Deciding on the best hosting company to use for your WordPress website can often be a frustrating and time consuming process. There are a ton of hosting companies out there, all offering what usually appears to be pretty much the same thing.

In my opinion and experience, here are the most important things to look at when shopping for a website host for your business:

• Reliability. This can be a tough thing to use to compare hosts, since pretty much all hosting companies worth using will promise around 99%-99.9% uptime. If you are looking for cheap WordPress hosting, your website will be on a shared server. Until your site starts getting a lot of traffic, there’s really not much of a reason to pay to be on dedicated server. Good hosting companies allow your hosting to scale easily based on your needs.

• Support. This is probably the most important feature in a good WordPress hosting company, and what sets the best hosting companies apart from the rest. In a perfect world, your site will always be up with no problems and you’d never have to contact your hosting company. Unfortunately, you will most likely run into issues at some point, even with the best hosting companies. You want a company that is available 24-7, that helps you quickly, and has intelligent and helpful people providing support.

• Bandwidth and Disk Space. Most great hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space, as that is becoming more and more expected these days.

• Price. You should be able to find reliable shared hosting in the range of $5-$10 a month. Many hosting companies offer discounts if you pay for a longer time period up front (ie, hosting is cheaper on a monthly basis if you pay for 2 years, compared to paying month-to-month).

• No contracts and a money-back-guarantee. Many hosting companies have a money-back-guarantee period of around a month, but make sure you use a company that will also credit you back on a pro-rated basis if you cancel before the end of the time period you pay for. Being that most hosting companies require you to pay for at least a full-year up front, you want to make sure if you need to cancel after 6-months, for example, you’ll still get the money you paid for the other 6 months back.

There are a few WordPress hosting companies that I have used and highly recommend.

Host Gator – We use Host Gator for this site. Among other things, I’ve been blown away by their support. They’re always available, I’ve never had to wait more than about a minute to be helped, they offer support by web-chat, and have been extremely helpful when I’ve needed them (even including quickly fixing the site when I messed up the coding, causing the site to go down). Host Gator’s prices are tough to beat for all the services and features they offer.

Inmotion Hosting – Inmotion is known for their great support and reliability. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever read a bad review of this company or heard any complains from anyone who uses them.

Blue Host – Blue Host has been around since 1996 and is one of the largest hosting companies. Chances are a lot of other websites you visit every day are hosted by Blue Host. I have always been very impressed with their customer service, and have even had to put their cancellation policy to test a couple times and was able to do so easily. One great feature about Blue Host that sets them apart is that they will let you host an unlimited about of domains for the same price! If you’re planning on running several websites, this feature can save you a decent amount of money every year.

Liquid Web – I was a bit hesitant to include Liquid Web on this list because I have not yet used them personally, and they are a bit more expensive than the previous hosting companies, but they are widely regarded as one of the best hosting companies in the world. Liquid web is well known for their ‘heroic’ support and outstanding reliability. They don’t currently offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space with their Standard Plan, but it includes enough for most websites. Liquid Web is a great option for businesses with heavier site traffic, as they offer great options to scale as your business grows.

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