• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Meet the Girl ↡
    • About Abby
    • Contact
  • Projects ↡
    • Organization
      • All Organization
      • Printables Library
      • Productivity
    • Decorating
      • Our Home Tour
        • Current House Home Tour
        • Townhouse Home Tour
      • All Decorating
      • DIY
      • Furniture Makeovers
      • Crafts
      • Holidays
    • Blogging
      • All Blogging
      • Income Reports
    • Happy Thoughts
  • My Products ↡
    • Impactful Habits, Organized Home Organizing Course
    • Browser to Buyer
    • Blogging Binder Printables
    • Home Binder Printables
    • Student Binder Printables
    • Christmas / Holiday Planner
    • Fitness Journal
  • Free Resources ↡
    • ClarityList for Bloggers
    • How to Start a Blog in 2020
    • 100+ Blogging Tips, Tools, and Resources to Grow Your Business
    • My Favorite Organizing Items
  • Income Reports

Abby Lawson logo

January 4, 2018 By Donnie Lawson 11 Comments

How to Choose the Best Hosting Company for Your Blog

Pin92
Share3
Tweet12
Email
107 Shares

After choosing a domain name for your new blog, picking a host is your next job. There are so many choices out there, with pros and cons to each one, so how do you choose?

Choosing a hosting company for your blog can be confusing! Use this guide and our experience to compare and choose between the best WordPress blog hosting companies!

If you do a Google search for “best blog host” or “choosing a good blog host” the number of articles and opinions you’ll receive could fill multiple libraries. It can be overwhelming. The problem is that you could read all that information and still not be any closer to a decision. Whose opinion do you trust?

We hear you. We've been there. We've tried many different hosts with varying results. There’s no perfect one size fits all solution -- you’ll have to make the final decision based on our recommendations and your needs-- but we thought we'd share our experience and lay out the features and drawbacks of our favorite blog hosting choices.

How to Start a Blog

Learn How to Start a Blog!

Get your new blog set up in a few short minutes with our easy-to-follow guide, and start growing your site today!

Visit the Guide!

One final piece of advice: Don’t agonize over this decision. Hosting is very important, but it’s not what will make your new blog a success. Make a choice and move on with more important work like writing, posting, and building your audience.

This page contains affiliate links meaning we earn a commission if you use those links. We only recommend brands we use and trust. See our disclosures.

Our favorite "starter" WordPress hosting options

1. Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting solutions when starting a new self-hosted WordPress blog. They were the very first hosting company Abby and I ever used. Years ago I picked Bluehost because it was one of the recommended hosts on the WordPress.org site, and the price just couldn’t be beat. The site design and overall feel of the company just felt right.

When I was first learning about WordPress, I appreciated that Bluehost used the industry standard cPanel for making technical host setting changes. The Bluehost cPanel also has one-click WordPress installation, and they make it easy to set up a custom email account with your domain using Google Apps (my preferred choice). The cPanel also has a built in FTP manager for uploading and downloading files directly to the server.

Bluehost is part of a large corporate conglomerate, and most of their revenue comes from servicing hundreds of thousands of smaller hosting accounts. One of the reasons this billion dollar company can offer such a low price is because of the scale involved. That being said, the customer support makes it feel like a small and friendly company. They’ve always been responsive and helpful during my support request chats.

Bluehost accounts start at $2.75/month (insane I know!) if you prepay for 36 months. (This pricing sometimes changes but you can always get the best available deal through our link.) You have one up front fee that covers you for 36 months of hosting service. The good news is that if you cancel sometime during the first 30 days, Bluehost offers a full refund. I wrote an entire article about how Bluehost pricing works if you want to learn more.

For a few extra dollars per month you can get a "plus" account. The amazing thing about the plus account is that a single account can host an unlimited number of WordPress blogs. If you ever get the urge to start a second site about a different topic or create dedicated WordPress-based landing pages with a unique domain, you can keep adding and adding to the plus the account for free.

Here’s a tip about Bluehost renewal pricing… I always recommend prepaying for the 36 months with each new account — you get the best price. But please remember that these are introductory prices and if you do nothing, when the 36 months is up you, will have different renewal pricing. For instance, you can get the starter Bluehost account for $2.75/month through this link. After the 36 months is up, the account will renew for another 36 months at the regular price of $7.99/month. But here’s the super important tip… Bluehost always makes their crazy holiday sale prices open to existing customers! Pay attention to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and I recommend extending your hosting for a year during these sales to lock in the best prices. It’s always a good idea to renew during a sale even before your 36 month introductory period is up.

2. SiteGround

SiteGround is another fantastic hosting option with very competitive pricing. There's been a lot of buzz lately about their amazing customer support and some high-end WordPress hosting features at a really good price. SiteGround is impressive.

