If you have decided to mount a blog, the first thing you should check is which platform is the fittest in terms of functionality, customization, accessibility, etc. Our personal recommendation for newcomers is indeed WordPress, a powerful and user-friendly CMS, perfect to help you start a blog without having to worry excessively about programming and server-side issues but rather concentrating all your energy on creating rich contents and enjoying the blogging experience. Once you the decision of working with WordPress has been taken, the next thing you need to figure out is which hosting service is the most appropriate for your site. To help with this, we have made a complete assessment on the top hosting services where you can host a WordPress site, we hope this article can help you choose the best service wherein mount your site. So how did we define these 25 services when there are hundreds of hosting sites out there?. The first filter you can utilize is check if the site covers WordPress minimum requirements, this will probably leave the majority but at least you'll now be sure that no matter the service you choose, you can run WordPress on it. Then the real filter begins when you employ more specific search terms to separate the junk from the goodies. Some of the parameters that you can use to execute this filter are:

• Has the site contributed to the WordPress community?.
• How long is the site's customer base?.
• Does the site offer a quick install service for WordPress?.
• How easy is to perform WP upgrades?.
• Does the site violate any GPL regulations?.
• How well designed is the site's official page?.
• What does people say about working with that service?.
• Does the site offer a dedicated customer service?.
• Is WordPress 3.0 fully supported?.

These are just some of the guidelines that you can work with to help you define the service that suits better to your needs, of course you can use more parsing parameters to make a more refined filter, though by using these only, you can definitely remove all the garbage and the decision will be a lot easier to take.

Choosing the best hosting plan

It's not easy for a beginner to choose between the different plans that hosting companies have to offer, average users just want to pass through this and start blogging. If your site is going to feature multiple articles and occasional freebies, then a regular web hosting plan works wonderfully. To let you understand a little bit more about hosting, these are the main types of services that you can purchase:

• Regular free web hosting: This is the average hosting service provided but most of the companies and the one you often see in ads, this site is quite limited in front of paid services.
• Shared web hosting: On this service, a website are hosted in a single server along with many other sites, which can go from a couple of hundreds to thousands. Having a shared host means that you'll be using some resources in common with the other sites such as RAM memory and CPU.
• Reseller web hosting: By purchasing a reseller service, people can provide web hosting services themselves. Reseller accounts can go from small virtual servers to a fully dedicated server. Resellers can usually provide a service very similar to their provider's shared hosting plan with the technical support being offered by themselves.
• VPS: The acronym for Virtual Private Server, this hosting service splits server resources into virtual ones, where resources can be placed in a way that doesn't reflect the primal hardware. The reason for creating a VPS service is to save storage space and provide a greener service as well. Users can obtain root access to their own virtual space and sometimes obtain responsibility over the maintenance of the server.
• Dedicated service: By purchasing a dedicated hosting plan, the client obtains his own server with total control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); this does not imply that the user actually owns the server. This service is probably the most powerful hosting services and the one utilized by many companies around the world.
• Managed hosting: On this service the user obtains his own server on leasing, but without full control over it, though he can administrate data through FTP or other remote management tools. The reason why the user does not receive full control is for the provider to guarantee a quality service by preventing the user from causing configuration problems.
• Colocation hosting: This is the most powerful and hence the most expensive kind of web hosting service. With colocated hosting the company provides the physical space for the server, though the company provides almost no support to the client's machine and limits its function to providing the electrical, internet access and storage facilities for the server. On this service the client is responsible for all the hardware upgrades and maintenance.
• Cloud Hosting: Cloud hosting is one of the newest hosting services, it provides customer a powerful, scalable and reliable hosting service based on a group of load-balanced servers and utility billing. This service removes single-point failures and let users to pay for what they actually use instead of what they could be using.
• Clustered hosting: This service implies having several servers hosting the same content for a better resource usage. Purchasing this service is excellent for high-availability dedicated hosting or developing a scalable web hosting solution. Usually Web hosts use Clustered Hosting for their Shared hosting plans, as there are multiple benefits to the mass managing of clients.
• Grid hosting: This service usually implies that the web space you're renting is not located in a single (potentially shared) machine, but is more like a "virtual machine" which is hosted on a group of several servers (just like a grid).
• Blog hosting: Although this is not a specific technical service because it can be coated by any of the previous services, it's important to mention it due the high demand of people for creating blogs. This plan usually offers single-click-installation scripts for the main CMS such as WordPress and Joomla, multiple email accounts and several IP addresses for SEO purposes.

Linux or Windows host?

When you purchase a hosting service, besides the fact of choosing the fittest plan to support your needs you also need to determine whether to opt for Linux or Microsoft® technology. Both formats run perfectly on any computer and are capable of powering impressive websites.

Linux hosting

If we're talking about web hosting, Linux has always been considered as the best operating system fir web servers thanks to its reliability, stability and efficiency, all these factors have been tested in the most demanding circumstances with satisfactory results. If you're planning to use PHP, Perl or MySQL languages, then Linux is the best option for you. Linux is also the best choice for places that utilize newsletter or data sheet formats, Linux offers great performance for sites that provide interaction through enquiry forms, e-commerce and similar things. Another great thing about Linux hosting is that when it comes to instant solutions for powering up your site, including blogs, CMS or discussion boards, Linux presents many Open Source applications in its hosting service, whilst Windows® hosting is more based in licensed sources that must be purchased.

Windows® hosting

On the other hand we have Windows® hosting. This service offers an easy customization and management thanks to its drag-and-drop functionality through .Net framework and SharePoint. This hosting service is ideal for incorporating Microsoft® applications in your site such as ASP®. Choosing this option will also give you an edge if you're planning to insert searchable databases within your website thanks to its efficient development time and better integrated functionality. So if your plans are inserting database facilities on your site, then Windows® hosting is your choice.

So, where should you host your WP site?

Now we're going to list the top companies for hosting a WordPress website. We've considered several aspects to assure that whatever service you select from the list will provide a quality service for your WP site. During the research we developed a series of sheets that helped us compare these services at different levels with ease, you will be able to check these charts from this point of the article. One of the most important aspects when hiring a hosting company is having the possibility of reaching them with ease, which means that email should not be the only way of doing it. We've made a complete revision throughout each and everyone of these sites and this is what we found regarding this aspect: There are other aspects that are also important and that can help you determine the best hosting company to start your WordPress site, these aspects includes if the company does provide a 1-click WordPress installer, a specific WordPress support section as well as WordPress hosting plan and finally, if the site has instructional videos to help you understand WordPress and hosting with ease. Having these aspects checked, let's continue with the rest of this article. We have taken the most important hosting companies and then we took the most affordable and the most expensive web hosting plans to help you compare, then we checked the most powerful dedicated plan to see how far could the company get to help you fulfill your needs Note: The hosting services have been ordered alphabetically, so it could happen that one of the best services on the list gets featured at last.

