3 Most Overpriced Yet Superior Managed WordPress Hosting Services

WordPress is one of the world’s most powerful and widely used website platform and CMS today, with nearly 75 million blogs and websites. WordPress hosting is pretty similar to regular web hosting, and virtually any host can become a WordPress host simply by possessing two basic requirements: MySQL and PHP. This allows a web hosting platform to integrate seamlessly into the server and handle data quickly and efficiently.

Since the demand for WordPress websites is so high, most reputable hosting platforms offer WordPress hosting that comes with a wide range of prices. For someone looking to host their blog online, they might opt for a shared WordPress plan from big names such as A2 Hosting or Siteground. This has a huge cost advantage since the fees of the server are shared by thousands of sites. This can cost roughly $4-$10 a month. Not bad! Larger businesses, on the other hand, typically choose to lease one or more entire servers.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Host

While there are a ton of hosting options for your shiny new WordPress site, choosing the right one is very important, as not all hosts are created equal. Here are some factors to consider when choosing a host:

• Ease of use – The process of remotely accessing your site through a control panel application should be simple and not overly complicated.
• Reliability – Any host worth a buck should guarantee at least 99.9% uptime for your website, with pages loading quickly across all browsers.
• Hosting packages – The hosting provider should offer a package that matches your requirements.
• Customer support – A quality host should be available 24/7 via phone, online chat, and email to help you solve problems and answer questions.
• Price – Hosting prices can vary widely, depending on your budget and the features you require.

Pricey but Superior: Top 3

Before we get to the top three hosting providers for your WordPress site, it’s important to first understand the most common hosting packages, which ultimately play a large role in price.

Shared hosting is the lowest tier and perfect for small businesses and bloggers. This package offers a single server shared by many clients. This is typically less secure and not as reliable, but very affordable.

E-commerce hosting is a more specialized option perfect for those planning to conduct sales through their site. It offers some great features like an e-shopping cart and credit card processing.

VPS hosting provides a virtual private server (VPS). This is a shared server that’s fully partitioned for two or more clients. This is a better option for businesses and sites that can expect a lot of traffic. It ensures a specific amount of resources always available for use.

Dedicated Hosting is a top tier package and most expensive. This package allows you to lease an entire server for your own use and offers the most flexibility.

With hosting packages in mind, let’s now take a look at the top three pricey, but overall superior WordPress hosting services.

1. WordPress Engine

This is definitely a contender when it comes to WordPress hosting solutions that are secure, fast, scalable, and with 24-hour support when you need it. WordPress Engine is one of the most advanced and powerful hosting providers for the WordPress platform out there. While it’s certainly more expensive than other hosting providers, it’s widely considered valuable and well-worth the cash.

With WordPress Engine, you won’t ever have to worry about your site. This platform ensures fast websites no matter how heavy the traffic. They offer superb customer support, incredibly fast speed, and excellent security.

With five different plans on offer (starting at $29/month), their top three plans start at $249 per month. Its Business plan provides up to 25 installs and 400k visits per month and go up from there. You can expect more innovation with tech features like GeoIP, dedicated hosting architectures, included SSL certificated, optimal performance, and faster support.

If you don’t mind paying a higher price, then go for a WP Engine plan. The speed and reliability it comes with will give you peace of mind. They also offer a 60-day money back guarantee if you find that it isn’t the plan for you.

2. Liquid Web

Liquid Web is a long-time player in web hosting solutions and has only recently added a managed WordPress hosting to their lineup of features. They offer dedicated servers, VPS hosting, a dedicated cloud, and managed WordPress sites. They do not, however, offer shared hosting. So if you’re looking for cheap, you might have to look elsewhere.

Liquid Web is an excellent hosting platform. They offer customer solutions for enterprise-level clients, making them truly an upper tier platform. With monthly prices ranging from $69 a month for a Personal plan all the way up to a whopping $289 per month for their Agency plan, Liquid web offers a ton of great perks and features. Its features include the number of pageview counts and overage fees, full server access, automatic backups, a secure infrastructure, around the clock support, a staging site, and of course, fully managed WordPress integration, amongst other features.

While WP Engine is especially useful for developers, business owners, agencies, and freelancers will love Liquid Web. It’s expensive, but not exactly meant for hobby or personal sites. Between their security features and high-performance, Liquid Web is simply one of the best.

3. Flywheel

While not quite as pricey as Liquid Web and WP Engine, Flywheel is yet another highly recommended WordPress hosting service by WordPress.org. Flywheel only hosts WordPress sites and offers an exceptional hosting and management service more geared towards beginners, designers, and agencies.

Flywheel ensures high performance, solid security, and amazing support from their professional customer support team. Their dashboard is simple and clutter-free, and easy to use. Some top features at a glance included managed software updates, backups, managed WordPress security, caching and performance, free SSL certificates and CDN.

Their two main types of hosting plans are Pay-Per-Site and Bulk Plans. These plans range from $15-$100 a month making it a great choice for a managed WordPress hosting provider.

Conclusion

There are simply tons of excellent and top-notch Managed WordPress hosting providers to choose from. They range from cheap to super high priced, and in the end, it truly comes down to your business’s needs. If you’re a small business owner or blogger, these plans are probably an overkill. For larger businesses looking for high performance, ridiculously fast speeds, and reliability, WP Engine, Liquid Web, and Flywheel are a great place to start.