When it comes to blogging, whether you’re a beginner seeking a hassle-free setup, someone eager to learn without coding skills, or even a future visionary planning to expand, the right blog hosting service is your essential foundation. We understand the unique needs of individuals looking to embark on their blogging journey.
However, the popularity of online blogging makes it difficult to find the best blog hosting sites for your needs. That’s why we’ve meticulously tested and handpicked hosting services that excel in areas like user-friendliness, flexibility, and growth potential.
Our selection process considered aspects such as security, page loading speed, bonus features, and more factors. In this article, we present the best 7 blog hosting services tailored to meet your personal blogging aspirations, whether you’re a beginner or a future influencer. It will help you discover platforms that offer the best performance at reasonable prices and help pave the way for your blogging success.
Top 7 best hosting sites for blogs
- Hostinger – best blog hosting site for beginners in 2023
- Bluehost – user-friendly hosting service for blogging
- SiteGround – inexpensive and well-performing blog hosting site
- DreamHost – blog hosting site for WordPress and small businesses
- A2 Hosting – simple but comprehensive hosting service
- HostGator – flexible option for business blog hosting
- InterServer – versatile blog hosting site with reasonable prices
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Best blog hosting sites – detailed list
The overall best hosting solutions aren’t necessarily optimal for housing a business or personal blog. Therefore, we tested various services and focused on features tailored specifically for maintaining a top-quality blog. Naturally, we also evaluated other vital aspects, such as ease of use, site performance, customer support options, and value for money. We concluded that the 7 providers outlined below are perfect for your personal or business blogging needs.
1. Hostinger – the best blog hosting provider overall
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Hostinger is the best blog hosting provider that is packed with top-notch blog features, like automatic WordPress migration, easy-to-use hPanel, additional website builder with analytical tools, and more, making it a top hosting choice for a personal or a business blog.
Blog features. You get a free SSL certificate, a custom domain name, and up to 100 professional email accounts. Meanwhile, data backups are either weekly or daily, depending on your plan. All plans include e-commerce optimizations for monetizing your blog, which is perfect for businesses and regular users thinking about turning their blog into a side hustle. Hostinger also offers a 1-click WordPress installation, automatic migration, and additional features, such as WordPress AI Tools for generating content based on your descriptions and SEO Marketing Panel available to download in the custom hPanel. Crucially, these powerful features are easy to use, allowing blog hosting beginners to utilize them immediately. However, seasoned veterans will also benefit from their immense utility.
Performance. Hostinger keeps its hardware up to date and offers 8 data center locations in the US, UK, Lithuania, France, Netherlands, Singapore, India, and Brazil. Thus, your blog will load very fast for users across the world. We tested Hostinger’s performance by setting up a blog site, and throughout 2 months time, we’ve noted a perfect 100% uptime, an average response time of 511ms, and swift 0.9s page load times.
Customer support. The leading blog hosting service provides support through 24/7 live chat, email, the ticketing system, or a knowledge base. While reviewing Hostinger, we texted them via the live chat about adding a website to a hosting account, and in 20 minutes, our question was solved.
Pricing. The Hostinger Shared plan costs $1.79/month and is the perfect starting point for personal and business blogging. It includes a free domain and 100GB SSD storage to begin your online journey. If that’s not enough, you should consider upgrading to plans with higher resources, such as Cloud Startup, which includes double the storage capacity and other excellent benefits. Plus, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re unsatisfied with the results.
2. Bluehost – beginner-friendly solution for hosting blog
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Bluehost is one of the best blog hosting options due to its ease of use and additional features like Google Ads. Its inclusive plans make it one of the go-to providers on the market.
Blog features. Besides essentials like an SSL certificate, each plan includes Site Analytics for tracking your blog’s performance. Furthermore, the SEO Toolkit is available for an additional fee for monitoring your blog’s performance on search engines. Additionally, Bluehost offers a $150 credit to launch your first Google Ads campaign, there’s a free CDN and caching, and 1-click install option. And with premium plans, you gain CodeGuard Backups, which create daily backups automatically and support one-click restoration. Ultimately, we had no trouble taking advantage of the service’s many features without needing extra assistance.