1&1

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 860, MozRank: N/A , Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No
The first company we have in our list is 1&1, one of the most prestigious and also the oldest company of the whole list, with a lifetime of more than 2 decades. 1&1 has registered more than 11 million domains for both executive and private customers around the world. The company has a strong environmental conscience and therefore all its equipment and hardware is eco-friendly, 1&1 has under its power more than 70K highly efficient web servers operated with Foundry and Cisco routers. If you purchase a hosting with this company, you will receive 24/7 support via mail or phone. If you're starting in the world of blogging and this is going to be your first WordPress-powered site, then purchasing a basic plan is good, but once you get really into blogging, purchasing a premium account might be the best option. Finally, if your site starts receiving thousands of visitors and the data transfer becomes humongous, then a dedicated server is the way to go. Now let's take a look at the main features that 1&1 has to offer to create your first WordPress blog:

Basic plan

• Price per Month: 6,99 USD
• Price per Year: 59,88 USD (28 % discount)
• Storage: 10 GB
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: 250
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

  Premium plan

• Price per Month: 13,99 USD
• Price per Year: 155,88 (7 % discount)
• Storage: Unlimited
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 3
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

  Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 999,99 USD
• Price per Year: 11.999,88
• Storage: 4 TB
• CPU: Opteron DoDeca Core
• Clock Rate: 2 x 12 x 2.1 GHz
• RAM: 48 GB

  What the costumers say

  Good

  Mattit: "I've been a customer of 1&1 for about 5 years now. I started with a free Business Class promo they ran and just stayed with them. Their billing cycle is quarterly for their hosting, which isn't too bad. Their FTP transfer is also really good. I've NEVER had any problems with their speed or transfer rate." Ptown2: "I'd recommend this because of their hosting, but Customer Service can be a bit more better 1and1..." Kev: "I can recommend 1and1 faithfully, Any problems and I can contact server support via phone,email, or their support contact. These server people really know their stuff." Michael: "I have over 120 sites hosted there, and there has never been a problem with 1and1. The only complaint I have is that they only have 50 Databases for the business pack but 100 domains can be hosted.."

  Bad

  ADV Pro: "Horrid, horrid tech support. Barely speak English, and lie about status of account. Tried to transfer INTERNALLY to a new, upgraded hosting package (same account). 5 days later...nothing. Did I mention their phone lines (to the Philippines) go down constantly?" Mary: "DON'T' If you don't want to have endless months of stress, writing letters and emails while they never answer your letters even if you recorded ones. If you Google complaint about there are hundreds of people complaining but they do not get anywhere, maybe it would help if they where all in the same place. Aren: "I have never in my entire life dealt with a more sneaky and untrustworthy company in my entire life. After 5 years of being their customer they decided to start charging my account for additional services I never requested or signed up for." To find more useful reviews written by some of the customers that have purchased an account with this hosting provider, please check the following links:

  1&1 Review

  1&1 Review 2

  Arvixe

  Founded: 2003, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 4,493, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No This Californian company has been delivering hosting services since 2003 for both small business and big companies worldwide. The company has a strict politic of delivering reliable, quality and affordable services to all its clients; if you're looking for a good WordPress hosting service, then Arvixe has a cutting edge technology to help you with this, which includes a free automated installation and all the features you might need to begin a WordPress-powered blog. Among some of the company's achievements, they obtained the first place in the 2011 WordPress Hosting Awards. The company offers several plans to get you started, the great thing about these plans is that there's a specific WordPress section with all the main features and support to help you begin your blog, you can read more about this plan by visiting the official page.

  Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 8.95 USD
• Price per Year: 71.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: 1K
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 12.95 USD
• Price per Year: 143.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 424.95 USD Price per Year: 5.099,4 USD
• Storage: 1 TB
• CPU: Dual QC Xeon 5520 2.26Ghz HT BW+ SS
• Bandwidth: 10 TB
• RAM: 12 GB

What the users have to say

Good

Biomurad: "I have experienced that people at Arvixe are quite supporting, competent, and quick. Their servers even for my busy website are performing optimally." I have also don so much time looking for good, reliable web hosting provider with advance technology for future. Harihar Patel: "I found Arvixe web-hosting best of all. I have also don so much time looking for good, reliable web hosting provider with advance technology for future." 1 Month: "I've been very happy with the service! arvixe.com which was actually cheaper, had unlimited database size, unlimited storage and bandwidth"

Bad

Griz: "Arvixe is simply amazing. I have two .com sites currently hosted with them. One is a medium traffic community page and the second is purely business." dgv76: "If you have high traffic site, don't go with Arvixe, they will suspend your account and ask you to move to more expensive plan" F Bosticky: "I'm disappointed with Arvixe for a few reasons: 1. Why did I not get any warning before they took down all my websites and emails 2. Why could they not explain why? and I had to find out from another host. So in summary, and due to this event, I do not recommend their hosting." This and more information regarding this hosting provider can be found at the following addresses:

Arvixe Review

Arvixe Review 2

Bluehost

Founded: 1996, PageRank: 8, Alexa: 361, MozRank: 8, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: Yes Since the mid nineties, Bluehost has been providing quality hosting solutions to individuals and major companies. The company earned the second place in the 2011 WordPress Hosting Awards, one of the great benefits of signing with Bluehost is that you receive all the new upgrades on the service at no cost. The company also features one of the best customer service lines that offers permanent support to the clients. Just for mentioning some tech specifications, the company has its own datacenter and nationwide fiber network, as well as its own custom Linux kernel. Regarding the hosting plans, the company is a great option to create your WordPress blog or upgrade your current site.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 6.95 USD
• Price per Year: 83.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 19.95 USD
• Price per Year: 239.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unspecified
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

They don't offer dedicated server plans

What other people say

Good

Joshua Stone: "Blue Host let me have unlimited storage space, unlimited file transfer, and unlimited email accounts! Best of all, setup was instantaneous." Cassidy Grant: "The uptime guarantee is definitely true! In the past three months, there was one five-minute period when I couldn't get to my site. Other than that, it's always available for traffic, which is a huge bonus!" Hugh Prade: "Good service good uptime and what I like the most is their friendly stuff. Indeed friendly. I haven't waited more then 10 minutes for their response." Scott James: "Bluehost seemed to possess the perfect answers to complement my needs and the necessities that I required in my hosting package."

Bad

Vernon: "Default security should be strong. Anybody who needs less security will know how to configure it". Pixiestash: "I've used Bluehost for a few years. Uptime has been pretty decent, but there have been some random outages that nobody at BlueHost seemed to know anything about." To read more about people's thoughts regarding BlueHost, you can visit the following links:

Bluehost Review

Bluehost Review 2

Bluehost Review 3

Bluehost Review 4

DreamHost

Founded: 1997, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 1,653, MozRank: 8, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: Yes Founded in April 1997, DreamHost features over 1500 servers providing hosting services to more than 800.000 sites. As well as other companies, DreamHost offers tons of useful features to give you an excellent hosting service, though what makes this company different is the warmness of its staff and the will of helping people at anytime. Regarding hosting plan, the company offers Linux-only web hosting plans that despite of not having Windows features can guarantee a top quality service that will give you all the needs to maintain your WordPress site.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 8.95 USD
• Price per Year: 107.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1, additional domains must be purchased
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 13.9 USD
• Price per Year: 166.8 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1, additional domains must be purchased
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 249 USD
• Price per Year: 2739 USD
• Storage: 1 TB
• CPU: Unspecified 4 Core CPU
• Clock Rate:
• RAM: 12 GB

What the users think

Good

Heidi: "I love the dashboard so much that I'm willing to try installing things myself if needed. The dashboard is better by far than 1and1 or Site5." Jerkface McGuee: "They have promotions going around major holidays with $10/y (plus the domain if you decide not to renew) unlimited hosting plans though so it kind of cancels it out. I don't really know support since I haven't needed it." Bladeyang: "If you have issues they are corrected quickly. If you are lost in setting up something in their servers there's a wiki."

