Blog

On this page I’ve put the list of the reliable and fast web hosting companies that I recommend as I’ve been researching hosts since 2013 and started monitoring selected hosts 24/7 since the beginning of 2016.

If you are looking for a shared hosting, just continue reading the information on this page. And if you are looking for something different, I can make your life easier – see this section.

The hosts on this page are the hosting companies that I personally recommend. And if you become a client of any of these companies after reading this article, I’m responsible for my recommendation. It means that in case of any unresolved issues you may have with the hosting I personally participate in rectifying the situation.

You may also want to read the whole series of articles devoted to choosing the best shared hosting for a website. Take your time, here is enough information to make a weighted and reasonable decision what web hosting to choose.

CURRENT HOSTING PROMOS

If you’re my subscriber, you may already know, that I recommend only the best hosts I know in different hosting market segments. 

And some of these hosts now and then offer great deals and promotions.

I put these offers here for you. Check them out:

A2 Hosting

WP Engine

GeekStorage

GeekStorage is my favourite and the most recommended low-cost and very high-quality-for-the-money host with focus on the performance.

HawkHost

HawkHost is my second favourite super low-cost and high-quality-for-the-money host with focus on the more approachable support .

WPX Hosting

I recommend WPX Hosting as the best premium WP hosting for non-technical people and price-concerned agencies .

GetFlyWheel

It’s a comfortable and professional option for agencies. Fully managed WP hosting for single sites is also possible.

Who may need my hosting recommendations on this page?

• If you want to find a reliable shared hosting with great reputation and superior approach to their clients. Just read on – most information on this part is for you.
• If you are already using a shared hosting and your site is slow. You have two options to upgrade – semi-dedicated, high-performance or cloud hosting or powerful fully managed VPS hosting .
• If you want your host to take care of everything possible that a host can ever do, have a look at the fully managed hosts that I review.
• Shared hosting or a VPS resellers (classic approach to reseller business).
• Bussiness owners who are interested in hosting reseller programs but without doing technical job.
• WordPress developers/designers.
• Chief Technical Officers looking for a reputable and reliable host for web projects or enterprise needs.
• Linux professionals looking for the performance and infrastructure for your limited budget.

How can you use these recommendations?

• You can read them and get your web hosting right away;
• Or it would be great if you do your own research (it may be fun!) reading reviews and real users opinions on forums etc if you have time. And then finally come to the conclusion that I do recommend good stuff.

In short, how it all started and how I’ve come to this list of reliable and fast web hosting companies?

1. After registering my domain, I was recommended HostGator (back in July 2013), and was about to give it a try.
2. But I also decided to do some research (yes, I’m a scrutinizer by nature with analytic background  ) reading what people say about it and other web hosts that were so actively promoted by many review sites and bloggers.
3. I found out that HostGator was bought by Endurance International Group.
4. It was really disappointing. So I started looking for other decent and reliable and fast web hosting companies. I started analyzing eclectic and controversial reviews, reading different forums, being a liar-detective. And since then I’ve been watching the hosting market closely.
5. Paid special attention to negative reviews and how they were explained and resolved.
6. It took quite a lot of time, much more than I expected, but I enjoyed it.
7. After reading issues and reviews on different forums and listening to advice of some experts who choose hosting for their clients’ websites I realized that I really like the attitude of relatively smaller companies how they treat and serve their customers. Moreover, I have understood that such hosts, like no other big-branded hosts, can really provide reliable and fast web hosting services accompanied by brilliant support.
8. Thus, back in July 2013 I chose fantastically reliable and fast web hosting (for different budgets) that have fabulous reputation – HawkHost and EuroVPS for myself and my clients. And I still use them (in addition to these hosts, later I started using great value-for-money hosting: A2Hosting, GeekStorage and some other hosts which you can find below with real-time monitoring charts).
   Apart from that, since 2013 I’ve been using more than one hundred hosts for my SEO project (not connected with researchasahobby.com). But these hosts are more than cheap and I don’t mention them since they are mostly not reliable enough and and not recommended for your blogs or websites that you really care of. Anyway, it’s a good experience to deal with different hosts like that.
9. Also, as a great side effect of my hosting user experience I have written a series of articles about choosing the best host for a website. I’ve got a list of the web hosts that, as I’ve discovered, have a stellar reputation. So if anyone needs to find a good web hosting it can be much easier using this list as a starting point than looking for one from scratch.
10. Since the beginning of 2016 I’ve started to utilize a professional monitoring service to get solid data on hosting performance and reliability. You can see real-time charts of all hosts that I monitor this way and historical data on this page and Monthly Hosting Performance Contest roundups.

The recommended list of reliable and fast web hosting companies

Disclosure: There are affiliate links on this page. It means that I will likely get a compensation if you click on them and make a purchase. It does not increase price for you anyway.

I don’t present the recommended web hosts in a prioritized list because it can be prioritized for certain requirements and personal preferences. (E.g. someone wants cheaper, others need some specific features or options.) Rankings on many review websites are either simplification assuming some average needs or I’d rather believe they are just manipulating.

So for now I’ve just added some comments against each reliable and fast web hosting company that I recommended. (I made the notes as something caught my attention when I was choosing a web host for myself.) I have not included in this list those web hosts that I have found out as not good enough. Only the hosts are included that have great reputation, are trustworthy, and offer great service from both server and customer support point of view.

I have created this recommended list focusing first of all on shared hosting.
Also, I’ve included a list of companies that offer VPS, dedicated servers and other enterprise-level hosting solutions.

Hope you will find the recommendations below helpful. Only reputable and reliable and fast web hosting companies are here.

