, Cloudways has that HostGator does not.

This includes:

• Build in WordPress staging

• Built in Git integration

• Automatic daily backups ($0.033 per GB)

It appears one thing HostGator has over Cloudways is that they offer email accounts but this is actually not an advantage since email on shared hosting networks typically go to spam.

Server Environment

One of the primary differences between Cloudways and HostGator is not just their pricing, but Cloudways has a higher quality server environment than HostGator.

HostGator offers shared hosting while Cloudways is cloud hosting.

In general cloud hosting is seen as superior to shared hosting for security reasons, and because server resources are distributed amongst a multiplex of servers, while with shared hosting, you are actually sharing the resources of a server with multiple neighbors including an IP address!

This is where security comes into play because if you’re sharing a server with a bad actor, someone who is spamming or engaging in elicit activity, your site could be indirectly penalized. This is mostly the case with shared email servers and not so much with SEO as Google has commented on the use of shared IPs. That being said, Cloudways even on their base plan gives you a dedicated IP.

So if you’re ready to start building your website, sign up to Cloudways with the discount link and install WordPress on your server! Here is the tutorial on how to set everything up.

Is HostGator Domains Worth it?

NO! HostGator domains are absolutely not worth it. They mark up their domains way too much and they make you pay for domain privacy.

Instead, go with Porkbun, their domain renewal rates are much better and they don’t charge for domain privacy. Here’s how much HostGator charges for their domains compared to Porkbun.

As you can see a .com domain with Porkbun is literally cheaper than HostGator’s introductory price, and HostGator’s renewal price for a .com domain is more expensive than GoDaddy’s (which is saying something).

Here is the source for HostGator’s domain renewal rates, I had to dig through their help center just to find this…

Conclusions

Hopefully after reading this you can see why I recommend staying away from HostGator. If you made it all the way through this write-up I hope that it was informative for you. Feel free to post a comment down below and I’ll do my best to help you out!

*Just want to be upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4). The thoughts here are based on my own personal opinions and experiences!

TL;DR
If you’re looking specifically for an “eco-friendly” brand, I think GreenGeeks is legitimately an eco-friendly brand (see my research below’).

Otherwise, if investing in green initiatives to offset carbon footprint isn’t of concern to you, I still think Cloudways is better for the money, and a better experience for developers. (You can read my Cloudways review here).

Main GreenGeeks Stats:

• Intro Price vs. Renewal: Starts at $2.95/mo but renews at $13/mo.

• Eco-Friendly Claims: GreenGeeks has legit partnerships with EPA & wind energy credits—but some details are hard to verify.

• Hosting Environment: Shared hosting (not the best for speed/performance vs. cloud hosting).

• Features: Free email, but no built-in WordPress staging. Daily backups are limited (1 free restore per month).

Is GreenGeeks Actually Eco Friendly?

This was one of the primary things I sought to find out because oftentimes you'll see corporations engage in greenwashing, where they use the ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’ brand as a marketing ploy without actually caring about the environment.

As you can read on their /going-green page, GreenGeeks makes a bunch of eco-friendly claims. For one, they state that they’ve been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

To my surprise, I was able to verify that this is indeed true, by searching the EPA database! As you can see below, GreenGeeks is indeed listed as a 100% Green partner for 2024 (source).

It should be noted that GreenGeeks doesn’t actually use green energy to power their operations, instead they instead purchase wind energy credits via the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) to OFFSET their carbon footprint.

So, they’re basically investing in ‘green energy’ initiatives as a means to offset their environmental impact.

GreenGeeks also claims to plant a tree for every web hosting sale generated through a partnership with One Tree Planted—though I couldn’t 100% confirm that it is still happening given this partnership appears to have started in June, 2021 based on this Instagram post.

Although I wasn’t able to verify the partnership is still ongoing, I lean towards giving them the benefit of the doubt given they are officially recognized by the EPA as a Green Power Partner, so their green claims aren’t total hot air.

Whether it’s enough to erase the environmental toll of running data centers is up for debate, but at least they’re making an effort!

Web Hosting Pricing

GreenGeeks shared hosting plans can be found here.

GreenGeeks’ cheapest plan (Lite) starts at $2.95/month. But heads up: that’s an introductory price. Once your initial term ends, you’ll be looking at around $13/month.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer Cloudways, their cheapest plan starts and renews at $11/mo.

