The Best Web Hosting Services For 2024 (Comparison)

Do you need a web host for a new project but aren’t sure what type of hosting provider to use?

In this article, we have 10 web hosting services to share for the various types of websites and SaaS projects you may want to build. 

We’ll cover everything from shared hosts to dedicated hosts and even ecommerce hosts to help you find the best web hosting provider for your needs.

The best web hosts compared – summary

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1. DreamHost

DreamHost is a multi-service web host that caters to a variety of different content management systems and web development projects. It’s optimized primarily for WordPress, even being one of three hosts WordPress recommends themselves.

It should then come as no shock to learn that the web host offers optimized versions of many of its hosting services exclusively for WordPress. With or without the CMS, DreamHost offers shared, VPS, cloud and dedicated hosting providers with multiple plans available for each.

This means this host has what you need, whether you’re a new blogger creating your first blog or a developer in need of a sophisticated server for a powerful, high-traffic project.

DreamHost uses its own homegrown control panel. They’ve designed it for non-technical users specifically, so it’s easy to manage your site and install CMSs in one click. WordPress comes preinstalled on supported plans.

For managed WordPress hosting, DreamHost preinstalls an SSL certificate for you, backs up your site on a daily basis, offers one-click staging, includes built-in caching and preinstalls the Jetpack plugin for increased security, spam protection and CDN support.

DreamHost is also a domain registrar, so free domains are included with some plans. They also offer email hosting with unlimited emails @ your domain available.

Key features

• Shared hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting
• VPS hosting
• Cloud hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• Intuitive proprietary control panel
• Suitable for beginners
• Free migrations
• 100% uptime guarantee
• Free SSL certificates
• Backups included
• Registers domains
• Email hosting
• Extra services for web design, SEO and marketing
• 24/7 support

Pricing

DreamHost has multiple web hosting services, the cheapest being shared hosting. These plans start at $7.99/month, $83.88/year ($6.99/month) or $215.64 for three years ($5.99/month).

Introductory discounts up to 60%+ off of these prices are available for new customers.

DreamHost offers a 97-day money back guarantee if you change your mind.

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2. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers something for everyone. Specifically, they offer shared hosting that also comes in a managed WordPress hosting variation, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

A2 Hosting uses cPanel with most of its server configurations and Plesk for others, including the managed WordPress hosting service. VPS and dedicated hosting servers in particular come in managed or unmanaged varieties with full root access, so you can install any control panel software and operating system you like. Though, you should know, all of this host’s servers use Linux.

So, if you’re new to building websites, you can use the cPanel or Plesk control panels available with the shared hosting service and managed servers to make setting up a website with a variety of different CMSs as easy as can be.

On the flip side, developers have the freedom to configure their servers however they need.

This host’s servers are also quite powerful. They’re one of few hosts who’ve adopted the newer and faster NVMe technology for storage. Plus, they allow you to choose between Intel and AMD CPUs on certain plans, giving you access to as many as 20 CPU cores.

With managed WordPress hosting, the CMS comes preinstalled for you, and your server will be configured in a way that’s most efficient and secure for it. Plus, staging, Jetpack and WP-CLI are included.

Key features

• Shared hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• cPanel
• Free migrations
• Free SSL certificates
• Backups included
• Registers domains
• Email hosting
• Developer-friendly features
• Reseller hosting
• NVMe storage available
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Pricing for A2 Hosting starts at $10.99/month, $131.88/year or $395.64 for three years for its shared hosting service.

Introductory discounts up to 70%+ off are available for new customers on the annual and three-year plans.

A2 Hosting offers a hassle-free 30-day money back guarantee.

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3. Cloudways

Cloudways is a cloud host exclusively. Their infrastructure is powered by cloud providers: Google Cloud Platform, AWS and DigitalOcean. When you create an account, you can build your own server by choosing any one of these providers and configuring the amount of resources you need.

Not only does this make Cloudways one of the fastest hosts in the industry, it also makes them one of the cheapest. Instead of a small set of plans priced for a single server infrastructure, you have five infrastructures to choose from with scalable resources for each.

This does mean that this host is best suited for developers and technically-inclined site admins. Even so, Cloudways’ proprietary control panel has a user-friendly interface and is quite easy to navigate. Their help docs are also thorough enough to guide anyone through the process of setting up a WordPress site on the platform.

Speaking of, Cloudways supports different CMSs as well as custom-built projects, but they’re mostly optimized for WordPress.

All WordPress plans come with an in-house caching plugin, dedicated firewalls, automatic backups, free migrations and SSL certificates, a staging environment, and SSH and SFTP access.