This quiz will help you to choose the shared hosting that is the most comfortable fit for you

I’ve got a number of hosting that I recommend on this page. And to help you find your comfortable choice among the variety of the hosts, I’ve selected six great shared hosting that are designed for different kinds of people.

Some hosts fit you better than others. Find out your best match in shared hosting!

So, I’ve created the following quiz which asks you nine questions and then it tells you the following:

• Which of the shared hosts is the most likely to be your best choice according to your expectations.
• Some explanations about your expectations regarding shared hosting.
• Also you’ll get the prioritized list of the shared hosts you to let you know what host to look at first of all.

No email or social sharing required. You just answer the quiz questions and get your results displayed.

Click the button to play to find your the most comfortable shared hosting match:
Start the quiz!

 
And below you can read my short reviews and opinions on the hosting I recommend. After you look through them you will see that the hosts are deigned for different needs. And this is not just about technical requirements or pricing. This is also about choosing a right host from a mental compatibility point of view.

A2 Hosting

• This hosting focuses on speed. I consider this host to be one of the best performing shared hosting in terms of speed among well-established and large hosts. But this host may be not the best general fit for its price like other hosts I recommend. Read below for my opinion.
• A2Hosting was the fastest host in the Hosting Performance Contest in January 2021 for the Lite and Heavy WordPress installations among the four monitored hosts!
• Phone, Chat and Tickets support available 24/7. However, the main support channel is tickets.
• Its smallest plan allows 1 webiste, 5 databases, unlimited SSD storage (with reliable data mirroring RAID-1), unlmited traffic. Max number of files (inodes) for shared hosting plans is 600,000.
• Prices start from $3.92/mo for the first invoice for 2-year plan. Regular (renewal) prices are 2 times higher than at the first billing period (e.g. after 2 years the prices increases upto $7.99/mo). 1-year and per-month plans are available.
• One-time discount 51% is available. The discount code will be applied during the check-out process
• Free SSH.
• Free SSL certificate (LetsEncrypt). See more information about free Let’s Encrypt SSL sertificates available on A2Hosting. New accounts are SSL-ready (configured automatically) if your site is using HTTPS; for existing accounts the activation takes literally a couple of clicks in a WP dashboard.
• HTTP/2 is available on Turbo plans (higher performance via HTTPS).
• Spam filtering solution SpamAssassin (included for free).
• free site builder included (based on a template selectr & customizer).
• 30-day full refund money-back guarantee and pro-rata (based on regular price).
• Free migration from your previous host.
• There are some additional options avaiable such as off-site backups, dedicated IP, advanced spam filtering (Baracuda firewall), Railgun, priority support etc. They are offered for additional payment.
• A2 partners with security service Sucuri and has more attractive prices for this service (anti-DDoS protection included).
• A2 pays diligent attention to security of your website .
• You can give your developer(s) access to your A2 account without having to share your account credentials.
• Server locations: US (Michigan, Arizona), Europe (Netherlands), Aisa (Singapore).
• I like that it pays a lot of attention to speed optimization and options flexibility. However, I don’t like it for being over-promising on its sales page. Unprepared people may get some information wrong. E.g. notes that A2 Optimized option makes 6x faster page loads or Turbo Option that makes speed upto 20 times faster which is not typically true in real life – see my research on it. However, this host is pretty fast after all.
• My special love to this host is that it offers quite a lot of performance-tuning options. Apart from hosting plan upgrading options (nothing very special here), you can get pre-configured custom caching solution based on W3 Total Cache (very good for beginners), additional RAM and CPU to your existing plan (superb option!), as well as get the option for handling traffic spikes (very handy and affordable!). This flexibility provides cheaper option than simply upgrading a plan as other hosts could offer. This flexibility is very advantageous compared to other shared hosts. Besides, on A2’s Turbo plans it lets you get caching solutions (special Turbo Cache plus industry-standard Memcached and OPcache) that you are not likely to see with other shared hosts. A2’s options are very flexible and it feels like a VPS-grade hosting but much cheaper than managed VPS. See more details here.
• I recommend A2 as a well-performing shared host which successfully manages a lot of clients. If you want a fast hosting which is a big company, it’s a great choice. At the same time I think it may be too expensive after the first billing period on its Turbo (the fastest) plans.
• Also note that off-site backups are not included by default in your plan.
• A2 is fast compared to many other shared hosts (and its Turbo plans are even faster, although not 20 times), but may become too expensive with all possible paid add-ons included especially after the first billing period. Also, I don’t think that A2’s support is the strongest part of this host (or you need to pay extra that is not cheap). If you are beginner, then it’s a safer choice for you to go with WPX Hosting (see my review) which you will find more comfortable, but also moreexpensive (at least for the first billing period). Or go with with a fully managed WP hosting (it’s a very solid choice and cost-effective if you have one WordPress website).
• FYI: take CPU/RAM numbers advertised in the specifications of the A2Hosting plans with a grain of salt (by the way, don’t trust these numbers on any shared/VPS hosting).
• As a bottom line, A2 is a great choice for website speed perfectionists who are ready to pay extra and prefer going with a bigger company. But it’s not the ideal choice for those who want not very expensive hosting (especially after the first invoice).
• Alternative to A2Hosting is GeekStorage which also focuses on performance, but with more geeky support (it’s much smaller company). Also, it’s more straightforward regarding advertising, whereas A2 presents its services more attractively. Anyway, A2 is a bigger company and it invests more in customer support.
• Another worthy alternative is Cloudways (it’s faster than shared hosting and quite cheap option, but with one caveat – read my short review here and the separate article).
• I’ve been using A2’s cheapest plan since May 2016 and according to my 1-min uptime check and 20-min speed check monitors it’s in the top performing hosts in its pricing category. Also, as I’ve mentioned, I tested A2’s Turbo Boost (former Turbo) plan and it was also impressive.

