One of the most important aspects of a WordPress website is web hosting. You see, without it your site won’t run. Now there are many providers that offer WordPress hosting, but not every one of them is as good as they claim to be. For example: you can find a lot of services that say they allow you to install WordPress in five minutes or even instantly. Meanwhile, some other web hosts will say they have an amazingly intuitive control panel that makes life easier than ever. In this article I am going to share my personal pick for the best web host for WordPress website today.
Best Web Hosting For WordPress Website
WordPress is what I use to manage my blog and other sites. Millions of visitors read content and interact with my site each month. Without the best WordPress web hosting, there’s no way I could deliver a high-performance experience.
It’s different from regular hosting in that your provider is only going to host WordPress on the servers you use. This makes it easier to optimize performance and maintain security because there’s only one type of software on it.
So, if you’re currently using WordPress or planning to use WordPress for your website, you really ought to invest in web hosting that’s made for that platform.
And it’s extremely affordable.
Which WordPress web hosting provider is the best? Keep reading for reviews of the top providers I trust. The reviews are followed by a brief guide to help you find a host that makes sense with your goals and budget.
#1 – Hostinger Review — The Best for Cheap WordPress Hosting
Hostinger offers optimized WordPress hosting for as low as $1.99/month. Even at that rock-bottom pricing, it has the essential package of features and resources necessary to get a WordPress site off the ground and looking sharp.
Everything is easy to set up, even if it is your first time getting hosting or using WordPress.
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A four-year contract is required to get the best price. So, there is a little bit of a commitment, but the total price tag of four years at those low rates is still well below a single year with other options.
You also save with the free email account, domain name, CDN, and a free SSL certificate that’s super easy to enable. Your site will be faster and more secure with hardly any effort on your part.
Hostinger’s entry-level plan is not aimed at developers and the like who need to put a big strain on their site. You get 30 GB of storage, two databases, and weekly backups.
The lack of daily backups might not work for some users, but if you don’t need to update your site all the time, a weekly backup is a comforting insurance plan.
At the low price, there’s obviously no white-glove customer service, but it is still available 24/7/365. Customers tend to review Hostinger’s support very well, even if the response time is slower than you get with a managed plan.
There are going to be upsells in the platform, but there’s no catch. It’s a really great value because Hostinger hasn’t cut costs where it counts.
You get a 99.9% uptime guarantee and site speed is reliable for up to 10,000 visitors each month. If you are just getting started, this is more than enough.
And Hostinger has really has optimized the WordPress experience. The LightSpeed cache accelerates your site and works well with most popular plugins.
It’s not just increased performance—Hostinger provides a helpful suite of tools to get your site looking professional.
One-click WordPress installation, a site setup wizard, and lots of helpful tutorials. You’ll be able to take advantage of free WordPress plugins and themes to improve your site at no cost.
Hostinger has ultra-competitive introductory pricing for all of the WordPress hosting plans they offer:
Renewal rates jump a good bit higher than the introductory rate (between $2 more per month to as much as $5 to $7 more on the higher-octane plans), but that has a lot to do with just how deep of a discount they offer. Don’t be thrown by the jump in pricing, the full rate is comparable to other shared WordPress hosting.
And, if you snag the best deal by going with a four-year commitment up front, you won’t have to worry about paying more for your hosting for a good 48 months.
At the end of the day, if you are looking for a low-cost hosting plan that’s optimized for WordPress, Hostinger is a very good option. It’s a no-frills plan that covers all your bases and delivers great performance.
You can sign up and try Hostinger risk-free for 30 days.
#2 – Cloudways Review — The Best for Total Customization
If you’ve been shopping for WordPress hosting for a bit, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of providers start to run together after a while. It can be a parade of largely similar options with only slight differences in price, management, or other options.
Cloudways does everything a little bit differently, though—and that could be to your benefit.
This provider’s goal is to strike a unique balance between user customization and the stress-free nature of managed WordPress hosting.