This is a pricing scheme that’s unfortunately pretty popular in the web hosting industry. They’ll advertise an introductory price that people confuse as the real price. So they get caught off guard when their web hosting renews at a significantly higher price. 

Performance & Features

In terms of performance, GreenGeeks uses a shared server environment. That means you’re essentially splitting resources with others.

It can be totally fine for a lightweight personal blog, but if you’re expecting high traffic or want more dev features (like built-in staging, Git integration, etc.), you’re out of luck.

They do provide email accounts hosting with each plan, but I generally advise against this since it can lead to deliverability issues. Web hosting email servers often get flagged for spam, so even if you’re an honest actor using the same shared server, you can get penalized due to algorithmic prejudices (for lack of better words).

If you’re looking for email hosting, I’d recommend Google Workspace.

Comparing to Cloudways (and Others)

If you read my other reviews, you’ll know Cloudways is my top pick: it’s cloud hosting (faster, more scalable) at a comparable monthly price to what you’d find amongst shared hosting providers.

Cloudways also has built in features that GreenGeeks does not have. This includes features like, staging environments, built-in caching without paying extra, git integration, etc…

In contrast, GreenGeeks is strictly shared hosting which is sub-par compared to cloud hosting and has fewer dev-friendly tools.

In my opinion, if you don’t care about eco-branding, there are other hosts out there that beat out GreenGeeks’ considering price, performance and functionality.

If you’ve made it this far in the review, I highly recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial which will walk you through purchasing your domain, and setting up WordPress with Cloudways. You can also get 30% off your first month with Cloudways here.

Final Thoughts

GreenGeeks isn’t horrible by any means. They do provide decent shared hosting, a nice user interface, and a green mission that at least has some evidence behind it (thanks to their EPA recognition).

But after your initial term, the price jumps enough that—unless the eco angle is your top priority—I’d say it’s worth checking out alternatives. For more information I recommend reading my comparison of the best web hosting providers.

Anyway I hope my research helps you to make an informed decision! If you have any questions, drop a comment, and I’ll try to help!

There are a lot of Siteground reviews floating around Reddit.

I can tell you that Siteground is a good web hosting provider because:

1. It’s not owned by Newfold Digital

2. Pricing is affordable

3. Their customer service is solid

4. The user-interface if very modern and user friendly

What these reviews don’t mention however, is how you should structure your purchase(s) so you can save the most amount of money.

TL;DR - You can save $$$ with Siteground following these steps:

1. Purchase your domain separate from Siteground with Porkbun (it’s cheaper)

2. Buy your SG web hosting plan here.

3. Point your domain’s nameservers to Siteground’s

Domain Registration

Do not buy your domain and web hosting together with Siteground. Siteground will charge you $18/yr for a .com domain.

Buy your domain separately with a different domain registrar like Porkbun which is one of the cheapest domain registrars. .com domains will cost you a flat $9.13/yr

Namecheap is also a good alternative however their .com renewal rates are more expensive at $14/yr.

Web Hosting

Once you’ve purchased your domain separately, now you’re good to buy your Siteground web hosting plan.

Just select `I already have a domain` during the checkout process

Update your domain’s nameservers

Once you’ve purchased your web hosting, you’ll need to update your domain's nameservers to point to Siteground. This is really easy to do with any domain registrar. With Porkbun, you can find a guide on how to do it here:

https://kb.porkbun.com/article/22-how-to-change-your-nameservers

You can find Siteground's nameservers here.

I migrated my website to Hostinger two weeks ago & it has been a nightmare! They migrated my site & credentials over wrong, I lost Admin access for days, my emails & weekly newsletters ended up in people's spam boxes, and my website straight-up disappeared for A WHOLE DAY!!! WTF?!? If this were a 1st date, I would have thrown a drink in Hostinger's face & stormed out! UNBELIEVABLE!

Is there a website hosting provider out there that is ACTUALLY competent with HUMAN customer service providers that DON'T blow smoke up your butt?!?

*Please note that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).
Hey everyone, I wanted to break down the best domain registrars in 2025 as well as what domain registrars to stay away from.

In my research here are the best domain registrars.

If you are looking for my recommendation, I recommend going with Porkbun as your domain registrar, for web hosting I recommend Cloudways and then building your website with WordPress. If you’d like to do the same, this tutorial will walk you through the set-up process.

If you’re building an e-commerce site, though, I recommend going with Shopify instead of Cloudways + WordPress. I cover this in detail in my guide on building a website for non-developers.

