Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies: 2022 Speed Comparison

I compared 20 hosting plans, looking at their page speed scores and server responses, to put together this guide of the top 10 fastest hosting plans for WordPress. You may be surprised at how some of the better known hosting companies didn’t get in the top 10.

From actual speed tests, the fastest WordPress hosting companies in 2022 were Cloudways (using Vultr, Digital Ocean, and AWS servers), A2 Hosting, Kinsta, WPX, Flywheel, Hostinger, and WP Engine.

You’ll see Cloudways listed multiple times here since they offer a managed hosting service using the bare metal hosting from other providers. This setup is obviously working for them (and for us!) since they are topping the list. I also listed Hostinger twice since their cloud hosting and shared hosting are so different. I’ll go into more detail on them and all the other super fast WP hosting companies below.

Top 10 Fastest WordPress Hosting $50/month Or Less

Rank	Hosting Provider	Page Speed	Response Time	Uptime	Price*
1	Cloudways (Vultr)	0.69s	191ms	100%	$13-50/mo
2	Cloudways (Digital Ocean)	0.85s	243ms	100%	$12-50/mo
3	A2 Hosting	0.81s	334ms	99.97%	$6.99/mo
4	Kinsta	1.2s	203ms	99.99%	$30/mo
5	Hostinger (cloud hosting)	1.22s	143ms	99.9%	$38.49/mo
6	WPX	0.93s	298ms	99.85%	$49.99/mo
7	Cloudways (AWS)	1.14s	338ms	100%	$36.51/mo
8	Flywheel	0.95s	424ms	99.98%	$25/mo
9	Hostinger (shared hosting)	1.37s	294ms	99.82%	$7.49/mo
10	WP Engine	1.31s	632ms	99.99%	$43/mo

* Prices based on monthly average over 2 years. I do this to account for standard pricing after any introductory offer. Posted prices also don’t include any additional discounts that may be provided by using the links below.

See full comparison at the very bottom of this article.

Why Fast WordPress Hosting Is So Important For Your Site

Having a website that loads fast is a must, both for user experience and for ranking high in Google search results, as well as other search engines. Your site visitors don’t want to wait for pages to load and in general, your website should load within 1-2 seconds. In fact, according to a recent study by Google, 53% of mobile visitors will give up if your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds – most likely to a competitor’s site.

How quickly your site loads depends on a lot of factors but the first, and easiest step, is choosing a fast hosting for your WordPress website. From my research, I was even surprised at the difference in speed between the hosting companies that I compared. Hosting plans ranged from an average server response time of 143ms (for Hostinger) to 2075ms (for Dreamhost). For overall time to load, using a default WordPress site, the load times ranged between 0.69s (for Cloudways with Vultr) to 2.51s (for Inmotion hosting).

As you can see, with the goal of having your website load in 1-2 seconds, choosing the right hosting is super important.

If you’d like to learn about other ways to speed up your website’s load time, read my article “How To Make Your WordPress Website Load Faster“.

What To Look For When You Compare Hosting

When comparing hosting providers, speed and reliability are the most important factors to look at, followed by customer service and ease of use.

• Speed: Having a fast hosting provider is critical to your website’s overall site speed and success, as discussed in the previous section.
• Uptime: Having a reliable website host is also crucial and you should look for an uptime of at least 99.9% (that’s about 44 minutes of downtime per month) – any hosting with a lower uptime wouldn’t be acceptable in my book.
• Ease Of Use: How easy is there website and hosting control panel to navigate? If it’s confusing and difficult to use, you may want to choose a different hosting provider that is easier to use.
• Customer Service: How is their customer support? Can you give them a call or do they have an instant chat? If it’s good hosting, you won’t have to contact them very much but when you do have a problem, being able to talk to a real person makes a huge difference.

You may also want dedicated resources versus shared hosting. In general, managed or cloud hosting plans will be faster than shared hosting since they have dedicated resources allocated to your website and include a lot of optimizations built into their hosting such as built-in server caching. Also with shared hosting plans, like the name suggests, the server resources are shared with other websites so if one website on the server uses up a ton of resources, everyone else feels it.

With that said, shared hosting is generally cheaper and there are some shared hosting options that made my list of fastest hosting plans.

Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies Compared

I’ve provided brief summaries below for each of these hosting companies. Click on the links to visit their sites for more information and maybe to sign up.

Where possible, I’ve tracked down discounts for you as well. To get you the best deal, some of them are actually affiliate links from other websites (I’m just a nice guy).

