Often overlooked web hosting is one of the key feature in running a website. You will find numerous free web hosts in web forums offering you their services for banner ads, or you might find really cheap web hostings which require a long term commitment, and then there will be the expensive web hosting services. As a beginner you already know that you need web hosting to run WordPress, but what does WordPress require? What specifications do you need? We will help you through the process of analyzing and choosing the best web hosts in this article.
What Specification does WordPress Require?
You will be surprised to hear that WordPress is a very light-weight script and it is compatible with almost all web hosts. The simple requirements that WordPress put forth are:
- PHP 4.3 or greater
- MySQL 4.0 or greater
- The mod_rewrite Apache module
As a matter of fact most linux web hosts come pre-installed with WordPress, so you won’t have to worry about what WordPress requires.
Things to Consider when Choosing a Web Hosting Service
Your Needs
As we stated above, WordPress is a very light-weight script for a normal blog account, you won’t be needing a dedicated server. So don’t get that. Majority of top shared hosting sites are now offering unlimited resource, so take advantage of that. That is all what you really need. But if for some reason, you end up going with a service that doesn’t offer unlimited specs what will you do?
You need to evaluate. How much space you do need on the web. A WordPress site can run well under 100 MB space. If you are offering downloads, and hosting your own images then you will need more space.
Evaluate the bandwidth your site will be using? As a goal of every blogger, you want to hit the Front Page of Digg and other social media networks. When you hit that, you receive a lot of traffic. So how much bandwidth should you get? Start low and upgrade when necessary. There is no point of paying extra for something you won’t use in the early months. Once your blog starts to get influence in the industry then you can upgrade.
WebHost’s Reputation
Every host that we mention in this post has earned its reputation in the industry. They are top-notch services. If you decide to go with a service other than the ones that we list in this post, make sure you do an extensive research on their reputation, uptime history, and support reviews.
WPBeginner Web Host Recommendation
Below is the list of what we consider to be the Best Web Hosts for WordPress. All of these hosts have an unlimited specs for you.
Host Gator – Hosts over 2 million domains and is known as one of the well-reputed web host in the industry. They have plans that will suit all your needs. Use coupon “wpbeginner” to receive $9.94 off the first month.
Site5 – One of the most popular web hosts that have special plans just for the WordPress community.
Blue Host – Another reliable web hosting company that has been around for a long time. Blue Host has proven it’s worth to the users, and it is a legit competitor of Host Gator.
Choose from any of the web hosts above, and we guarantee you that you will not be disappointed.
Suman Sourabh
On my two WordPress websites, I have used Hostinger as the web hosting company. I like how it is like cPanel but better! More modern looking UI and good UX as well. I can see a lot of options and stats there.
Dennis Muthomi
It’s easy for beginners to be swayed by unlimited resources, but as you pointed out, a typical WordPress site can run well under 100 MB of space. This insight can help newcomers avoid overpaying for unnecessary resources.
One aspect I’d like to add is the importance of server location.
For those targeting a specific geographic audience, choosing a host with servers with your target audience in that region can significantly improve load times.
This ties into your point about bandwidth – faster load times can help manage bandwidth more efficiently, especially when experiencing traffic spikes from social media.
ansateza
I use godaddy. Is this means I did mistake?
ArunNagarathanam
Except Hostgator all the famous unlimited shared hosting doesn’t provide quality and speed hosting.
Try jaguarpc, stablehost, knownhost, , if you need cloud then you may opt for Eurovps
ArunNagarathanam
For wordpress, you should also see, whether they support Litespeed or NginX server. APC or eAccelerator for superior performance
KaloyanBanev
Reliable web hosting is always important not only for WordPress websites. It is good that WordPress system requirements are minimal and can be hosted at almost every shared hosting package.
monalisa222
hosts101.com is another reliable free web hosting company also provid free domain with paid hosting, I have been using their business hosting with free domain since 2008.I think they are pretty good.
Kraft
I had some problem like this with Hostgator in 2007. Suspended my account due to excessive activity with the only way to get the site and my e-mail functional was to upgrade to a much more expensive plan.
Their support could never tell me what activity on the site was excessive, only that my account was in that state. My website, on a great day, pulled in maybe 200 visits, but typically in the 75/day range, back then.
I can’t in good faith direct people to Hostgator with the customer service they provided in that incident.
Marsha
Thanks for the host recommendations! I really appreciate the work you do here. Your tutorials are very helpful.
Jay
I would recommend hostgator to all my readers at anytime. Definitely one of the best.
Carlitos
Yeah but you need to move when you blog is bigger, I’ve a blog with 100k in daily hits, thats almost 3kk a month, I started with a small host then I had to purchase 2 servers for a better performance, im paying around $1700 a month to my host providers.
Editorial Staff
When the blog grows of course the shared hosting won’t last and the users will have to buy servers and so on. But how many new blogs do you know that gets 100k in daily hits? This article is to help beginners.
Admin
Mari Lynch
Since the domain registrar and web host I’ve used from the beginning, Network Solutions, was one that you recommended for registrar, I was surprised to see that you didn’t likewise include them on list of recommended web hosts. Curious if there’s a reason why you don’t include them here, or if you’re just trying to spread the recommendations around to more companies that meet your criteria for the different roles. Thank you.
Mari Lynch
PS: Where are you, out in the Atlantic? You’re four hrs ahead of us in Pac time on the west coast!
Editorial Staff
This blog is being run on Eastern Standard Timezone (EST)
Admin
Editorial Staff
We have to keep our numbers limited, so it does not seem like that we are recommending just everything. We are only recommending services that we have used in the past and have worked with. We will also be updating this list in the near future, but Network Solutions will not be included regardless because we do not have enough experience with them in order to recommend them. The reason why we have them as domain registrar recommendation is because we have had plenty of experience with their registrar services.
Admin
webBoi
Actually, I disagree that WordPress is a lightweight script. I am a HUGE advocate of WP, and have used it to build countless blogs for clients as well as several full-fledged content-management systems. I’m also a hosting provider, and I can tell you we’re not along in having lots of trouble with WordPress running too many inefficient queries too frequently. You MUST make sure your host is familiar with WordPress, has a very high end machine with tons of RAM (4GB minimum) if you’re in a shared hosting environment, and PLEASE discuss their policies for memory/MySQL usage “violations.” All these hosts offering “unlimited” everything obviously don’t mean that — they don’t expect you to be using any resources, which most sites don’t — but if you do, they’ll suspend your account. There are lots of horror stories of low-traffic blogs getting shut down by hosting providers because certain WP database queries are hogging precious server resources.
I’m so glad to see this guide site up, though — I can’t wait to show it to several of my clients! Thanks for the terrific resource!
Darren Nickerson
I think hes just saying that the script itself doesn’t take up much server space, so if you just wanted it for simple blogging you wouldn’t need unlimited space and bandwidth, but if you wanted to host a lot of images and videos you may want unlimited everything.
John (Human3rror)
media temple for the win.