The Best Website Hosting For Wordpress

Is it even possible to answer the question “what is the best website hosting for WordPress based sites”?

To me, that question is like so many others that get asked, such as who is the best guitarist; or best football team; or who makes the best lager in the world! The answer is dependant on so many factors, not least being personal choice.

So, unlike many “review” sites I don’t purport to have tried and tested every hosting platform (although I have used many over the past 15 years or so) and my conclusions are based on my assessment of what is important and my true life experience of using the service for an extended period of time rather than a comparison of features.

If you find comparisons useful you will find no shortage of sites running “tests” on a wide range of services but you have to question whether the products or services are actually being used regularly or whether there is another motive (financial?) when those sites often present results across a very broad range of products.

Having used Rocket since shortly after the company launched (pardon the pun!) in 2020 I can honestly say I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending their WordPress hosting unreservedly and use them extensively for the vast majority of my clients’ websites. If you provide support for clients’ websites you will know how vital it is to use a hosting platform you can trust and probably more importantly have knowledgeable and responsive support service for when any problems arise.

Over the years I’ve tried most of the “big” names and have repeatedly been disappointed with the service for some reason or another.

So my recommendation, whether you are looking for hosting for your own site or are looking for quality for your own clients is Rocket.

Read on for full details of why I have reached this conclusion.

Hosting is one of those services that you know you have to pay for and you hope it works and you can just forget about it.

A bit like your utilities at home – you don’t really care very much about the water treatment plant or the pipework that gets the water to your home, you just want water available when you turn on the taps.

OK, I know there’s more to it than that, environmentally friendly companies, waste dumping etc etc but the main point is most people don’t give much thought to it until there’s a pipe burst or water shortage and nothing comes out of the tap. At that point you expect prompt and efficient support and solutions.

But, given a choice, would you consider a water company known to provide water at low pressure and are virtually impossible to contact in an emergency? Or one with a “service standard” of 24 hours?

Probably not. You want a good service you don’t have to think about and in the event of a problem, a company that resolves the issue without drama.

Getting back to hosting, unless you are running a hobby website with a very low expectation of traffic and the site is very much static content (text and maybe a few small images) the chances are you will want a hosting provider that offers very fast loading websites.

Of course, if your site isn’t built with speed in mind no matter how good the hosting service is there will always be a trade off in performance. The code output by some of the most popular page builders is often bloated and can slow loading times as can images and videos that aren’t properly resized and fully optimised.

A slow website is off putting for visitors and many are likely to leave if it takes too long to load. Lost business. The search engines also penalise slow loading sites and display faster loading competitor sites higher in the search listings. More lost business.

(This site is built using Bricks Builder and is hosted at Rocket and in the main gets a 100% for performance on desktop and a little under than on mobile. You can see for yourself here).

Some hosting companies, especially those offering a very low-cost option, don’t provide much other than hosting itself. No SSL certificate, no malware protection or anything other than very basic security. You are quite likely to find your website is “sharing” a server with some, er, unsavoury websites, and that can have a major negative impact on performance, security and potentially your reputation.

If, for example, your website shares hosting with a shady gambling or spammy site (and there’s no way to know in advance if that is the case) there is a strong possibility your site will be “tarred” with the same brush and start to get blocked or even shut down as the hosting provider attempts to protect it’s servers from infection.

See comment below from an AI answer on Google:

 

Hosting providers may suspend websites on the same server as spammy sites to protect their servers from infection.

 

Shared hosting is a cheaper option, but it can lead to less reliable performance because resources are shared between multiple websites. Frequent server downtime can also negatively impact a website’s SEO ranking.

 

There are some excellent “do-it-yourself” hosting options where you have full control over the server and can configure everything as you require. This is fine if you are technically minded and have the time to undertake this work and monitor the server for any issues (which you are then responsible for in the main) or want to offer that service to your clients but for a typical business this is an unnecessary addition to the daily (and nightly!) workload. In my opinion businesses should concentrate on what they are good at and the service they are providing to their clients and not dabble in a very technical area that has the potential to cause extreme stress when things go wrong.

Similarly, using a hosting company that isn’t responsive when issues arise is just as stressful. Imaging your website goes offline and your customers cannot place orders or contact you and it takes hours for the hosting company to investigate and resolve the problem. That is potentially costly but at best will involve you in a load of wasted time trying to get the problem resolved.