Also, just a quick primer what these numbers mean:

• Page Speed: The total time it takes in seconds to load a default home page – the lower the number, the better!
• Server Response Time: The time it takes in milliseconds (1000ms = 1s) to get that initial response from the server (then the page loads)
• Server Uptime: The percentage of time the server is up and running within a year (anything under 99.9% should be a red flag)

Let’s talk a little more about Cloudways first. Cloudways isn’t a traditional hosting company – they offer a managed hosting service that adds an extra layer on top of “bare metal” server hosting from other providers. These other hosting companies (Vultr, Digital Ocean, AWS) provide servers that don’t have the control panel and optimizations that make hosting easy to work with. To use hosting such as Vultr directly, you’d have to know how to log into the server via command line and take care of business using Linux commands.

That’s where Cloudways comes in: they offer that control panel, an easy way to login and manage your hosting, extra optimizations, and cheap reliable email hosting through Rackspace. It’s actually what we use to host over 95% of our client websites at my company. You can read more about Cloudways on their website.

OK, now you know how Cloudways works, let’s take a look at their fastest hosting which uses a Vultr server.

#1 Cloudways With Vultr Cloud Hosting Option

Choose Cloudways with Vultr if you’re looking for ultimate hosting speed and if you have development experience. This hosting is fast!

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	0.69s
Server Response Time:	191ms
Server Uptime:	100%

With this plan you get all the speed of using Vultr cloud hosting but with the managed services offered by Cloudways to keep it easy to use and with all the features you’d expect (see above for how Cloudways is unique). When you set up your first website, you can choose their optimized WordPress option which installs the base WordPress theme along with caching and security plugins. While they don’t offer email themselves, they do have a deal with Rackspace, one of the best email providers, so you can set up email accounts easily, and at a discounted price. For tech support, they offer support tickets and 24/7 online chat, no phone support.

If you’re a developer, you’ll appreciate all the extra features they give you including SSH access, Varnish cache, Object Cache Pro, Cloudflare, New Relic, a staging environment, and lots of server and application settings (if you want them since the defaults are usually fine). Just a note here – Cloudways now offers the Cloudflare Enterprise for just $4.99/month on any site which gives you even more security and speed optimizations.

Recommended Plan

At $50 per month, the High Frequency 4 GB, 2 CPU cloud hosting will give you more than enough resources and I typically host around 8 websites comfortably on this plan. This plan would also be perfect for sites with high content and lots of traffic, or for a large membership site. I prefer the High Frequency servers since they are using the latest Intel 3+GHz servers and use the faster NVMe SSD storage.

If you’re just running one website, the $13/month High Frequency hosting plan would work fine for you. With just 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM, it won’t be quite as fast as the beefier plan but it’ll be close.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a hosting plan at $50/month or less that loads the fastest with no downtime, this is it. You won’t get phone support or some of the control panel features you may be used to but Cloudways is the best for speed and site optimizations.

#2 Cloudways With Digital Ocean Cloud Hosting Option

Choose Cloudways with Digital Ocean if want really fast hosting speed and an extra 1TB of bandwidth each month over the Cloudways plan with Vultr.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	0.85s
Server Response Time:	243ms
Server Uptime:	100%

With this plan you get all the speed of using Digital Ocean cloud hosting but also with the benefit of managed services offered by Cloudways. Read the above review of Cloudways with Vultr – the same applies with using the Digital Ocean cloud hosting option. The biggest difference is that you’ll get an extra 1 TB of bandwidth each month (4 TB vs 3 TB) and 48 GB less disk space (80 GB vs 128 GB) when compared to the Cloudways Vultr plan with the same RAM.

Recommended Plan

At $50 per month, the Digital Ocean Premium 4 GB, 2 CPU cloud hosting will also give you more than enough resources and I typically host around 8 websites comfortably on this plan. This plan would also be perfect for sites with high content and lots of traffic, or for a large membership site. I prefer the Premium Droplet servers since they are using the latest Intel 3+GHz servers and use the faster NVMe SSD storage.

If you’re just running one website, the $12/month Premium hosting plan would work fine for you. With just 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM, it won’t be quite as fast as the beefier plan but it’ll be close.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a hosting plan at $50/month or less that loads fast with no downtime, with 25% more bandwidth, this is it.