Plus, Cloudways does not restrict the plugins you can install on your site as other cloud-based WordPress hosts do.

Key features

• DigitalOcean cloud provider
• AWS cloud provider
• Google Cloud Platform cloud provider
• Custom-built control panel
• Optimized for WordPress
• Free trial available
• Only pay for what you use
• Suitable for developers
• In-house caching plugin for WordPress
• Proprietary CDN
• Backups included
• Free migrations
• Free SSL certificates
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Cloudways’ pricing structure is dependent on which cloud platform you choose to build your server with and how many resources you use each month.

DigitalOcean is the cheapest option. Pricing for this platform starts at $11/month for 1GB of RAM, 1 CPU core, 25GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth.

Read our Cloudways review.

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4. Servebolt

Servebolt may seem like an expensive hosting option at first glance, but it’s well worth the price if you own a high-traffic website with a lot of blog posts or product pages.

That’s because Servebolt is a cloud host exclusively with servers powered by its very own cloud platform and Linux distribution. This has allowed the host to optimize its infrastructure from the ground up for the PHP-based CMSs it supports, primarily WordPress.

Along with their operating system, this includes optimized databases, which is why this host is a fantastic choice for sites with a lot of page IDs, PHP versions, security and caching.

Each plan has been fully tested to ensure it comes with the right amount of RAM. Plus, the servers are designed to use unmetered CPU cores and failover components in every layer of the stack. Once you include auto-scaling, you can see how the host has designed their servers to have high-availability hardware so your website never goes offline during traffic surges and hardware disruptions.

The servers are managed, but Servebolt has made developer tools along SSH and SFTP access available for WordPress users so you can build your project however you need. Agency hosting and offloading WordPress-related client queries to Servebolt are also available as services.

Key features

• Cloud hosting powered by the host’s own cloud platform
• Managed cloud servers
• Unmetered CPU cores
• Up to 128GB of RAM
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Proprietary Linux distribution
• Support for WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Drupal and Laravel
• Custom-built version of MariaDB
• High-availability hardware
• Fastest PHP processing
• Server caching
• Free migrations
• Optimized for Core Web Vitals
• Automatic backups
• WordPress-savvy support team
• Green hosting

Pricing

Servebolt has four plans; Pro, Business, Scale & Enterprise. Plans start at $99/month for 10GB of storage, 500k dynamic requests and 256MB of PHP memory limits.

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5. Liquid Web

Liquid Web is a high-performance web hosting service with managed servers for cloud hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

Although the servers are managed, full root access and developer tools are available to give you more control over your high-traffic website or SaaS app. Plus, each web hosting service has a large amount of resources you can scale to when you need it. High-availability hardware also makes sure your site stays online no matter what in the meantime.

Liquid Web also offers managed CMS-based hosting powered by its own Cloud platform. For WordPress, this is a managed WordPress hosting service comparable to Kinsta and WPX Hosting.

This service includes a server stack optimized to improve performance for WordPress sites, automatic daily backups, automatic installation of an SSL certificate, a staging environment, managed WordPress updates, access to SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git, and more.

Key features

• Cloud hosting
• VPS hosting
• CMS-based hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• Cloud-based dedicated hosting
• Enterprise hosting
• Managed servers with full root access
• Linux and Windows-based servers
• Over 1TB of SSD storage available
• NVMe storage available
• Optimized for WordPress, WooCommerce and Magento
• Best suited for developers with reseller hosting available
• cPanel, InterWorx and Plesk control panels
• Free migrations
• Free SSL certificates
• Automatic backups
• Cloudflare CDN
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Liquid Web’s cheapest web hosting services are technically its managed CMS-based plans, but we’ll talk about this in a bit.

Its cheapest web hosting service under the name Liquid Web is its VPS hosting service. These plans start at $59/month, $420/year ($35/month) or $360 every two years ($15/month).

Liquid Web offers a 30-day money back guarantee.

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6. WPX Hosting

WPX Hosting is a managed WordPress host optimized for simple blogs with small to medium-sized traffic (as opposed to ecommerce or membership sites) and best suited for non-technical users.

In fact, busy bloggers and site admins are the host’s target customer base. It manages everything for you, from backups and caching to malware detection and removal. The host even offers its own control panel, cloud-based CDN and email hosting service to cut back on the number of third parties you need to rely on.

From an infrastructure point of view, WPX Hosting utilizes LiteSpeed instead of Nginx or Apache in its server stack, stores your site on SSDs, implements caching optimized for WordPress, and uses the latest versions of PHP.