WP Engine

• WP Engine focuses entirely on WordPress websites. It has great advantages over other generalist hosts because of better technical quality of the services (performance, robustness) and higher expertise of human support expertise.
• It’s fully-managed (which means you may focus on your blog and your business, not a technical side of keeping a website like speed, security, backups etc).
• They not only promise to secure your website, but they will also clean it up for free unlimited times if it gets hacked (but their work is not to let it happen in the first place). More details: WP Engine partners with Sucuri. And the hosting plans include the advantage of unlimited cleaning up your website in case of hack. The service is provided by Sucuri Website Antivirus. It’s very attractive, because the Sucuri’s clean up service is inlcuded into its product which costs $16.99/mo!
• WP Engine successfully completed a Service Organization Control (SOC 2®) Type II examination for its customer environment and User Portal. The audit, conducted by Holtzman Partners, found that WP Engine meets the SOC 2 standards for Security and Availability Trust Services Categories. In simple words, it ensures that WP Engine has processes in place to meet the highest standards in customer data management and protection.
• WP Engine puts a lot of efforts of making your online property as safe as possible. One of the measures is its security environment at the platform level.
• The WP Engine hosting includes the Genesis Framework and 35 premium StudioPress Themes for free (it costs $499.95 if you are not a WP Engine customer). The Genesis is the most popular theme framework for WordPress in the world (more than 1 mln themes).
• The host offets WP Engine DevKit – tools to develop WP websites in one place.
• Although it’s premium hosting, it’s not expensive (and much less than many competitors) for the services they offer (The minimum plan is $30/mo for 1 website with the limit of 25K visitors per month. Yearly plan is $25/mo).
• 60-day full money-back guarantee.
• Flexibly scalable (if one day you get a huge spike of visitors, you’ll not need to upgrade your plan, but just pay additionally $1 for each 1,000 visitors over your limit).
• 10 GB disk space.
• 50 GB data transfer per month.
• Free CDN.
• Free SSL certificate (LetsEncrypt).
• Their own caching system (they make your website fast, you don’t need to deal with any caching plugins).
• They offer staging area (a copy of your website) for free where you can make any changes and do any experiments on your website (like installing plugins, publishing pages, posts etc) and see if it works. And then you may deploy it to the live version (very convenient!).
• Separate backup system and one-click restore option is included (backups are daily and stored for 30 days on in the independent place so you don’t need an additional backup service).
• Both live chat and ticket support.
• These guys entirely focus on WordPress hosting, and you’ll get more help and assistance than you may expect.
• WP Engine has a performance monitoring solution based on Relic (New Relic APM Pro application). It allows you to see detailed information about how your WordPress site on WP Engine is performing.
• Server locations: WP Engine utilizes Google Cloud infrastructure in many of its datacenters. So there are lots of datacenters around the globe you can choose from.
• DISCOUNT: 10% off or 3 months for free if you purchase an annual plan (discount code WPE3FREE).
• Server locations: WP Engine utilizes Google Cloud infrastructure in many of its datacenters. So there are lots of datacenters around the globe you can choose from.
• It’s a great choice if you’re a non-technical user or don’t want to spend time on a technical side of maintaining your website, and it’s not expensive (compared to other alternatives of this kind).
• I recommend this hosting as the best WordPress fully managed hosting in regard to value-for-money for websites which have from a small to an upper-intermediate popularity.
• A realistic alternative (from a pricing point of view considering offered services) is Kinsta (especially if you have more than 5 websites or more than 100k visits montly). Kinsta, as well as WP Engine, offers a similar pack of services which are important for website owners focusing on business, not technical side (e.g. unlimited free rescuing from hacking). Other alternatives are not that well-equipped with services (or much pricier). For example, Page.ly‘s $499/mo plan, which makes sense to consider if you have 500K visitors per month or above. WPX Hosting is a very sweet and quite affordable alternative if you are beginner or a small agency (see my review above). Other alternatives to WP Engine which are very good WP managed hosting but focus on a specific and much narrower audience: LightningBase (much smaller host), WireNine (focusing more on a technical side), LiquidWeb WordPress Managed product (focusing on a stellar true VPS-grade performance and high-availability phone support; see above my short review).
• After all, WP Engine is one of the most favorite affordable options for many users. Especially for those who has less than 25K visits per month and want fully-managed hosting with enhanced security.