I mentioned the buzz around SiteGround… usually it was in the form of customers raving about amazing site speed and amazingly friendly customer support. I didn't push any limits with my SiteGround site to test speed so I can’t speak to that, but I did test the customer support. It really is top notch. I had the type of interaction you walk away from with a smile on your face versus anger and frustration. It makes a difference.

SiteGround has been gaining momentum lately, but they’ve actually been around since 2004. The company headquarters and ownership group are in Bulgaria, but they do have small offices in Spain, UK, and Virginia. SiteGround certainly does have a different feel than the larger and more corporate Bluehost. It’s not good or bad, just different.

A cool thing about SiteGround is that you can take advantage of their best price of $3.95/month by just pre-paying for 12 months (instead of 36 months like with Bluehost). Your first payment to get up and running is only $47.40 and there are no other weird setup charges or any surprises. Sometimes it does make sense to pre-pay for a longer term because the renewal rate for their StartUp account is $9.95/month.

All SiteGround accounts do come with daily backups. I still recommend additional backup measures that you can read about in my guide to starting a blog, but the free backup is still a nice feature.

The free backups are stored on the SiteGround servers and in the case of emergency you can request a copy. With a lot of hosts, this would be an extra cost. Like Bluehost, SiteGround uses a custom cPanel so all the typical server controls and settings will look familiar.

In order to host multiple WordPress blogs on a single hosting account you need the SiteGround “Grow Big” account at $7.95/month. This account also includes some more advanced WordPress specific features. Honestly, this is a steal. If I knew I would have more than one site with multiple WordPress installs, the SiteGround "GrowBig" would be the account to start with.

SiteGround is a really solid choice for WordPress hosting for both new and more established blogs. It’s slightly more expensive than Bluehost, but they have a lot of nice options include free backups and some WordPress specific caching (faster site!) with their Grow Big and higher plans.

Our favorite "premium" WordPress hosting options

1. Media Temple

Abby's blog lived happily on Media Temple for a long while. We eventually upgraded not because of any issue with Media Temple, but because we had a too-g00d-to-pass-up offer from an ultra-premium hosting provider.

With Media Temple you really do get a lot for your money. I don't know of any other WordPress hosting that has a $20/month account that supports up to 250,000 monthly visitors. That's certainly the type of account you can grow with and not break the bank. As traffic and needs increase, Media Temple has plenty of more advanced hosting options.

Abby and I still have a number of our domains registered with Media Temple. One of the reasons is their custom designed interface that is fast and easy to use.

2. Flywheel

Flywheel is relatively new to the scene (since 2012), but they have come on strong in recent years. Count me as one of the many super impressed and happy customers. The blog you are reading is currently hosted on Flywheel.

Before I talk about Flywheel pricing (both good and bad), I want to tell you a few things that really set Flywheel apart from the competition.

Free migrations. What?! Yes that's right, Flywheel will migrate your site from your old host for free. You fill out a form on their site, Flywheel makes a copy of your entire WordPress database, they move a copy to their servers, view and test the site before setting it live. The migration process is handled in-house by Flywheel and not contracted out to any third party. (Rumor has it that they will also do Blogger to WordPress migrations if you ask nicely!)

When Abby and I moved Just A Girl and Her Blog to Synthesis for our hosting years ago, we ended up paying a third party service $99 to complete our migration. We figured it was better safe than sorry, so we let professionals handle the process. With Flywheel the same service is free!

WordPress only. The Flywheel servers are all custom configured for optimal performance with WordPress. They're not a jack of all trades but instead are focused on giving their customers the best WordPress hosting experience they can.

Free nightly backups. Other hosts do this, but with Flywheel you can download the entire backup or restore to a particular backup with one click. They make it super easy. They've even taken the extra (but important!) step of storing all the backups in Amazon S3 instead of their own servers. That's the attention to detail that I love about Flywheel.

Blog staging areas. I haven't tested this yet, but with Flywheel you can make changes to your site and test those changes in a staging area before you set it live. This is a helpful feature when you're going through a blog redesign or other major change to your site.

Gorgeous dashboard. If you're a sucker for design and usability, you're going to fall in love with the Flywheel dashboard. They've just thought of everything. You can actually create an account for free with Flywheel and test things out a bit before picking a hosting package.

Super flywheel customer support. When I start with a new hosting company, one of the first things I do is test out their customer support. Multiple times! I probably drive them crazy with questions but if all the files for this blog are sitting on their servers, I want to make sure they have good support. Flywheel has always responded to my requests in a short period of time. And more than that, their answers were actually helpful. None of that "here's a link to knowledge base article" stuff that some hosts do. You'll love the Flywheel support.