#3 A2 Hosting

Choose A2 Hosting for powerful and fast hosting that’s under $10/month. A2 Hosting includes a lot of speed optimizations and features while remaining affordable.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	0.81s
Server Response Time:	334ms
Server Uptime:	99.97%

A2 is an industry giant for shared hosting and their “Turbo Boost” hosting gives you really fast hosting with many additional features and speed optimizations. What the Turbo Boost means is that you’re getting the faster server technology with LiteSpeed web servers and high-end NVMe Solid State disk drives. They also include their A2 Optimized WP plugin that gives you advanced caching and optimizations.

While A2 starts off a little confusing with all the options, you get a lot. From automatic backups, 1-click software installs, unlimited** email accounts and databases, and 24/7 network monitoring, they have everything that most WordPress website owners would be looking for. For advanced users, you also get WHCMS panel to manage billing and managing multiple sites.

With A2 Hosting, you can contact tech support 24/7 through online chat, by phone, by email, or through support tickets. As with most shared hosting, there will be a wait time and not every member of their “Guru Crew” will be a hosting guru. Most people are happy with the customer service though.

They also offer a 30-day money back guarantee, no questions asked.

Recommended Plan

At $6.99 per month, the Turbo Boost Hosting with 2 GB RAM, 2 CPUs, and NVME SSD storage gives you more than enough power for your website, with lots of optimizations to tweak. You can typically host around 6 websites with this plan comfortably before you start seeing performance issues.

Don’t touch any of A2 Hosting’s plans that do not include the Turbo Boost since, like the name suggests, they will be quite a bit slower.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a lightning fast hosting plan for under $10/month with almost no downtime, this hosting is for you.

#4 Kinsta

Choose Kinsta if you’re looking for fast managed hosting with an easy to use hosting interface and quick, knowledgeable customer support.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	1.2s
Server Response Time:	203ms
Server Uptime:	99.99%

Made for those who want fast, quality hosting without all the fuss, Kinsta provides managed hosting built on top of the lighting fast hosting platform Google Cloud Hosting. The interface is clean and simple, with all the hosting options easy to to find. They include their own premium CDN and 24 data centers around the globe, so can serve up quick pages to anywhere. WordPress is easy to install, they include built-in caching and other optimizations, include a free SSL certificate and guarantee that your website will be free of malware. They also offer free WordPress site migration from any other hosting.

For tech support, they offer support tickets and 24/7 online chat with a typical response time of under 3 minutes, no phone support.

Recommended Plan

For under $50/month, Kinsta only offers their starter plan at $30/month. It includes just 1 WordPress install, 25K visits per month, and 10 GB disk space.

Bottom line: If you just want a fast, reliable hosting company that does all the heavy lifting for you, Kinsta is easy to use and offers an optimized platform for your website.

#5 Hostinger Cloud Hosting

(Use code “FANDISCOUNT” for an additional 10% off)

Choose Hostinger Cloud Hosting for fast hosting that includes dedicated resources and a free domain name, emails, CDN, and more.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	1.22s
Server Response Time:	143ms
Server Uptime:	99.82%

Hostinger is usually known for their shared hosting but their separate cloud hosting is even more speed optimized and includes more dedicated resources. They also have their own control panel (hPanel) that is much easier to use that the traditional Plesk or cPanel interfaces, and they make it really easy to install and manage WordPress.

To achieve their fast hosting speeds, they use LiteSpeed HTTP3 servers enabled with LiteSpeed Caching. Included with each hosting plan, they include 100 free email accounts, unlimited bandwidth**, unlimited databases, free SSL and WordPress Acceleration.

Cloudflare’s CDN is also included, along with a dedicated IP address and free site migration so you can move from your current hosting.

Their customer support which includes live chat and support tickets, typically has a 30-40 minute response time and they include a 30-Day money back guarantee.

Recommended Plan

At $38.49 per month (averaged over 2 years), the Cloud Professional plan can host up to 300 websites, has 250 GB SSD storage, 6 GB RAM, 4 CPU cores, and unlimited bandwidth. It also includes the Cloudflare CDN, staging tool and SSH Access. While this plan would work great for multiple sites, keep in mind that for additional websites, extra domains cost $9.99/year and additional SSL certificates are a one-time $11.95 cost.

If you’re looking for shared hosting, Hostinger has a strong offering here as well with plans starting at just $2.99/month. You can upgrade from shared hosting to cloud hosting at anytime. They also have a $14.49/month Cloud Startup plan that provides plenty of resources for most sites.

Bottom line: For $38.49/month, Hostinger provides first class speed, dedicated hosting and options – all with great customer support!