Kinsta

• Kinsta is the main competitor of WP Engine on the market of fully managed hosts for WordPress websites and it has vivid advantages for heavier and high-traffic installations as well as for developers. Here’s the page (the text, not sales page) on Kisnta’s site describing the most important things about this host.
• Whereas WP Engine is great for smaller (below 20-10GB storage) and not very popular (below 100K visits monthly) websites, Kinsta really rocks for heavier and more popular websites, as well for multiple websites. Especially if you have more than 5 websites. Although both hosts are very similar in what they offer and for what kind of clients they serve the best, Kinsta is killing WP Engine with performance when it regards heavy loading (a lot of sites, tons of visitors, big number of plugins).
• Let me repeat it once again, for website(s) with a lot of traffic (more than 100K visits per month), Kinsta beats WP Engine by offering better speed. Otherwise, if you have a less popular websites and the number of your websites is 5 or less, then WP Engine looks like simply a cheaper alternative, especially if you want to use premium StudioPress’ WordPress themes and Genesis framework which WP Engine offers for free.
• Like WP Engine, Kinsta offers unlimited free recovery of your website(s) if case they are hacked. But unlike WP Engine, Kinsta does it more “manual” way, which includes involving you in the process in a bit bigger extent. Whereas WP Engine uses Sucuri’s clean-up service (Sucuri is the leader on website security market for small and mid-sized online businesses). You can compare these two hosts handle cleaning websites after hacking/malware contamination: Kinsta security guarantee and WP Engine malware cleaning.
• Unlike WP Engine, Kinsta has just one channel of technical support – its chat system (conversations and tickets). This can be considered as a disadvantage (since some people want to speak by phone rather than chatting online or creating tickets). But this lets the company dedicate more resources in developing its other strategic advantages. 
• Just a helpful link if you suggest this host: Kinsta’s useful technical FAQ
• If you manage more than 40+ WordPress websites, Kisnta has a special ebook for you (in exchange for your your name, email and phone number).
• Kinsta is better designed for bigger and enteprise clients thanks to its architecture, infrastructure and automatization (e.g. high security network, automatic PHP restart, automatic database optimization, multi-user permissions etc).
• Kinsta is developer-friendly. It offers SSH access (as well as Git and WP-CLI) on all plans (whereas WP Engine only on enterprise plans). Here’s a beginner-friendly article for WordPress developers using Kinsta.
• Server locations: Kinsta, like WP Engine, utilizes Google Cloud infrastructure in many of its datacenters. So there are lots of datacenters around the globe you can choose from.
• Kinsta, unlike WP Engine, offers a premium DNS for free.
• Play with Kinsta using a free demo account!
• Kinsta can not be compared to more generic hosts. But if you think that Kinsta’s price is too high, have a look at this comparison with a more generic host (A2 Hosting) to see what you pay extra for.
• In very short: Kinsta is ideal above all for the clients who may consider using WP Engine. But Kinsta works comparatively better if you have a pretty popular website(s) or more than few heavy websites. Whereas the prices of the both hosts are comparable. And also, Kinsta is much more friendly for developers.
• This host is a true rising star of premium WordPress hosting. But it also has its risks (more on that see below).
• The host has a secret of becoming super successful and getting very exciting reviews. If you understand what stands behind it, you will know whether you want this host or not.
• The secret consists of three parts: training its technical support to go extra mile whenever possible, providng speed not worse than the competitors, and giving you all the feature benefits that the more expensive fully managed hosts have (including for example, unlimited free malware cleanup).
• If you look at this host’s reviews for instance on TrustPilot, you will see that almost all reviews are not simply positive, they are raving. Why?
• Because the host did a very good marketing home work – it successfuly focuses on two types of clients: Non-technical users and price-concerned website development agencies.
• Why is WPX Hosting so successful in making its non-technical clients much more than simply happy? Because it gives them what this category of clients need the most, particularly the helping hand of the technical support which helps not only with hosting issues, but also with users’ websites issues and helps fast. 
• Why is WPX Hosting popular among beginner website developement businesses? Because it gives them the tools and infrastructure (staging, White Label) for comparatively low price. The professional-level hosts for agencies like FlyWheel cost many times more.
• Having a technically knowledgeable friend during 24/7 within a mouse click on a live chat to help you solve any issue you are experiencing with your website (and not only with the hosting) is a killer advantage. And although the scope of this help is not directly determined, the clients do indeed get this incredible kind of going-extra-mile service. You simply can’t get this with other hosts. This is the kind of the service that other hosts are lacking because this would make the hosting services too expensive.
• How then does WPX Hosting manage to keep its prices competitively low? There are three factors: no phone support (which is expensive), no huge discounts for new clients, and the employees from Central Europe. The employees are fluent English speakers (absolutely no problems with communication), but their salary is many times lower compared to US employees of the same qualification. Lower costs for a hosting means lower prices and therefore better quality for the hosting clients.
• One more point about the WPX Hosting technical support: They are qualified as they are supposed to be at a managed WordPress hosting. If you are a non-technical user, you will find them stunning. But if you are an experienced user with advanced technical skills, don’t expect too much generally. I’m telling this to counter balance the raving reviews in the web which can make the wrong impression. Once again, the support is great and goes extra mile which is the gold for newbies.
• Now as regards the performance. Although reading the the reviews you may think that this host is super fast, I want you to slow calm down a bit. Yes, this host is indeed much faster compared to shared hosts. But comparing with similarly priced reputable hosts the performance will be comparable in the long run. Single speed tests are not indicative here. Thus, the host has a great performance for a well-managed hosting of this price category, but not miraculously faster.
