12 Best Managed WordPress Hosting Compared

Shared (US – UK – IN – AU) – WordPress – Managed WordPress – VPS – Dedicated – What’s the difference? 1 minute video

Drag & Drop table added further down on this page for 1 vs 1 comparisons.

Other Comparison Charts

Pricing Info: The price represented here for all companies is from their most affordable plan. All data making up this table is based on the most affordable plan the company is offering.The ⚠️ symbol will indicate the feature is not offered in the lowest plan but is offered in the higher plans or warn you about limitations that are hidden in the fine print.

Flywheel Phone Support Info: Standard support hours are M-F 9am-7pm CDT and 24/7 emergency support

Dreamhost CDN Info: 12¢/GB US & EUROPE. 19¢/GB ASIA-PACIFIC, AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

WP Oven Refund Info: The 110% refund policy only applies to active sites which have been migrated over to the WPOven server and have run on it for atleast 7 days

WP Oven Email Info: 1 free email with plan and $1 for each additional email
Media Temple Caching: Varnish, Memcached, PHP APC, and storage L2 caching

Pagely live chat only w/ VPS1+

WP Engine: Phone Support only w/ Pro and above
WP Engine: live chat available 6am-8pm CT

Godaddy Free Domain Registration or Transfer only with an annual plan.

FlyWheel Money Back Guarantee: 30 days on annual plans, 72 hours on monthly plans
Godaddy Money Back Guarantee: 45 Days for annual products, 48 hours for monthly products

Kinsta LXC: LXC (Linux Containers) is an operating-system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a control host using a single Linux kernel.

The following features are really specialized and many people will not need them. So if you are not aware of what they are you can simply disregard them as a decision factor in the chart above. If one of these features below is ticked in the chart above then that means it is possible to perform that task on the host you are selecting. It may require a little extra setup on your own part. But it is definitely within the capabilities of the web hosting providers to support the following features.

WordPress Multisite (WPMU): A special “mode” built into WordPress, which allows you to create a network of multiple websites, all running on a single installation of WordPress. * Flywheel Tiny plan does not qualify for this but all other plans do.

WP-CLI: This is extremely specialized so it is not listed on the chart at all. This allows you to use command line to make updates and multisite management, if desired. This comes pre-installed with hosts like Siteground.

WordPress Staging: Allows you to test out new features on an installation before a live launch. It’s basically a clone of your WordPress site so that you can test out things instead of breaking things or causing errors on your own site and all of your traffic seeing it. Some hosts will have this as a one-click solution to where you can quickly copy and stage your WordPress installation. Other hosts will have documentation or be able to support you in setting it up.
Features that will be added next include: ssd, security, cpanel, reseller info and free cloud with plans.
 

Compare them 1 vs 1

Now that all the info links are done I think I should go ahead and justify the decision making process on prioritizing all this data into which companies provide the best bang for your dollar. With 16 rows of offerings (I will probably add more to this soon-like malware scanning, so look for that in an update) I feel as though you will easily be able to understand why one companies offerings beat or out-compete the other. Note: Arvixe and 1 & 1 will not be added to the comparison at this time because their performance is severely lacking.

Bluehost vs Dreamhost

Both of these companies really stack the offerings as high as you can get and at a very competitive price when it comes to the managed wordpress hosting industry as it is currently. With many of Bluehost and Dreamhost’s features matching one another and their pricing being pretty close there are a few where I believe bluehost pulls ahead. CDN included in bluehost’s package versus having to pay by the gig with Dreamhost’s package is definitely the major tipping point. As for the difference of amount of websites you can have on 1 account where Dreamhost offers unlimited not many people are going to run more than one or a few blogs that make up the majority of their traffic so having a limit of 5 sites is a none issue. Bluehost also offers a migration service where Dreamhost does not even though it is expensive- the option is still there, although you can find more reasonably priced migration services or plugins to make the move more affordable or even free.

Dreamhost vs Liquid Web

This one really comes down to the price. Liquid web offers more than Dreamhost in all categories except for number of sites on 1 account but for the difference of $20 per month versus $80 per month it is pretty easy to decide on which one to go with. I was hosted with Liquid Web dedicated servers for over a year with a heavily trafficked multimedia entertainment site and they are a beast of a service with a very intelligent support staff. I’m definitely a fanboy of Liquid Web but they are pretty expensive.

Liquid Web vs Media Temple

The comparison of features here isn’t close like the last one was. Liquid Web stomps Media Temple by offering more of everything included in their package (and stupid fast servers) that you would eventually have to pay for extra if you went with Media Temple. A big chunk of that extra pay with come with the CDN, extra bandwidth and disk space if you needed it.