#6 WPX

Choose WPX for fast, reliable managed hosting with unparalleled customer support.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	0.93s
Server Response Time:	298ms
Server Uptime:	99.85%

WPX is one of the fastest WordPress hosts with LiteSpeed servers, free CDN, and caching but they are also one of the most affordable managed hosting providers and have amazing customer support. Like other managed hosting providers, they provide free SSL, automatic backups, and free migrations from other hosting. But they also include unlimited email accounts, their own included CDN, advanced caching and speed optimizations, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited databases and have a malware-free guarantee.

What sets WPX apart though is their advertised average customer support response time of under 30 seconds but in practice, it looks like it’s actually faster! Whether you contact them through support ticket or chat, you’re going to get a knowledgeable support representative that knows what they’re doing.

Recommended Plan

For $41.58 per month Professional Plan, you get super fast hosting that can support up to 15 websites and includes 20 GB high speed storage and 200 GB of bandwidth each month. You don’t get dedicated memory (RAM) or processors (CPUs) but instead WPX allocates enough resources automatically for your website to run optimally.

If you’re just running one or a few websites, the $20.83/month Business Plan should work fine for you since it’s rated to be able to run 5 websites.

Bottom line: Out of the managed hosting plans, WPX offers the best customer support along with a good range of features. You won’t get as much dedicated resources but this may be the perfect plan for you.

#7 Cloudways With Amazon Web Services (AWS) Option

Choose Cloudways with AWS if you prefer using AWS but don’t want the hassle of managing an Amazon EC2 server.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	1.14s
Server Response Time:	338ms
Server Uptime:	100%

With this plan you get all the speed of using AWS cloud hosting but with the managed services offered by Cloudways to keep it easy to use. Read the above review of Cloudways with Vultr – the same applies with using the AWS cloud hosting option. The biggest difference is that you’ll get half the RAM, only 20 GB of diskspace (vs 128 GB) and only 20 GB bandwidth (vs 3 TB but you can pay for additional bandwidth).

Recommended Plan

At $36.51 per month, the AWS 2 GB, 2 CPU cloud hosting will give you more than enough resources for one site and I typically host around 4 websites comfortably on this plan. This plan would also be perfect for a large WordPress with lots of complexity.

With Cloudways, this AWS plan is the cheapest that you can sign up for.

Bottom line: If you’re wanting to use AWS for your website but want to have an easier time managing your hosting, this is the plan for you.

#8 Flywheel

Choose Flywheel if you’re looking for fast managed hosting that’s easy to use and understand, optimized right out of the box.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	0.95s
Server Response Time:	424ms
Server Uptime:	99.98%

Flywheel removes a lot of the options and confusion that’s inherent with hosting to give you a ready made solution for hosting a WordPress site, optimized for speed. Flywheel comes with its own server caching, includes a free CDN, free SSL, and will migrate over your existing site for free. Built on the Google Cloud Platform, your site will be reliable and load quickly.

Their customer support usually responds within 3 minutes and you can reach out 24/7 via email, chat, or phone.

Recommended Plan

The $25/mo Starter Plan includes 1 WordPress website, with 25k visits, 10 GB high-speed storage and 50 GB bandwidth. All plans include built-in server caching, CDN, SSL certificate, and more.

If you have a small website, the $13/month Tiny hosting plan would work fine for you, with 5,000/month visits and 5 GB storage. For freelancers and agencies, they offer some compelling plans that would work great for managing client websites.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a fast managed hosting solution with little fuss and is easy to use, Flywheel would be a good option. Only 1 website is included with the Starter plan though so that could be limiting.

#9 Hostinger Shared Hosting

(Use code “FANDISCOUNT” for an additional 10% off)

Choose Hostinger for fast hosting under $10/month that is easy to use and includes a free domain name, emails, CDN, and more.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	1.37s
Server Response Time:	143ms
Server Uptime:	99.82%

Hostinger really packs a lot into their shared hosting plans and you’re really getting an amazing deal for their price. They have their own control panel (hPanel) that is much easier to use that the traditional Plesk or cPanel interfaces, and they make it really easy to install and manage WordPress.

Just like with their cloud hosting, they use LiteSpeed HTTP3 servers enabled with LiteSpeed Caching. Included with each shared plan, they include 100 free email accounts, unlimited bandwidth**, unlimited databases, free SSL and WordPress Acceleration.

Their most expensive shared plan at $8.99/mo (with $4.99/mo introductory offer) also includes the Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, free domain name, and more.

Their customer support which includes live chat and support tickets, typically has a 30-40 minute response time and they include a 30-Day money back guarantee.