• Now about the risks that WPX Hosting has. Unlike its competitors (Kinsta, LiquidWeb, WP Engine) this host is in its active growth phase. This is a risk both for the hosting and for its clients. Keeping super high standards of the service is impossible when the hosting gets much more clients. This means that within time (matter of years) I expect the quality of this host to decrease to a general level of the competitors which are much longer on the market. This is the warning that you need to keep in mind. As of October 2019 there are no signs of quality drop.
• An interesting fact about WPX Hosting is that formerly this host was known as TrafficPlanet. And that host did not have such amazing review ratings (although it was good). Re-branding into WPX Hosting let the host to take a head start and stand out really well. I’m telling you this so that you would not lose your head because of the brilliant reviews particularly on TrustPilot, G2 and in the rest of the Internet. The host is great and makes it everything possible to please the clients, no doubt, but from a technical point of view it’s not a revolution in the hosting industry.
• As regards value for price, WPX Hosting has advantage of letting you have 5 websites on its cheapest plan ($25/mo if paid monthly and $21/mo if paid yearly). The competitors like WP Engine, Kinsta or LiquidWeb would cost you many times more for hosting several sites. Although WPX Hosting may seem like a real bargain (and it is!), at the same time there’s a hidden risk: if your multiple websites are too resource-intensive, you may encounter performance issues (because all your websites may require more resources than one account can handle). Although this risk exist with any hosting generally, WPX is at higher risk compared to much more expensive hosts, because it’s too affordable for proper handling a big number of resource-hog websites on one account.
• Another advantage that WPX Hosting has is that it provides its clients peace of mind in terms of security. If your website or websites ever get contaminated with malware, everything will be fixed for free. If you have multiple websites, this is indeed the unmatched option. For example, Sucuri clean-up service costs $200/year for just one website, and other hosts which offer free unlimited cleanup service (like Kinsta or WP Engine) cost much more than WPX Hosting if you have multiple websites.
• Unlimited website migration, DDoS protection (powered by Incapsula), daily Backups (stored for 28 days), free SSLs, host’s own CDN, emails, option to set PHP version foreach website – all of this are included without any additional fee.
• Server locations: US (Chicago, IL), Europe (London, UK), Australia (Sydney).
• 30-Day Money-back Guarantee
• If you need to know more about the WPX Hosting, I’ve got two articles about the host – my detailed review and my thoughts on its support.
• In short, I recommend this host for non-technical people (especially if you have more than one website) and price-concerned agencies. The features this host has and the support that is ready to help you with any issue make this host a bargain for its price.
• It may seem that I’m too harsh on WPX Hosting. But since this host has enormously positive feedbacks from its clients, I want to emphasize what its clients and other reviewers miss or don’t want to notice so that you could better understand the hosting’s true strong points as well as its risks. Having said all the above, I do recommend this host.
• If you prefer to pay monthly, you can use the code RAAH50 which will give you 50% off the first month for any monthly plan. 
• HawkHost was the third fastest host in the Hosting Performance Contest in January 2021 for the Lite and Heavy WordPress installations among the four monitored hosts!.
• This is my second favorite low-cost host that deliver very professional and high-quality hosting services for such low prices for a long term (the renewal prices are small as well). My most favourite low-cost host is GeekStorage .
• Has a great reputation both among web hosting community and among the company’s clients.
• Good handling spikes in number of visitors.
• Free daily backups (for 7 days).
• HTTP/2 is available (higher performance via HTTPS).
• 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Prices: for 1 month – $4.99 monthly; for 1-year plan – $3.99/mo; for 2-year plan – $2.99/mo.
• Starting plan: 10 GB disk space / unlimited bandwidth / unlimited domains / 500,000 inode limit (max number of files).
• There’s also unlimited plan starting at $7.99/mo.
• The major alternative to this host (an my best recommended budget option) is GeekStorage (very good and stable performance with professional and truthful support for a comparatively low price). In short, GeekStorage has a bit better performance, but HawkHost has a more approachable support.
• Server locations: US Center (Dallas, TX), US East (New York City, NY), US West (Los Angeles, CA), Canada (Toronto), Asia (Singapour), China (Hong Kong).
• Very affordable option with great support and uptime.
• I’ve been using it myself in 2013 and 2014 and have been hosting another site with it since the beginning of 2016.
• GeekStorage was the second fastest host in the Hosting Performance Contest in January 2021 for the Lite and Heavy WordPress installations among the four monitored hosts!.
• GeekStorage was the very best-performing host in 2016, 2017, 2018 and the third best performing host in 2019 among all the hosts I’ve been monitoring.
• Geek Storage is my favourite low-cost hosting that I recommend above all if you need to host as cheap as possible with maximum performance advantage for a long term (the renewal prices are small as well). My second favourite low-cost host is HawkHost.
• Geek Storage focuses heavily on high speed providing high level of reliability and anytime available support.
• The servers security is covered by Imunify360.
• During many years of doing its business, Geek Storage has earned great reputation among demanding clients who value performance. And it’s very much respected in a professional hosting community.
• Shared hosting plans with generous server resources (unlimited plans are also available).
• The most basic plan: 10 GB SSD (database is also SSD) / unlimited bandwidth / 3 websites / 200,000 inodes (max files count).
• Regular prices start from $3.2/mo for yearly plan (the GeekStorage offers lifetime discount for most of its plans). Check out the prices and other options on GeekStorage’s website.
• Easy drag-and-drop website builder for free (based on Site.Pro, check out a demo).
• Another powerful site builder RVSiteBuilder is included for free (many other hosts do not offer it for free!). Check it out its demo).
• Free migration from your previous host which uses cPanel (many hosts use it).
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Daily off-site backup (only one backup is stored at a time). I recommended to use additional backup services or solutions.
• I’ve been using Geek Storage since April 2016 and it’s proved to be one of the best shared hosts I’ve used from a performance point of view.
• Just in case: GeekStorage is not only for geeks, but its spirit is closer to the clients who are more technically advanced (the same as with MDDHosting).