Sadly, problems do arise with most hosting at some stage. On one occasion in the past, a site I was looking after got hacked (it was on a shared hosting plan with a company I no longer deal with due to this particular issue) and I attempted to install a back-up provided by the hosting company. For reasons that were never clarified the backup install failed* and as that was the only one available prior to the hack we had a problem. The company only offered a backup every 24 hours and retained them for just 7 days. Fortunately I always install a back-up plugin and store those backups offsite so a disaster was avoided. However, it took the best part of a day to resolve the issue – and a fair amount of stress for me and the client.

*The reason given for the backup failure was a corrupted file.

So in summary, the main issues to consider when looking for a hosting company are:

• Speed
• Features
• Security
• Service

Rather than make comparisons with other services or simply list features I have provided my rationale of why each area is important and how Rocket meets these requirements.

Speed

If you are a business website then fast hosting is a must although you should also ensure the site itself is built and optimised for speed as far as possible.

Rocket utilises a fine-tuned Enterprise CDN (content delivery network), which ensures that website visitors from around the world get an equally fantastic, lightning-fast browsing experience. No configuration required and there are no hidden costs.

Additionally there are off-server optimisations that compress and resize images which boosts performance without expense to the origin server. A built in server level cache system ensures sites are always loaded as fast as possible.

Apart from the speed benefits, reducing the number of otherwise required plugins can help further and can also reduce overall costs.

 

Features

Free Migrations

If you are moving your website from another hosting provider, free migrations are available which include reviewing the site on a temporary url before DNS changes are made (your responsibility) to point the domain to the new hosting servers.

In my experience migrations are flawless and are carried out extremely quickly.

A few years ago I had a complex site with a very active Membership area that was migrated to Rocket. There were some initial issues (due to the Membership plugin structure and requirements) and I was amazed at the level of support and help I received in getting the site live on the new server.

 

With other providers I would have been left to figure it out myself but Rocket went out of their way to ensure the issues were resolved and everything was working as it should

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Rather than visitors to your website having to wait for the content to load from one server (which could be on the other side of the world to their location) a CDN is utilised which effectively puts your site’s files within easy reach wherever your site visitors are based.

Named Enterprise Edge, Rocket has partnered with some of the largest edge providers in the world to create a global footprint larger than any other hosting company on the planet. Every single request on Rocket.net is cached and/or delivered from their Enterprise Edge putting your WordPress website within 50ms of the world.

No configuration is required and this feature is automatically available the moment your site goes live.

Security

Every WordPress installation on the Rocket platform receives not one, but two firewalls. The first is powered by Enterprise Edge and every request to your WordPress site is scanned by this Firewall first, then if deemed safe, sent to the servers.

The second is powered by Imunify360 and lives on all Rocket.net servers. This provides additional protection from brute force attacks, 0-day exploits, and much more.

PHP Shell, Malware, and all of those nasty scripts will be immediately blocked meaning there is a very minimal likelihood of being hacked (but if that did happen Rocket support will assist in resolving the issue).

Again there is no configuration required and everything is available immediately a site goes live.

Service

For me this is the most important feature. Without fanatical, timely support any hosting service is flawed.

Rocket support is outstanding.

A quote from their site:

Our core principal when starting Rocket.net was (and always will be) that support is a fundamental part of the product and experience.

 

If you met me you would know that I have a low opinion of the service provided by virtually everyone. The usual attitude is “it’s not me guv” or simply fobbing you off to get the problem to go away seems to prevail.

It is a pleasure, therefore, that I can 100% vouch for the support provided by Rocket – simply outstanding. And, it’s not just I got lucky with one individual, every one I have dealt with has been superb.

 

Email

As is usual with specialist hosting, Rocket do not offer email services. The reason is quite simple – email issues can take up a massive amount of support time and Rocket prefers to focus on its core strength – quality hosting.

I use Google Workspace and I recommend their service if you need emails and decide to go ahead with Rocket Hosting.

Everything about Rocket impresses me.

Over the years I have tried most of the big name hosting providers and each has fallen short in one area or another.

Of course I know everyone has a favourite and ultimately there really cannot be just one best website hosting for WordPress.

But with the fullest portfolio of features included in the base price and in my opinion the very best support service I have encountered in over 15 years I have no hesitation in placing Rocket in pole position.