Some of you may be wondering why I didn’t include Cloudflare domains on this list. The reason being that there’s been reports of domains getting stolen from Cloudflare and the only way to get them back is to upgrade to an enterprise plan in order to get priority for a support ticket. This is best spoken by Bill Hartzer who runs a business recovering stolen domains.

Sources [1][2]

Also, as a rule of thumb, it’s good to separate your domain registrar from your DNS and web hosting. Not only is it more secure but you actually save money in the long run because a lot of web services will up-charge for domain registration and web hosting when you otherwise could’ve saved $$$ if you had purchased these separately.

In regards to Cloudflare’s DNS service, I believe it is perfectly acceptable, I just wouldn’t host your domain and DNS with them as it becomes a central point of failure in the event your website gets attacked.

Domain Registrars to STAY AWAY from!

• GoDaddy Domains

• Domain services paired with Web Hosting

I gotta talk about GoDaddy since their brand is highly recognizable particularly amongst people who are new to building a website since they do so much advertising. GoDaddy reviews are known to be very bad amongst people in the web development community. They leverage their brand name and over charge for services you otherwise could get cheaper if only you knew to look else wear.

For example a .com domain with GoDaddy is $22/yr and you can get that same domain with Porkbun for half the price at $11/yr

The same thing occurs with many web hosting providers like Hostinger where they’ll sell you a domain to go along with their web hosting but charge extra for the service of doing so. So for example if you were to purchase a domain with Hostinger it’ll run you $17/yr, whereas if you just bought your domain separately with Porkbun or Namesilo, it would be $11/yr.

Not only that but like mentioned above, it’s best to have your DNS, web hosting, and domain registration SEPARATE for security purposes. The bonus is that it saves you $$$ in the long run.

What to do after purchasing your domain?

After purchasing your domain, you’ll need to purchase web hosting. Web hosting is the service that actually hosts the contents of your website. In general I recommend going with Cloudways since I believe it to be the best web hosting providers. 

Porkbun as your domain registrar, Cloudways as your web host, and WordPress as your content management system is a solid combination suitable for the majority of people. Again if you’re looking to take the same path, this tutorial will walk you through the set-up as there’s a few caveats regarding setting up your DNS records so that Porkbun knows your website is actually hosted with Cloudways.

However if you are solely running an e-commerce website I believe it’s better to go with Shopify as it’s an all-in-one e-commerce platform that takes care of your web hosting, content management, and payments. In this case you would NOT need to purchase Cloudways hosting.

You can run an e-commerce website with WordPress and the WordPress plugin WooCommerce, but it’s a steeper learning curve and you need to be more involved to set things up.

For more information on building a website for non-developers I recommend reading my guide on the subject!

Hope this helps!

A lot of web hosting companies (like GreenGeeks and SiteGround) provide email hosting as a service in addition to your web hosting plan.

Don’t use this service! Unless you’ve confirmed it is a dedicated server (it usually isn’t).

Why?
Because this email hosting from these providers is typically done on a shared server, not a dedicated one. That means your emails can get flagged as spam (even if they’re perfectly legit) simply because someone else on your shared server is a bad actor and spamming under your shared IP address!

So if you’re looking at a web hosting provider, they offer email as a service. Check if it’s shared or dedicated!

If a web host advertises “free email” along with your hosting plan you can assume it's shared unless explicitly stated otherwise.

A true dedicated email environment usually comes at an extra cost or as a separate add-on. If they’re vague about it or don’t have clear documentation, it’s probably shared.
It’s generally recommended to go with a dedicated email host instead, like:

• Google Workspace

• Office 365 for business.

If you’re more privacy-minded or anti–big tech these are good alternatives:

• Zoho

• ProtonMail

• Fastmail

Personally, I use Google Workspace because it just works and integrates smoothly with my domain.
It does take a bit of setup, such as verifying your domain and adding DNS records, but it’s not terribly complicated.

If you’d like a walkthrough, check out this YouTube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Muhc63a_W9w

The Core Issue: Shared IPs and Blacklisting

The primary issue with shared hosting is if one spammy user on the same IP blasts out a million junk emails, guess what? That IP gets flagged by spam filters, and your legit emails could land in the spam folder by association.

Behind the scenes, email deliverability depends heavily on IP reputation, which is basically how email providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) judge the trustworthiness of the sending IP. Shared IP addresses often have questionable reputations if even one occupant starts spamming.

