Doesn’t matter if you’re starting a new business or if you already have one that’s been around for a while, speed is one of the keys to making sure that your site can grow and remain healthy. Bonus point … this will also keep your visitors active.
Looking for the right fastest web hosting can be a little tricky, though, because every host is different. They have a multitude of packages that can make you confused when you go through them. Everyone wants what’s best for their business, no matter if it’s a small or big one. And of course, one of the most important things you can rely on is the speed.
Why is speed important?
The fastest WordPress hosting will help you organize and develop your content in an easy way. A slow host not only slows down the page load for the visitors, but can slow the admin panel too. This will make your work harder and more time-consuming.
However, most importantly, a fast hosting will make your visitors feel comfortable when they try to access your site and interact with it in some way (like commenting or trying to click your social media buttons). A website that fails to load fast will cause them to go away.
UPDATE (July 2016). Here are the three leaders in our “fastest web hosting” run. Check them out if you don’t have the time to go through the whole post:| SiteGround | Bluehost | WPEngine | |
 |  |  | |
| PRICE (MONTHLY) | $3.95 | $3.49 (when signing up for 36 months) | $29.00 |
| TYPE OF PLAN | Shared | Shared | Managed |
| NO. of WEBSITES | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| DISK SPACE | 10GB | 50GB | 10GB |
| VISITS MONTHLY | 10,000 | 10,000 | 25,000 |
| VISIT: |
Speed tests with Pingdom
Server location: Amsterdam
| Testing location | Load time 1 | Load time 2 | Load time 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 0.40s | 0.40s | 0.42s |
| New York | 1.07s | 1.16s | 1.15s |
| Melbourne | 3.76s | 3.76s | 7.75s |
LoadImpact tests
Server location: Amsterdam
Testing machine location: Dublin, Ireland
Minimum response time: 0.46s
Maximum response time: 0.87s
THE FULL COMPARISON:
There’s also one more issue that’s not that apparent at first glance when it comes to the fastest WordPress hosting. Mainly, even if your current web host is perfectly capable of handling your average traffic numbers, what happens if you hit a really popular day? As it turns out, not all hosting plans can handle that.
Visitors are … what’s the word … moody. They just won’t spend their day waiting for a website that barely moves, and what’s more important, many of them won’t come back again if you don’t offer them some basic comfortable browsing experience.
As Dave Artz from AOL concluded in a study, page views drop off as page load times increase. The study says that:
According to the same study, increasing speed will reduce the operating costs too. Phil Dixon from Shopzilla shares his experience and shows that:
Need more? According to a study made by Akamai in 2009, 47 percent of visitors expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. More than that, 40 percent of people leave the page if it takes more than three seconds to load. And a one-second delay in page response can result in a seven percent reduction in conversions.
As you can see, the role of site speed is huge in business terms and can have significant impact on how successful a website can be.
Looking for the fastest WordPress hosting – factors to consider
There are a couple of important factors that you need to be aware of when looking for the right host:
It is important to know how many visitors your host can serve – and whether it’s going to be able to handle your growth.
With the standard hosting packages, every client has a certain space allocated on the server. Even if the host says that the space is “unlimited,” this is not exactly the case, which you will quickly find out if you read the fine print under the user’s agreement.
Inevitably, a huge spike in traffic will slow down your website if it’s run on a shared hosting plan. And if the spike is big enough, at some point, your site will go down completely.
Before choosing a web host, browse some online forums and reach out to the web host’s support as well. Try to look for information regarding the traffic numbers that the host can handle realistically.
In other words, don’t host your site on the other side of the globe from your audience just because it’s cheaper.
Types of WordPress hosting
The decision of what type of hosting to select will depend on your personal requirements regarding how much work you want to be doing with your server and your site later on.
If you’re just starting out and want to see how owning a WordPress site will work for you, you can experiment with free hosts (Hostt being a prime example) or shared hosting packages (it’s where you share the hosting space with other customers; companies like BlueHost or Site5, or will give you that).
For professionals and sites that have built a larger audience, managed hosting and VPS will be the answer (with WiredTree, WPEngine, Pagely, or Flywheel for example). They are more pricey, but they come with a lot of features and benefits. Chief of which is that you don’t have to deal with the technical side yourself.
Hosting companies you should look into
There are many hosting companies to choose from, and each of them provides slightly different services and features. We’ve made a selection of some of the more interesting ones, especially having the main goal in mind – finding the fastest WordPress hosting.
The companies here are among the fastest in the field, and they alternate from expensive to cheap, depending on your budget. They offer reliable customer support and assistance, good security, and safe backups.
