Best Review and Comparison WordPress 4.5 Hosting

In this article we’ve set out to simplify matters for you by running the rule over three of the best hosting companies out there: ASPHostPortal , HostForLIFE and DiscountService

Update: Here is the short version of our WordPress Hosting case study, if you’re in a hurry. Feel free to scroll down to read the complete post (including methodology / data).

We’ll cover speed, performance and price to help you narrow things down. Before we get into the nitty-gritty though, let’s discuss what you should be looking for in a hosting partner generally.

What to Look for in Your Hosting Company

Hosting is not everybody’s area of expertise or favorite subject in the world so it’s important to have a clear picture of what you should expect as standard from the outset.

We’ll kick things off here with a look at features that should simply be non-negotiable in any solid WordPress hosting setup.

(If you’d rather cut straight to the chase and dive into our WordPress hosting comparison, go for it!)

• Speed: Web users are notoriously impatient so speed is vital. Google are also cracking down on slow sites so you really can’t afford to be slack in this area. This is especially the case when it comes to WordPress hosting. Left unoptimized, WordPress can be a resource-heavy application so you need top-notch hardware in place to get the most bang for your buck.
• Full feature set: This isn’t specific to WordPress hosting of course but it should go without saying that your hosting provider offers email accounts and forwarding, appropriate server access and excellent tooling on the admin side.
• Security: Nothing ruins a day quicker than discovering your site has been pawned by script kiddies. Your host should have verifiably secure systems in place to deter common attacks.
• Support: Excellent support is essential in a hosting provider. You should be able to reach friendly and knowledgeable support people at any hour of the day or night. Waiting around on email tickets isn’t good enough if there’s a real problem.
• WordPress-friendly hosting: WordPress has its own specific requirements and peculiarities and not every host is set up to handle it optimally. Right now, WordPress ideally needs to be running on PHP 5.6 (or greater) and MySQL 5.5 (or greater) to avoid security vulnerabilities and potentially broken features. Look for a host with a strong track record in dealing with WordPress sites.
• Pricing and value for money: It’s all very well having a super-fast, super-secure server, and an awesome site, but if you’re spending ten times as much on it as you can ever hope to get back, all that effort is in vain.

What We’ll Cover

We’ll be going over a lot of ground in the remainder of this piece so feel free to hit us up in the comments if anything is unclear along the way.

Unlike many other hosting guides which are biased in favor of one particular provider from the get go, we’ve reviewed each of the hosts totally independently and are happy to answer any questions you might have.

Let’s start drilling into detail and look at the different types of WordPress hosting that are actually available for your site.

WordPress 4.5 Hosting and Server Types

Hosting options run the gamut from very basic shared hosting all the way up to having your website’s very own dedicated server. The hosts we’ll be looking at later each offer pretty much the full range via their various packages.

In this section, we’re going to take a whirlwind tour through some key differences between basic types of hosting to make sure you have some background context for later on. If you’re relatively experienced in this area already, feel free to skip ahead.

Managed versus Unmanaged WordPress 4.5 Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is where everything regarding your site is taken care of for you by the hosting company. You don’t need to worry about server configuration or security settings and uptime should be pretty much bulletproof.

With unmanaged hosting, you are given space on a server and what happens next is essentially up to you.

Although it’s more than possible to set up, run and maintain an installation with an unmanaged host, there are a number of obvious reasons why a managed option makes an awful lot of sense:

1. If anything goes wrong, you have people on hand to help and it’s their problem as well as yours.
2. You’re not forced to carry the burden of system administration for your site. Running a successful WordPress site is hard enough without constantly fretting over ports, proxies and potential server meltdowns.
3. Managed hosting options will almost certainly have better security systems in place than anything you can hack together and your WordPress installs will be automatically upgraded with each new release.

The plans we’ll be testing in our roundup are all managed, but it’s still useful to have an idea of the different options available to you. We’ll quickly run over the main pros and cons of each alternative before getting down to business.