8 Best Cheap WordPress Hosting Options: An Honest Review

Searching for cheap WordPress hosting?

Sometimes you need a way to host your WordPress site(s) without breaking the bank, and we’ve got you covered in this post with some objective recommendations based on review data from thousands of users.

In this post, you’ll find ultra-budget WordPress hosting options for under $3 per month, but most of the hosts we recommend fall more in the ~$10 per month range.

If you just want a quick look at the best cheap WordPress hosting, here are the top options. Otherwise, keep reading for the full analysis:

To help you find the option that’s right for your needs and budget, I’m going to divide the hosts into two sections:

To make this objective, we’ve aggregated user ratings from TrustPilot, WhoIsHostingThis, CodeinWP, and Review Signal. Beyond offering our own experience, this gives you hard data on how other users rate all of these hosts. You can see our in-depth analysis of all WordPress hosting options—not just the cheap ones—here.

If you already know what you’re looking for, you can click a link above to jump straight to that section. Otherwise, keep on reading to find the best option for your needs and budget.

What to Expect With Cheap WordPress Hosting

Let’s be honest to start this off:

As Heinlein reminds us, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

For the most part, there’s a clear correlation between the price that you pay for hosting and the quality of service that you receive.

There are certainly some hosts that offer better value than others, but a $5 per month plan from a good host is not going to perform on the same level as a $30 per month plan from a good host, especially as your site grows in complexity and traffic.

In general, I would say that you can still get good quality WordPress hosting in the $10-$15 per month range (that’s full price, not promo prices. More on the difference in a second).

If you try to go below that into hosts that cost under $5 per month with regular pricing, you’re typically going to make serious sacrifices in:

• Performance
• Reliability
• Support

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go under the $5 per month range if that’s all your budget allows for – you’ll just need to lower your expectations for the quality of service that you’re going to get.

Pay Attention to Promotional Pricing When Considering Cheap WordPress Hosting

When discussing cheap hosting, it’s important to highlight the concept of promotional pricing because it’s a common tactic in the budget web hosting space.

With promotional pricing, the top-line prices that you see many hosts advertise only apply to your first billing cycle.

After that, they can double or triple when you go to renew. For example, look at the difference between SiteGround’s “special price” and its regular prices:

Most hosts will let you lock in the promotional pricing for up to three years, but you’ll need to pay it all upfront.

If you can swing the upfront cost, promotional pricing is a great way to lock in cheap hosting for at least a few years. But if you can’t, you’ll need to be extra wary of promotional pricing.

As I go through the hosts, I’ll do my best to show you both the promotional prices and the regular prices.

About this Inexpensive WordPress Hosting Review

We are affiliates for some of the hosts in this article: specifically, the ones that real users actually like. Currently, the hosts in this article that we’re affiliates for are Cloudways, Flywheel, Green Geeks, and SiteGround. If you click one of those links and go on to buy the hosting, we’ll earn a commission.

We’re affiliates for these companies because we know they’re the best, not the other way around. We are not affiliates for GoDaddy, for any EIG-owned company (such as Bluehost or HostMonster), or for any other low-performing hosts as defined by our unbiased analysis of thousands of honest user reviews. We try not to even link to those companies’ websites, because we really, really don’t want you to buy their hosting.

Cheap WordPress Hosting Options That Still Rate Well in Objective Metrics

In this first section, I’m going to highlight hosts that, while cheap, still offer a good quality service. If they meet your budget needs, I would recommend choosing one of these hosts if at all possible.

1. SiteGround

Based on the numbers, SiteGround is the best cheap WordPress hosting provider. In our roundup of objective review data, SiteGround even out-performed more expensive options like WP Engine and Flywheel.

SiteGround offers stellar performance (especially for the price). It also offers convenient managed WordPress features like:

• Automatic WordPress updates
• Staging (on higher tiers)
• Server-level caching

SiteGround is also continuously pushing out improvements. They launched a new custom hosting dashboard in late 2019 and they recently moved to use Google Cloud infrastructure in early 2020.

