5 Best Shared WordPress Hosting Companies

Looking for the best shared WordPress hosting to host one or more sites on a budget?

If you want a beginner-friendly and affordable way to run WordPress sites, shared hosting is almost always going to be the best decision. But because it’s the entry point for most WordPress users, there’s a lot of garbage out there in the shared hosting space.

To help you avoid the dregs, we’ve put together the five best shared WordPress hosts, with prices starting at under $5 per month. We’ll do this based on both personal experience, as well as objective numbers from third-party websites and review aggregators.

Later in this post, we’ll compare shared hosting services vs. some other common types of WordPress hosting. You’re probably here for the hosts, though, so that’s where we’re going to start.

5 Best Shared WordPress Hosting Providers

As we go through this list, one important thing to pay attention to is the distinction between promotional prices and regular prices.

Pay Attention to Promotional vs. Regular Prices

In the shared hosting space, it’s common for hosts to advertise one “promotional” price for your first billing cycle and then a “regular” price that you’ll pay after that. Typically, you can lock in the promotional prices for up to three years, but you’ll need to pay for the entire three years upfront. If you can afford it, this is a great strategy to make promotional prices work for you.

We’ll be sure to include both promotional and regular prices in this list. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into when choosing hosting plans.

About this Hosting Review

We are affiliates for two hosts on this list, SiteGround and GreenGeeks. If you click one of those links and go on to buy the hosting, we’ll earn a commission. We’re affiliates for these hosts because we’ve collected and analyzed thousands of real, unbiased customer reviews on WordPress hosting, and that data shows that these hosts are the best hosting in their category.

1. SiteGround

Based on the data, SiteGround is the overall best shared WordPress hosting provider in 2020.

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Not only are SiteGround customers generally pretty happy, but SiteGround also earned Top Tier status in Review Signal’s 2020 hosting performance benchmarks, which means your site will load very fast on SiteGround.

Despite being shared hosting, SiteGround still offers some managed WordPress features including:

• Automatic updates
• Automatic backups
• Free SSL certificates
• Staging sites (on mid-tier and up)
• Server-level caching (on mid-tier and up)

SiteGround recently made two big changes in 2020 and late 2019:

1. It moved all its infrastructure to Google Cloud, including the shared hosting plans.
2. It released a custom hosting dashboard. Personally, I like the new dashboard, but I know that some users preferred cPanel, which SiteGround previously used.

Unfortunately, SiteGround also raised its prices significantly in June 2020, which is a bit of a downer. With the new prices, it’s the most expensive shared host on this list by a large margin. So you get excellent quality for shared hosting, but you’re paying for it.

? Our full SiteGround review

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2. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is another top-rated shared WordPress host that clocks in significantly cheaper than SiteGround after SiteGround’s recent price increase.

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GreenGeeks also performs quite well, earning an Honorable Mention in Review Signal’s 2020 benchmarks. That’s not quite as good as SiteGround, but it still means your site will load quickly and reliably on GreenGeeks.

Beyond performance, you also get access to other useful features such as:

• Automatic WordPress updates
• One-click WordPress installer
• Daily automatic backups
• LiteSpeed server and LSCache
• Free SSL certificate
• cPanel

One thing that you might like about GreenGeeks is that, true to the name, GreenGeeks offsets all of its energy usage with 3X that in renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

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3. DreamHost

DreamHost is a more affordable shared WordPress host that still performs fairly well in the objective data.

It’s not quite in the same tier as SiteGround and GreenGeeks, but it’s still a solid offering at a lower price. You also get the option to use month-to-month billing (at affordable prices), which can be attractive if you can’t afford the upfront payment that’s required to lock in cheap prices at SiteGround and GreenGeeks.

Like GreenGeeks, DreamHost earned an honorable mention in Review Signal’s 2020 performance benchmarks. Again, that’s not top tier, but it’s still quite good, especially for the money that you pay.

DreamHost’s plans also come with:

• Free SSL certificates
• Automatic daily backups
• Automatic WordPress updates
• Custom control panel
• Free migrations via DreamHost’s automatic migration plugin

* MTM price = full price with month-to-month billing. The other prices are for three-year billing.

One thing to note is that DreamHost doesn’t include email hosting on its cheapest WordPress Starter plan—you’ll have to add it for an extra $1.67 per month. The WordPress Unlimited plan does include email hosting, though.

4. Namecheap

Calling Namecheap the “best” shared hosting is a little bit of a stretch, but it’s “ok” shared hosting at an incredibly cheap price.

If quality is your #1 concern, it’s probably not for you. But if price is key to you, it’s a solid option for what you pay.

So let’s talk price:

Billed yearly, Namecheap is just $1.44 per month for up to three sites or $1.88 per month for unlimited sites.