Blazing speed. The lowest end $15/month Flywheel account has to be the absolute fastest host for the money that I've ever seen. The speed (for all of their accounts) is no joke and it easily compares to the Synthesis hosting we have for our other site. To take things even further, Flywheel has a partnership with MaxCDN for even faster content delivery and caching. There are no settings to change or plugins to install -- just click a button in the Flywheel dashboard and pay the extra $10/month, and you have one of the world's best content delivery networks serving up your site at lighting speed all around the world. We use and love this option.

A word on Flywheel pricing...

Flywheel pricing is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that you can start a blog with some of the absolute best hosting at only $14/month. It really is unheard of to have Flywheel's level of managed WordPress hosting at that crazy low price.

The only potential issue (for some) is that as your traffic increases you can quickly move up to more expensive account levels with Flywheel. For example, the Flywheel "professional" account is $69/month for up to 100,000 pageviews. This level of account does include free CDN with MaxCDN. That alone is worth at least $20/month if you used a similar service like CloudFlare.

At this point, most of our new sites will start with Flywheel because I love them so much.

3. StudioPress Sites (formerly Synthesis)

Did you know the same company that owns the Genesis WordPress Framework also has a WordPress hosting company? Well, they do! Synthesis (now StudioPress Sites) is where Just A Girl and Her Blog was hosted for many years. A few things to keep in mind with StudioPress Sites…

It's managed WordPress hosting. This is great when it comes to speed and security but you do give up some flexibility. You are limited to using only approved plugins. This can feel limiting to some and perfect for others.

It’s not cheap. Plans range from $27/month to $47/month.

You get to use the Genesis Framework and some Genesis child themes for free! Because StudioPress is the creator of the Genesis Framework, StudioPress Site accounts come with included WordPress themes. This is maybe the best feature. Learn more about the included themes and see if there is one that is right for you.

There is no access to hosting “back end” settings. Let me explain this...

With most hosts, you can log into a control panel, add re-directs, change email hosting settings, edit DNS zone files, etc… With StudioPress Sites you don’t have that same access. It’s all managed for you. If Abby and I want to make any type of change or implement a re-direct, we log into our account and submit a support request. Usually less than an hour later (sometimes within minutes!) the change has been made. We don’t do anything! It’s all done for us. Over the years I’ve submitted hundreds of tickets… not for problems, but for little changes to the account. It’s fantastic not having to worry about anything!

Final Hosting Recommendations

Hopefully you're not feeling overwhelmed at this point, but instead have a clearer idea of which hosting company may be the best choice for you. I don’t think it’s plausible to recommend a single hosting solution for every type of need. With this article, I’m hoping you can take advantage of our experience and research and pick the best hosting solution that meets your needs.

Deciding on a hosting company is what I call “work about work.” It makes you feel like you are doing something when you actually aren’t. Real work is writing blog posts, connecting with other bloggers, improving your photography, or interacting on social media.

Picking a host is necessary, but it takes time away from actual productive work that will make your blog successful. A hosting company will not determine your blog's success, so don’t take too much time to make your decision.

Let me summarize my recommendations…

  1. Bluehost is the perfect place to start if you are ok prepaying for 36 months. You will not find a better host at a better price than $2.75/month. If you want to host more than one (unlimited!) blogs choose the $4.95/month “plus” account.
  2. SiteGround has a smaller company feel and perfect if you want a great price ($3.95/month) and only want to prepay for 12 months with out-of-this-world friendly support. The "GrowBig" account is a great value if you plan on having more than one site.
  3. Media Temple offers higher than usual traffic limits for the account prices making it a solid choice for high-traffic blogs.
  4. Flywheel is the best hosting money can buy for the low starting price of $14/month. It's the best experience I've ever had at any host but it does get pricey as your traffic increases.
  5. StudioPress Sites is for those who want highly-optimized and hands-free hosting for their Genesis Framework WordPress blog. Only consider this option once you’re clearing well over 100,000 visitors/month or want a highly managed (and sometimes restrictive) hosting experience with free WordPress themes.

There it is! Pick one and go — you’ll be happy with any of these options. I’ve used and loved all of them.

Blogging Tips, Tools, and Resources

We're sharing ALL of the tools we've used to grow our blog!

Stop the guessing game! Get our list of 100+ proven tips, tools, and resources that can take your blog/online business to the next level!

See the List!
Donnie Signoff Building a Framework

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Pin92
Share3
Tweet12
Email
107 Shares

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog hosting, blogging, bluehost, flywheel, online business, siteground, synthesis

Pin92
Share3
Tweet12
Email
107 Shares
ClarityList | claritylist.com

Get ClarityList!

Join thousands of bloggers who receive the most important blogging and online business news in their inbox every Friday morning!