Bad

Doxtorray: "I have already begun my migration of all my sites to another host, even though I have 18 months left on a two-year pre-paid plan with DH. That's how dissatisfied I am." BTD: "Terrible. "After three years of being with them they take all the sites down for some TOTALLY random reason. Apparently the All In One SEO plugin which is a standard Wordpress Plugin is now "Blackhat." As a result they drop all my sites" JS: "DreamHost would have been the best of cheap webhosting if their servers do not crash and go down so frequently. It's absolutely a nightmare. Their control panel is great, support not bad too, but what do these matter if the server is down for 1/5 of the time?!" To read more reviews about this hosting provider, you can visit the following links:

DreamHost Review

DreamHost Review 2

DreamHost Review 3

Fasthosts

Founded: 1999, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 5,966, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No Fasthosts has been providing hosting services since 1996, with its headquarters located in the UK, Fasthosts has moved from being a local hosting company to a worldwide retailer. The company offers a 24 / 7 support via phone, though you can also shot them an email or read the how-to articles. Concerning the fittest plan for mounting a WordPress blog, you can decide between an average web hosting service or if you're ready for something bigger, then you may want to opt for a dedicated server, let's take a look at the plans' features:

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.2 USD
• Price per Year: 50.4 USD
• Storage: 5 GB
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unspecified (20 subdomains)
• Number of Email Accounts: 500
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 11.39 USD
• Price per Year: 136.68 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unspecified (unlimited subdomains)
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 248.69 USD
• Price per Year: 2.984,28 USD
• Storage: 2x 300GB SAS - 2x 500GB SATA
• CPU: 2x 2.1GHz AMD 12 Core Opteron
• RAM: 32 GB

Users' opinions on Fasthost

Good

Andy Andy: "No complaints with the hosting, uptime and speed, what i do have a problem with is their customer service and attitude towards their customers." Graham Jones: "I had been using Fasthosts for some 6 months, using their reseller account and had been reasonably pleased," Mike Gatward: "I have not had any major problems and i have found their support system to be very useful. i would highly recommend using Fasthosts"

Bad

John Baily: "I have used Fasthost and have been very unhappy with the support and the renewals policy. The only way I have been able to stop these guys taking money from my card was to cancel it" John Smith: "They do respond reasonably fast, but spoil this by not reading emails properly and getting it totally wrong." JL: "I've had numerous problems with them, the latest of which was my domains stopped working, and after a month of Emailing them on a daily basis, I finally got an Email, to thank me for my comments." For more customer's reviews about this hosting service, please check the following link:

FatCow

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 3,248, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No As the company's statement says, FatCow was born in 1998 and the rest is history. The company delivers simple and effective hosting solutions that compete against other companies with an user-friendly customer support and quality service. The company offers several great features to power-up your site and stop worrying about downed servers and things like that. Regarding web hosting plans, FatCow has decided to simplify things by offering a one plan one price philosophy that works equally well for individuals or large companies. If a full hosting plan is a bit more than you're looking for, then you can choose the MiniMoo plan, a small hosting service with just a domain name and an email address to help you get the word out. The Original Fat Cow Plan

The Original FatCow Plan

• Price per Month: 4.67 USD
• Price per Year: 56 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Unspecified

What the clients have to say

Good

Nathan M: "I have 4 Joomla sites with them and the performance is exceptional. I have no difficulties throughout my 6 months that I've been with FatCow. I would most definitely recommend." Dena: "I was recommended to take on FatCow from an associate of mine. I hesitate, but glad I did because I would have missed out on all of the amazing features and extra add-ons that they offer their new clients" Chandani: "FatCow is one out of many hosts that provide everything they promise without fail. No bait and switch tactic used here! How comforting is that!"

Bad

Brian Kinn: "Shockingly terrible customer service. I had many problems with their software, debugged for hours. Finally requested account close." Riched: "The servers are constantly down and our whole disappears with no error messages and the customers service just 'apologize' and still keep sending newsletters and offers.. We are sick of them and cannot run our Internet business on a service that doesn't work." Bad: "It takes forever for customer service to answer your questions!! and they don't know what the heck they are doing -- you'll hear "we don't support that " most of the time even if they do they just don't know" You can read more customer reviews and opinions about this hosting on the following link.  

Go Daddy

Founded: 1997, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 61, MozRank: 8, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No Started by Bob Parsons in 1997, Go Daddy is probably the largest hosting company nowadays with more than 48 million domains under management. The company offers some of the most competitive prices on the market as well as one of the best customer services. One of the nicest things about Go Daddy is its custom WordPress hosting plan, which spreads traffic spikes across multiple servers so your site is always up and running at top speed. Besides the obvious experience and quality service, Go Daddy has participated in many events, including the Phoenix WordCamp 2009. until these days, the company has managed to stay on top as one of the best hosting services around, though we cannot deny the numerous complains that the service has received lately. Regarding hosting plans, these are the 3 fittest options you might want to check for starting a WordPress blog.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.99 USD
• Price per Year: 47.88 USD (20 % discount)
• Storage: 10 GB
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: –0- (25 subdomains)
• Number of Email Accounts: 100
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 14.99 USD
• Price per Year: 119.88 USD (33 % discount)
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: –0- (500 subdomains)
• Number of Email Accounts: 1K
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 419.99 USD
• Price per Year: 4.535,88 USD (10 % discount)
• Storage: 2 x 64 GB solid-state drives
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad - 2.83 GHz
• Data transfer per Month: 3,000 GB per month
• RAM: 8 GB

Reviews from the costumers

Good

Melanie: "Go Daddy has great customer services. The CSR of any company need to represent and they are really professional, respectable of issues as well as very helpful in fixing them." Kim G: "Go Daddy is great! I love getting extra perks when I sign up for any type of service and Go Daddy's features are fantastic. Free Add-on apps as well as automatic installation and free credits for Facebook and Google ad words, which really helped my website increase traffic by 80%" Andre: "I would go as far to say that GoDaddy is the best IT company, full service support. GoDaddy techs are efficient, professional and courteous. I can't say enough about them! Best selling point, the extra service is invaluable. They aren't just about pretty faces!"

Bad

Sanjay Mendis: "My client's website was down for 10 hours yesterday and they are so happy to say that it can take up to 72 hours to respond to a problem. If you are a development company don't ever use them as they will expect you to sit back an relax till they take their own cool time to fix a problem they have" Stankiewicz: "Support responses take hour. Better go to sleep, and tomorrow check for response. Also setting up new subdomains, databases, etc. take hours. Is not true that you can have multiple domains or subdomains in the economic plan (you can have them, but all of them pointing to the same folder)." MJ Wilson: "If you want junk email several times a week "reminding" you to renew, renew, renew, or want to get "coupons" that don't actually work, when you go to use them, then sign up with Go Daddy. It takes at least six phone calls to tech support" To read these and more useful reviews about working with GoDaddy hosting please click here.

Green Geeks

Founded: 2006, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 21,245, MozRank: 6, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No GreenGeeks has been providing hosting services since 2006. Among some of the aspects that make GreenGeeks one of the best hosting services on the internet we can count the fact that by purchasing a package you obtain a lifetime free domain name of your web hosting account with the company. The company offers an exclusive WordPress hosting plan that includes complete guides to help you harness the best of WP, useful tips and a complete set of Wordpress video tutorial series. Although the company does not currently support dedicated servers, their web hosting plan is among the best on its category. If that's not enough, GreenGeeks has received multiple awards for their astounding WordPress hosting plan.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.95 USD
• Price per Year: 59.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Unspecified

They don't offer dedicated server or premium plans

What people have to say

Good

Sharon McEffrey: "I've used a few web hosting services in my day, but Green Geeks has the best control panel of them all. I think I'm done switching from one service to the next just because Green Geeks is so easy to use and simple." Georgia Farady: "I'm all about being green and friendly toward the environment, so choosing Green Geeks was an obvious choice. They offer round the clock live chat service, which is great. The coolest thing in my opinion about Green Geeks is that they use clean energy for everything. You just gotta love that!" Jake Trenton: "These guys really know what they are doing, especially when I have no idea what I am doing! I had an issue with one of my sites and I wasn't near my PC, so I gave them a call, and within seconds I got someone. My issue was resolved and I wasn't even near a computer. Now that's what I call service."