One thing to pay attention to is SiteGround’s promotional prices vs its regular prices. While SiteGround is super cheap for your first billing cycle, it’s not quite as good of a deal once you get past that.

If you can swing the upfront cost, I would recommend locking in the promotional prices for three years (the longest time allowed).

Here’s how the pricing shakes out:

Overall – this is the best cheap WordPress hosting for most users – just pay attention to the renewal prices and lock in the cheap prices for three years if you can afford it. You can learn more in our SiteGround review.

2. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is another cheap WordPress host that performs surprisingly well in objective metrics given its low prices.

One of its unique value propositions is its focus on being environmentally friendly (hence the name). GreenGeeks offsets 300% of its energy usage with renewable energy credits.

All plans come with automatic WordPress updates and server-level caching. GreenGeeks also advertises unlimited storage and bandwidth (though nothing is truly unlimited).

GreenGeeks advertises very low promotional prices, but you’ll need to commit to long terms to get the cheapest prices. The deals aren’t quite as sweet for shorter periods, though it’s still pretty cheap. Like SiteGround, you’ll also need to consider renewal prices after your first period.

Here’s how the monthly price shakes out depending on the billing period that you commit to:

You also get a free domain name for one year with your purchase.

Overall – this is another solid option that is a little cheaper than SiteGround. Still, my first recommendation would be SiteGround.

3. Cloudways

Cloudways is unique in that it doesn’t have any of its own hosting infrastructure. Instead, it’s a user-friendly control panel that helps you use and manage cloud hosting from DigitalOcean, Vultr, AWS, Google Cloud, or Linode.

The price that you’ll pay depends on the underlying hardware that you want access to.

The cheapest option is a $10 per month DigitalOcean plan with:

• 1 GB RAM
• 1 processor core
• 25 GB of storage
• 1 TB of bandwidth

Cloudways’ dashboard does a great job of making cloud hosting accessible to non-technical users, but I still wouldn’t recommend this one to casual users as there is some added complexity because of Cloudways’ approach.

Overall – this one is not for casual users, but users who can handle Cloudways’ cloud hosting approach can get great value out of even just the $10 per month DigitalOcean plan.

4. Flywheel

Flywheel is a premium managed WordPress host like Kinsta and WP Engine. One difference between Flywheel and those other hosts is that Flywheel offers a budget-friendly Tiny plan.

At $15 per month for the Tiny plan, I might be stretching the definition of cheap WordPress hosting a little bit. But I think it’s still valuable to include because this is one of the cheapest entry points that you’ll find to “premium” managed WordPress hosting.

Flywheel uses cloud-based architecture from Google Cloud, unlike almost all of the other hosts on this list (with SiteGround and Cloudways being the exceptions). It also has a well-designed custom hosting dashboard that makes it easy to perform key actions.

As the name suggests, though, the Tiny plan really only works for…tiny websites. It has a monthly cap of 5,000 visits and only comes with 5 GB of storage.

Overall – if you have a low-traffic site and want a quality, reliable managed WordPress hosting experience on the cheap, Flywheel is a great option. It doesn’t fit the label of “cheap” for higher-traffic sites, though.

5. DreamHost

DreamHost is kind of on the edge between “hosts that I would still recommend” and “hosts that are just cheap.”

If I had to describe DreamHost in a word, it would be… adequate.

DreamHost has been around forever and has built a pretty solid reputation.

In terms of features, it’s a pretty standard shared offering, with unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain name.

One notable thing is that DreamHost allows month-to-month billing, whereas most other cheap WordPress hosts in this price range make you commit to a one-year minimum.

If you want pay monthly WordPress hosting for under $5 per month, this is one of the better options that you’ll find:

Overall – a “good not great” option with a cheap month-to-month billing plans. This can be a good option if you’re scared off by the upfront costs at some other hosts that make you commit to multiple years to get the good prices.

Cheap WordPress Hosting Options That Are Just Cheap

In this second section, I’m including hosts whose only redeeming factor is their price.

These hosts just plain don’t offer a quality hosting product… but they do offer a cheap hosting product.

