WordPress web hosting costs may seem confusing sometimes. Because the final goal is ultimately the same -building a website. Their cost depends on various things including marketing policy.
In this post, I will compare the price & go through reputable hosting companies, from the lowest price to the highest.
But before I get into that see my top 3 picks (I am not affiliated with anyone).
Best for WordPress
WP Engine
Speed up website performance. Best suits for those who have more than 10,000 monthly visitors. $300 per year
Performance & Security
SiteGround
Easy and affordable web hosting that guarantees 99.9% uptime. Unmetered bandwidth, free website transfer and much more. $84 per year
Personalized assistance
Bluehost
Build unlimited websites, free SSL certificates, beginner-friendly dashboard & stunning customer support. $71 per year
Table of contents (price comparison per year)
| Namecheap | $19 |
| Hostinger | $36 |
| iPage | $36 |
| DreamHost | $47 |
| IONOS | $48 |
| Hostgator | $51 |
| Name.Com | $60 |
| Bluehost | $71 |
| HostPapa | $71 |
| GoDaddy | $82 |
| SiteGround | $84 |
| A2 Hosting | $84 |
| WP Engine | $300 |
Detail about the hosting companies & pricing model
You may see slightly different prices on the hosting websites. Because they may display the price according to the 3 years of subscription.
I am aware of the changes, their marketing strategies & deals. And committed to providing the most up-to-date & fresh data.
1. Namecheap Shared Hosting ($19/Year)
This is by far the cheapest hosting among all renowned companies. Their Stellar package will cost you 19 USD per year. Namecheap offers a free SSL certificate for one year.
For two years it will cost 34 USD.
They also offer a monthly subscription which will cost $2.88/month. You’re allowed to cancel anytime and upgrade your hosting subscription.
2. Hostinger ($36/Year)
Hostinger has a custom-built “hPanel” that is an alternative to “cPanel.”
The Hostinger hPanel is very easy to understand & use. Therefore if you have any questions, their support team is ready to help. To clarify, they are excellent & will not keep you on hold for more than 5/7 minutes.
They provide one free SSL Certificate for each Shared web hosting plan.
From my personal observation, I saw that Hostinger advertises less than its competitors. And that’s why you may not hear about them.
If you’re looking for better web hosting at an affordable price, Hostinger is the right company for you.
Hostinger shared web hosting costs 36 USD for one year ($3/Month). But if you buy for 4 years then it will cost 48 USD ($1/Month).
Hostinger also bills monthly. And it will cost you $10 per month (if you want to make the payment each month).
3. iPage Web Hosting Cost ($36/Year)
You can build an unlimited number of websites in any of their hosting packages. It will cost you 36 USD yearly.
iPage has three different billing periods as follows:
| 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
| $36 | $60 | $72 |
They offer a free domain for one year and free SSL certificates.
4. DreamHost Shared Website Hosting ($47/Year)
It comes with pre-installed WordPress CMS and you don’t have to install it manually. Their “Shared Starter” package will cost you 47 USD yearly.
DreamHost offers three different packages for their “Shared Website Hosting“. The prices are as follows:
| 1 Month | 1 Year | 3 Years |
| $7 | $47 | $93 |
They offer a free domain for one year with their 1 & 3 years packages. Their 1-year free domain is only applicable for the following TLDs:
.blog, .club, .com, .info, .net, .online, .org , .shop, .tech, .xyz, .store, .site, .design, .me
5. IONOS -Previously 1&1 ($48/Year)
The “Essential” package will cost you 48 USD for the first year. And it will cost 72 USD for the 2nd year.
Check their renewal price & be sure you’re comfortable with it. Otherwise, they will charge you a higher rate next year.
IONOS also offers a $6 monthly subscription. But the monthly subscription doesn’t include the free domain.
They offer free SSL and 2 GB SSD storage for the database.
The above prices and other information is applicable for their “Essential” package under the “Web Hosting” plan.
6. Hostgator Shared Hosting ($51/Year)
Their Hatchling Plan includes a free SSL and offers one free domain. It’s mandatory to signup for at least one year to be able to claim the free domain. The free domain is free for one year.
It will cost you 51 USD per year. Hostgator allows hosting subscriptions for 6 different duration as follows:
| 1 Month | 3 Months | 6 Months | 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
| $12 | $35 | $70 | $51 | $88 | $105 |
And their trial period ends after 45 days. And the trial is applicable only for 1 year & upper-level subscriptions.
7. Name.Com Web Hosting ($60/Year)
They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Name.Com also offers 10 GB disk space, 100 email accounts, 100 GB bandwidth, and SSL. It will cost you 60 USD per year.
They have four different subscription durations as follows:
| 1 Month | 3 Months | 1 Year | 2 Years |
| $7 | $21 | $60 | $120 |
Name.Com has three different plans for “Web Hosting“. And above prices is applicable for their “Get Me Started” plan.