Bad

Anonymous: "After one year with them.... I like their intentions, but the execution simply falls short too often. There has been more downtime than with Godaddy. Also problems with RVsitebuilder (returns error messages from the control panel). Nice guys when accessible, but at the moment I cannot access RVsitebuilder and my help inquiry returned an ambiguous automatic message. If your time is extraordinarily valuable to you, keep shopping before deciding." Steve: "Do not recommend These guys at all!!! I have had more trouble with this hosting company in 1.5 years than I did in 3 years at Host Dime. Going back to Host Dime. They do not allow backups of your sites, do not restore in a timely manner and then even if you get a live person they just fill out the trouble ticket for you and you are at the mercy of the ticket system and then all handled by cowardly emails. My server was hacked 3 times in one month and it was always my fault even after I took the security measures they told me to take!" Ryan: "Don't waste your time. Poor support, all by email. You call, and they say, "Oh that is only handled by email.... let me check that you have a case number". Of course I have a case number, I have the email from them. But I wanted phone supported. Wasted my time for 5 days until I finally canceled. Save yourself the hassle." If you want to read more customer reviews and opinions before purchasing this service, please check the following links:

Green Geeks Review

Green Geeks Review 2

HostPapa

Founded: 2005, PageRank: 4, Alexa: 38,516, MozRank: 6, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No Founded in 2005, HostPapa offers a complete hosting package with not only rich features but also supported by a top quality customer service and for the ecologists, powered by renewable green energy. The site has build a strong reputation during these years, making it one of the most reliable and technically competitive companies in the web hosting business. HostPapa has experienced an exponential grow during the recent years, though they have stick with the original philosophy of keeping things simple and functional. The original Host Papa plan has all the basics (and more) to get you started with your WordPress site.

The Host Papa Plan

• Price per Month: 3.95 USD
• Price per Year: 47.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

They don't offer dedicated server or premium plans

People's thoughts on this service

Good

Darren: "I only recently switched to HostPapa. In the short time I have used them I have found their reliability without fault. During the process of moving my domain I found the support team extremely helpful and always responded within a couple of hours. The price was one of the factors in selecting HostPapa. I found them very competitive and their plan features covered everything I needed. Since switching I haven't had to use their customer service (which is a good thing) but I know if I ever do then I will have quick and reliable responses" William: "My business has been hosting with HostPapa for almost 5 years now and their services haven't changed with constant reliability, support and consistent pricing" Darla: "HostPapa is amazing! Their free site builder was very helpful as I just wanted to dabble in building a website. Although it is FREE, the support team was very helpful and professional when I needed help. I developed my site in no time. I am planning on signing up to build a personal site"

Bad

AJ: "After one short trial of HostPapa, I am quitting. Three day response from customer service, never online support (either offline, or goes to email), emails that are not responded to in less than two days. So I decide to quit. Here's what I get: Setup Cost ($19.95 + $1.00 GST) = N/A Cost of Domain name registration ($24.95 + $1.25 GST) = $24.95" Rien Post: "I registered, paid, and then everything went VERY quiet. Couldn't login to my new web space, couldn't even access the billing page, nothing. Despite several e-mails to HostPapa's support and two password resets I still can't do anything. It just doesn't work, I can't login, and all I get from "support" is a deafening silence" Jennifer: "Had problems accessing the control panel using the user name and password given which had to be reset twice. Then couldn't access emails. Security warnings all over my screen. Eventually asked for my money back after several days of frustration as they offer a 30 day no quibble money back guarantee. 2 weeks later, no contact from them" To read more customers and reviews about HostPapa, please visit the following link.

HostGator

Founded: 2002, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 212, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No HostGator is an award-winning web hosting company, trusted by hundreds of thousands of WordPress enthusiasts. HostGator has had a very active role within the WordPress community, being a "Presenting Sponsor" at WordCamp Houston as well as sponsoring numerous Automattic events and product launches. By signing up with this company you receive 100% WordPress Compatible Hosting that includes an easy 1 click-installation, automatic installation of the Jetpack add-on and finally *PHP runs as suPHP for increased WordPress security. Regarding HostGator plans, these are the options you have access to:

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 3.96 USD
• Price per Year: 66.72 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 11.96 USD
• Price per Year: 143.52 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 374.00 USD
• Price per Year: 4.488 USD
• Storage: 1 TB
• CPU: Intel Xeon 3470 (Quad Core)
• Data transfer per Month: 10 TB
• RAM: 8 GB

Customer thoughts on Hostgator

Good

Torres: "I've been with HostGator for just over 6 months. I have not had a single issue or sec of downtime. The cpanel is so superior over the garbage that my last host provided, I had no idea what I was missing!" Shawn Right: "I was dreading transferring my website to another host, but it needed to be done. Host Gator made the whole process surprisingly easy, and they practically paid me to do it!" Amir: "I am running three websites and both work perfectly. The cpanel is simple and easy to use. There are also many other great features like PHP support, mySQL, email, webmail, SSI, CGI, you name it they got it!"

Bad

Vanaika: "Some users say good things about Hostgator because they've never really experienced high traffic. Buuuuut those with high traffic are generally automatically suspended until they purchase the more expensive server package!" Annoyed: "Their support and tech team seem to be reading off a script and never get anything done. I am just so annoyed by the service in general." Anonymous: "My sites load in the same time it takes for a dentist to pull out a tooth. Their tech guys said I was on a very busy server and moved me to one that wasn't. But after a couple of days, the problem was back." If you want to read these and more customer comments and reviews about this hosting company, please check the following links:

Hostgator Review

Hostgator Review 2

HostMonster

Founded: 1996, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 778, MozRank: 8, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No Since 1996, HostMonster has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal websites. The company features powerful hosting packages at a very reasonable price, making it one of the most accessible companies on the market. If you decide to go with this company, you will receive quality technologies and customer service, as well as plenty of admin tools, security backups and more. Although the company is not currently offering dedicated server plans, their web hosting plans can be listed among the greatest around, with the support of the Linux system. HostMonster is featured on 'Best 10 Web Hosting Sites' by WPDesigner.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 6.95 USD
• Price per Year: 83.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 19.95 USD
• Price per Year: 239.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

They don't offer dedicated server plans

Customer's review

Good

Rupert James: "This was the easiest host I've ever had the pleasure of using. It just takes one click to do everything that I needed to get my site ready - even adding a shopping cart! Their support service is great as well. I think Host Monster is going to be the host I stay with for a long time!" James McDonald: "I was afraid to start a website for my small business because I don't know anything about HTML. I even look at those WYSIWYG editors that are so popular, but I was totally lost. Hostmonster made it easy with their site builder tools, so now I have a really cool and super functional website." Alex: "I have no idea why a lot of people leave negative comments about HostMonster. My online business has never been as busy as it is now and I've never had any problems with them."

Bad

Scott Semans: "I am not a technician, but their support said I am on a server of theirs that is known to crash a lot. I asked to be moved to a different one ages ago, but they still have not replied. My online stores are out for hours a month, and that's what I monitor. I've asked to be moved but they haven't done so. So I'm going to take my business somewhere else." Peter Cartouche: "I wish I read the fine print before I started. I've ended up with a lot of extra services which I did not order and got my bill up unnecessarily." Mad King: "With all the downtime I've experienced, I seriously will not recommend the service to others, especially those who run their business online." To find more reviews about HostMonster services, please go to the following link.