Key features

• Managed WordPress hosting
• Proprietary hosting environment built on LiteSpeed
• Up to 40GB of SSD storage
• Custom-built control panel
• Optimized caching
• Best suited for simple blogs
• Free migrations
• Free SSL certificates
• Automatic backups
• Free malware scanning and removal
• Staging
• Proprietary cloud CDN
• Optimized for Core Web Vitals
• Email hosting
• 24/7 support

Pricing

WPX Hosting is a single-service hosting solution with three simple plans. Pricing for these starts at $24.99/month or $249.96/year ($20.83/month) for five websites, up to 10GB of SSD storage and up to 100GB of bandwidth.

WPX Hosting offers a 30-day money back guarantee.

Read our WPX Hosting review.

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7. Hostinger

Hostinger is an affordable web host that offers a variety of different web hosting services, including shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting and VPS hosting.

The host is suitable for all users. It has a custom-built control panel that’s intuitive enough for the average blogger to manage their site on their own. Many of its servers are also unmanaged or semi-managed with full root access and developer tools included. This gives you access to flexible hosting solutions so you can optimize your project with a customized server configuration.

For WordPress, general users have a managed solution with LiteSpeed caching, free SSL certificates, built-in security, customizable themes and plugins. Developers have SSH access, cron jobs, Git and configurable server options.

Key features

• Shared hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting
• Cloud hosting
• VPS hosting
• Minecraft hosting
• Unlimited bandwidth available
• Custom-built control panel
• Suitable for general users
• Developer-friendly
• LiteSpeed caching
• Cloudflare CDN
• Automatic backups
• Free SSL certificates
• Registers domains
• Email hosting
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Hostinger has multiple web hosting services, the cheapest being shared hosting. Pricing for this service starts at $9.49/month + a $4.99 setup fee, $71.88/year ($5.99/month), $95.76 every two years ($3.99/month) or $143.52 every four years ($2.99/month).

Introductory discounts of up to 85% off of these rates are available for new customers.

Hostinger offers a 30-day money back guarantee.

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8. Kinsta

Kinsta is a managed WordPress host that’s a little more expensive than comparable hosts, especially if you need to host more than one website. Even so, their service and performance more than make up for it. Plus, unlike WPX, Kinsta is suitable for ecommerce and membership sites.

The host’s server infrastructure is powered by Google Cloud Platform. They target a variety of different WordPress sites and users of all skill levels with this infrastructure.

You’ll see this in the custom control panel the host uses that makes it easy for anyone to manage their own site, most of which Kinsta manages for you, anyway. Along with server maintenance and software updates, managed features include security, backups, caching, SSL certificates, CDN integration and more.

For developers or even advanced users, Kinsta offers agency hosting, staging environments, a free local development application, WP-CLI, Git, SSH access and the ability to change PHP versions without having to contact support, something many managed hosts restrict you from doing.

Key features

• Cloud hosting powered by Google Cloud Platform
• Host up to 150 WordPress sites on the highest plan; more in custom plan
• Up to 250GB of storage; more available in custom plan
• Highest plans support 3 million+ visits
• Custom-built control panel
• Automatic backups
• Built-in security and malware removal
• Server-side caching
• Cloudflare CDN + firewall protection
• Free migrations
• Free SSL certificates
• Staging
• Developer tools
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Kinsta is another host that offers a single web hosting service with one set of plans. These plans feature varying resources. Pricing starts at $30/month or $300/year ($25/month). This includes one website, 25,000 monthly visits and 10GB of SSD storage.

Kinsta offers a 30-day money back guarantee.

Read our Kinsta review.

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9. Liquid Web WordPress Managed Hosting

Liquid Web’s plans for managed WordPress cloud hosting are optimized for ecommerce CMSs WooCommerce and Magento. Hosting for WordPress on its own is also supported. With full root access and an easy-to-use interface, Liquid Web WordPress Managed Hosting is suitable for users of all skill levels.

Liquid Web WordPress Managed Hosting has optimized its server stack and use of PHP specifically for ecommerce and membership sites. These types of sites rely on numerous database tables for products and user accounts. This causes the database to grow and require more resources, affecting performance if the server can’t process the database quickly enough.

In fact, their highest tier can support 10,000 orders per hour.

Along with this, they offers quite a bit in terms of what it includes with its web hosting service, specifically third-party tools you’ll have access to for free. These include the Solid Security plugin, the Kadence WordPress theme + Kadence Blocks, the Astra Pro WordPress theme, the Beaver Builder page builder plugin and more.

