Here is a novel concept if you’re seeking a low-cost host for your WordPress website; an unbiased recommendation. Unfortunately almost every Webhost recommendation is based, not on the quality of hosting, but on financial remuneration for the reviewer or commenter. Most hosts offer affiliate payments or referral fees so the reviews you commonly read are merely there because the host is paying a higher commission than other hosts (i.e. the recommendation has nothing to do with how good the host actually is).
I’ve built several hundred WordPress websites and here are, in my experience, the most reliable budget priced hosts for your WordPress website. My criteria is based on the fact that most of my clients use their websites for business purposes, are based in Australia and used shared-hosting.
Disclaimer: I get no financial reward for the below i.e. there are no affiliate links or other hidden agenda.
Recommended Hosts for WordPress
- Site5 : All my websites are hosted with Site5 and they are by far, in my opinion, the best budget host around. Site5 has servers in Sydney (Site5 allows you to select where you want your website hosted) and will migrate you from your old host for free.
- Digital Pacific : Australian based and their hosting seems good.
- Panthur : As per Digital Pacific they are Australian and are good.
- HostGator : I’ve used HostGator hosting for all the websites I build (while the new WordPress website is being built). I’ve never had a problem.
Hosts to Avoid
Here are a few hosts that I repeatedly hear that clients have issues with:
- Netregistry: I don’t have much experience with Netregistry but clients have advised me of problems.
- MelbourneIT: As with Netregistry I hear of problems.
- GoDaddy: Clients love GoDaddy domain services. GoDaddy WordPress hosting however seems to have issues.
- Hostpapa: Outages and getting hacked seems to be a common complaint with Hostpapa.
HostGator is a unethical, deceitful, and their customer service will tell you whatever they can to get you in their grasp and then strangle you with bad service and lies.
@Mark, I’ve used Hostgator for over five years without any problems at all. I have heard others however complain about Hostgator especially recently.
Maybe it’s only a recent problem but the reviews are not promising at all
i have to agree with Mark. Hostgator is slow and i swapped to traffic planet hosting (now WPX) and saw immediate change in my traffic. For some reason the sites were producing error messages and downtime that drove me completely nutes. left.
I’ve used a majority of the hosts listed including Site5 – they were once really good, since they were taken over by a new company (endurance I think they’re called) I haven’t had great support from them, I run about 4 reseller accounts with them, I also tried ventraip, crazydomains and netvirtue – cost wise you can’t complain, support was lacking – I moved a site to test on Panthur, I now have 3 accounts on their services – my sites load extremely fast, support is remarkable.
I can’t agree more about Site5. It’s quite remarkable how quickly they’ve gone backwards under the ownership of Endurance (who also own Blue Host, Hostgator and others). I’ve been impressed by Siteground as they seem to be like Site5 when they were good.
thank you gary