Honest comparisons,
even when we lose.
Nine WordPress hosts compared on the same axes: price, instance isolation, renewal hike, traffic sizing, free migrations, white-label. Pick a host below — or use the four-question tool further down and we'll honestly recommend the right one. Sometimes that's not us. That's the point.
Pick by name, or scroll
to the decision tool.
Two budget shared hosts (SiteGround, Bluehost, Hostinger, GoDaddy), two premium managed WP (Kinsta, WP Engine), one managed-cloud (Cloudways), and us. Pricing and gotchas verified May 2026.
Your own instance from WP Studio up, free human migrations, agency white-label, same price every renewal. The thing we built and the thing we sell.
Reliable shared host with strong onboarding and chat support. Renewal pricing jumps 2-5×. Shared CPU; visit caps that hard-throttle.
Mass-market EIG-owned WordPress host. Cheap intro, generic shared CPU, 'unlimited' that's actually throttle-gated.
Aggressive intro pricing fronted by 48-month prepay windows. Decent stack — LiteSpeed, NVMe — locked behind 4-year commitments.
Mass-market registrar that also sells hosting. Heavy upsell pressure in-dashboard. Cheapest tier is rarely the actual price paid.
Polished managed WordPress on Google Cloud. Real performance, real engineering team. Pricey at scale; visit overages bill per 1k.
Old-guard premium managed WP. Strong on enterprise paperwork (SOC 2, HIPAA available). Bills sneak up: overages + per-env fees.
Managed layer on top of DigitalOcean / Linode / AWS / GCP. Pick-your-cloud. Decent stack. Multi-vendor billing complexity.
Flat pricing with no renewal cliff, Cloudflare Enterprise bundled on every plan. Multi-tenant, and roughly double our price at every rung.
The one host here that undercuts us at every tier, and the rates are real rather than promotional. Multi-tenant throughout; deeper discounts on 2- and 3-year terms.
Tell us your workload.
We'll honestly recommend.
Four questions, ten seconds. The result is a real recommendation — and yes, sometimes it's not us. Compliance requirements, micro-budgets, or a specific cloud need will steer you to Kinsta, Hostinger, or Cloudways, and we'll tell you why.
How many WordPress sites do you run?
No tricks.
The recommendation logic.
We tell you what the tool does. If we wouldn't pick us, we don't pick us. Below: the actual rules.
Why our comparisons
recommend our competitors.
It's a real question. Here are the real answers.
Why would you ever recommend another host?
Because we lose more by lying than by being honest. Every comparison page that pretends every workload is best on us produces unhappy customers, refund requests, and bad reviews. Recommending the right host (even when it isn't us) is how we build a brand customers trust.
Where do the pricing numbers come from?
Public pricing pages on each host's site, verified May 2026. Renewal pricing comes from their terms-of-service / FAQ. Overage rates from their billing documentation. If any value is stale, email [email protected] and we'll update within 24 hours.
How are you cheaper than Kinsta and WP Engine?
Three reasons. We run our own hardware in colocation (not GCP / AWS), our AI ops layer replaces most human time, and we don't pay enterprise sales commissions. The savings are real, not a loss-leader.
What's a 'visit overage' and why does it matter?
Premium hosts (Kinsta, WP Engine) bill per 1,000 visits beyond your plan's cap. A traffic spike — viral post, holiday sale, press hit — can add $50-500 to your monthly bill unexpectedly. Budget shared hosts (SiteGround, GoDaddy) instead hard-throttle you at the cap. We do neither: soft caps, no overage billing.
Why aren't HostGator, DreamHost, A2, Namecheap here?
Diminishing returns. The four shared hosts we include (SiteGround, Bluehost, Hostinger, GoDaddy) cover roughly 80% of the "I'm on a cheap shared host and want better" audience. Adding more would dilute the comparison without adding clarity. Tell us if there's a specific one you're moving from and we'll add it.
Will you keep these comparisons up to date?
Yes. We review each host's public pricing pages by hand and republish when anything moves — intro pricing, renewal pricing, visit caps, or overage rates. Every comparison shows the date it was last checked, so you can see for yourself how fresh it is rather than taking our word for it. Last full review: July 21, 2026. If you spot something stale before we do, email [email protected] and we'll correct it within 24 hours.
Still not sure? Ask a human.
Tell us your workload and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right host — including when we're not.