Recommended Plan

At $6.99 per month (averaged over 2 years), the Business Shared Hosting can host up to 100 websites, has 200 GB SSD storage, and supports around 100,000 monthly visits. It also includes the Cloudflare CDN, staging tool and SSH Access. While this plan would work great for multiple sites, keep in mind that for additional websites, extra domains cost $9.99/year and additional SSL certificates are a one-time $11.95 cost.

If you’re looking for cloud hosting, Hostinger has a strong offering here as well (see above), and you can upgrade at any time when you need the extra dedicated resources.

Bottom line: For $6.99/month, Hostinger provides first class speed, hosting and options – all with great customer support!

#10 WP Engine

Choose WP Engine for fast, stable hosting that’s very developer friendly and highly secure.

Speed Results
Page Speed (Time To Load):	1.31s
Server Response Time:	632ms
Server Uptime:	100%

WP Engine offers secure managed hosting that’s very geared towards WordPress developers with built in development environments, Git deployment, top notch security, and a unique 1-click restore feature. Built on their own platform that utilizes Evercache technology, free CDN, and other speed optimizations, they specialize in fast WordPress hosting. For security features, WP Engine includes a free SSL, daily malware scans, built-in firewall and offers a Free of Malware guarantee. For tech support, they provide 24/7 chat and email support, along with phone support during business hours, with response times usually under 20 seconds.

If you’re a developer, you’ll appreciate the 1-click development environment and 1-click restore point. They also include SSH access, advanced caching, firewall rules, redirects, and much more.

Recommended Plan

At $43 per month (calculated over 2 years, billed annually), you get WP Engine’s Professional plan which includes high-end managed hosting for 3 sites. With all WP Engine plans, you get top-notch speed, great performance, enhanced security, automatic WordPress/PHP updates, great developer tools, and amazing support.

If you’re just running one website, WP Engine’s $21.87/month Starter hosting plan would work fine for you. Besides less resources, the only difference is that you will only get chat support.

Bottom line: WP Engine has tremendous customer support and has a lot of great development features. While you don’t get as many resources as some of the hosting companies in this list, they take care of a lot for you.

What Hosting Would I Recommend?

Now that I’ve given you the all the information and a full comparison, here’s who I would personally recommend:

• If you’re looking for raw performance, resources and speed, go with Cloudways (with either Vultr or Digital Ocean platform).
• If you’re wanting fast, affordable hosting with tons of options, go with A2 Hosting. The Hostinger Cloud Startup plan is not a bad choice either though.
• For managed hosting without a lot of the fuss and great performance, go with either Kinsta or WPX Hosting.

Full 2022 Fastest Hosting Companies

Top 20 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers Compared At $50/month Or Less

Rank	Hosting Provider	Page Speed	Response Time	Uptime	Price*
1	Cloudways (Vultr)	0.69s	191ms	100%	$13-50/mo
2	Cloudways (Digital Ocean)	0.85s	243ms	100%	$12-50/mo
3	A2 Hosting	0.81s	334ms	99.97%	$6.99/mo
4	Kinsta	1.2s	203ms	99.99%	$30/mo
5	Hostinger (cloud hosting)	1.22s	143ms	99.9%	$38.49/mo
6	WPX	0.93s	298ms	99.85%	$49.99/mo
7	Cloudways (AWS)	1.14s	338ms	100%	$36.51/mo
8	Flywheel	0.95s	424ms	99.98%	$25/mo
9	Hostinger (shared hosting)	1.37s	143ms	99.82%	$7.49/mo
10	WP Engine	1.31s	632ms	99.99%	$43/mo
11	Linode	1.78s	354ms	100%	$30/mo
12	LiquidWeb	1.14s	665ms	99.99%	$45/mo
13	NameHero	1.09s	762ms	99.85%	$9.06/mo
14	Green Geeks	4.08s	306ms	99.95%	$6.95/mo
15	SiteGround	1.58s	658ms	99.8%	$25.34/mo
16	BlueHost	1.93s	655ms	99.7%	$9.72/mo
17	inmotion hosting	2.25s	2958ms	99.89%	$9.49/mo
18	Hostgater	7.73s	1714ms	99.89%	$7.68/mo
19	Dreamhost	2.51s	2075ms	99.26%	$7.47/mo
20	Hostpapa	3.66s	1765ms	98.21%	$9.47/mo

* Prices based on monthly average over 2 years. I do this to account for standard pricing after any introductory offer. Posted prices also don’t include any additional discounts that may be provided by using the links below.

There were a few other hosting companies that I looked at too but they were either too slow, too expensive since I was looking for $50/month or less, or the speed tests were inconclusive.