Inmotion

Founded: 2001, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 3,560, MozRank: 7, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No Since 2001, Inmotion has established as one of the best hosting companies around, worshiped by many and used in many major WordPress sites. The site's hosting networks is build upon Linux and Unix operating systems and is monitored 24/7 to guarantee an excellent performance; another interesting fact is the Max Speed Zones system, of which you can read more by visiting the official site. The site has a very powerful hosting plan for WordPress sites at a reasonable price, though if you're interested in acquiring something a little bigger, you might want to check its dedicated server plans.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 5.95 USD
• Price per Year: 71.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 2
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 13.95 USD
• Price per Year: 167.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 25
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 319.95 USD
• Price per Year: 3.599,4 USD
• Storage: 500 GB
• CPU: Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.53GHz
• Data transfer per Month: 2500 GB
• RAM: 8 GB

Customer's Opinions

Good

Leonard Appleby: "My site depends on the ability to have streaming video, and I was so happy that In Motion hosting was able to provide me with a great options and service that keeps my site up, running, and looking great all the time. They are easy to use, and the price was perfect!" Carla Bowne: "Inmotion web hosting was my perfect solution. I didn't have time to build my own website, but my veterinary business really needed one. I just talked with inmotion's designers on the phone, and it was so easy and cheap to have them design my website. I get more calls from that website every day than I thought was possible!" Anonymous: "Inmotion proved itself as a great site. I couldn't be happier with the way that they treated me when I called in for support, even though I had a hard time understanding what they were talking about. They explained it all and took all the time I needed to get things right.

Bad

Anonymous: "If you are not a computer geek or can't afford to hire one, you are not going to be happy. I'm a retired software engineer, and even I could not make hardly any of their instructions work. Getting tech support on the phone to help with the instructions ... they were nice ... but nice doesn't cut it when something goes wrong." Akito: "I'm a newbie so I naturally had a lot of questions. I've been reading very positive reviews from Inmotion so I signed up, but have found their support to be unhelpful. They always seemed in a hurry to get rid of me, in my opinion." You can find more exclusive reviews of actual users by clicking on the link.

iPage

Founded: 2001, PageRank: 5, Alexa: 2,958, MozRank: 3, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No iPage has been serving people and businesses for more than 10 years, providing the latest hosting technologies along with a careful customer service. The site is currently managing more than 1.5 million websites and serving around 1 million websites in 150 different countries around the world. There's an aspect that even when most companies offer it, they don't realize its importance, and that's emailing, iPage offers one of the best emailing services around, with permanent maintenance and high velocity. Regarding hosting plans, the company is not currently offering dedicated plans, however, their Blog Plan brings all the necessary to run a WordPress blog without any problems. iPage received the TWHR award for Best WordPress Hosting.

Basic Plan (Blog Plan)

• Price per Month: 4.50 USD
• Price per Year: 54 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Undefined

They don't offer dedicated server or premium plans

People's opinion

Good

James Rook: "Everything is so easy to use. I don't have any experience building websites with HTML or CSS so I love the fact that I have the option of using site-building tools through iPage. It's also nice that the price is right since I'm on a budget like most people today." Chelsea Green: "My favorite thing about iPage is the site building tools. This is my first website, and they've made building it ridiculously easy. Plus, I love knowing my website is powered by green energy. It just makes me feel better about my website and iPage as my web host." Gabriel Duarte: "iPage works well for me. I'm a professional photographer and use my site for advertising my business. I was able to get the features on the host running with no problems at all and haven't had to call tech support yet. This makes life a lot easier for me."

Bad

Steph S: "It seems great, but I always get disconnected when calling support. My questions were never fully addressed." Mark B: "Customer service and tech support are horrible. I spent a lot of our time on the phone trying to resolve issues which would take a competent tech a fraction of the time to solve." Justin Kovach: "When I started with iPage, I was very pleased. Now, it takes around 10 days before my email inquiries are answered and I have experienced several downtimes." For more reviews about this hosting service, please connect with the following link.

iX Web Hosting

Founded: 1999, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 2,658, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No The history of iX Web Hosting began in 1999 and has become an immense company serving more than 110 thousand clients hosting more than 470 thousand sites with them. An important aspect of this company is its Personal Support Rep program, which works like this: When you sign up with iX, the company assigns a personal support agent to you that you can reach at anytime with all your queries and suggestions. Despite of not having a dedicated plan, the company does feature VPS and cloud hosting services, which in most cases work really well, even when you need to work with tons of information.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 3.95 USD
• Price per Year: 47.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 7.95 USD
• Price per Year: 95.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: Unlimited?
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

They don't offer dedicated server or premium plans

What the clients have to say

Good

Grace: "Excellent customer service, excellent uptime (although I get highly agitated on the rare occasions when there is downtime, no matter how brief), just basically reliable!" JDW: "The staff at IX are always quick and courteous in their response whenever I have a question or need assistance. I really appreciate their availability on line or by phone" Steve Mitchell: "The only reason there is anything less than excellent in this rating is because I'm still on one of the older Linux Business Plus plans that doesn't have as many control panel goodies as I would like. I'm only limited by my own choice to stay with the plan I have. Their service, support and uptime is solid and consistent."

Bad

Crystal: "I use to host at IX over a year ago for a good 3 years. They were great at first. I ended up having several of my clients sites hosted here, 5 to be exact. Well we were all were hacked one lovely day.. (injection virus, changing all my .html files). IX Web didn't even roll back the server. I found out by my client calling me to complain." Detroit Web Man: "Ok. I am very mad right now with them. I am webmaster and I design website night and day. It's 1:30 am and my website is down. So, I called the 1-800 and ask why is my website down. They clam that it was my internet. So, I call my internet people, they ran test, I can access all website but mine." G0li@th: "IX really needs to update their security. There servers are at risk to hacking and infections. My site was hacked a month ago and they dealt with my problem with a lot of miscommunication. Good thing I didn't experience too much downtime and lose of money/time; but they still turned the other way and don't seem to be acknowledging the situation. TERRIBLE, isn't it!?!" You can find more useful costumer reviews about IX Web Hosting in here.

JustHost

Founded: 2008, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 1,572, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No JustHost has a nice Decalogue on their about section where you can easily understand the main features that the company has to offer. First of all you receive a free domain with your purchase, 24/7 monitoring, smooth integration with Google Webmaster Tools, an unobtrusive Control Panel, free script library and best of all, a money back guarantee. Regarding hosting plans, the company offers a complete web hosting plan with tons of great features that will help you take advantage of all the WordPress features inside a quality hosting service.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.45 USD
• Price per Year: 53.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 6.95 USD
• Price per Year: 83.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 3
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Linux

They don't offer dedicated server plans

Clients' thoughts

Good

Elaine McKinney: "I moved my website from another host to Just Host recently. With their templates, I made my site look better than ever. Plus, the Yahoo! And Google ad credits have helped me build traffic I just didn't get with the other host. Just Host's technical support is great, too" Joey Sorenson: "I am thrilled with all areas of JustHost. The technical staff is very helpful and responsive, the customer service is incredibly friendly and efficient, and it's super easy to set up and use. I can't say enough about how pleased I am with JustHost-I would recommend it to anyone that wants set up a site and actually enjoy the experience." Susan: "Just host is one of the most reliable providers I've came across. Their billing support is amazing, their pricing is so affordable and uptime is 99.9%. They are a very dependable host"

Bad

Chris: "After two years of not being able to login to my accounts I gave up on them. My passwords failed to work almost every time I tried to login. I had to send them an email each time just to get access. I paid for two websites and never was able to get them up" Robert Contardi: "They promise unlimited bandwidth, but in cPanel you'll find "1GB/month" (just 100 pics). We updated some files for startup (of course you have to start!) and got a "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later." Mark: "Horrible Support, very disorganized. DO NOT use them if you need critical business reliability. Their server went down, killed my website and email accounts and they didn't even have a backup. The support team is playing a game with me as if nothing happened or if it was my fault." So, if you want to read more reviews about this hosting service before purchasing, you can find them on these next 2 links:

JustHost Review

JustHost Review 2

Laughing Squid

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 5, Alexa: 130,951, MozRank: 6, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: Yes There are many reasons why Laughing Squid is included on the official WordPress hosting list. First of all the company offers a dedicated customer support, reasonable prices and has an Open Source quality, which gives people the chance of help others with their hosting issues. But probably the most important fact is the extended WordPress guide that covers all the basics to help people get used to this amazing CMS. Regarding hosting plans, Laughing Squid offers very affordable plans with all the necessary features to let you host your WordPress site and enjoy the maximum speed and functionality.

