“Do I need to sort out hosting?” is one of the first questions a client asks, usually about ten minutes after “how much will it cost?”. It is a fair question with an irritating answer, because almost everything written about WordPress hosting has been written by someone paid to rank a particular host.
So, before anything else: the SiteGround link in this article is a referral link. If you sign up through it they pay me a commission, and you pay exactly what you would have paid anyway. I would recommend them either way, and the site you are reading this on runs on them, which is harder to fake than a review. But you should know, and now you do.
With that out of the way, here is the version I give clients.
What actually matters in WordPress hosting
Hosting comparison tables measure the things that are easy to put in a table: storage, bandwidth, a number of websites. Almost none of it decides whether your site is a pleasure or a problem three years from now. The short list I actually care about:
- Daily backups you can restore yourself. Not “backups are available on request”. You want a button, and you want to have pressed it once before you need it.
- A staging site. A copy of your site where changes can be tested before they touch the live one. This is the single feature that separates hosting you can work on from hosting you have to be careful around.
- A current version of PHP. WordPress runs on PHP, and old PHP is both slower and less secure. A host still offering 7.4 as a default in 2026 is telling you something about the rest of the operation.
- A data centre near your customers. If your customers are in Sussex, a server in Texas is adding a round trip to every page load for no reason.
- Support that answers. Not a knowledge base with a chatbot in front of it. At some point something will break at an unsociable hour and you will want a human.
Notice what is not on that list: the headline monthly price. It is the least useful number in hosting, for reasons I will come back to.
What I use, and why
For most of the WordPress sites I build, the answer is SiteGround. Not because it wins on any single spec, but because it is the option I have had the fewest bad afternoons with, across a lot of client sites and a lot of years.
Specifically:
- There is a London data centre, alongside Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. For UK clients that means lower latency, and it keeps the data question simple.
- Daily backups are included and self-service. You can roll a site back yourself without opening a ticket.
- Migration is free on every plan. If you are moving an existing site, that removes the usual reason people stay somewhere bad.
- SSH and WP-CLI come with every plan, which matters to me more than it does to you: it is how I deploy, and it is why a site move takes an evening rather than a weekend.
- Support is genuinely good. This is the unmeasurable one, and it is the actual reason I keep going back.
One practical note on which plan to buy: for a business site, start at GrowBig rather than the entry plan. The step up is what brings staging and on-demand backups, and those are the two features you will actually miss. The entry plan is a fine place for a personal site and a frustrating one for a site that gets worked on.
If you want the detail on how I build the sites that sit on it, that is on my WordPress development page.
Read the renewal price, not the headline price
Here is the thing nobody in an affiliate roundup wants to dwell on, including, in fairness, me.
SiteGround advertises its plans at an introductory rate for the first term, and that rate sits a long way below the renewal rate. At the time of writing the entry plan is around £2 a month to start and around £14 a month when it renews. The larger plans follow the same pattern. This is normal across the whole shared hosting industry, but it still catches people out a year later, and I would rather you heard it from me than from your bank statement.
Two practical consequences. First, budget for the renewal figure, because that is the real price. Second, the longer initial term is usually worth taking if you are confident in the choice, because you are buying more months at the low rate.
Where it is the wrong answer
I would not put every site on it, and a recommendation with no edges is a sales pitch rather than advice.
- High traffic, or a busy WooCommerce store. Once a site is doing serious volume, properly managed WordPress hosting earns its higher price. Kinsta, WP Engine, Pressable and Cloudways all sit in that bracket. If your store is the business rather than a sideline, spend the money.
- Sites with a lot of media. Shared plans have storage ceilings that a photography-heavy site reaches faster than you would expect.
- The entry plan, if the site will grow. One website, ten gigabytes and no staging is a personal-site plan. It is not where a business site that gets worked on should live, and upgrading later is a job you could have avoided.
What I would avoid
Less a list of brands than a set of shapes:
The very cheapest shared hosting. Somebody has to pay for the server, and if it is not you it is the two hundred other sites sharing your processor. This is where the “my site is slow and I don’t know why” enquiries come from.
Hosting bundled in with your domain registration. It is sold as convenience and it is usually the weakest product in the company’s range. It also tangles your domain and your hosting together, which makes leaving harder than it should be. Keep them separate.
Anything where you do not hold the account. If an agency or a friend hosts your site inside their reseller account, you do not really own your website: you own a favour. Whatever you choose, the account should be in your name, on your card, with your email on the recovery address.
If I am building your site
You do not have to work any of this out on your own. On every build I recommend a plan that fits the site, set the hosting up, handle the migration if there is an existing site to move, and hand over an account that is yours from day one. No reseller account, no hostage situation, no monthly fee to me for the privilege of your site existing.
If you would rather not think about updates and backups afterwards, I can look after those too, on a light plan with no retainer and no ticket queue. And if you would rather do it yourself, the handover includes showing you how.
Either way, if you are weighing up a new site or wrestling with an old one, tell me what it needs to do and I will give you a straight answer, usually within a working day or two.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to buy hosting before we start?
No, and I would rather you did not. I will recommend a plan once I know what the site needs to do, because the right plan depends on the build. If you have already bought something, that is usually fine too and I will tell you honestly if it is not.
Can you move my existing site to a new host?
Yes, and it is a routine job rather than a drama. Migrations are free on most hosts worth using, I handle the move and the DNS, and the site stays up throughout. The usual result is a faster site and a smaller bill.
How much should I budget for WordPress hosting?
For a typical small business site, budget against the renewal price rather than the introductory offer: somewhere in the region of £15 to £35 a month once the first term ends. Cheaper exists, but it is cheap for reasons you eventually pay for in other ways.
Do you manage the hosting and updates after launch?
If you want me to, yes: updates, backups and small changes on a light-touch plan. There is no retainer required and no obligation, and the hosting account stays in your name either way.
