THE TOP 3 WORDPRESS WEB HOSTS FOR NEW OR SMALL BUSINESSES
So, you spent countless hours looking for a web designer or agency to build your business or eCommerce website. What you may not know, for your website to be publicly available online, you will need two things. First, you will need to pick a domain name and register it. Second, you will need to look for a hosting company that will “house” your website in layman’s terms. In other words, your web host is where your website lives.
As a start-up business, I needed to find a reliable hosting company that offers affordable pricing and a “host” (no pun intended) of significant features such as great speed, uptime, load time, storage, bandwidth/traffic, customer support, etc.
Overview
I have already done the homework for you and looked into the top 3 rated web hosting companies endorsed by WordPress.org. To give you a brief overview of these web hosts – BlueHost has been around since 2003 and power over 2 million websites across the globe. DreamHost has been around for 25 years and proudly hosts over 1.5 million websites. SiteGround has been serving over 2 million websites since 2004. They all have made a strong reputation and proven themselves. Therefore, you cannot go wrong with either one of them as they all have something unique to offer, and your specific needs and budget will impact your choice of hosting.
Since I design websites for start-ups and small businesses, I will focus on the Shared Hosting plan, which I thought is the most suitable plan for those starting an online presence. Shared web hosting, as the name implies, multiple websites are hosted on a single server maintained by a hosting service. Each user on this shared server gets an allotment of the server’s total available storage, bandwidth, memory, etc. Shared hosting isn’t for everyone, but it is ideal for new businesses or entrepreneurs who might be tight on budget.
BlueHost vs DreamHost vs SiteGround
As a disclaimer, I am an affiliate of these three web hosts. And so, if you purchase a subscription via the links below, I will be eligible to receive a small commission.
I have built two comparison tables below showing the current pricing (at the time of this writing) for Shared Hosting single website and unlimited websites, respectively, and the key features to consider when shopping for a web host. By the way, DreamHost does not offer a 2-year subscription plan, so I’m leaving this out.
Single Website
Basic
- 1 Website
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / Bandwidth
- No Indicated Uptime Guarantee
- 5 Email Accounts with 100 MB Storage
- 24/7 support (Email, Live Chat, Phone)
- Free Automated Backups
- Free CDN
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Domain - 1 year
- Built-in Security Features
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Starter
- 1 Website
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / Bandwidth
- 100% Uptime Guarantee
- Free Email Account (Extra $1.67/month)
- 24/7 support (Email and Live Chat)
- Free Automated Backups
- Free CDN
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Domain - 1 year
- Built-in Security Features
- 97-Day Money-Back Guarantee
StartUp
- 1 Website
- 10 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / 10,000 Visits Monthly
- 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
- Unlimited Email with 10 GB storage
- 24/7 support (Email, Live Chat, Phone)
- Free Automated Backups
- Free CDN
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Domain
- Built-in Security Features
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Unlimited Websites
Plus
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / Bandwidth
- 5 Email Accounts with 100 MB Storage
- Includes all other features on the Shared Basic plan
Unlimited
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / Bandwidth
- 5 Email Accounts with 25 GB Storage
- Includes all other features on the Starter plan
GrowBig
- Unlimited Websites
- 20 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Traffic / 100,000 Visits Monthly
- Unlimited Email with 10 GB storage
- Includes all other features on the StartUp plan
Key Features of a Reliable and Top Performing Web Host
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Speed
I have read a few blogs about performance and speed tests from multiple sites across all three web hosts. Between BlueHost and DreamHost, DreamHost performed better than BlueHost. But between DreamHost and SiteGround, SiteGround performed slightly better than DreamHost.
I am proud to share with you the below screenshots showing the performance of my website with DreamHost.
As you can see, the Time to First Byte (TTFB) is showing at 97ms, which is equivalent to .01 seconds. TTFB measures the amount of time it took for your website to load. This metric is one of the speed indicators of web performance.
However, your web host server is not the only determining factor for a fast-loading website. The theme, content, plugins, and design elements used are other contributing factors.
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Storage
On a single website plan, both BlueHost and DreamHost offer 50GB of SSD (Solid State Drive) storage which is more than enough for a small website, eCommerce store, or blogging website. With SSD storage, access to the resources such as HTML pages and images is much faster than with an HDD (Hard Disk Drive). However, SiteGround's StartUp plan comes with 10GB of SSD storage. Although, as the name implies, this amount of storage is suitable for start-ups or small businesses.
As your business grows, having an unlimited amount of storage becomes inevitable. Both BlueHost and DreamHost offer this on their unlimited website plans, while SiteGround's GrowBig plan doubles up to 20 GB of storage.
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Traffic
All of them offer unlimited traffic or unmetered bandwidth. That means you will not have to worry about your growing visitors and traffic each month. However, with SiteGround, it is specified on their site that the StartUp plan comes with a 10,000 monthly visit restriction, and the GrowBig one increases to 100,000 monthly visitors.