• Alternatives for GeekStorage are HawkHost (also low-cost and high-quality for the price, a bit less performance but more approachable support than GeekStorage), MDD Hosting (also geeky spirit), A2Hosting (special focus on performance).
• GeekStorage is a small company. If you’d like to be with a bigger hosting, A2Hosting or Cloudways are better choices.
• Server locations: US (Chicago, IL), Europe (Falkenstein, Germany).
• Before all, this host is the professional and comfortable hosting place to do your small or mid-sized agency/developer business (free demo sites for your clients, blueprints, collaboration on managing/editing/creating sites, billing, whitelabel, additional revenue options etc). For bigger agencies I suggest Kinsta.
• This is also a less expensive fully managed WordPress hosting compared to other fully managed solutions if you have few sites.
• This is NOT a shared hosting – each site gets a dedicated server resources (powered by Google Cloud).
• Chat support (by default) and phone support (for bigger agencies – ask the support if you apply).
• Famous Premium themes from StudioPress and the Genesis Framework are available with all Flywheel hosting plans for free.
• Also, if you would like to get Divi Builder, there’s a great opportunity to get a bundle of Divi and FlyWheel hosting using this offer which is more attractvie than if Divi and FlyWheel hosting are purchased separately.
• FlyWheel also offers full managed WordPress hosting for single sites. If phone support is not a must for you, this is a great high-quality option and it’s cheaper than WP Engine, LiquidWeb or Kinsta.
• Server locations: FlyWheel utilizes Google Cloud infrastructure in many of its datacenters. So there are lots of datacenters around the globe you can choose from.
• Besides, if you have any questions or if you want a discount, then I suggest contacting Brady Wells at brady@getflywheel.com – he is a cool guy who can will take a personal care for your onboarding process (also tell him you are from Michael Bely and ResearchAsAHobby.com and ask for the promised discount – 50% off for the first month on personal plans and 50% off for the 3 months for agencies dealing with 5+ sites).
• Very reliable hosting with 24/7 live chat and phone support (they call it “Heroic Support”):
  59 Second Livechat Guarantee
  59 Second Phone Call Guarantee
  59 Minute Help Desk Guarantee (tickets)
• Special WordPress Managed product based on fully managed VPS, which includes automatic core and plugins updates, automatic backups, SSL, multisite support.
• $19/mo (1 WordPress website, Unlimited visitors / 2 TB bandwidth, Automatic backups for 30 days and 1-click restores, 1-click staging, iThemes Security Pro and iThemes Sync, free SSLs etc).
• This host is my first recommendation for e-commerce businesses (based on WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, X-Cart) which are already running. This host is also HIPAA compliant (for the businesses dealing with health information).
• LiquidWeb also offers the platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.
• Server locations: US Central (Lansing, MI), US West (Phoenix, AZ) and Europe (Amsterdam, NL).
• LiquidWeb is very respected and quite a big company that offers premium-level hosting services for all kinds of customers – starting from newbies and finishing corporate clients providing versatile hosting infrastructure products and solutions.
• The alternatives to LiquidWeb for hosting and managing WordPress websites that I can recommend are WP Engine (which adds more security, management and development services and features), Kinsta (which is a reliable solution for hosting a big number of websites) and WPX Hosting (if you have up to 5 websites). If you have more than 5 websites and you want to go within the smallest budget as possible, then consider Cloudways hosting (but remember about a caveat that I mention in my short review).
• I recommend LiquidWeb as managed WordPress hosting if you need a professional hosting solution and a helping hand of live chat and phone support (and ticket help desk, of course) available to you within a minute 24/7.
• LiquidWeb is beneficial to agencies and developers also because it offers iThemes’ Sync Pro plugin for free (you save $130/year on the smallest plan).
• Notice: In summer 2016 LiquidWeb sold its shared hosting business to a another company. It let liquidWeb focus on premium and more complex hosting services (such as Managed WordPress Product, fully managed VPS and Dedi, automatically scalable infrastructure Cloud Sites). This could be entirely positive move for LiquidWeb. But how it sold the part of its business was not very ethical from shared hosting clients’ perspective, because for a lot of clients it was very sudden and painful. It’s the only negative aspect in the LiquidWeb hosting’s entire history that has hurt its reputation. Apart from this, LiquidWeb has been a great hosting company.
• This is the smallest-team WP managed host exclusively for WordPress sites that I recommend. Personalized approach.
• Entirely focused on hosting WordPress sites.
• From a technical point of view, this host offers an minimally optimal set for managed WP host without whistles and bells: speed (server optmization and propermanagement), server-based security, offsite backups (full – weekly, database – daily), CDN.
• Multisites are supported.
• Prices start from $10/mo.
• In my opinion, this host provides the greatest value for you if you have up to 3 websites. Of course, nothing wrong if you get a bigger plan with this host (especially if you have a tight budget), but the very small-team host LightningBase, IMO, is suited better if you have not a big number of sites. For a bigger number of websites WPX Hosting suits better (read the review above), or, depending on your budget, more advanced hosts cam be a better choice for you (see this page).
• Server locations: LightningBase utilizes Google Cloud’s datacenters in US (Iowa), EU (Netherlands), Asia (Singapore), or Australia (Sydney).
• I recommend this hosting as a cheaper alternative to the high-end fully managed WordPress hosts like Kinsta (my review), WP Engine (my review), LiquidWeb (my review), WPX Hosting (my review) and FlyWheel (my review).
  By offering less expensive infrastructure (no malware clean-up, backups just for emergency purposes, no developer tools, just ticket suport, no premium themes/plugins for free etc) LightningBase provides better than shared hosting performance and comparatively high peace of mind (more reliable than shared hosts).
• Resume: A minimally-optimal WordPress managed host for a smaller price for one or a few sites.
• VeeroTech took the third place in Hosting Performance Contest in October 2020 among the monitored hosts in the middle-class pricing category! (see details)
• VeeroTech was the third best performing hosting in 2018 among all the hosts I’ve been monitoring (read more here).
• VeeroTech focuses on delivering high reliability against data loss. It’s much appreciated by shared hosting and VPS users for high speed and it has very positive reputation among hosting professionals and clients.