8. Bluehost Shared Hosting ($71/Year)
It’s one of the most popular hosting companies and is recommended by WordPress. They offer free SSL, and SSD storage and their support team is just awesome.
They offer a free domain including any of their hosting packages. You can choose any available TLD for your free domain, there are no boundaries.
Bluehost offers three different subscription periods for their shared hosting. And the prices are as follows:
| 1 Year | 2 Year | 3 Year |
| $71 | $119 | $142 |
Bluehost doesn’t offer a monthly hosting package.
Their dashboard & user interface is beginner-friendly. You can install WordPress with a few clicks and start building your website right away. Their SSL is auto-enabled and you don’t have to manually install it. Bluehost already has done many heavy lifting for you.
They have four different types of packages for their shared hosting (see screenshot below).
I recommend “Choice Plus” among the four. Because you can build an unlimited number of websites on the same hosting and you’ll get better performance (speed) than basic & plus.
I personally used Bluehost for 2 years before I made this recommendation. From my practical observation, I found it way too much better than I paid.
The above screenshot shows my personal billing documents for 2 years (2020 & 2021). So if you’re still hesitating, I would recommend you Bluehost. Also, you have 1 month trial period. That means you can ask for a refund if you don’t like their hosting.
9. HostPapa Web Hosting Cost ($71/Year)
Their “Starter” package includes a free SSL certificate, Cloudflare CDN, 100 GB SSD storage, and a free domain for the first year.
It will cost you 71 USD yearly.
HostPapa offers three different billing periods and their prices are as follows:
| 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
| $71 | $119 | $142 |
10. GoDaddy ($82/Year)
It’s perfect for small businesses & entrepreneurs. They have all the tools you need to create a website quickly.
But I would like to suggest you not use their website builder. It doesn’t work very well on Safari. This is an affordable company for building your website.
The customer support is knowledgeable & cooperative.
GoDaddy starter hosting plan will cost you 82 USD per year with an SSL certificate. If you subscribe for two years, then the cost will be 157 USD, and 212 USD for three years.
They also sell a monthly hosting package and it will cost you 57 USD per month with 12 months of SSL. And without an SSL certificate, it will cost you 2.73 USD for one month.
11. SiteGround Web Hosting ($84/Year)
It’s recommended by WordPress.Org. SiteGround offers free SSL certificates & CDN. But they don’t offer free domains.
It will cost you 84 USD per year. You can choose any subscription period from four separate durations. The costs for separate periods are as follows:
| 1 Month | 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
| $20 | $84 | $240 | $378 |
SiteGround has three different packages for the “Web Hosting” plan. And above prices are applicable for their “StartUp” package.
Though SiteGround offers “Unlimited Websites” with most of their packages. However, there is a catch. From my personal & practical experience, it’s actually not the “Unlimited Websites” by means. See the screenshot below as a reference.
In the above screenshot, you see that the “Site limit” has been exceeded. There are disk quotas and other factors that we generally don’t care about when buying hosting. I had SiteGround “GoGeek” plan that offers “Unlimited Websites.”
But SiteGround started to Shutdown most of my websites after they started getting traffic.
So if you have multiple websites with lots of traffic, you have to take the disk quota and other hidden factors into consideration.
But if you only have one website, you can go with SiteGround especially if you like the faster server speed.
12. A2 Hosting ($84/Year)
Their startup package costs 84 USD per year. You will get a free Cloudflare CDN, SSL & website builder with your hosting subscription.
A2 Hosting offers four different billing cycles as follows:
| 1 Month | 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
| $11 | $84 | $105 | $108 |
They have SSD storage. If you don’t know about SSD storage, you can read an article on the Intel website.
13. WP Engine Hosting Cost ($300/Year)
Their prices are a bit higher than others. The “Startup” package will cost you 300 USD per year.
WP Engine also allows you a monthly subscription and it will cost 30 USD.
It doesn’t have other billing periods except the yearly & monthly.
Conclusion
I covered a lot of hosting companies. Now you can compare the prices & make your decision based on your budget.
The package & plan names are very confusing to beginners. You may think that you need specific “WordPress Hosting” in order to build a WordPress website. But in reality, it’s not the case.
You might hear a lot about the following terms: WordPress hosting, Shared Hosting, Web Hosting, VPS, Dedicated, etc. In this article, I discussed “Shared Hosting“. Sometimes it is also known as “Web Hosting“. These two names are indicating the same thing.
And you can build your website or blog on the “Shared Hosting” platform without any trouble. Generally, this type of hosting can handle 5,000 (five thousand) monthly hits. And it’s way more than enough for a startup website or blog. Also, there are other hosting plans such as VPS and Dedicated that can handle a lot more traffic than that. But at the start, the shared hosting is good. You can always change your hosting without affecting the website negatively.
Once you have more than 5,000 (five thousand) visitors per month, then you can upgrade your hosting to a VPS or dedicated plan. Or migrate your website to a dedicated server. Till to then, don’t waste your money with dedicated server/hosting at the beginning. Because it will take time to build those amounts of traffic to your website.