Performance. Our Bluehost tests showed that the service is very reliable and just a little less powerful when put to a blog hosting test. While it has no uptime guarantee, the provider delivered a highly trustworthy 99.99% uptime. And it also showcased an average response time of 361ms paired with 1.8s site loading times. Aside from that, it has data centers in the US, so the best performance can be expected for the US audience.
Customer support. If you face challenges while hosting your blog using Bluehost, there’s 24/7 live chat support. You can also contact the provider via phone or by finding an answer in their articles, guides, or FAQs section. For example, during our in-house testing, we were looking for a WordPress installation guide, and Bluehost’s Knowledge Base even consisted of a video walkthrough.
Pricing. The Basic Bluehost plan is suitable for small-scale personal blogs with 1 website support, 10GB SSD storage, and a $2.65/month starting price. Meanwhile, larger business operations should consider upgrading to Pro, which houses 5 websites on 100GB SSD of storage, unlocks CDN, daily backups, and more. Give it a shot using the 30-day money-back guarantee.
3. SiteGround – budget-friendly blog hosting
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SiteGround is among the top-tier blog hosting services, especially well-rated WordPress hosting solutions. It focuses on WordPress while also offering custom management, security, and excellent performance for a powerful blogging experience and output.
Blog features. With SiteGround, you get staging capabilities for controlled development, the ability to add collaborators with customizable user rights, and a 1-click install option for WordPress or Weebly. The provider also offers managed WordPress for covering core updates and security aspects. And the best part – if you want to monetize your blog, there’s an online store, too. Regarding security, all plans include Let’s Encrypt Standard and Wildcard SSL certificates at no extra cost, although you should consider the GoGeek plan to unlock private DNS servers as well.
Performance. During our testing,SiteGround uptime was 99.99%, and our fully-built website boasted 1.5s loading times, which is an excellent result. We experienced just 3 outages that lasted 7 minutes while reviewing SiteGround and its blog hosting capabilities. Overall, you’ll have a decent connection despite your location as SiteGround grants CDN capabilities and has data centers in the US, Europe, Singapore, and Australia.
Customer support. When we bumped into a problem during our evaluation process, we could find a lot of information in the SiteGroun’d help center. However, we decided to pick one more option from their live chat, phone support, and ticketing system, and test it. Fortunately, their customer service on the 24/7 live chat was extremely helpful and assisted us with adding SSL to our blog.
Pricing. SiteGround offers 3 hosting plans. StartUp, which costs only $2.99/month, is ideal when you’re beginning your business or personal blogging journey. It grants 10GB of storage, 1 website, E-commerce support, and other essential perks. Meanwhile, larger organizations can upgrade to gain 40GB of storage, priority support, the highest resource tier, and improved overall performance. Whichever plan you choose, it includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
4. DreamHost – WordPress-oriented blog hosting provider
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DreamHost is another well-rounded hosting provider that offers affordable prices, inclusive plans, and WordPress optimizations, making it one of the best hosting for blog options. While its main focus lies with online businesses, it’s just as great for amateur blogging.
Blog features. Like any worthwhile blog hosting site, DreamHost includes free SSL certificates to safeguard your webpage against various threats. Unfortunately, email features aren’t included by default in the most affordable plans and require paying extra or picking pricier tiers. Customers also gain domain privacy, a Web Application Firewall, and automated daily backups. It also offers free and automated WordPress migration, and the biggest plan gets you a 1-click WordPress installation. More so, there’s a staging option for flawless testing of your content and automatic site statistics to track your blog’s performance.
Performance. We set up our blog with DreamHost to test the performance in detail, and the provider showed an impressive >99.99% uptime and 1.6s site loading time. Response time was an impressive 231ms, which is twice shorter than the market’s average time of 600ms. On the other hand, we weren’t fascinated by its data centers only being in the US and the idea of your site not being so fast for international readers. However, during our DreamHost testing, we learned that if your blog is down for an hour, DreamHost will credit you a day of hosting.