• Good choice of shared hosting plans (no unlimited).
• The most basic plan: 5 GB SSD storage / 0.5 GB RAM / unlimited bandwidth (~50,000 visitors) / 1 website / 150,000 inodes (max files count). Suitable for sites which have light-weight theme and not many plugins (and the plugins should be not resource-hungry)
• Regular prices start from $2.95/mo for monthly plan (1 website, 0.5 GB RAM, 5 GB storage). But its real bargain is SSD Starter plan with 2 GB RAM and unlimited websites allowed (25 GB storage) for $9.95/mo monthly plan.
• Easy drag-and-drop website builder for free (based on Site.Pro, check out a demo).
• Free migration from your previous host.
• 30-day money-back guarantee. And after that refunds can be applied as a credit.
• SSH for free (activated upon request).
• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL.
• Daily backups for 7 days as a courtesy (via R1Soft which gives you an option to restore your entire account. The backups are stored separately from your server and do not take up your storage quota). But like with other non-premium hosting, it’s recommended also to keep your own backups. For admin use only and disaster recovery the backups are created weekly and monthly.
• Server location: US East (North Carolina).
• I’ve been using VeeroTech since February 2016.
• I recommend VeeroTech as one of the best hosts of such level with very affordable MONTHLY plans. If you prefer paying monthly for a very decent low-budget hosting, definitely check it out. But if you prefer paying yearly and save from 15% to 60% from what you would pay monthly, I suggest looking at GeekStorage (my review is above) – this is the better option compared to Veerotech
• MDDHosting took the third place in the Hosting Performance Contest in June 2020 among the monitored hosts in the budget category! (See details)
• MDD Hosting was the second best performing hosting in 2019 (details) among all the hosts I’ve been monitoring.
• Wide range of well-elaborated plans from shared hosting to dedicated servers.
• They even may help trouble shoot things that are not their liability.
• MDD Hosting is a small company and its owner, Michael Denney, is known as being a straightforward, not a marketing type of person./li>
• Free daily backups (for 7 days) for disaster recovery.
• Starting plan: 10 GB disk space / unlim bandwidth / 1 website / 250,000 inodes (max files count). By the way, SSD RAID-10 storage available on premium plans.
• Price for yearly plan: $5/mo.
• 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee and after that refunds will be issued on a prorated basis of any unused time as a credit to your account.
• Free migration from your previous host (if you use cPanel control panel; ask MDDHosting’s support if you are not sure).
• Server locations: US (Denver, CO).
• It’s fast and reliable, although it’s a small tidy host. Superior tech support (tickets), focusing on a very wide variety of shared hosting options and managed VPS.
• Alternative hosts that I appreciate a lot are HawkHost (for less technical users, see my review above) and GeekStorage (like MDD, it focuses on performance, see my review above). These two alternatives are in more affordable pricing segment.
• Also, if you prefer a bigger (faster and cheaper) hosting with more technical options and developer tools (e.g. staging area) then my consider Cloudways (see my short review).
• I recommend this host with a word of caution – this can be a superb choice but for not everyone who just wants cheaper and much faster host.
• The greatest caveat is that its support can be not always as suberb as you would expect it. If you want a great support in addition to the performance that Cloudways can give you, then look at Kinsta (my short review is above) or other fully managed WP hosts (see this article).
• Cloudways can be indeed a great option if you use WordPress. But what is really worth noting is that this host is very attractive to those who does not use WordPress and wants very high performance and comparative ease of use.
• I suggest reading this article for all the details I have for you regarding this host. Read it before purchasing Cloudways.
• Prices start from €5/mo for yearly plan.
• Limited plans (starting from 5 GB disk space (SSD Storage) and 250 GB bandwidth tansfer per month).
• Up to 5 domains in the cheapest plan.
• 7-day money-back guarantee.
• Please note that the hosting offers server location only in Europe, NL.
• It has some security restrictions on shared hosting (e.g. SSH or direct MySQL access are not allowed).
• This host is designed mostly for enterprises (managed VPS, Dedicated), but also offers shared hosting services.
• By the way, EuroVPS is just one of the VPS and dedicated hosting options I recommend. The other options that I highly recommend see in this section.
• GeekStorage has a very affordable plans called Performance plans. Not many Performance plans to choose from, but for most cases it’s enough. Very relialbe options. And I love reliability, I put this option above all. Server locations: US (Chicago, IL), Europe (Falkenstein, Germany).
• HawkHost has high-performance Semi-Dedicated plans. Server locations: US Center (Dallas, TX), US East (New York City, NY), US West (Los Angeles, CA), Canada (Toronto), Asia (Singapour), China (Hong Kong).
• VeeroTech offers not cheap High-Performance Semi-Dedicated hosting plans. But this host is a solid and reliable choice. Server location: US East (North Carolina).
• MDD Hosting is the smallest hosting company among the hosts in this section, but it has very attractive pricing for so-called “unlimited” storage and very wide variety of its Cloud options. Server location: US Center (Denver, CO).
• WPX Hosting is the best option I know for small and beginer agencies which are price-concerned. This host includes everything so that you could focus on your business and less on technical infrastructure (e.g. includes features like a free unlmited malware cleanup). You can read my short review of this host above.
• Cloudways is the cheapest option for agencies and WP developers (staging area, Git). But comparing with WPX Hosting, Cloudways has riskier support (see my short review).
• LiquidWeb has great options for a wide variety of professional and demanding users: CloudSites (ideal for serious agencies and for websites with unpredictable or/and large traffic), LiquidWeb Managed WordPress Product (based on powerful fully managed VPS, has 1-click staging environment), as well as scalable VPS and dedicated solutions.
• WP Engine provides solutions for developers, agencies and individuals who need fully managed WordPress hosting. It’s more restrictive on server resources and more affordable than LiquidWeb.
• FlyWheel is the host that I recomend to professional agencies and developers who pay extra attention to working one-to-one with the clients (check out this video demo). This host belongs to WP Engine company and together they serve more than 4,500 agencies around the world, making it the largest in WordPress.