Those are promo prices…but what’s more impressive is that the prices still stay low after your first year. Even at full pricing, you’ll pay just:

• $33.88 per year or $2.88 month-to-month for up to three websites
• $57.88 per year or $4.88 month-to-month for unlimited websites

You won’t find many shared hosts that come close to that regular pricing—and most of the ones you do find will be a lot worse than Namecheap.

Namecheap didn’t earn Top Tier or Honorable Mention status in Review Signal’s benchmarks, but it did still perform adequately when you consider the price. As long as you understand that you’re making some performance trade-offs, it can still offer good value if you’re on a tight budget.

Beyond the prices, Namecheap’s shared hosting plans also come with:

• WordPress autoinstaller
• cPanel
• Free/automatic SSL certificates (but only for your first year, which is a downside)
• Automatic backup (only on the unlimited plans)
• Free Supersonic CDN

5. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is another shared host that earned Top Tier status in Review Signal’s performance benchmarks. It doesn’t perform quite as well as SiteGround or GreenGeeks in the user satisfaction metrics, but it’s still another solid independent option in the shared WordPress hosting space.

Beyond excellent performance, A2 Hosting also offers:

• cPanel
• Free SSL certificates
• LiteSpeed server/cache on higher-tier shared plans
• Email hosting

The Worst Shared WordPress Hosts: Avoid These Hosts

Why are we dedicating a section to the “not best” (or worst) shared WordPress hosting? Because, unfortunately, a lot of the shared WordPress hosts that you’ll commonly see recommended are not good WordPress hosts, as evidenced by the data.

Here are some popular shared WordPress hosts that you should not use:

• Bluehost
• GoDaddy
• Hostinger
• iPage
• HostGator
• A Small Orange
• Arvixe

In general, you want to avoid any EIG hosting company.

The one exception is if you don’t care about quality and just want something cheap (e.g. for a testing environment). If cheap WordPress hosting is all you care about, these hosts can certainly tick that box (though Namecheap is still probably a better option).

What to Expect From the Best Shared Hosting for WordPress

To finish things out, let’s compare shared hosting vs. some other popular types of WordPress hosting.

Shared Hosting vs. Managed WordPress Hosting

Shared hosting is not going to be as good as premium managed WordPress hosting from hosts such as Kinsta or WP Engine.

You’ll usually make sacrifices when it comes to:

• Performance
• Features
• Support

However, you’re making those sacrifices to get a substantially cheaper product. And that—price—is really the only reason to choose shared WordPress hosting over managed WordPress hosting.

Shared Hosting vs. Cloud/VPS WordPress Hosting

Shared hosting vs. cloud VPS hosting is a slightly different comparison.

Cloud VPS hosting is surprisingly cheap—it can be as cheap, or even cheaper than shared hosting.

For example, just the $5 per month droplet from DigitalOcean will give you surprisingly good performance—I have a simple WordPress site loading in under one second on this setup.

However, the drawback is that cloud VPS hosting is not accessible to non-technical users.

There are services that make it easier, such as Cloudways or server control panels like SpinupWP or RunCloud (or GridPane, if you’re willing to spend more). However, it’s still not a great option for casual users, which is why shared hosting makes a good alternative in that price range.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Shared Hosting

Now for the important question: what is the best shared WordPress hosting for you?

Well, that depends on your needs and budget.

In 2020, I would recommend most people start with GreenGeeks even though SiteGround rated a tiny bit better.

Why? Because of SiteGround’s June 2020 price increase, I think GreenGeeks offers better value at this point. SiteGround is still an excellent shared product…the recent price increase just makes it harder to justify.

However, even though GreenGeeks is cheaper than SiteGround, both are still pricier than some of the other shared hosts on this list. That makes sense—if you want a better product and better support, you’re going to need to pay a little more.

If the regular pricing is out of your reach and/or you can’t afford the upfront payment to lock in those cheap prices for three years, you might want something a little cheaper.

In that case, your next best option is DreamHost. It’s still pretty good and offers cheap month-to-month plans. Even with full price, month-to-month billing, you can still spend under $5 per month.

And if that’s still too much, you might want to go with Namecheap. Namecheap isn’t as good as the other hosts, but it’s impressively cheap. I don’t think you’ll find a better option that lets you host unlimited sites for under $5 per month with regular pricing. Just be aware that, while it’s ok, you’re not going to get as good of a product or support as with SiteGround or GreenGeeks.

Finally, if you want to see our overall best picks for WordPress hosting, check out our full guide to WordPress hosting in 2020, including both shared hosts and other options.

Still have any questions about which host is best for you? Ask us in the comments, or in our Facebook group!

Keep reading the article at WPShout. The article was originally written by Colin Newcomer on 2020-07-15 10:39:10.

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