Basically, if you want a working WordPress website for under $3 per month, these are your options.

6. Namecheap

Of the ultra-cheap WordPress hosting providers, Namecheap is probably your best option. With an aggregate rating of 74%, Namecheap performed surprisingly well when you consider the price.

So what is the price? Namecheap actually has two cheap options that work for WordPress sites.

The first is their generic shared hosting plans, which are dirt cheap:

Second, Namecheap also offers a cheap managed WordPress hosting offering called EasyWP.

EasyWP plans only support a single site. They offer improved resources over the shared plans, but have more strict storage and traffic limits.

The EasyWP Starter plan offers 10 GB SSD storage and resources for 50,000 visitors per month for:

• $3.88 per month billed month-to-month
• $22.88 per year for your first year ($1.91 per month) and $29.88 per year after ($2.49 per month)

Overall – I think this is about as good as you can do for under $3 per month with regular pricing. It still doesn’t compare to the hosts in the previous section, but it’s acceptable for its price.

7. iPage

iPage is not good WordPress hosting, but it is cheap WordPress hosting if you lock in the promo pricing for multiple years.

Here’s how the prices shake out depending on your commitment:

• 1 year – $2.99 per month
• 2 years – $2.49 per month
• 3 years – $1.99 per month

The two kickers are that:

• You get a free domain name.
• You can host unlimited websites.

Being able to host unlimited websites for $1.99 per month with a three-year commitment is the cheapest deal that I could find for unlimited sites.

What’s the downside? Well…it’s just not good hosting. With an aggregate rating of 54%, the objective numbers above are pretty dreadful.

Additionally, those are promotional prices, and the deals won’t be as sweet after your first billing cycle.

Overall – you won’t find many cheaper options that let you host unlimited websites, but the quality is not good. Only use it if you need the absolute cheapest way to host unlimited sites and don’t care about quality.

8. Hostinger

Hostinger has a checkered reputation in the WordPress hosting space. They were caught manipulating TrustPilot reviews and using sketchy marketing tactics in the WordPress hosting group – Review Signal covers the issue well in this post.

Because of their history of manipulating ratings, I didn’t find it worth including the objective metrics for Hostinger as they’re artificially high.

For those reasons, I would not personally recommend Hostinger as a host…but I can’t argue that they’re not cheap, and this is a post about cheap WordPress hosting.

In fact, if you’re willing to pay for four years upfront, I could not find a cheaper option from any mainstream WordPress hosting company. That fact is literally the only reason why I’m still including Hostinger on this list.

So how cheap is it?

If you’re willing to pay for four years of hosting up-front, you can lock in four years at just $0.99 per month, or $47.52 all in for four years of hosting.

That plan does limit you to a single website and 100 GB bandwidth, though. If you need to host multiple websites, Namecheap would be a cheaper option.

Overall – not a host that I would recommend, but I can’t argue that Hostinger doesn’t fit the label of “cheap WordPress hosting”. I would only use this if you want the absolute cheapest hosting available and you don’t care about quality. Even then, you’d probably be better off ponying up the extra dollar for Namecheap.

What’s the Best Cheap WordPress Hosting?

If I had to recommend the two best cheap WordPress hosting options for most WordPress users, I would say to start with SiteGround or GreenGeeks.

Despite the low prices, both still manage to offer quality WordPress hosting products that will give your site a good foundation.

If those are still out of your budget, or if you’re scared off by having to pay for three years upfront to lock in the cheap prices, then the $4.95 month-to-month DreamHost plan is still an adequate solution.

And if that’s still too expensive, your next stop might be Namecheap. Namecheap manages to offer “not totally horrible” WordPress hosting for under $3. As long as you go in with the right expectations, it’s a viable option.

You can go even cheaper than Namecheap, but you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel at that point and I would try to avoid it if at all possible.

Questions about any of these hosts? Ask away in the comments!

Keep reading the article at WPShout. The article was originally written by Colin Newcomer on 2020-03-31 15:06:25.

The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.