The best things in life are not always free, but they don’t always have to cost an arm and leg.
Contrary to what many website owners think, an expensive WordPress hosting plan doesn’t exactly guarantee premium service.
However, it is important to mention that opting for a cheap plan doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gotten yourself a bargain.
While the initial cost might sound like a discount, the hidden charges and poor service could leave you wishing you bought a premium WordPress hosting plan in the first place.
A study by Google found that the probability of users leaving a website increases up to 123% as the page load time lags from 1 to 10 seconds.
That’s how much a bad hosting plan can ruin your website.
So how do you find the right balance?
This is quite tricky because, on the one hand, you don’t want to lose the advanced features that come with the premium hosting plan, but then again, you don’t want to fall for the marketing hype and overpay for a service you can easily buy for less from another provider.
A few hours of reading online reviews and doing intense research could help you unearth affordable WordPress hosting options that will deliver optimum performance and save you a couple of bucks.
But what if we told you you don’t have to go through the hassle?
Of course, you don’t because we’ve done our homework and drawn up a well-researched list of the cheapest WordPress hosting plans that offer entry-level performance and quality of service.
Best and Cheapest WordPress Hosting
1. DreamHost
- Auto WordPress updates
- Free domain
- Free SSL certificate
- Advanced user-friendly dashboard
- 97-day money-back guarantee
When searching for the right balance between price and performance, you probably won’t find a better WordPress hosting provider than DreamHost.
To start with, it is officially endorsed by WordPress and is trusted by over 1.5 million website owners, and this speaks volumes of the quality of service it offers.
Of all the hosting platforms, DreamHost has the cheapest month-on-month WordPress hosting pricing plan at $1.99 per month.
You’re not tied down to any unnecessary commitments, meaning you can pull the plug on the contract anytime you feel like it.
You also enjoy the same features as users who purchase the annual plan, including unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate.
With DreamHost, there are no hidden charges. Uptime is estimated to be 100%, and you also get a 97-day money-back guarantee, the industry’s most generous refund policy.
In comparison, Hostgator (which also features on this list) offers customers a 45-day refund.
The best you’ll get from most hosting providers is a 30-day money-back guarantee. At the time of writing this post, all of DreamHost’s data centers are located within the United States, but they’re accessible from anywhere in the world.
2. Hostinger
- Single WordPress hosting plan costs $1.99 monthly
- 100GB bandwidth
- Free SSL
- Multiple data centers
- 99.9% uptime
Over the years, Hostinger has become a prominent name in the web hosting space, and it’s no coincidence. The service delivery and customer support are exceptional, and they don’t rip you off either.
Hostinger’s Single Shared hosting plan costs only $1.99. In return, you’ll get 100GB bandwidth, 30GB SSD storage, 99.9% uptime, and a free SSL certificate. The only challenge would be that you have to subscribe for 48 months to enjoy this deal. If you do the maths, that’s four years of great web hosting for less than $100.
As expected, premium features like WordPress staging tool, weekly backups, free domain, and Cloudflare CDN are missing from the basic plan, but you can access them all for $6.99 monthly with the higher-octane Hostinger Business WordPress plan.
With seven data centers across four continents, Hostinger is one web host that gives your website the best possible loading time. That right there is why the platform is trusted by more than 29 million users across 178 countries. And that number is growing by the second with an average of 15,000 new users daily.
3. SiteGround
- Free automated site migration
- Excellent 24/7 support
- Easy-to-use interface
- Free SSL
- Daily backups
At $2.99, SiteGround’s StartUp monthly plan is more expensive than the first two web hosting plans we’ve explored so far. But we cannot complain, considering the firepower features it offers.
Imagine getting unmetered traffic, free CDN, and daily backup for less than five dollars. That’s a bargain by all standards.
Furthermore, SiteGround has seven data centers in Europe, North America, and Asia.
The platform has two other packages called the GrowBig and the GoGeek. These plans have the same features as the StartUp package, except that they support unlimited websites and offer more web space and monthly visits.
Like most hosting platforms on this list, SiteGround has an impeccable uptime rate and loading speed.
4. HostPapa
- Free expert support during migration
- Jetpack 24/7 support
- Easy-to-use interface
- Free SSL
- Daily backups
If it means anything to you, HostPapa is one of the first platforms to adopt renewable energy in powering its data centers.
With that said, let’s explore some things about HostPapa’s platform that stands out for us. There’s no better place to start than the pricing, which sounds too good.
The WP Starter plan is ideal for newbies; it features 100 email accounts, unmetered bandwidth, free domain registration, automated backups, Encrypt SSL certificate, and support for two websites.
It has an uptime rate of 99.97%, which is absolutely premium if you factor in maintenance and system errors that may occur from time to time.