It starts with something novel right off the bat. You select the cloud server infrastructure you’d like from five of the top platforms out there:
- DigitalOcean
- Amazon Web Services
- Google Cloud
- Vultr
- Linode
Each offers at least eight data centers to choose from, sprinkled across North America, Europe, and Asia (with some even having options in Australia, Africa, and South America).
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to customizing your Cloudways package. Each infrastructure option comes with four pre-set pricing packages, but you can easily adjust or reallocate resources after getting signed up (for free).
Plus, all plans are billed monthly for pay-as-you-go pricing, so you only pay for the resources you’re actually using and can make plan changes with ease.
There’s even an hourly billing option that can come in handy for super short-term site projects and testing endeavors.
Plus, depending on your comfort level with server management, there are a host of ways to fine-tune your hosting experience, including:
- One-click backups on demand
- Automated backups
- One-click application force stop
- Varnish cache settings
- App web root changes
- Supervisord process manager
- WP-CLI control over WordPress
- Cron job rules and scheduling
You get all of this control, plus deep optimization features for WordPress sites, robust security, and expert support with Cloudways.
Pricing varies greatly based on the server infrastructure you choose, resource levels, and premium options (for DigitalOcean and Vultr). For ease of comparison, here are Cloudways’ entry-level plans for DigitalOcean:
As you can see, you can get started for just $12 per month with no commitment. That gives you more storage and bandwidth than a lot of other base WordPress hosting plans from other providers, while giving you a truly managed hosting experience with extra-fine levels of control on your end as well.
Cloudways isn’t for beginners, but if you know enough to handle some server-side maintenance and management, you can really reap all kinds of benefits from this provider. Get everything just the way you want it—without getting a bill that punishes you for customization—by getting started with Cloudways for free. Use promo code NEILPATEL to get 25% off for 3 months.
#3 – Pressable Review — The Best for Agencies, Designers, & Developers
Whether you’re designing sites for clients or building their entire marketing strategy, adding web hosting to your service suite is a wise move. You can handle one more thing for your clients (making your services more valuable) and, with Pressable, give them quality hosting while adding more revenue to your own bottom line.
Pressable delivers both managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, giving you two options to offer your clients. Whether they need a WordPress site (or multiple) for their campaign or need you to lay the foundation for their web store, you’ve got them covered.
No matter which web hosting type you need from Pressable, they deliver fantastic speed, uptime, and security with their cloud hosting infrastructure.
And, since their hosting services are fully managed, you get the extra help of free migrations on every hosting plan, true and attentive 24/7 support, and performance monitoring provided by the Pressable team. They’ll help you and your clients get the absolute most out of their web hosting.
You can get all the managed hosting bells and whistles from WP Engine, but Pressable is more valuable to those who are designing and building sites for others. For one, you don’t get migrations on every WP Engine plan, something that is immensely valuable to client-based website work.
You also tend to get more bang for your buck with Pressable.
The entry-level plan starts at just $19 per month, and you can get two months free when you prepay for the year. This package supports up to 5,000 visits per month and a single WordPress installation.
For single sites expecting more traffic, you can upgrade to a Personal plan that supports 30,000 visitors for $25 per month.
Pricing continues to rise as your traffic grows and you need more WordPress installations, going all the way up to 150+ installs and more than three million site visits per month. So the platform is built to scale.
If you’re selling online on WordPress via the WooCommerce plugin, Pressable has managed WooCommerce packages as well. This service is offered at the exact same price as standard WordPress hosting.
If you need more, Pressable makes it ridiculously easy to scale up. So, none of your clients can ever complain about outgrowing the Pressable hosting you’re providing them.
Get to know Pressable’s great WordPress and WooCommerce hosting and start delivering a high-quality home on the web to your clients.
#4 – Bluehost Review — The Best for New WordPress Sites
Powering more than 2 million sites across the globe, Bluehost is an industry leader in the web hosting space, especially for WordPress sites. In fact, it’s one of the few web hosts that’s officially recommended by WordPress.