There are also WooCommerce-based tools. There’s an extension that allows you to set up redirected thank you pages and another that allows for faster checkouts.

For WordPress itself, Liquid Web manages server maintenance, caching, backups and more. Security is done through Solid Security, Liquid Web’s child company, but it’s still easy to configure and use.

You can also monitor the performances of sales and plugins with monitoring extensions that help you optimize specific aspects of your site.

Key features

• Proprietary cloud platform
• Managed WooCommerce hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting
• Managed Magento hosting
• Up to 32 vCPU cores
• Up to 32GB of RAM
• Up to 800GB of SSD storage
• Up to 10TB of bandwidth
• Add-on for a collection of tools designed for membership sites
• Ecommerce-based add-on with plugins, premium WordPress themes and more
• Multi-layered caching
• Improved checkout performance
• Proprietary CDN
• Performance monitoring
• Staging area
• Security via Solid Security
• Daily backups
• Developer tools with full root access
• Registers domains
• Email hosting for smaller plans
• SSL certificates available for purchase annually
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Liquid Web’s cheapest plans are the ones for its WordPress and WooCommerce services. These start at $21/month for one site, 15GB of storage and 2TB of bandwidth.

They offer a 30-day money back guarantee. Annual discounts available.

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10. InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is a popular web hosting service that offers different hosting services that cater to different types of web projects and CMSs. It offers shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting with WordPress iterations of each.

All of its servers use cPanel to ensure non-technical users are able to manage their sites easily on their own. VPS hosting servers are managed, making these servers suitable options for busy site owners who need a little more power.

You can also register domains with this host, and email hosting is available with select plans via cPanel.

Key features

• Shared hosting
• WordPress hosting (shared, VPS, dedicated)
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Advanced caching with some plans
• Hack and malware protection
• DDoS protection
• Automatic backups
• cPanel
• Free SSL certificates
• Free CDN
• Developer tools with certain services
• Registers domains
• Email hosting
• 24/7 support

Pricing

Shared hosting is InMotion Hosting’s cheapest web hosting service. Pricing for this service starts at $143.88/year ($11.99/month) or $131.88 every two years ($10.99/month).

InMotion Hosting offers a 90-day money back guarantee.

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Choosing the best web hosting services

Choosing a home for your website is intimidating, even when you’re faced with the best web hosting companies on this list.

So, let’s talk about your options in terms of what type of hosting excels at what and what you should consider most: the type of project you’re building, your budget, your skill level and how fast you predict you’ll grow.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is a suitable option if your budget is low, you only need a simple blog or website, and you don’t intend on receiving a lot of traffic in your first year. It’s also a great choice for beginners with little technical knowledge.

Managed WordPress hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is a little (and sometimes a lot) more expensive, but it’s well worth the price if you don’t want to manage things like backups, security and caching on your own and you expect your traffic to grow quicker.

Last, we have cloud hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting, and it can be quite easy to mix them all up, especially VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

Dedicated hosting

Basically, dedicated hosting is when you host your website on its very own server. You don’t share the server with anyone. As such, dedicated hosting is best suited for high-traffic websites and demanding SaaS projects. It’s also the most expensive form of hosting you can use.

VPS hosting

Fortunately, cloud hosting and VPS hosting, which are cheaper, have come a long way. VPS hosting stands for “virtual private server” because it’s a physical dedicated server you share with other customers, similar to shared hosting, except each customer gets its own private portion of the server through virtual computing. This means you get your own set of resources that are completely immune to your neighbors’ activity.

VPS servers can either come managed or unmanaged with full root access. This makes it suitable for all user types. Just remember: managed is best for non-technical users; unmanaged is best for developers.

Because VPS hosting is on a single physical server, there are a limited amount of resources you have access to. You can scale (draw on more resources) manually when you need to, but the server is still in danger of crashing if you get hit with huge surges in traffic.

Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting involves a server infrastructure connected to multiple physical servers of which customers are given private portions (cloud servers) via cloud computing.

This gives cloud hosting the ability to scale automatically during traffic spikes. Your website is much less likely to go offline as a result. As such, cloud hosting is the best way to go if you plan on growing quickly or have a high-traffic, ecommerce or membership site.

Plus, cloud hosts like Kinsta and Liquid Web are completely managed and easy to use if you’re a beginner.

Domain registrations

A lot of web hosting services offer free domains with the purchase of hosting packages. Or, will at least offer the ability to register a domain with them.

However, it’s best to host with one company and register your domain with another whenever possible.

If you’re still confused, check out our guide on how to choose a web host.

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