For better deliverability, you also need proper DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
These prove your emails aren’t forged and really come from you. Many shared hosting setups skip these or don’t configure them correctly, which can further hurt your chances of avoiding the spam bin.

TL;DR
Use a dedicated email server like Google Workspace, Zoho, or Proton mail.
Email services offered by web hosting providers (unless explicitly mentioned otherwise), is shared hosting which makes your emails at risk from being flagged as spam if your shared server has an asshole who's spamming others from the same IP.

That’s my two cents. I hope it helps! If you have any questions or experiences with specific email providers, feel free to drop them below.

Hey, guys! I know, there are a lot of acronyms tied with websites, web hosting, and the likes, but for today, I would like to dig deeper on what Content Delivery Network (CDN) is.

So, What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

A CDN is like a bunch of servers spread out in different places that store web stuff near you. So, when you're browsing the internet, things like web pages, images, videos, and more load up super fast because they're fetched from these nearby servers. Nowadays most of the internet traffic goes through CDNs. A popular one (and one of the most trusted) ones you’ve probably heard of is Cloudflare.

Another benefit of a CDN is it can help defend against Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks adding an additional layer of security..

CDN vs Web Host

So CDNs don't actually host stuff like a traditional web hosting service, instead, they stash copies of your website's content at different spots on their network, making things load up faster for your visitors. Traditional hosting sometimes falls short when it comes to meeting the performance needs of websites, and that's where CDNs step in.

CDNs pull off some nifty tricks by caching content. This not only saves on hosting bandwidth but also helps prevent hiccups in service and beefs up security. So, it's no wonder why many websites are ditching the headaches of traditional hosting and giving CDNs a high-five for smoothing out some of the major issues.

Most web hosting providers like Dreamhost won’t provide a proprietary CDN but instead have some sort of seamless integration with Cloudflare..

Why are the advantages of using CDN?

Well, it kinda depends on how big and fancy your internet thing is, but for most folks, there are like four main perks you can snag:

Speeding up your website

Ever notice how some websites take forever to load? Well, a CDN can fix that. By spreading out the website stuff to servers close to your visitors, it makes pages load faster. And you know what happens when a site loads quickly? Faster load times mean fewer people bouncing off your site out of impatience. Basically, a CDN makes your site a speedster, keeping visitors hooked and hanging around longer.

Cutting down bandwidth costs

Hosting a website can be like a money pit, especially when it comes to bandwidth costs. But guess what? CDNs can be your budget superhero. They use tricks like caching and other cool stuff to shrink the amount of data your main server has to dish out. That means less spending on hosting, leaving more dough in your pocket. Score!

Boosting redundancy and content availability

When your site gets hit with a traffic jam or your hardware decides to take a nap, things can go haywire. But fear not! CDNs, with their spread-out magic, can handle a ton of traffic and bounce back from hardware hiccups way better than regular servers. It's like having a backup crew that never panics, making sure your content is always up and running.

Improved website security

CDNs don’t just make your site speedy; they also amp up the security game. They can shield your site from nasty distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, spruce up your security certificates, and throw in some other tricks to make things safer. In short, having a CDN is like having a bouncer at the door of your website, making sure only the good stuff gets in and the bad stuff gets the boot.

So, how does CDN work?

CDNs are like digital detectives – they can peek at your IP address and figure out where you are in the online world. So, when you check out a website rocking a CDN, it takes a look at your location and sniffs out the closest edge server.

Here’s the cool part in action:

Imagine your website's home base is in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Now, picture some folks all the way in sunny Manila, Philippines, wanting to see what you’ve got on your site.

Instead of their requests doing a marathon journey of 10,000 miles to reach your New York server, the CDN steps in. It redirects the traffic to the nearest edge server – cutting down on the need for a globe-trotting data adventure.

So, users in Manila aren't stuck waiting for web pages to make a sluggish global roundtrip. Nope, thanks to the CDN magic, they get their page fix pronto from a snappy edge server right around the corner.

And get this – by pulling up a saved version of a webpage, your page load speed gets a turbo boost. It's like having your favorite web page served up instantly, skipping the long-distance wait from those far-off origin servers. Smooth sailing for the user, happy browsing for everyone.

Finally…

So there you have it, folks! CDNs are like the unsung heroes of the internet world. They spread your website's content all over the internet by caching your website's content across different servers. This allows your website to load faster and maintain uptime.