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Uptime
Both DreamHost and SiteGround have an uptime guarantee indicated on their sites, with DreamHost boasting a 100.00% uptime claim. SiteGround's uptime guarantee is 99.99%, which was pretty accurate based on my research. I believe no web host, especially on a shared hosting plan, can provide 100% uptime. DreamHost's uptime claim of 100.00% is accurate for most of the months I have been with them but not consistently for each month.
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Email Account/Storage
On BlueHost's single website plan, up to 5 email accounts with 100 MB storage are included, which may suffice initially. DreamHost doesn't offer a free email account, but you may still subscribe for $1.67 each month with 25GB of storage for each of the five email accounts. However, this comes included in their Unlimited plan for the same annual price as the Starter plan. SiteGround offers an unlimited email account with 10GB of storage.
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SSL Certificate/Security
What is an SSL Certificate, you might ask? An SSL certificate helps keep your customer's data safe via encryption between a web server and a browser. Fortunately, all three offer a free SSL Certificate powered by the "Let's Encrypt" SSL Certificate.
While a free SSL certificate provides a certain level of security on your website, it is not an end-all and be-all when it comes to securing your site. Both BlueHost and DreamHost offer a paid add-on service called SiteLock and DreamShield, respectively. BlueHost's basic plan's initial annual rate is $35.88 with a renewal price of $71.88, while Dreamhost's DreamShield costs $3/month for weekly scans. BlueHost offers the same features except for its frequency of scanning that is daily.
Meanwhile, SiteGround provides all these basic security features for free. They also maintain a custom Web Application Firewall (WAF) to stop emerging vulnerabilities. Additionally, they have an AI anti-bot system that effectively blocks millions of security threats every day.
One way to get away with subscribing to a security add-on feature with DreamHost or BlueHost is to install a free WordPress security plugin. There are tons of excellent "freemium" security plugins out there.
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Content Delivery Network
What is Content Delivery Network, and how is this useful to your WordPress website? By using CDN, your website's load time will be much faster. A Content Delivery Network saves the static content of your website on servers across the world. Each server contains a copy of your site so that when visitors visit your website, they will instead connect to your site via the server closest to them. It is an optional feature that may be especially useful for those sites that expect visitors across the globe and with a lot of traffic.
Again, all three provide a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) service with CloudFare.
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Backup Policy
BlueHost offers complimentary backups created on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. But as stated on their website (https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/account-backup-policy), these backups are not guaranteed in any way. They recommend that customers create and manage their backups on-site and off-site. However, they offer a paid add-on automated backup service called CodeGuard for $2.99/month. The service includes daily backups, site monitoring, and one-click restore.
DreamHost does offer an automated daily backup of your site free of charge. You may also manually create a backup daily and restore it yourself using the admin panel. You may opt to submit a ticket to restore a backup if need be, which I have tried, and they have delivered promptly. As with BlueHost, DreamHost also recommends managing your backups both on-site and off-site.
SiteGround, on the other hand, automatically saves daily backups and keeps up to 30 copies of your site. Backup restores come included in all of their shared hosting plans.
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Scalability
As your business grows, your traffic increases at some point. And the resources that are available on the Shared Hosting plan may no longer cater to your business needs. Then it is time to upgrade to more specialized hosting options such as dedicated, managed, or cloud hosting, and as expected, all these three web hosts offer these options.
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Money-Back Guarantee
Both BlueHost and SiteGround offer a thirty-day money-back guarantee if, for any reason, you are not satisfied and want to cancel your subscription and get a full refund. DreamHost offers the best money-back guarantee of 97 days, so you will have ample time to test out their service.
An Added Bonus - Free Domain Registration
Not all web hosting companies offer free domain registration. So, it is worth mentioning that both BlueHost and DreamHost offer this free for the first year, but SiteGround does not and charges $17.99. You not only save money on the first year, but it does make your life easier if you bundle your domain registration and web hosting services. The only notable difference is that DreamHost offers free domain privacy protection which is an additional $15/year with BlueHost.
What does domain privacy protection do? When you purchase a domain registration, ICANN requires you to submit personal information such as your name, address, phone number, and email address. This info becomes publicly available to anyone running a WHOIS lookup. But having a domain registration privacy feature allows you to replace your personal information with anonymous information, thereby protecting your data.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned earlier, all these top 3 rated WordPress web hosting companies have something unique to offer, and their strong points vary. I would recommend getting an annual plan regardless of the web hosting company of your choice to save money.
If you have noticed, both BlueHost and Dreamhost have the annual plan pricing of $2.95/month with comparable features. But upon renewal, DreamHost comes up a bit cheaper than BlueHost, even when you factor in a paid email account. DreamHost still comes up as the winner, with better speed, uptime, backup policy, and a 97-day money-back guarantee. But, if free phone support and a free starter email account matter more to you, then go with BlueHost. Just bear in mind, their renewal rates are a bit higher.
However, if money is not an issue, you will get more for your money in terms of features and overall performance with SiteGround. But, if you would rather pay less, DreamHost is a great compromise. Plus, as a new business, you probably do not want to spend more on overhead initially.
As a new business owner, I decided to host my site with DreamHost, and I am pretty satisfied with the performance of my site and the support they provide.