5. GreenGeeks
- 1-click WordPress installation
- Automatic updates
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain name and website transfer
- Free WordPress tutorials
Founded in 2008, GreenGeeks is one of the newest web hosting startups that has delivered quality service and gained users’ trust in recent years.
So far, it powers 500,000 websites.
WordPress does not officially endorse it (at least not yet), but it’s rated as one of CNET’s best web hosting platforms.
GreenGeeks has three data centers in the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. These servers are incredibly fast, meaning your website can get a speed of up to 480ms, which is above the industry standard.
In addition, the GreenGeeks offers super-reliable uptime, excellent customer support, free backup, free CDN, built-in caching, and 300x energy-efficient hosting.
For what it’s worth, GreenGeeks founder Trey Gardner is a veteran in the industry, having worked with eight web hosting companies since 1999.
6. Cloudways DigitalOcean
- Dedicated firewalls
- Managed Security
- All PHP Apps supported
- Free SSL certificate
- 1-click server cloning
Cloudways is a flexible managed hosting provider that allows you to host your WordPress website on a cloud server.
You get to cherry-pick between five of the very best cloud infrastructure providers, including DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud.
In terms of price, the Cloudways and DigitalOcean pairing is the ideal option of the lot with a base price of $10 per month.
Cloudways DigitalOcean offers standard premium options like unlimited application installation, staging environment, automated backups, free site transfer, free SSL certificate, CDN add-on, HTTP/2 Enabled Servers, and unbeatable customer support.
7. Flywheel
- 60-day money-back guarantee
- 14-day demo sites
- Free migration
- Free SSL certificate
- 24/7 customer support
Flywheel is not the most affordable WordPress hosting platform feature available, but it’s stacked with advanced tools that will excite experienced website owners, developers, and large agencies looking to expand their operations.
We have no complaints about the customer support service, which is above the industry standard. However, phone call support is only available to customers who spend a minimum of $250 within a month.
There’s a good chance you wouldn’t need to ring the company, though, because the email tickets and chat box are just as effective.
Flywheel dominates the hosting space when it comes to performance and the sheer amount of features that are offered to web admins.
From the cloud hosting infrastructure from Google Cloud to the built-in content delivery network powered by Fastly and the one-click sandbox environment for staging, you cannot help but appreciate the technological offerings of the Flywheel WordPress platform.
8. Liquid Web
- Automated daily backup
- Automatic free SSL certificate
- Round-the-clock customer support
- Fully managed WordPress
- No traffic limits or metered pageviews
Liquid Web is a managed web host solution that supports VPS, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, CMS, and eCommerce Hosting.
The cheapest hosting plan on the Liquid Web platform sells for $19 monthly, but new users are offered a 30% discount for the first three months. This package offers 15GB storage, 2 B bandwidth, regular backups, and unlimited email accounts.
If you’d like more discounts, you can pay $190 to enjoy uninterrupted access to the service for 12 months.
Additional perks include excellent customer service and fast page loading time. Uptime is also impressive, and you can choose from ten data centers across the globe.
More than five hundred active users are subscribed to the Liquid Web WordPress hosting service.
9. BlueHost
- Custom theme
- Okay customer support
- Free CDN
- Automatic update
- Unmetered bandwidth
BlueHost is one of the better options among the lineup of web hosting platforms owned by Newfold Digital (formerly EIG).
For $2.95 only, you can purchase the lower-tier plan, which offers a free SSL certificate, custom themes, 10GB SSD storage, free CDN, exceptional uptime, and decent load page speed.
For an extra $2.50, you can upgrade to the BlueHost Plus package and enjoy access to unlimited websites, unlimited SSD, and a range of other high-tech features that over two million users enjoy.
The interface is easy to use, but the plans are on a shared server which slows down page load times.
10. HostGator
- Free domain
- Free SSL certificate
- Free site transfer
- Simplified dashboard
- Easy app integration
Here is another inexpensive WordPress web host platform owned by the New Digital (EIG). With over ten million active domains registered on the platform, HostGator is one of the most popular and most reliable hosting providers you’ll find around.
Pricing for the three packages starts at $5.95 and tops out at $9.95 monthly. Free SSL certificate and domain are included as standard features.
Also, HostGator is renowned for having a large fleet of servers which eventually translates to an impeccable uptime record of up to 99.9%. But like Bluehost, these shared servers are jammed with several websites, slowing down the overall performance.
Conclusion
A good WordPress hosting provider gives you an edge over your competitors. But as we mentioned earlier, you don’t have to drain your wallet to get the right hosting plan for your website.
This article is packed with affordable options that offer immense value.
Whether you’re a newbie or an experienced web developer, you will find the perfect fit for your website.