Customer support. DreamHost offers 24/7 live chat, phone support, and 24/7 email tickets. There’s also an extensive knowledge base where you can find help to your issues and of course – access to its community forum. The answers came quite fast, and we had a resolution for our issue in minutes.
Pricing. DreamHost subscription plans begin with the shared Starter plan. It costs only $2.59/month and supports 1 website, includes a free domain, and provides 50GB of SSD storage. Conversely, the business-oriented VPS option comes in various tiers depending on your upgrade needs. Whichever you choose, the 30-day money-back guarantee has you covered.
5. A2 Hosting – fast and simplistic blog hosting
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A2 Hosting is a performance-oriented hosting for blogs that enhances every blog’s performance to be lightning-fast. It’s also one of the few providers to use the good old cPanel for website setup and management.
Blog features. A2 Hosting includes a WordPress auto-installer or 1-click setup on Magenta. It also offers the Site Cloning & Staging feature that lets you test out your blog’s site without risking losing your current work. Moreover, all plans include at least 100GB of SSD storage, free SSL certificates, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited transfers.
Performance. During our 2-month blog hosting test, we noticed only 7 minutes of downtime. This came up to a very trustworthy 99.99% uptime. The average response time of 597ms, however, wasn’t too impressive. On the other hand, site loading time was a solid 1.4s on average. With A2 Hosting, you can select the server that’s closest to your target audience for the best performance results, as they’re located in Arizona, Michigan, Amsterdam, and Singapore.
Customer support. A2 Hosting is slightly behind modern customer support options. While reviewing A2 Hosting, we inquired about pricing in a live chat session and were instead redirected to the ticketing system. Regardless, you’ll be able to reach agents 24/7 or refer to a knowledge base.
Pricing. A2 Hosting has separate pricing tiers for shared and WordPress hosting. The most beginner-friendly option is the shared hosting Startup plan, costing merely $2.99/month. You can use it to host one website on 100GB of SSD storage while enjoying SSL security, website staging, and unlimited email. On the other hand, subsequent plans boast perks like unlimited websites, storage, email accounts, vastly improved performance, and automatic backups. You can test all options using the 30-day money-back guarantee.
6. HostGator – hosting for blog with unlimited resources
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HostGator is a great blog hosting that provides attractive plans for all website owners, blogs included. It is one of the very few providers to offer unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts even in its entry plan.
Blog features. The provider uses a mix of native management dashboards and cPanel for website management. It also includes a 1-click WordPress installation for an easy blog setup process, and the biggest plan includes unlimited sites, a free dedicated IP address, SEO tools, and a free upgrade to positive SSL. Also, bigger plans get you a $500 Google Ad spend and $100 Microsoft Advertising credit for blog promotion.
Performance. When we put it to a blog hosting test for 2 months while writing our HostGator review, the site experienced only 5 minutes of downtime. As usual, the provider gives a 99.9% guarantee, but you get an almost perfect >99.99% uptime. It showcases 525ms average response time and a solid 1.2s webpage loading time, which is pretty solid. More so, this provider will be great for US audiences, as its data centers are located in the US, too.
Customer support. HostGator offers 24/7 phone support and live chat, which can be quite limited if you bump into a serious problem. When we contacted the agent, it took us relatively long, compared to Hostinger’s customer support. However, it also has tons of articles and guides to help you navigate through hosting issues.
Pricing. Blogging beginners using HostGator should opt for the aptly named Hatchling plan. It costs only $2.52/month and includes essential tools like 10GB storage, one-click WordPress installs, infinite email accounts, and a free domain. Meanwhile, established businesses should upgrade to higher tiers to unlock unlimited websites, 40GB SSD disk space, Cloudflare CDN, SEO tools, and other perks. All plans come with 30-day money-back guarantees for risk-free testing.
7. InterServer – budget-friendly month-to-month blog hosting
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InterServer is one more blog hosting that ensures all your blogger needs will be met. You get everything you need for seamless blog hosting, including unlimited hosting for a reasonable price, and a well-known cPanel.