• Price per Month: 6 USD
• Price per Year: 72 USD
• Storage: 1 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 25 GB
• Free Included Domains: Undefined
• Number of Email Accounts: 10
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 16 USD
• Price per Year: 192 USD
• Storage: 4 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 200 GB
• Free Included Domains: Undefined
• Number of Email Accounts: 50
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

They don't offer dedicated server plans

What people have to say

Good

Aris: "Great hosting and great art list. they are connected to their community and are active about giving back while having fun. I hosted my site with them for years. now i have my own hosting service because i needed more options and wanted to resell web hosting to my web design clients. Now i see they offer cloud hosting so maybe I'll try that sometime." Natalia M: "I used to have hosting through one of those cheap discount web hosts. My email was worse than unreliable, my website was flaky as all get out, and my support tickets just disappeared into the ether. I got the "Basic Squid" package, first of all, my email hasn't gone down once in that time. Secondly, their spam filtering has *never* eaten days worth of "real" emails. (unlike my old host that did that regularly.) My website is always in working order."

Bad

Brian W: "Customer care? sucks and to cancel? takes two months. Expensive "cloud hosting", but hey, at least the downtime was unplanned and lengthy, and the customer care non-existent." To read more reviews about Laughing Squid services, please check the following link:

Laughing Squid Review

Liquid Web

Founded: 1997, PageRank: 5, Alexa: 3,241, MozRank: 6, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No Liquid Web Inc. is a web hosting company founded in 1997. Michigan. Since its first days, Liquid Web has become a leader in the professional web hosting market with thanks to a strong dedication to providing the best hosting products. Liquid Web is currently working with more than 20,000 clients in 120 different countries. Liquid Web received the INC.5000 Fastest Growing Companies award from 2007 to 2010. Regarding its web hosting plans, the company has the following solutions to help you launch your WordPress site.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 14.95 USD
• Price per Year: 179.4 USD
• Storage: 5 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 120 GB
• Free Included Domains: 2
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 24.95 USD
• Price per Year: 299.4 USD
• Storage: 40 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 320 GB
• Free Included Domains: 5
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 799 USD
• Price per Year: 9.588 USD
• Storage: 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA
• CPU: AMD Quad x12 Opteron 6168
• Data transfer per Month: 10 TB
• RAM: 8 GB

Customers' thoughts

Good

Victor Rojas: "The support is so great, we were with go daddy, cihost, etc and Liquid web is the best dedicated hosting service ever. I do recommend it." Dustin Walker: "We have had a VPS plan with liquid-web for several years and the level of support and performance has been nothing short of excellent. We recommend them to all of our clients and they have been equally impressed with their response time. Their plans are slightly more costly if you evaluate on a resources vs price comparison but the time that I have had to deal with other such setups in the past with support and trying to plea my case allows me to confidently rate LW's pricing/value 5 out of 5. There are many support tickets that I have placed that I am confident other companies would either respond that it is my responsibility or charge extra to complete the task (such as adjustment to setup or addition of software.)" GoJoin: "Used them for years and years. As previously stated by others, Tech Support is some of the BEST I\'ve encountered. We used to pay a guy to do the same things they\'ll do for free every day, no questions asked. They even help with errors I\'ve caused, sometimes even looking through my code to find the problem."

Bad

Lady Luck Shines: "I have had the unfortunate experience to have multiple customers who host with Liquid Web over the years and I have watched customer service plummet to an all new level." Vincent: "I used them for about 2 months. Their technical support is terrible. They take their own sweet time to reply to your queries and sometimes I had to go to the their live support chat to tell them I have an unanswered support ticket." Daniel: "We paid for our website and domain registration through LiquidWeb, but it was about 5 months before we actually had it ready to go online. When we uploaded our files, we found out that our domain registration had not been registered to us. On the same day we registered it with LiquidWeb, someone (suspiciously) registered the same name with GoDaddy, but had never developed a site." To read more customer reviews and opinions about LiquidWeb hosting services, please check the following link:

Liquid Web Review

Lunarpages

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 7, ,Alexa: 5,039,m MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No From California we like to welcome Lunarpages, a top class hosting service serving more than 150.000 clients with top efficiency and professionalism. The site stands as one of the most important hosting companies around while maintaining a friendly relationship with its clients and colleagues. Regarding their services, Lunarpages offer multiple web hosting solutions, including dedicated servers and both Linux and Windows support. If you want to start a WordPress blog, then we suggest you to opt for one of these next plans, though the dedicated service is more adequate for larger companies.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.95 USD
• Price per Year: 59.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 19.95 USD
• Price per Year: 239.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 235 USD
• Price per Year: 2.820 USD
• Storage: 1 TB SATA
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 2.66ghz
• RAM: 3 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 5.000 GB

Users' opinions and reviews

Good

Solve: "I have been for Lunarpages for a year. I had a problem with the speed of Drupal. And they Upgrade my plan for free. They helped me fast and the customer service was very good and polite in all issues." Anonymous: "My previous host was not so good. Lunarpages had great special for two year plan. I must say I've saved good money and the hosting has been rock solid and fast" Abelp: "Customer service is the best. Way better than my previous hosting ( godaddy, apthost ). I hope that although the price goes down, their customer service wont. I don't mind paying an extra dollar for fast responses."

Bad

Anonymous: "Their hosting service is extremely not acceptable, down server all the time, told us to upgrade the advance plan and problems keep coming up. we use our website for business and it was down in the middle of the day then we call them and they said there were moving the server. What???" Ben: "I am so happy that my relationship with Lunarpages is over. LP looks like a good deal, but the headache is not worth it. If your site just shows a couple of pages, LP might be okay. Downtime isn't frequent, but when it is, LP clams up, admits nothing and wants you to leave them alone" Mike: "We tried out Lunar Pages for hosting our corporate website and email. For an entire month we had email outages. First line support was not helpful and returned canned responses." To find more useful reviews and opinions about LunarPages, please check these next links:

Lunarpages Review

Lunarpages Review 2

Media Temple

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 8, Alexa: 2,745, MozRank: 8, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: Yes Chosen by many and despised by others, MediaTemple is one of the most popular web hosting services that thanks to its constant campaigns and indeed quality service, has managed to stand out as one of the most important companies on the business. Since 1998, the company has provided hosting solutions around the world and has become the favorite by many people. You won't find normal plan names such as 'Basic' or 'Premium' on MediaTemple, instead of that you will find specialized services such as the grid-service or the Nitro plan.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 20 USD
• Price per Year: 120 USD
• Storage: 100 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 1 TB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: 1000
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 1500 USD
• Price per Year: 18.000 USD
• Storage: 600 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 3 TB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: –0-
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server (Nitro)

• Price per Month: 2500 USD
• Price per Year: 30.000 USD
• Storage: 8x 300GB SAS disks (10K RPM)
• CPU: 16-Core Xeon 2.13 GHz CPU
• RAM: 32GB (DDR3-1333) RAM

What the costumers think

Good

Daniel: "I've been working on the web since 1994 and using Media Temple since 2002. I started with a shared server and now host on a Grid and DV accounts. The bottom line: I've never found a better service. I've used (and abused) many hosting services over the years. Media Temple has not only been extremely reliable, but also flexible." Stuart Oliveira: "I'm using MediaTemple's (gs) Grid Service to host multiple websites, including a couple of my clients. They're servers are reliable and fast for their 'shared' hosting classification (dedicated/virtual would be a lot faster), and overall everything works great." James Huckabone: "I am more than happy with Media Temple. Their phone support takes forever to get through to during the day but when I get there, each and every time (15 times now, and it keeps a detailed log of this in your admin), they provide extremely detailed and accurate help."

