Today, we’re comparing five of the best shared hosting providers for WordPress: SiteGround vs Bluehost vs HostGator vs InMotion Hosting vs GoDaddy .
Why THESE five in particular? The answer is straightforward: They’re the most effective shared hosts for WordPress in terms of speed, pricing plans, features, support, and more.
👉 We also tested these companies in our in-depth experiment not too long ago. Read all about it here.
In this analysis, we’re going to take a close look at the features that each hosting provider sets you up with. Then we’ll answer which one is the cheapest, the fastest, and the most user-friendly. Most importantly, we’ll share which one is the best all-around solution.
If you’re in a hurry and all you need is raw info, we’ve included a summarized version below:
Host | More | Price / month | Sites allowed | Free domain | Av. load time |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Read Review | Visit | From $2.99 | 1 | ❌ | 0.89s | |
Read Review | Visit | From $1.99 | 1 | ✅ | 0.87s | |
Read Review | Visit | From $1.99 | 1 | ✅ | 0.59s | |
Read Review | Visit | From $3.75 | 10 | ✅ | 1.03s | |
Read Review | Visit | From $5.99 | 1 | ✅ | 0.27s |
SiteGround vs Bluehost vs HostGator vs InMotion Hosting vs GoDaddy (for WordPress):
SiteGround
PRICE FROM: $2.99 (per month)
Loading times based on location:
- Load time US: 1.1s
- Load time EU: 0.36s
- Load time Asia: 1.32s
MAIN FEATURES (the $2.99 plan)
- Free setup and transfer.
- 30 days money back guarantee.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Unlimited emails and databases.
- cPanel and SSH access.
- Free daily backups.
- Free CloudFlare CDN.
- Suitable for ~ 10,000 visits monthly.
- 10GB web space.
- Free app installs.
- 24/7 support.
- Free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt.
PROS
- Fast response times. It’s one of the fastest hosting plans we’ve tested recently – min response time at 0.41s, and max response time at 0.87s.
- The sign-up process and the back-end are really simple and easy to manage. It doesn’t take much time to set SiteGround up.
- It comes with a WordPress built-in installer, which absolves you from any extra-steps. And, add to that, in case of anything, the support team is ready to help you.
CONS
- Once you go over 10,000 visitors a month, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher plan. Also, the disk space limitation (10GB) can be a problem after a while (especially if your email inbox is going to run on the server).
USER RATING
8.56 / 10 (based on 178 responses) ← When asked how likely they are to recommend SiteGround, on a scale of 1-10.
SiteGround also got rated 9.2 among WordPress pros in our survey.
PREFERRED USER GROUP
This web host is a good getting-started option for small businesses and WordPress blogs. Three reasons: it’s cheap, comes with 10GB of disk space, it’s intuitive and easy to set up. SiteGround (vs Bluehost) is also proven to be more reliable than the latter, according to our hosting survey.
InMotion Hosting
PRICE FROM: $1.99 (per month)
Loading times based on location:
- Load time US: 0.43s
- Load time EU: 1.02s
- Load time Asia: 1.89s
MAIN FEATURES (the $1.99 plan)
- Good for up to 20,000 monthly visits.
- 40GB of SSD disk space.
- Unlimited monthly transfer.
- Two websites on one account from $1.99 / month.
- Free domain registration or transfer.
- Free no-downtime website transfers.
- Free data backups.
- WordPress preinstalled
- 90-day money-back guarantee.
- 24/7 US-based support.
- Unlimited email accounts with IMAP.
- Shared SSL included for free.
PROS
- Runs on SSD drives, which makes everything really fast.
- Comes with pre-installed WordPress. So you’re all set up right from the get-go.
- The free no-downtime website transfer can come handy if you’re moving from a different hosting provider.
CONS
- To be charged only $1.99, you need to subscribe for three years right from the beginning.
USER RATING
8.11 / 10 (based on 52 responses) ← When asked how likely they are to recommend InMotion Hosting, on a scale of 1-10.
PREFERRED USER GROUP
InMotion Hosting is a great solution for new blogs and small businesses. The fact that the platform runs on SSDs gives you good speed and reliability.
Bluehost
PRICE FROM: $1.99 (per month).
Loading times based on location:
- Load time US: 0.62s
- Load time EU: 0.55s
- Load time Asia: 0.6s
MAIN FEATURES (the $1.99 plan)
- 50GB of disk space.
- 1 WordPress site.
- Free domain name.
- Free SSL certificate.
- Unmetered bandwidth.
- 24/7 support.
- 30-Day money-back guarantee.
PROS
- Bluehost comes with advertising offers from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other important companies to help you kick start your business.
CONS
- It will not be enough if you want to launch more than one WordPress website on your setup.
USER RATING
7.93 / 10 (based on 450 responses) ← When asked how likely they are to recommend Bluehost, on a scale of 1-10.
PREFERRED USER GROUP
Bluehost is a good choice for both startups and small to mid-size businesses, as it comes with decent options, support, and offers good bandwidth. However, when comparing SiteGround vs Bluehost, the former seems to be more appreciated by the users (according to our latest hosting survey).
HostGator
PRICE FROM: $3.75 (per month).
Loading times based on location:
- Load time US: 0.49s
- Load time EU: 1.3s
- Load time Asia: 2.12s
MAIN FEATURES (the $3.75 plan)
- Works with up to 10 WordPress sites.
- Good for 100k visits per month.
- Free website migration.
- 1GB of backup space.
- Automated daily database backups.
- Global CDN included.
- Unlimited email accounts.
- 45-day money-back guarantee.
- 10 GB SDD storage.
- 24/7/365 phone, live chat, email support.
- Shared SSL certificate.