  If you are interested in FlyWheel reseller option, I suggest contacting Brady Wells at brady@getflywheel.com – he is a cool guy who can answer any questions you may have and will take a personal care for your onboarding process (also tell him you are from Michael Bely and ResearchAsAHobby.com and ask for the promised discount – 50% off for the 3 months for agencies dealing with 5+ sites).
• Guru.co.uk is the best UK hosting I know for advanced users, agencies and website developers in UK. Also, it’s a very comfortable host for people with many years of experience managing websites. If you are tired of hosts which are focusing on newbies, then you will love Guru hosting.
• Digital Ocean is the most hardcore solution among the above options. It is the first choice for serious web application developers thanks to its handy infrastructure (Linux-based droplets), extensive tutorials and very low prices. By the way, if you sign up through this link, you will get $50 in credit (I am as a DO affiliate have this offer for you). Also, Linode is a superb choice for production environment.
• HawkHost (50 accounts, pure SSD, from $12.99/mo annually for 2-year plan and $18.99/mo if going monthly).
• VeeroTech (20 accounts, pure SSD, RAID10, the smallest plan is $15.95/mo monthly). Bigger packages or longer-period plans are cheaper. The minimum price is $13.56/mo if paying for 3 years in advance. Please note that alhtough Veerotech is a little bit cheaper than the next one (GeekStorage), Veerotech does NOT include WHMCS license on smaller and middle reseller plans, whereas Geekstorage does.
• GeekStorage (30 accounts, pure SSD, from $17.97 monthly).
• BigScoots (unlimited accounts, pure SSD, from $17.95/mo biennially, $19.95/mo annually and $23.95/mo monthly).
• A2Hosting (40 accounts, pure SSD, from $19.99/mo for 3-year plan or $29.99 monthly. 6-, 12-, 24-month plans are also available with discounts. Bigger plans have free WHMCS. 1 GB physical RAM and 8 GB virtual RAM per user on any plan).
• MDDHosting (50 accounts, pure SSD, from $22.05/mo annually and $24.5 monthly).
• FlyWheel offers a great infrastructure for WordPress sites developing studios and WP design agencies (including easy management and support of your clients, team collaboration, staging for website development – check out this video demo). Also it gives you a free hosting for your website (on a bulk plan). Become an agency partner to resell hosting to your clients and manage them easily. FlyWheel became a part of WP Engine company in June 2019, although operates as a separate business. WP Engine and Flywheel together serve more than 4,500 agencies around the world, making it the largest in WordPress. This reseller option is designed for professional agencies or the agencies that want to be professional.
  If you are interested in FlyWheel reseller option, I suggest contacting Brady Wells at brady@getflywheel.com – he is a cool guy who can answer any questions you may have and will take a personal care for your onboarding process (also tell him you are from Michael Bely and ResearchAsAHobby.com and ask for the promised discount – 50% off for the 3 months for agencies dealing with 5+ sites).
• Kinsta Hosting offers a conceptually different approach to reselling business. Whereas a classic reseller sells accounts, at Kinsta it’s not about technical stuff, but about managing your hosting company on a business level. For example, you can grant business roles to users (site administrator, site developer, company owner etc – see here). Whereas handlling a classic reseller business is a technical job in many ways, Kisnta makes it business role-oriented job.
• LiquidWeb’s reseller program is an easy and solid way to start your classic reseller business with a strong support holding your hand when you need it. Here’s an introductory article from LiquidWeb how to start out.
• Guru.co.uk is the best choice for you if you are looking for a UK-based reseller host which is designed for advanced users.
• FlyWheel offers a great infrastructure for WordPress sites developing studios and WP design agencies (including easy management and support of your clients, team collaboration, staging for website development – check out this video demo). Also it gives you a free hosting for your website (on a bulk plan). Become an agency partner to resell hosting to your clients and manage them easily. This reseller option is designed for professional agencies or the agencies that want to be professional. By the way, FlyWheel became a part of WP Engine hosting company in June 2019.
  If you are interested in FlyWheel reseller option, I suggest contacting Brady Wells at brady@getflywheel.com – he is a cool guy who can answer any questions you may have and will take a personal care for your onboarding process (also tell him you are from Michael Bely and ResearchAsAHobby.com and ask for the promised discount – 50% off for the 3 months for agencies dealing with 5+ sites).
  Also, if you have a team, or if your clients are teams then you amy consider Kinsta‘s option too (see below)
• Kinsta Hosting offers a conceptually different approach to reselling business. Whereas a classic reseller sells accounts, at Kinsta it’s not about technical stuff, but about managing your hosting company on a business level. For example, you can grant business roles to users (site administrator, site developer, company owner etc – see here).
• LiquidWeb (Windows, Linux): acknowledged professional provider with a wide range of products and paying extra attention to very responsive and timely support and performance. Also, this host is superb for ecommerce solutions such as WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, OpenCart and X-Cart (this is not for entry-level e-commerce sites, but for the businesses that are already running). Precious addons are available such as proactive monitoring (Sonar® proactive monitoring and service restoration), mitigation of DDoS attacks (complete layer 4 and layer 7 protection; free of charge for protection from volumetric attacks upto 2 Gbps), load balancers and so on what is needed for hosting applications of all levels of complexity. Server locations: US Central (Lansing, MI), US West (Phoenix, AZ) and Europe (Amsterdam, NL).
• KnownHost (Linux): specializes in managed VPS and dedicated servers. Popular among VPS resellers. Server locations: US primary DC (Atlanta, GA), US North-West (Seattle, WA), Europe (Amsterdam, NL).
• EuroVPS (Linux): smaller team with a professional attitude. Server location: Europe, NL.
• BigScoots (Linux): this company is not as experienced (considering number of years in business) and quite small comapred to the above ones, but since 2010 it has already proved to provide more than simply really good services and the team is proud of maintaining a great reputation. A part of their continuing success is that they are not keen on growing fast in order to keep up with the high standards of services. Server location: US Chicago.
• Guru.co.uk (Linux): If you are looking specifically for a UK-based hosting, then look no further. You can go back and forth researching the best UK host, and you will come to Guru in the end.