Blog features. The InterServer web hosting plan supports 1-click installs for over 450 cloud apps (such as WordPress and Joomla), includes the SitePad website builder, and offers free website migration. Also, all plans include free SSL and InterShield protection for improved security. For example, the exclusive security tool comes with Inter-Insurance – a free service that restores your blog in case of an attack. Plus, you gain unlimited email accounts for easy communication with your site visitors and various business partners.
Performance. We reviewed InterServer’s blog hosting performance for 3 months, and it seems that the service is reliable and just a bit less powerful. The provider had barely 13 minutes of downtime, maintaining a great 99.99% uptime. Unfortunately, the provider’s average response time was 662ms. Site loading time was also subpar and elapsed a whopping 2.3 seconds.
Customer support. There are 4 different customer service options. You can contact the provider via 24/7 live chat, phone, email, and Messenger. Our experience with the live chat option was great as agents were skilled and eager to fix our issue with WordPress installation.
Pricing. Practically all InterServer features are included in the Standard plan, which costs a mere $2.50/month. Buyers are blessed with unlimited storage, bandwidth, email accounts, free SSL and CDN, automatic weekly backups, and an InterShield security package. Standard plan will meet your needs if you’re a small business, but if you need improved performance, consider upgrading to Boost 4.
Methodology for picking the best hosting for blog
We tested tens of hosting providers, and the list of the best one was compiled based on several criteria. All the providers come with the best blog features, excellent performance, helpful customer support, and the best price-to-quality ratio. Here’s how we picked the best hosting for blog:
- Blog features. Each provider on the list offers blog-related features that enhance your blogging experience. For example,providers on the list offer 1-click WordPress or other software installation, staging, cloning, and caching. In addition, all of them get you professional email accounts, a free SSL certificate, and a custom domain name, and some even include additional perks, such as SEO tools, statistics, or even Google Ads credits for blog promotion.
- Performance. Performance is another key aspect allowing to host blog as seamlessly and efficiently as possible, therefore, we tested it by setting up a fully functioning blog with each provider. It allowed us to identify the efficiency of each provider, their speeds, uptime, and response time to only select the best-performing ones.
- Ease of use. Easy setup is crucial, especially for beginners. It ensures that users can get their blogs up and running quickly without the need for extensive technical knowledge. This minimizes frustration and encourages people to start blogging sooner. That’s why we picked providers that are easy to navigate and don’t require a lot of technical knowledge.
- Low learning curve. A low learning curve means that users can quickly grasp how to use the hosting platform. It reduces the time and effort required to become proficient, making it more accessible for individuals without coding skills or technical backgrounds. We took this into consideration while selecting and testing out the best hosting picks.
- Customization options. Customization is essential for personalization and branding. Hosting services with robust customization options allow bloggers to create a unique and visually appealing blog that reflects their style and message. This is crucial for establishing a distinct online presence. We made sure the provider checked this box and allowed as many customizations as possible.
- Room for growth. A hosting service’s ability to accommodate growth is vital. As a blog expands, it may require additional resources, features, or scalability. Hosting providers with room for growth ensure that bloggers can seamlessly scale their websites as their audience and content grow, avoiding the need for platform migration.
- Customer support. While hosting a blog is a technical task, we tested how helpful the customer support of each provider is. We identified their customer service options and then contacted each of them to help us with a particular issue, such as difficulty migrating to WordPress.
- Value for money. The list of blog hosting providers consists of providers that offer different pricing options and won’t break the bank if you decide to pick one of them for you blog hosting. Moreover, all of them include features essential for blog, so you know what you’re paying for and get the most bang for the buck.
Best blog hosting services compared
What to consider when looking for blog hosting?
Choosing the right blog hosting is not an easy task. Especially since you have so many good hosting providers. However, there are a few factors that matter the most. With that in mind, we put together a step-by-step guide that should make things a bit easier for you.
- Type of blog hosting
- Provider’s performance
- Your blog needs
1. Type of blog hosting
There are 3 primary types of hosting, and each of them is created for a set of specific needs:
- Shared Hosting means sharing a server with several other websites. It’s affordable, easy to use, and as a blogger, this is pretty much all you need. However, if you become bigger, shared hosting will lack power and resources.
