This nonsense swamps the Interwebs. Links screaming “The Best WordPress Hosting for 2022”, “The Top 10 WordPress Hosts”, “WordPress Hosts Ranked by Real Users” – many other variations. These are always clickbait, frequently affiliate marketing scams, many times involving the notoriously evil Endurance International Group (EIG). No useful information has ever been gleaned from any of these sites.
So, how do I pick a WP host? It ain’t easy. There are thousands to choose from, and selection can be a bit hit and (mostly) miss. Sorry for that.
I start by making a list of my must-have features – Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, Cloud Linux site isolation technology, no obnoxious upselling, not associated with EIG, etc …
Then, I pick my must-have feature that I think is least-common. In my case, LiteSpeed Server. I search on that feature. Of the hosts that offer that feature, I narrow it down to those who offer all my other must-haves. Of those that make the cut, my deciding criterion is price. “You get what you pay for” is just more click-bait nonsense. You can very easily – and are likely to unless you research very carefully – overpay for what you get.
(There are no affiliate links below or anywhere else on this site. This site is strictly my Point of View.)
I am currently using Hostmantis. I like – but don’t quite love – pretty much everything about it. It provides all my must-have features (Yay!); Fast (though not the fastest); Reliable (though not the most so), and most of all … Affordable (Yay!). I recommend it for anyone looking for a very affordable shared or reseller host, and who is willing to live with a few occasional technical glitches. I would not use it for a business site that makes me money – I would go with MDD Hosting for that.
Other hosts that I’ve used and recommend depending on circumstance: SiteGround (awesome, but expensive after the first teaser year); MDD Hosting (also awesome, but reseller plan became too expensive for me); BuyShared (almost unbelievably inexpensive, shared hosting worked great for me, switched to reseller – I could never get it to work right).