SiteGround
SiteGround is a great choice when you’re looking for fastest WordPress hosting around. They offer three main plans spanning from $3.95, $7.95, to $11.95 a month, which make it a very affordable solution. As part of the most basic plan, you get 10GB of disk space, a free domain, 24/7 support, free daily backups, and everything else you’d expect from a hosting service. Then, there are some additional features as part of the other two plans (e.g. a free SSL certificate, priority support, free PCI compliance, and more). On top of that, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
BlueHost
This is a company specialized in professional shared hosting. It’s an official WordPress approved-hosting provider. They provide one-click installation, automatic backups, non-stop support. Their offer starts from $3.49 a month (provided that you’re willing to sign up for a 36-month contract), with a 30-day money-back guarantee. This WordPress hosting is a good choice for small businesses and bloggers.
Pagely
A bit more pricey than the other solutions on this list, but it does give you a lot in return for your investment (it’s a managed hosting plan). The basic package is $99 per month and gives you a number of perks. Just to name a few: you get WordPress pre-installed, auto-updates for your WordPress and plugins, auto backups, free CDN, and 24/7 US+UK-based support (important!). Pagely has been known for their WordPress-optimized hosting plans and basically giving you the fastest WordPress hosting possible, so if you’re looking for something that gives you a hassle-free experience, this might be the provider for you. Plus, you also get to launch up to 5 websites on a single plan, and you get 25GB of bandwidth.
Flywheel
This is a WordPress hosting built for designers and agencies, but it is also friendly for less advanced folks who want to develop their websites. The plans at Flywheel have gotten much more affordable lately, starting as low as $15/month or even $11.25/month if you’re lucky to hit one of their promotions. You get to launch one WordPress site on the cheapest plan called “Tiny.” And you get to serve as many as 5,000 monthly visitors on it. Flywheel provides great speed, security, customer collaboration, and safe backups.
WiredTree
WiredTree is a dedicated and VPS hosting provider, and runs since 2006. It offers powerful services and has great customer service and server security. The plans start at $49 a month for SSD-accelerated VPS, or $55 a month for SSD-only VPS. The company features an easy to handle control panel, data backups, proactive monitoring and provides constant updates and fast solutions. Additionally, during signup you can select extra server resources and tools “a la carte.” This is useful if you think you’re going to be needing more RAM, for example, than is available in the standard package.
WPEngine
A little bit more expensive than some of the other managed WordPress hosting plans, but it’s worth it. They provide good services, super-fast servers, great technical and customer support. Their hosting infrastructure is especially created to ensure your WordPress site runs fast and smooth. The plans start at $29 a month and there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee. As part of the $29 plan you get unlimited data transfer and 10GB of local storage. This should be more than enough for a new website, and capable of serving up to 25,000 visitors monthly.
Traffic Planet Hosting
This is what you call fast WordPress hosting, with great support and good page loading times. They offer power and speed as the two most important keys of their company. Traffic Planet Hosting provides a one-click WordPress installation, enhanced security and good customer support. The prices start at $24.99 a month. The offer lets you build five websites, get 50GB of bandwidth and a 10GB storage limit (all disks are SSD, which is huge for site speed).
HostGator
Another shared WordPress hosting, which is one of the biggest online hosting companies out there. It offers some of the lowest prices you’ll find, starting at $5.56 a month (on a 36-month contract). You can install your site in just one click. Fits best people who want to start their first business site. If you need more, HostGator offers shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated server packages for both beginners and professionals at different price points.
Site5
A shared WordPress hosting which is very good for the beginners who want to launch their very first site. Site5 provides one-click installation, plans begin at $4.95 a month, and they even offer free site migration at that price point (if you’ve had your site hosted with a different company). It’s worth noting that the cheapest plan is good for up to 10,000 visitors a month, which should be enough to get you started. Site5 also gives you a user-friendly control panel.
How to choose the fastest WordPress hosting for you:
Here’s the step-by-step for selecting a hosting package that’s going to be fast for you and your audience:
- Select one of the companies
Go through the companies listed above and get familiar with what they provide. Take note of every interesting detail about their offerings. This is where your budget comes into play. - Check their server location to see if it fits yours
After you select a company, you should check their available server locations. That means you have to verify if it’s relatively close to your audience’s location. The closer, the better. This aspect is important, because it gives you better performance for the same investment. Some companies show their server locations during the sign up process, others need to be contacted directly about this. - Choose a plan
After you decide which company is closer and also serves all your needs, you have to choose one of the plans they’re offering. The plan you need is the one that fits best your budget, your audience and your goals.
Conclusion
There’s plenty of hosting companies that can serve everyone’s needs and budgets. But this maybe makes selecting the fastest WordPress hosting for your site even tougher.
It’s important to know your business and your goals very well to be able to select the right company. Apart from that, there are also a lot of tools and services – free and premium – that can further improve your site and make it work even more smoothly.
That’s it for our view on the fastest WordPress hosting providers on the market. Feel free to share your suggestions and opinions with us! Tell us how your web host is performing in terms of speed. Is there a company that you would (or wouldn’t) recommend to others?
* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a small fee. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no cost on your part.