Bluehost is a great option for anyone building a new website from scratch. When you sign up for hosting, you get a free domain name for a year and WordPress is a one-click install.
Normally a domain name costs $10-15, but your saving time in addition to money. Instead of having to go and register a domain and download WordPress, you can get everything done in a single step.
Plus, the cost of WordPress hosting is about as low as you will find.
WordPress hosting from Bluehost starts at just $2.95/month. You’ll have to sign a 3-year contract to get the best deal. If you are always going to need hosting, I say lock in the best discount for as long as possible.
Getting everything set up is really easy. I walk you through the whole process in my post about how to start a WordPress blog.
Trust me when I say you don’t need any special skills to start blogging right away.
Navigating around your new WordPress dashboard is fairly straight-forward, but you can reach out to Bluehost support if you have questions. Representatives are available any time of day by phone or live chat.
Lots of the best parts are baked right into the service—a free CDN to boost performance and security and a free SSL certificate is always enabled. You don’t have to configure any of it in order to benefit from the faster speeds and safer traffic.
It’s easy enough to take advantage of free WordPress themes and find a layout you like. Plus, there are tons of incredible options via the Bluehost WordPress marketplace if you are willing to spend a couple bucks.
Other noteworthy highlights from Bluehost include:
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Unlimited traffic
- 50 GB storage
- $200 in free marketing credits (Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising)
- Securely configure your WordPress login credentials
All of this comes with Bluehost Basic WordPress web hosting, starting at $2.95 per month. For an entry-level plan, 50 GB of storage is a lot. More than twice as much as you get with other plans.
There are no arbitrary limits about traffic, but if your site starts to impact other sites on the server, they may ask you to upgrade to a higher tier plan.
The Plus and Choice Plus plans let you build as many sites as you want, whereas Basic limits you to just one. You will also get unlimited storage (within acceptable use limits, of course) and greater server resources with the higher tier plans.
Or, you can choose to take advantage of either managed hosting plans for WordPress or Bluehost’s specialized WooCommerce hosting.
Bluehost’s managed WordPress hosting starts at $9.95/month with a three-year contract. The introductory rate is very attractive compared to other managed plans, which is great for getting managed-level service locked in for the near future.
However, it is lacking some features compared to more robust managed WordPress plans, like the ones offered by WP Engine.
But if this is your first site, you shouldn’t even be worried about managed hosting. You’ll be fine with shared WordPress hosting. Bluehost will get you set up with everything you need at an affordable price.
I really like their online store-specific hosting, as well. It’s a great way to get a WooCommerce store set up in a pinch, with its included store builder, preinstalled WooCommerce and Jetpack, one-click install for payment processing, and capability for manual order creation.
Get in touch with Bluehost today.
#5 – WP Engine Review — The Best for Managed WordPress Hosting
WP Engine is the original managed WordPress hosting provider and still leads the pack in terms of providing concierge service and expert support. The company has also developed a platform full of exclusive tools designed to help you take your WordPress site to the next level.
If you are just getting a small site or blog online, WP Engine is overkill. This is a good option for people with online stores, a bunch of sites, and other complex WordPress hosting needs.
WP Engine allows you to get high-performance sites without having to hire a developer or stress about maintenance.
You’ll unlock blazing fast speed, incredible uptime, and best-in-class security without any work on your part.
In addition to optimizing the IT environment, WP Engine will keep the WordPress Core and PHP up to date. The company is constantly monitoring and blocking threats, keeping your sites fast and safe.
WP Engine has a legendary customer service record. The company does not host anything besides WordPress. You are always going to get a rep who knows the platform inside and out and handles relevant issues all day, every day.
With so much taken care of with WP Engine, you have more time to focus on building a great site. 36 premium StudioPress themes are included with every hosting plan.
Normally, that would cost hundreds of dollars, but you are free to experiment and customize these powerful themes as you like.