Bad

Dominick: "When I started my hosting via mediatemple I thought it was a good hosting. But they were down already in my second day. They support is slow and 50% of the time they do not read the question and you get a preformatted responds." Shane Harris: "I tried everything you can imagine to get speed using grid hosting. But no matter what I did was very slow to load pages. Support always told me must be a script on my page etc....But amazing as soon as I switched to a new host all my speed problems went away." Todd Schoelen: "MT's Grid service is horrible. As a small business using MT to host a simple site, email & FTP on their grid service we have had at least 4-5 full business days without any services in the last month alone! As I type this comment we have been out of service again for over 24 hrs." More information about MediaTemple and customer reviews can be found by checking this link.

MidPhase

Founded: 2003,PageRank: 6, Alexa: 1.771, MozRank: 6, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No For more than 8 years, MidPhase has been serving people (currently more than 120 thousand clients)to find the best hosting solutions. The company works with both individuals and big companies, providing a powerful technical service and customer support at a reasonable pricing. An important aspect to highlight is that Midphase owns all its software, guaranteeing a complete attention 24/7. If you want to establish a WordPress blog, MidPhase has all the tools to help you with this, ranging from their basic 2.95 plan to a potent dedicated plan, you will find the best solutions to begin your site by signing up with this service.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 2.95 USD
• Price per Year: 35.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: 1000
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 7.95 USD
• Price per Year: 95.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 424.95 USD
• Price per Year: 5.099,4 USD
• Storage: 2x500GB SATA II
• CPU: Dual QC Xeon 5520 2.26Ghz HT BW+ SS
• RAM: 12 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 10 TB

Customers' opinion

Good

Thomas Saunders: "I love the service the Mid Phase offers. I'm not a web designer, so it was nice that I was able to have the company design my site for me. The price was right and it was easy to get things going." Ben Small: "Now that I'm with midPhase, I never have reliability problems. My site is always online when I need it to be, and it's great." Gary Hall: "I would recommend midPhase for any web hosting needs you might have. They have great special offers to save you money, along with incredibly fast and friendly service."

Bad

Robbie: "Their uptime isn't even close to 99.9%. They have a lot of hidden issues internally and lame excuses when they can't provide quality services that they claim they have." Tannis: "Midphase has many problems with their system. My passwords aren't working along with CPanel, and FTP. On top of that, they went ahead and just decided to switch my account to another server without me being aware of it." Nicolette: "A VPS tech was suppose to return a call on an important FTP issue I was having, it has been a week and I'm still waiting! Helloooo...?!" To find what other people have to say about MidPhase services you can check the next two links:

MidPhase Review

MidPhase Review 2

NetFirms

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 8, Alexa: 2,025, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No NetFirms has been around for the past 12 years, helping customers access affordable and quality hosting services. The company stands on a Five Core manual where they care about customer attention, keeping things simple, constant improvements, permanent upgrades and ambitious goals. Although the site doesn't have a dedicated plan, you can apply for a regular web hosting account and obtain all the benefits to let you install a WordPress blog with ease and enjoy a high data transfer per month (unlimited?) as well as many more great features.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 9.95 USD
• Price per Year: 119.40 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 2
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 14.95 USD
• Price per Year: 179.40 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 5
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

They don't offer dedicated server plans

What the users have to say

Good

Terry Holloway: "Net Firms was a great hosting choice for my small business. I was able to redirect the various domains I had to my new site, and I was able to get all of my e-commerce needs onto my site quickly and easily." Willow Hogue: "NetFirms is a super easy host to use, and Zen Cart made it really easy for me to get my online business started. I wasn't sure how to do some things at first, but I just called customer service and they got me straightened out." Jackson Southwick: "What a difference a web host makes! After spending way too much time with terrible and overpriced service somewhere else, I changed to NetFirms and am thrilled with the results. I am already planning the next site I'll launch with them."

Bad

Jacob: "My page is down for maintenance much more often then it should be. The connection to netfirms for any of my three websites often run very slow. They have been 'transitioning' to a new system" John: "Netfirms was ok when I first started, but my sites got progressively slower and starting a couple weeks ago I discovered malicious code was being injected into my sites. I changed my passwords and checked my computers for viruses, cleaned up the site multiple times and the code kept re-appearing a few hours later." Rob: "The service is completely unreliable both for web hosting and email. Databases are impossibly slow and anything server-side is unstable. I would give it a zero if it was possible. STAY AWAY." To read these and more opinions from real customers that have acquired NetFirms services, please check the following links:

NetFirms Review

NetFirms Review 2

TSOHost

Founded: 2003, PageRank: 4, Alexa: 103,997, MozRank: 5, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No UK Webhosting was founded in 2003 as an alternative for purchasing powerful and affordable hosting services. The site is currently working with more than 20.000 sites hosted on their UK headquarters. The company moved recently its hosting infrastructure near the main offices to be able to fix any major problems immediately. Unlike most websites on this countdown, the site does not offer unlimited storage and bandwidth and prefers to keep things as honest as possible providing real statistics. Now we invite you to check the three major plans that you can sign up for prior mounting your WordPress site.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: Unavailable
• Price per Year: 21
• Storage: 500 MB
• Data transfer per Month: 5 GB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: 10
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 70 USD
• Price per Year: 840 USD
• Storage: 10 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 150 GB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: 100
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 839 USD
• Price per Year: 10.000 USD
• Storage: 6x 300GB 10,000RPM Serial-Attached SCSI HDDs in RAID 10 configuration (Approximately 900GB usable storage)
• CPU: 2x Intel Xeon Quad Core CPUs (with HyperThreading, for 16x virtual CPU cores!)
• Data transfer per Month: 4 TB
• RAM: 24GB DDR3 ECC RAM

Customers' opinions

Good

Will Dean: "Superb. Such quick sales/tech support, and excellent performance too. We will be moving all our hosting to them over time." Karen: "Someone always replies promptly to any request for support. And they're always patient with me and my daft questions. Really helpful company - thank you." Andy Everingham: "I came to TSOhost on recommendation and I'm extremely confident in recommending their services to others. Not only does their platform give superb performance using Magento, but their support responds quickly to problems" We couldn't find any bad opinions regarding TSOhost (weird isn't it), anyway here's a helpful link with several opinions from the users:

UK2

Founded: 1998, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 11,918, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No With more than 10 years on the market, UK2 is one of UK's most important hosting companies with more than 1 million domains sold and thousands of hosted websites (many of them with dedicated servers) around the world. UK2 Group is accredited by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to provide .com, .biz, .info, .net, .org, .jobs, .name and .pro gTLD's to its customers. Regarding hosting plans, the company has several solutions to aid you start your WordPress blog by putting at your service the latest tools as well as a top quality customer support.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.13 USD
• Price per Year: 49.56 USD
• Storage: 3 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 100 GB
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: 50
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 19.5 USD
• Price per Year: 234 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 3
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Top dedicated server

• Price per Month: 377 USD
• Price per Year: 4.524 USD
• Storage: 2x 300GB SAS RAID1 +1TB SATA
• CPU: 2x Intel Quad Xeon 2.13GHz
• Data transfer per Month: 100 TB
• RAM: 24GB DDR3

People's thoughts on UK2

Good

Susan Stockwall: "I have been with UK2 for years and never had any issues that I have seen others claim to have had. I own an upscale shop and use the web for a lot of traffic. My web sites offer direct links to my online sales so I would know if I had issues." Brent Sikorsky: "I've been with uk2 for several fruitful months. The services they provide are as good as you can expect from an experienced company. Of course, there's no hiding the fact that I'm not exactly the most experienced person in this area." Phil Carr: "I can say from personal experience that UK2 is a decent hosting provider and an even better domain name registration company. In comparison to most of other companies, their registration of multiple domain names wins by far."

