Best Place to Host WordPress

This website is a skinned WordPress microsite. As many readers know, I have been an advocate for using WordPress to create microsites to complement existing full service dealer platforms. The popularity of the WordPress platform is growing and we have been having fun skinning sites for car dealers to be consistent with their brand image.

Over the past year we have tested a number of WordPress hosting companies and I wanted to share our current thinking. WordPress hosting packages will cost under $100 a year and are offered by many providers as part of their base install. Some of the big names like GoDaddy, Network Solutions and 1 &1 offer inexpensive hosting and WordPress support.

Keep in mind that in addition to base hosting costs, WordPress gets a number of patches and updates every month so if you are not comfortable with upgrading WordPress, figure 2 hours a year for your IT consultant to make sure all your plugins are up to date. The upgrade process is simple, most of the time. Occasionally an upgrade has issues so it is always good to have a backup of your WordPress website in advance of any major updates.

WordPress Hosting by HostGator

We are currently hosting most of our WordPress sites on www.HostGater.com. We started off with GoDaddy and the perform was painfully slow when using the back end administration panel. It was wasting too much of our time to put of with GoDaddy’s performance. So then we transferred a number of accounts to Network Solutions and at first the performance was much better than GoDaddy. Then, for whatever reasons, performance started to degrade over dozens of WordPress websites.

So, we have transitioned most websites to HostGator and we have been very pleased with the performance and costs. If you plan to host multiple WordPress websites you can purchase their reseller package and save by economies of scale. For the average business owners, the performance with HostGator.com will be fast and smooth.

WordPress Alternatives

If you have any other companies that you recommend for WordPress hosting, send me a note: brian@paschconsulting.com. I would like to spread out my WordPress websites to multiple vendors so as not to have all my eggs in one basket.