Some of the other highlights include:
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Free CDN
- Free SSL Certificate
- Geotargeted content
- Free automated WordPress migrations
- Development, staging, and production environments
No other managed WordPress host offers separate dev/staging environments. This is a boon to WordPress developers, as it solves some of the pesky problems associated with one-click staging environments.
Managed WordPress hosting starts at $25/month with a one-year contract. You can also sign up for one month at a time—which some hosting providers don’t allow—and it’s only $30/month.
Normally, it costs a little more, but the price I’m giving you here includes a discount for being a reader of my blog. So definitely click through the link or remember to use the NEILPATEL20 coupon code at checkout to get the savings.
Although WP Engine isn’t cheap, there are no skyrocketing rates or hidden charges. However, you can select some extra features for an add-on cost, such as automated plug-in updates for $3 per month or an additional site for $17 per month.
The Startup plan works for one site and comes with 10 GB storage and 50 GB bandwidth, which can handle about 25,000 visits each month. It recently had a minor price drop.
Upgrading to the Professional, Growth, or Scale plans will let you build more sites and host more traffic. At the top end, Scale, you’re allowed 400,000 visits each month while getting 50 GB of storage and 500 GB of monthly bandwidth for $218 per month.
There’s also a separate track of plans for ecommerce. Those plans scale resources in the exact same way as the standard managed WordPress plans. They include powerful web store features as well. The Startup plan for WordPress ecommerce starts at $27 per month when paying annually.
With the ecommerce option, you receive a platform built to use WooCommerce, as well as premium themes designed specifically for ecommerce. Additionally, the automated plug-in updates I mentioned earlier are included as part of this tier without an extra cost.
For most people, the standard WP Engine plan is everything they need and more. But if you have any expectations about needing ecommerce features, the slightly higher price for this option still provides a good value. Both options have a 60-day money back guarantee. This is my top recommendation for managed WordPress hosting, and I am hardly alone in that opinion.
Make WP Engine your first and last stop for managed WordPress hosting. Sign up for a year today, and get two months free.
best web hosting companies in nigeria
Getting the best web hosting in Nigeria is a different palava compared to the other web hosting options we have in Europe and the United States.
Under normal circumstances, when choosing the right website hosting provider in other parts of the world, uptime and load time are the most important factors, along with their pricing plans.
But here in Nigeria, it is unrealistic to check the uptime of a hosting company because most Nigeria web hosting companies don’t show this information to the public.
Choosing the right web host is by far the most important thing when getting a new website for your business. Don’t get me wrong, the design is also critical, but it won’t mean anything if your website is slow or inaccessible, right?
So what can you do to solve this problem? How do you know the best web hosting company in Nigeria?
Don’t fret! Based on my experience and that of my partners, I have taken the time to list out the best, cheapest, and most reliable web hosting in Nigeria.
If you don’t have the time to read the whole list, Smart Web is my best web hosting company in the Nigeria. And yes, they are fast, affordable, and more reliable than the other web hosting companies in Nigeria.
Their web hosting service is more than suitable for any type of website, even if you want to start a blog or create a free ecommerce website.
You can also get a discount through Tech O’Clock if you decide to go for Smart Web.
- 6 Best Web Hosting Providers in Nigeria
- 1. SmartWeb Nigeria — Best Rated Web Hosting Company
- 2. DomainRacer — Cheapest Web Hosting Company
- 3. QServers — Most Reliable Hosting Company in Nigeria
- 4. BlueHost — International Web Hosting Company
- 5. WhoGoHost — Most Popular Hosting Company in Nigeria
- 6. Web4Africa — The Biggest Web Host in Africa
- How Much Does Hosting Cost in Nigeria?
- Contributor
6 Best Web Hosting Providers in Nigeria
- SmartWeb is the most satisfying web hosting company in Nigeria.
- DomainRacer is the cheapest web hosting company for Nigerians.
- QServers is the most reliable web hosting company in Nigeria.