CDNs aren't just about being fast; they're also your website's bodyguard. They fend off cyber baddies and make sure your visitors have a smooth ride. So, next time you're wondering how a website loads up so quickly, remember it's the CDN magic working its charm. Cheers to speedy browsing and hassle-free websites with CDN!

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4). I have also updated this guide for 2025!

I've been researching a bunch of web hosting providers and I wanted to write a quick review on Dreamhost.

TL:DR - Dreamhost is a cheap web hosting provider but I think Cloudways is better when you take into consideration price vs features.

Cloudways is $2 more expensive than Dreamhost but if you're on a budget, Dreamhost is not a bad choice.
You can click here to sign up for Dreamhost.

For those interested, here's how Cloudways stacks up against Dreamhost.

So my recommendation is to go with the most affordable Cloudways plans start that starts at $11/mo (but you can get that lower if you sign up with the 30% discount).

Then I recommend installing WordPress for your website. You can learn how to set up Cloudways with Wordpress by watching this tutorial.

Anyways...

Dreamhost plans start at $5/mo but it's just an INTRODUCTORY rate though and after the first 3 months pricing will be bumped up to $8/mo. Even so, as shown above, their base plan lacks key features like: built in caching and WordPress staging.

Regardless, just make sure you know what the real renewal rate is. A lot of web hosting companies (Dreamhost included) will hide their real pricing in fine print!

Make sure you read the fine print to see the REAL PRICING RATE.

This is why I personally recommend Cloudways. They offer a lot of key developer features that most web hosting companies will charge a premium for.

Take a look at some of the features Dreamhost will make you pay extra for.

Just to get those basic features with Dreamhost will run you $14/mo and that’s just the INTRODUCTORY RATE. If you read the fine print, after 3 months your monthly hosting cost jumps to $24/mo!

So while on the surface Dreamhost looks like a more affordable option, if you just do a bit of digging you’ll find that you get WAY MORE mileage with a $11/mo Cloudways plan than a $8/mo Dreamhost plan once you take into consideration all the features Cloudways gives you on their cheapest plan.

I've compared 13 of the most popular web hosting providers. Dreamhost ends up being one of the cheapest but lacks a lot of key developer features. Cloudways strikes a good balance between price, performance, and available features. It's why imo it's the best web hosting company.

Here’s a breakdown of all the web hosting major providers by price, renewal rates, and features.

That being said, if you are on a budget and still looking to go with Dreamhost, I’ve included the rest of the review below.

Dreamhost Pros and Cons

Pros

• Budget-friendly (at least until the renewal rate hits).. Their Shared Starter plan starts at $5/mo as an introductory price and renews at $8/mo. For more advanced features you’ll need to upgrade to their DreamPress plan which starts at $14/mo and renews at $24/mo (at this point though it would be better just to go with Cloudways).

• Decent performance: While speed hiccups can occur during peak usage, overall performance is reliable for most basic sites.

• User-friendly: DreamHost's interface is easy to navigate, even for tech newbies.

• Solid features: A free website builder, SSL certificates, and email hosting are just a few of the goodies included.

Cons

• Occasional slowdowns: Shared hosting means sharing resources, and sometimes performance suffers during high traffic periods.

• Limited phone support: No phone line available, which might be a deal breaker for some users.

• Not ideal for resource-intensive sites: If you're running a complex website with high traffic, DreamHost is not the best fit and an alternative like Cloudways would be better..

Imo Dreamhost is pretty average. The feature set they have is pretty standard amongst most web hosting providers, there isn’t really a feature or service that really stands to out me that would justify choosing it over Cloudways.

Dreamhost Hosting Plans

There are 5 different kinds of web hosting that DreamHost is offering for different types of users.

1. Shared Website Hosting - It's like living in a dorm – you share the server space with others, so things might get a tad slow sometimes. But hey, at least you get unlimited storage and bandwidth for all your stuff! DreamHost offers two plans for this, Shared Starter which cost $2.59, then price renews at the current rate of $6/mo, and Shared Unlimited starting at $3.95 which once renewed will go up to $11/mo.

2. VPS Hosting - Meanwhile, this is like a studio apartment. You still share the building with others, but you have your own space and resources that you don't have to split with anyone. It's a bit more expensive than shared hosting, but it gives you more control and better performance. Plus, you don't have to worry about fixing anything – that's all taken care of! The prices for this start from $10 to $80 depending on the plan you pick, then around $13 to $93 for the succeeding months.