Bad

Andrew Scott: "uk2.net are out dated, their hosting and domain control panels are either weak or lacking, they charge you extra for everything. If you want to move away from them they make it as difficult as possible." John Turner: "I thought this would be a great move to a more full featured service after getting fed up with Clook. How wrong could I be! Even more downtime, no backups unless you pay extra (which is not what the advertising said) and the tech support guys are unbelievably slow and sometimes downright offensive." William Neckel: "I have had the misfortune of buying domains through UK2.net. Not only do they trap you in an underhanded 'auto-renew' system - you actually have to send them a request (either 30 days or 60 days) to be able to move to another host. Then they charge you a fee for this 'service'." You can read more costumer reviews and opinions about this hosting provider by clicking here.

Web Hosting Pad

Founded: 2005, PageRank: 6, Alexa: 5,773, MozRank: 7, Blog: No, WordPress.org featured: No WebHostingPad is a reliable hosting service provider with more than 5 years of experience and 150 thousand domains being hosted. The site offers some of the most reasonable prices on the market whilst assuring a quality service and permanent client support. With the purchase of any of the site's plans, you receive over $500 of free add-on features, which includes among others, Google and Facebook ads, free scripts and more.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 4.45 USD
• Price per Year: 53.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 7.95 USD
• Price per Year: 95.4 USD
• Storage: Unlimited?
• Data transfer per Month: Unlimited?
• Free Included Domains: 1
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

They don't offer dedicated server plans

What the costumers have to say

Good

Gary: "My login in information no longer worked, I emailed customer support and Christopher Got back to me within a few hours. Within a few days, I had the new login information for my site" Angus: "I had problems with FTP authentication. The help request was answered faster than it took me to write the email. The answers were well detailed and the root cause was positive - enforced security. Overall a very happy customer." Anonymous: "I have had to contact support a few times, always for what turn out to be me being really dumb. Response times are really fast and the quality, friendliness and usefulness of the help is first rate."

Bad

Anonymous: "The speed is slow, the worst thing is that they will charge you without any notice a month later! It is cheating!" Anonymous: "The domain manager isn't as easy to use for a non-programmer. Also today the tech would not answer my question about timing. I had to repeat the question email 3x before it was answered." Genius: "Your account will be suspended if your website became popular, and the service is not unlimited you getting max 20 gig disk space and 100gig bandwidth, i will never recommend you to use this service." For more costumer reviews and opinions regarding WebHostingPad services, please check this link.

WebFaction

Founded: 2003, PageRank: 7, Alexa: 17,242, MozRank: 7, Blog: Yes, WordPress.org featured: No Instead of talking about the company's history, if you visit WebFaction about section, you're going to find all the major features that makes the site one of the best hosting suppliers around. The site works with Nginx to serve static content while still providing the power of Apache for dynamic content; if you sign up for an account, you automatically receive a 60 days money-back guarantee. Concerning the company's plan, you can either purchase the basic plan or opt for the premium service, which includes more storage and data transfer per month.

Basic Plan

• Price per Month: 9.50 USD
• Price per Year: 102
• Storage: 100 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 600 GB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

Premium Plan

• Price per Month: 29.50 USD
• Price per Year: 354 USD
• Storage: 150 GB
• Data transfer per Month: 900 GB
• Free Included Domains: –0-
• Number of Email Accounts: Unlimited?
• CPanel: Yes
• Linux/ Windows: Both available

They don't offer dedicated server plans

People's thoughts on the service

Good

John: "I've been with them for over 3 years and I absolutely adore them. Best shared host by far" Jim Tinsky: "I've had them reply within 5 minutes to big blocking issues and keep replying as they basically taught me things I should probably already have known. They are flexible, responsive and very reasonably priced." Robert: "Webfaction has a very easy setup which is impressive and the best thing about them is their responsiveness towards their user community."

Bad

Wouter Suren: "We also like the simplicity of Webfaction! Unfortunately we also experience the slow response from out of the Netherlands (Like Erik) so we have to look for a closer server." Gary: "Webfaction has good support. Yet, I've had MORE problems with them than ANY other host. From the site going down for 10 minutes to a few hours (just today, 15 minutes down), to EXTREMELY long page load times (20 – 30 seconds), to proxy errors, etc. it's been harrowing." Jaymie: "I really want to use them and I really want to continue liking them. At the moment, they're losing me." You can find more clients' opinion and reviews about this hosting provider by following this link.

What the experts have to say

Now that you have scrolled throughout the entire list, we want to give you more tips concerning which hosting service to choose for starting a WordPress blog. We have contacted some of the top design bloggers around and we asked their opinion on the subject, as well as which hosting service are they currently using, let's see what they had to say:

Jacob Cass – JustCreativeDesign

"I'm using MediaTemple on the dv (Dedicated Virtual) server ($100/m) and using the $20/m backup service. I haven't had any problems with them since changing from their Grid Server which bit of a pain, but we got through it. I recommend them!"

Mike Lane – Mlane.net

"Personally, I use MediaTemple for hosting services, including Wordpress, and have been extremely happy with what they offer. They have the longevity and experience, cater to creative professionals and offer stellar customer service that make them the ideal host for me. I rarely encounter major hosting problems, but if something does come up, I need immediate support. That's the most important factor for me when choosing a host and I have found them to be extremely responsive and accessible via Twitter or traditional means. They offer scalability, affordability and a strong technical foundation for Wordpress-based web solutions. Servers come loaded with MySQL, PHP, Ruby, etc. and Wordpress or other CMS options are a simple install. My Wordpress performance has been second to none over there. All in all, they've been a great provider and I can't recommend them enough."

Jacob Gube – Six Revisions

"Currently, Six Revisions and Design Instruct is on Slicehost. They've been great thus far." Note: We did not include Slicehost on the review as it only offers a VPS hosting service (excellent by the way).

The Shock Family – IconShock

We've been using Servint for more than 5 years. We own a dedicated server account with 12 TB of data transfer limit per month, which is one of the largest transfer capacities around, the CPU has 4 powerful cores and runs under a Linux system. The guys have always assisted us with promptness and the system is very stable, considering that our full icon collection weighs more than 60 GB!! (that's a total of 15 normal DVD's). We totally recommend this service if you're running a major web-based company that works with tons of daily data.

Final thoughts and useful resources

And that's it friends, we have reached the end of this article, a complete review on the top hosting services to mount a WordPress blog, we are fully aware of the existence of other quality hosting suppliers, we tried to include as much as possible for giving you and the rest of our readers different options for them to choose from; if you want your hosting service to be included on this post, please leave us a comment and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Finally, if at this point you're still considering necessary to read more about WordPress hosting before mounting your site, we have reunited a small list of helpful links that will give you more insights on WordPress hosting and how to decide the most suitable service to satisfy your needs.

• Best WordPress Hosting
• Hostpeek
• Official WordPress.org list
• Four WordPress web hosting solutions tried and tested
• WordPress hosting on StackExchange
• More WordPress hosting on StackExchange
• WordPress Getting Started guide
• WordPress requirements