Media Temple vs Host Gator

This one is tough to base off the data provided in the chart above because what makes Media Temple outperform Host Gator cannot really be a check mark in a cell. Media Temple specializes in managing WordPress hosting so their staff is deeply more in-tune with what a customer needs and wants from their service, rather than a huge hosting company and their newly trained staff will be, that is just recently adding the service to their portfolio. Maybe if you went with a more expensive package from Hostgator then it will tip in their favor but this is just based on all companies minimum offerings.

Host Gator vs WP Oven

A Dedicated VPS server with no CDN included in WP Oven’s package will never outperform the assistance you can get from 24/7 support that Host Gator offers in their package, oh that also includes CDN.

WP Oven vs Pressable

Price and support is pretty much the same between these two packages. WP Oven simply offers a superior hosting environment to Pressable whether CDN is included or not. Also with WP Oven including email and free migration their package is definitely more rounded. For anyone that subscribes to a service that doesn’t offer 24/7 phone support these differences will make the decision easy.

Pressable vs SiteGround

This comes down to Pressable offering more sites on one account and their package being able to handle more traffic. Pressable is double the price so you could probably opt for a higher package from SiteGround to level them out and SiteGround would come out ahead. Again the baseline has to be somewhere and this is based on minimum packages offered.

SiteGround vs Flywheel

SiteGround offers more of everything in it’s package: It can handle more traffic, unlimited email addresses and doesn’t charge extra for CDN-enough said.

Flywheel vs Godaddy

This is definitely another hard case. Flywheel specializes in managed wordpress hosting whereas Godaddy is applying and training staff on what they have learned from acquiring Media Temple.  Godaddy has a more rounded package but you cannot have CDN unless you opt for a higher package. The Godaddy package says it can handle more traffic but they are known for over-populating their servers and wordpress performing sluggishly at times(just google for wordpress slow on godaddy) where that does not seem to be an issue with Flywheel. This really comes down to how much speed do you want your low traffic wordpress site to have?

Godaddy vs Pagely

Pretty obvious Godaddy offers more for a far better price and unlimited bandwidth. These 2 companies cater to two completely different customers. Pagely targets corporations that can afford their prices even if they do not offer as much as Godaddy does for a fraction of the price.

Pagely vs WP Engine

Pagely does charge three times more but atleast you do not have to worry about overage charges that could easily come out to way more than you would pay Pagely a month.

When I started this side-by-side comparison chart and I kept moving both of these services(Pagely and WP Engine) lower and lower I began to wonder why would I even keep them on here. To answer that I believe I have to give you a little bit of history first. When managed WordPress hosting started becoming a thing out of necessity: shared hosting plans often cannot give you what you need for your WordPress site to perform optimally. A few services popped up to offer the specially tuned hosting environments, but at a much higher price. Most people that needed it didn’t care because they were either making enough from their site to afford it and just wanted better out of the box performance that you get with these services. Some people actually saved money by moving to these new service providers from their dedicated hosting because it offered the same performance because it is made for WordPress and it’s many resource demands.

When the demand is there you raise the price. Now enter the big and already successful hosting companies coming is to level the playing field with their massive resources and staff to offer much better pricing. This competition entering the industry forced many of the companies that started managed wordpress hosting to bring down their prices more to where they should be. Far too many of them were offering a $10 dollar service for a $30 price tag and making a killing because of the customers lack of options. I feel as though WP Engine is a perfect example of one of those services that has failed to change with the industry. Pagely simply targets a completely different customer, one that can afford it.

Now back to answering why I left WP Engine and Pagely on this chart- simply to show the drastic difference in offerings that these services provide in their packages. Missing features that are pretty standard and expected in many other companies hosting packages. Shady overage charges, the resetting of IPs every 24 hours to make returning visitors look like new visits. Your hotlinked assets on someone else’s site being counted as a visit. All of these crazy things(and more) here are the exact reason why smart people like you search the internet for comparisons before jumping in and buying or being sold to on the spot. I don’t like being screwed and I don’t want you to either.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Web Hosting Video Demos, Tutorials and etc

 
 

Bluehost WordPress Setup Tutorial

 
 

Dreamhost Commercial

 
 

Liquid Web Heroic Support

 
 

Media Temple

 
 

HostGator Optimized WordPress

 
 

WP Oven Website Setup Tutorial

 
 

SiteGround

 
 

Flywheel

 
 

GoDaddy

 
 

WP Engine