- BlueHost is the best web hosting company in the world.
- WhoGoHost is the most popular web hosting company in Nigeria.
- Web4Africa is the biggest web hosting company in Africa.
So let’s take them one after the other, shall we?
1. SmartWeb Nigeria — Best Rated Web Hosting Company
SmartWeb Nigeria was the first web hosting company I tried when I started my digital marketing agency some years ago. And we’ve been through a lot of hiccups together.
When I joined SmartWeb Nigeria about six years ago, their service was excellent. And they had good customer service to back it up too. But they fucked up a few months ago (they’ve now made changes), and that made me place them on the bottom of this list in the last version.
However, they’ve made the necessary changes and I haven’t had the time to adjust the article to match the great customer service and quality of their web hosting services.
SmartWeb has one of the best (if not the best sef) customer support in the web hosting industry in Nigeria! And they’ve proved this to me and many others multiple times over.
And honestly, aside the small issue we had many months ago, this makes it the 5th year of me being their customer.
To prove to you that this is not just a hype, here is a screenshot of my dashboard on SmartWeb’s website.
My advice—If you want a Nigeria hosting company for your business that is fast and secure, I think SmartWeb would be a very good start for your new website. However, if you are just window shopping, then by all means, keep reading to check out the other web hosting companies in Nigeria.
Smart Web’s starter package would cost you just ₦450/mo and just ₦5000/yr. However, like most web hosting plans, you get to save more if you choose to pay yearly. Smart Web is also the most affordable hosting company in Nigeria.
My Rating: 9.2/10
2. DomainRacer — Cheapest Web Hosting Company
DomainRacer is one of the most popular web hosting providers for marketers. The popularity is not only because you get cheap web hosting in Nigeria, but their hosting services are also very reliable.
DomainRacer provides hosting services such as Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Reseller Hosting, LMS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting and Application Hosting (WordPress, PHP, MySQL, E-commerce, Web developer, Node.js, Magento, Joomla, Drupal). All these services are at a very affordable price.
If you want to use DomainRacer’s web hosting plans, it doesn’t matter where you live or where your business is. Because they have tier-4 data centres in India, USA, UK, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany and more.
If you are planning to migrate your website, they have a free website migration system. You don’t need to worry about losing data because their plans give you free weekly Jet Backups. There is also a free SEO Default tool to boost your website’s ranking on Google.
All hosting plans of DomainRacer are very affordable. You can start hosting a website at $0.99/month only. Also, you will get many free and amazing add-ons with their hosting plans. With most Nigerian card limits set at $25 per month, you should have no problem paying with your Naira Master or Visa cards.
My Rating: 8.1/10
3. QServers — Most Reliable Hosting Company in Nigeria
QServers is also a very reliable website hosting company in Nigeria. And the main reason why I said this is because of their service uptime.
I have several websites hosted with them, and hardly get a notification from JetPack monitoring service, telling you that your website is down or inaccessible.
Although you might get limited features compared to the other web hosting plans, their basic hosting server can handle a decent amount of traffic better than most hosting companies I have tested.
QServers‘ starter package would cost you ₦900/mo and just ₦9000/yr. And just like most web hosting plans, you get to save more if you choose to pay yearly.
And here’s what you get as part of your package: 2 GB of storage, 8 GB of bandwidth, a free.COM.NG domain, a free SSL Certificate, unlimited emails, 5 subdomains, cPanel, unlimited MySQL, and daily backups in case something goes wrong with your website, and you need to restore it.
My Rating: 7.3/10
4. BlueHost — International Web Hosting Company
Honestly, if I wanted to do real justice to this article, BlueHost shouldn’t even be on this list. And it’s not because their service is poor but because it’s quite expensive here in Nigeria, and you might run into issues paying for their service due to CBN’s restriction on our naira debit cards.
One of the best things about them is that WordPress.org (the most popular website software) named them the best web hosting provider for their CMS. And they also offer good value at a fair price in dollars.