PROS
- If you plan on hosting several smaller websites, then the 10 website limit is useful.
- Free website migration can come handy if you’re moving from a different hosting provider.
CONS
- The 10 GB of hard drive space is relatively low. If you have any websites that are substantially larger, then the benefit of being able to have up to 10 websites isn’t quite as exciting, since you’ll run out of space well before hitting the limit.
USER RATING
8.02 / 10 (based on 456 responses) ← When asked how likely they are to recommend HostGator, on a scale of 1-10.
PREFERRED USER GROUP
Suitable for bloggers and small business sites. The unmetered bandwidth should allow you to operate for a while before needing to upgrade. Also, the free migration makes setup easy – as you effectively don’t have to get your hands dirty.
GoDaddy
PRICE FROM: $5.99 (per month).
Loading times based on location:
- Load time US: 0.23s
- Load time EU: 0.3s
- Load time Asia: 0.34s
MAIN FEATURES (the $5.99 plan)
- Good for up to 25,000 monthly visits.
- 1 WordPress install.
- 30GB SSD disk storage.
- Free domain.
- Free daily backups.
- One-click migration tool.
- 24/7 online support.
PROS
- Good performance as tested in an in-depth experiment of ours.
- Very good price, considering that what you get is a managed WordPress hosting platform.
- Very attractive discounts available from time to time. You can get some plans at 50% off even.
CONS
- GoDaddy’s reliability ranked at 3.8 / 5 according to our hosting survey.
- No free SSL certificate options on plans lower than “Ultimate.” The prices start from $5.84/mo.
USER RATING
7.64 / 10 (based on 734 responses) ← When asked how likely they are to recommend GoDaddy, on a scale of 1-10.
GoDaddy was, by far, the most popular host among users in our hosting survey – accounting for 15.3% of all responses.
PREFERRED USER GROUP
Great if you’re on a tight budget but still want to get a managed hosting platform – letting the pros take care of the hosting environment for you, instead of having to do everything yourself.
You may also be interested in:
- Best Elementor Hosting: 3 Web Hosts With Optimizations for Elementor
- Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting: The Key Differences and How to Make Your Decision
- WP Engine vs Pagely vs Synthesis vs Flywheel vs GoDaddy WordPress Hosting
The winner?
After analyzing all the pros and cons of each platform, it’s still a tight battle here. That being said, two companies do stand out. SiteGround and InMotion Hosting both offer very interesting hosting plans for good dollar.
In the end, though, just like in our other test – the performance-based one – we have to go with SiteGround as our top pick .
Basically, SiteGround has everything working for them. The price is good. The traffic that the host can handle is enough to get you started. There’s CDN support, daily backups, free setup and transfer, and more.
Alternatively, if you want to take advantage of SSD drives and a longer money-back guarantee, we encourage you to go with InMotion Hosting.
At the end of the day, choosing the right host for your site is always relative. What is important to me might not be as important to you. That’s why you always need to compare all the details and parameters of the web hosts you’re looking into. Check our previous comparison of GoDaddy alternatives for more options.
The following table should help you with that. Here are all the crucial details about our five web hosts – SiteGround vs Bluehost vs HostGator vs InMotion Hosting vs GoDaddy:
Company | SiteGround | InMotion | Bluehost | HostGator | GoDaddy |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PRICE (MONTHLY) | $2.99, $4.99, $7.99 | $1.99, $4.99, $3.79, $12.99 | $1.99 | $3.75, $4.50, $6.25 | $5.99, $7.99, $12.99 |
Suitable for * | ~ 10,000 visits monthly | ~ 20,000 visits monthly | undisclosed | ~ 100,000 visits monthly | ~ 25,000 visits monthly |
Disk space * | 10GB (SSD) | 40GB (SSD) | 50GB (SSD) | 10GB (SSD) | 30GB (SSD) |
No. of websites allowed * | 1 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 1 |
Free domain name * | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Free backups * | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
CDN included * | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
SSL certificates * | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
Av. load time | 0.89s | 0.87s | 0.59s | 1.03s | 0.27s |
Reliability | 4.65 / 5 | 4.36 / 5 | 3.4 / 5 | 4.1 / 5 | 3.8 / 5 |
Overall user rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4 / 5 | 3 / 5 | 3.7 / 5 | 3.5 / 5 |
VISIT: |
So which one is it for you among SiteGround vs Bluehost vs HostGator vs InMotion Hosting vs GoDaddy? Have you ever used any of these hosts? Feel free to tell us what you think of them.
Don’t forget to join our free crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. With some simple fixes, you can reduce your loading time by even 50-80%:
Original text by Adelina Tuca and Karol K. Layout and presentation by Karol K.
Tried bluehost before, was baddd, hostgator was awfulllll too. Customer service is soooo slow.
I am with Inmotion now and pleased with it, have about 30 sites there, though open to trying Siteground.
Good comparison, thanks! With Hostgator now, considering try Siteground for its free SSL&SSH.
A word of caution regarding inmotion though, based on my own experience – it lies/cheats and has no ethics at all. Can end really bad if you’re with it.
When I started hosting with inmotion in 2012, it’s written clearly on its promotion web page & later confirmed with their help desk personnel during an online chat, in the following exact words:
“…first domain transfer or registration is free
…every year we would renew it for free”
But later I realized that inmotion charged me extra for that domain renewal, and for I don’t use that credit card any more, they made my domain name expire & I lost that domain.
That’s blatant breach of contract.
Even worse, when I contacted their customer service asking for an explanation, they just pushed around, & played dirty tricks like “Unfortunately your chat transcript did not get attached to your reply”. Well, I have the exact email in my sent folder with the chat record attached!
That put inMotion on my blacklist forever.