I'M IN!
Pin92
Share3
Tweet12
Email
107 Shares
Previous Post: « The One Reason You Won't Reach Your Goals This Year
Next Post: Creating an Organized Office with the IKEA PAX System »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kay says

    February 19, 2017 at 2:44 am

    This was incredibly helpful! Thank you for this article 🙂

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      February 20, 2017 at 10:55 am

      So glad it was helpful!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  2. Rachel says

    February 21, 2017 at 6:17 am

    I've read elsewhere that there is a difference between Siteground and Bluehost on dealing with Paypal and your affiliate links -any comments on that angle would be an interesting read please ?

    Also, for non-US based bloggers, are there any considerations ? Charges and USD exchange rates for example ?

    Thank-you for your helpful content!

    Reply
    • Donnie Lawson says

      February 28, 2017 at 8:49 am

      Great question Rachel! Honestly, I haven't heard about this differences but I'd love to hear more.

      Reply
  3. Kelly Howard says

    April 29, 2017 at 11:40 am

    Have you checked out eHost yet? They have many reviews under eHost vs Bluehost. I am considering them and would appreciate your opinion. Thank you!

    Reply
  4. Kay says

    June 12, 2018 at 12:23 pm

    Thank you so much for putting all of the work into creating this post. It has been a one stop shop for me as I build my blog (which you have given me the courage to build). I have decided to start with Flywheel, between the price and the security it seems like a good an all around choice. Thank you a million times over.

    PS. I adore your Youtube channel

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 13, 2018 at 7:17 pm

      You are TOO sweet! Thank you so much, Kay! I'm so glad it was helpful for you! Wishing you all the best on your blogging journey! <3

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  5. Jen says

    August 13, 2018 at 12:42 pm

    This is very helpful information in an easy to read format, thank you.

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      August 16, 2018 at 12:36 pm

      So glad it was helpful for you, Jen! Hope you're having a wonderful week!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  6. Regena Lawson says

    January 07, 2019 at 3:10 pm

    All this info. is amazing! I .have been wanting to start a blog for a long time! I have been researching the options and love the way you explain each one.but do any of them have a monthly pay plan? It's just hard for me to pay so much at one time.
    Thank you,
    Regena Lawson

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      January 10, 2019 at 2:10 pm

      Hi, Regena! All of the companies will have a monthly plan. They just give you a bit of a discount if you pay for a year or several years at a time. 🙂

      ~Abby =)

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You have to agree to the comment policy.

Primary Sidebar

Hey there, friend! I'm Abby, and I'm so thrilled you stopped by! I love working to create a beautiful, thriving home, life and business and helping others do the same.

Read my story→

Let's Connect!

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Let's Get Organized!

Impactful Habits, Organized Home Organizing Course | https://www.abbylawson.com/ihoh
Deluxe Home Binder Printables | https://www.abbylawson.com/deluxe-home-binder-printables

Stick to your fitness goals!

Deluxe Fitness Journal | https://www.abbylawson.com/deluxe-fitness-journal-printables

How to Start a Blog

How to Start a Blog: The Definitive Guide

Our Course for Bloggers

Blogging: Organized

Deluxe Blogging Binder Printables | https://www.abbylawson.com/deluxe-blogging-binder-printables

Favorite Posts

Free Printable Library | 50+ Free Organizing Printables

50+ Free Printables to Organize Every Area of Your Life

home- cozy office nook, feminine home office, organized home office, small office, decorating, farmhouse office

A Cozy Office Nook

Ryan Homes Palermo Before and After Home Tour 2.5 Years In

Before and After Home Tour: Two and a Half Year Update

Free Printable Budget Binder Cover

Budget Binder for 2021 (with FREE Printables!)

Home organization- How to Organize Every Space in Your House, declutter, organizing, small space organization

How to Organize Every Space in Your House

Student Binder Printable Organizing Pages

Printable Student Binder

Personal Posts

Breast Cancer Awareness Month My Story by Just a Girl and Her Blog

Breast Cancer Awareness Month: My Story

This girl started out knowing nothing about blogging or online business and made 6 figures last year. Time to start that blog I've been thinking about!

From Hobby Blog to Thriving Business: My Blogging Story

Archives

Post Categories

Copyright

I love it when you share! Please keep in mind that all images and text on this site are property of Just a Girl and Her Blog. Feel free to use one or two photos provided that a link back to my original post is included. Please do not remove any watermarks, crop, or edit any of my images without first obtaining written permission from me. All free printables offered are for personal use only. Pinning is always welcome and appreciated! Thank you!

Privacy Policy & Disclosures

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Read our privacy policy and disclosures →

© 2021 Twenty Three Publishing LLC