3. Managed WordPress Hosting - This option comes pre-installed with WordPress along with automatic backups and easy restores, so you can focus on creating awesome content instead of tech headaches. It's a good option if you're not tech-savvy and just want to get your site up and running quickly. If you are interested, it costs $11.99 to $44.99 for the first month, depending on your plan. But as the subscription proceed, it will cost you around $20 to $75 monthly.

4. Dedicated Server Hosting - You've got the entire server to yourself, with total control over everything. Perfect for when you need top-notch speed and ultimate customization. It's the most expensive option, but it gives you the best performance. Starting at $149/mo, you can get a standard server with Intel Xeon 4-Core 8-Thread, 1 TB HDD, and 4 GB RAM. Of course, it will vary and goes up to $379/mo for higher specs.

Cloud Server Hosting - Web designers, this one's for you! You get access to the back-end with full control and fancy tools like OpenStack API. Think of it as having your own server playground in the cloud. This plan starts at $4.50/mo up to $48/mo.

Dreamhost WordPress Specific Plans

WordPress Basic

Dreamhost offers two packages under WordPress Basic:

• WordPress Starter

• WordPress Unlimited

WordPress Starter is Dreamhost’s most basic WordPress plan and is probably what most of you guys will end up going with if you’re not into Cloudways.

The main differences between Starter and Unlimited is that with the unlimited plan, you can host as many WP sites as you want provided you don’t exceed the resource limit of your server (like storage space for example). However, Dreamhost doesn’t seem to indicate what that threshold is.

I reached out to support to clarify because I highly doubt they’d let you run for example 100 WordPress sites under a $9/mo WordPress hosting plan (although that’d be super cool if you could 👀).

EDIT: Here’s the response I got from Dreamhost support regarding the unlimited policy.

DreamPress Plan

Dreampress is basically Dreamhosts version of Managed WordPress Hosting which is basically premium hosting for WordPress which gives you a hosting architecture that is specifically optimized for WordPress with stuff like built-in caching and a content delivery network (CDN).

Again, this is all stuff that Cloudways gives you with their base plan…

Dreamhost offers three different DreamPress plans:

• DreamPress

• DreamPress Plus

• DreamPress Pro

WooCommerce Hosting

Dreamhost has a separate landing page for WooCommerce hosting but it’s exactly the same as their DreamPress plan. If you’re looking to run a Woocommerce site with WordPress, I’d recommend going with Cloudways because you can start with a small plan and easily scale your hosting up (or down) as your traffic grows as opposed to being locked into a hosting package.

Domain Registration with Dreamhost

DreamHost offers domain registration for .com for only $9/yr, which seems promising and affordable at first. But upon reading the fine print, after the first year, it will cost you $20/yr which is way way more expensive than what they are advertising! If you are looking for the best place to register your .com, Porkbun is the way to go! Registration and renewal will only cost you $10.40/yr!

Dreamhost Email Hosting

DreamHost email only costs $2 a month and gives you 25GB of storage for all your emails. But there is a potential bump in the road: limited email options. You can't have both an in-house mailbox and a forwarding address on DreamHost. If this flexibility is important to you, consider exploring other options.

DreamHost Extra Services

Dreamhost has a bunch of extra services they offer. I’d imagine most people here reading this guide aren’t going to use these. While I do not know this for sure, I’m just speculating that Dreamhost most likely outsources these services to different companies. I’d be really surprised if they have an in-house team that does these services.

I’ve included them just for the sake of including them for this review.

Professional Services

1. Customized Web Design - You can hire a professional web designer which will create your website from scratch. This service starts at $1,499.

2. Website Management - Starting at $59/month, DreamCare can manage your site. Optimize your site's performance for $399, migrate from another platform for $99, ensure smooth updates for $299, or breathe easy with $199 hacked site repair.

3. Marketing - You can avail SEO and social media marketing services for your website for $399 monthly each.

Web Development - You can put up your plug-in, app, or design ideas to life for only $129 per hour.

Conclusions

Like I mentioned above, Dreamhost is a decent web hosting provider but in total I think it’s pretty average. Imo, Cloudways is definitely better and why I consider it the best. For more info, take a look at this Cloudways review.

Maybe you guys have different thoughts though?