Some benefits of their basic shared hosting plan include; one-click WordPress installation, free SSL certificate, MOJO marketplace to install apps, a free domain name, cPanel, a 24/7 support team, and $175 in free advertising credits.
You will get all this for an introductory price of just $2.65/mo. Which is not that bad, considering BlueHost is the most popular web hosting company in the world!
If you want speed, security, and a great user experience on your website, BlueHost uses international standards when it comes to getting the best web hosting in Nigeria. So you can definitely try them out too.
My Rating: 7.3/10
5. WhoGoHost — Most Popular Hosting Company in Nigeria
WhoGoHost is the most popular web hosting company in Nigeria. With more than 9,000 active customers and over 23,000 active domains registered with them, they have been here for a while.
However, their web servers are slow, and you don’t even have to go too far to put this to test.
All you have to do is visit WhoGoHost’s website to notice how slow their own website is. But you can always give them a try if you love slow things. Just kidding. Don’t!
Just like every other web hosting company in Nigeria, there are different options to choose from. Some of them include shared hosting, reseller packages, cloud hosting, and VPS hosting.
WhoGoHost is also an accredited IBM business partner, a Google Suite reseller, a Cloudflare certified partner, and an Inter Switch partner.
While all these certifications sound great, the pricing plan is more important. So let’s see what you get with their basic hosting plan.
The smallest hosting package on WhoGoHost is the Premium plan, and it comes with some exciting features. Their basic package would cost you ₦800/mo or ₦8000/yr.
And the plan gives you access to 6 GB of storage space, 30 GB of bandwidth, 10 subdomains, 2 add-on domains, a free .NG domain, a free SSL Certificate, unlimited emails, unlimited databases, and 24/7 support.
My Rating: 7.2/10
6. Web4Africa — The Biggest Web Host in Africa
Web4Africa is the best hosting company in the whole of Africa. However, their monthly plan is more expensive compared to most hosting companies in Nigeria.
While a lot of people might be discouraged because of their monthly plan, I bought a test domain and hosting from them, and as you might have guessed, I loved my experience with them.
Web4Africa’s support team is top-notch too. You should see how quickly they responded when I wanted to transfer my domain to their platform.
It will cost you about ₦1,200 for their Mercury plan, but you get a discount if you decide to pay yearly. Their yearly plan is just ₦9000, which is a steal if you ask me.
Here’s what you get with that plan: cPanel, unlimited bandwidth, a free .COM.NG domain, a free SSL Certificate, unlimited emails, unlimited add-on domains, cPanel, unlimited databases, weekly backups, and a very fast support team.
My Rating: 7.1/10
How Much Does Hosting Cost in Nigeria?
Nigerian internet users are looking for cheaper ways to get their hosting services. The cost of web hosting in Nigeria is one of the most expensive in the world, and this is due to the lack of competition.
Hosting is a service that consists of storing and making available website files on a server so that they can be accessed by internet users. Hosting services are usually provided by hosting companies who offer a range of packages to suit different needs.
Web hosting Nigeria costs depend on factors like bandwidth, storage space, server location, and support services offered by the host company.
Here’s the list of some hosting companies and their hosting prices in Nigeria:
| Web Hosting | SmartWeb | DomainRacer | QServers | BlueHost | WhoGoHost | Web4Africa |
| Shared Hosting | ₦450/mo | $0.99/mo | ₦900/mo | $2.95/mo | ₦800/mo | ₦1,200/mo |
| Dedicated Hosting | ₦129,000/mo | $88/ mo | ₦159,000/mo | $80/mo | — | — |
| VPS Hosting | ₦30,500/mo | $8.3/mo | ₦18,000/mo | $20/mo | — | ₦12,000/mo |
| Cloud Hosting | ₦7,300/mo | — | — | — | ₦10,500/mo | — |
| WordPress Hosting | ₦4,200/mo | — | ₦1,500/mo | $2.95/mo | ₦1,800/mo | ₦4,200/mo |