- VPS Hosting, (Virtual Private Server) hosting, is the middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. It benefits if your blog is bigger and needs more resources, however, it’s pricier and becomes more complex to use.
- Dedicated hosting means that you have a server all to yourself. It’s one is the most expensive option that comes with the most resources. It’s easy to use as long as you get fully managed dedicated hosting.
If you’re just starting out, it is very possible that shared hosting will be more than sufficient enough. However, if you’re running a very successful blog with loads of continuous visits, VPS might benefit you more, while dedicated hosting seems just a bit too much for blogging alone.
2. Provider’s performance
Whenever you find a web hosting provider, you have to do a performance check. That’s one of the first things you have to do. What’s important to know here? Uptime, average response time, and traffic.
- Uptime translates into how much time your website is up in 30 days. Hence, make sure the provider has at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Average response time is to the period it takes the server to respond to a request. Ideally, your website should respond in less than 600ms. If it goes a bit higher, it’s bad, but beware if it gets close to 1 second.
- Traffic shows how many people have interacted with your site. Look for a provider that is capable of handling your expected traffic and won’t crash the blog.
In short, your blog’s success depends not only on the quality of content but its performance too. A good performance gives you a chance to rank on Google, and your visitors are more likely to enjoy themselves.
3. Your blog needs
Each provider comes with multiple plans that meet your different needs for the blog. Therefore, you should choose based on how many websites you can host, how much bandwidth and storage you get, security features, what other benefits you can enjoy, and so on. Here’s what you need to ask yourself to identify blog needs:
- Will you need more than one website? If all you need is just one website, usually, an entry plan might be all that you’ll need.
- The amount of storage depends on what you’ve planned for your blog. The more pages, images, fancy design elements you wish to have, the more storage you’ll need.
- Are you planning to monetize your blog? If so, security should be at the top of your list. Make sure the basics like SSL and firewalls are included. Additional tools like DDoS, server monitoring, or automated backups will add that extra layer of security.
- How much bandwidth do you need? If you have an estimated number of visitors, the size of your website in GB, and how many pages you will have, just multiply it all. Then multiply that by 30 to get a monthly bandwidth amount needed.
Before you grab the most advertised plan, really think about what you need in terms of resources, and keep in mind the future growth.
Paid blog web hosts vs free blog hosts
You can either build your blog with the help of a hosting provider or simply use a free blogging site, such as Tumblr, Blogger, or Medium. Even though the latter option can be tempting as it’s free of charge, the blog won’t belong to you. Meanwhile, blog hosting comes with a fee but provides you with top-notch security, ownership of your blog, and extra features that enhance your blog’s performance.
With this in mind, we compared each option based on ownership, security, features, and capabilities. In the paragraph below, find how each can benefit you to choose a suitable option.
Free blogging sites
The main advantage of free blogging site is the fact it’s free. Other advantages of the best free blog hosting sites include ease of use, and a relatively fast blog creation process. However, free blogging sites fall short due to them having very limited customization options, no advanced features or extensions, plus there are many limitations on storage space, traffic, and monetization options.
For example, sites like Blogger offer an easy blog creation flow, but you get incredibily limited storage, bandwidth, and poor performance quality. Although it sounds great, the site doesn’t provide you with the ownership of the blog, and includes little to no security features.
Overall, we’d recommend looking into more advanced blog hostings, such as Hostinger. For a minimal fee, you get both – an equally great and easy set up process, ownership, and security.
Paid blog web hosting
One key benefit of blog web hosting is the extensive customization options available. With paid hosting, you have greater control over design, layout, and functionality, allowing you to create a unique and professional-looking blog that aligns with your branding.
Check how free blog hosting compares with paid blog hosting in more detail:
Overall, paid blog web hosting offers flexibility, enhanced features, performance, and security, making it a great choice for bloggers.
Blog hosting with website builders
If both blog hosting and blog hosting sites don’t seem to fully satisfy your blog needs, there’s also an option to turn to website builders. There are many great website builders for blogging, such as Wix, Site123, or Hostinger Website Builder, that will let you fully customize your blog as you see fit.
Of course, each website builder also has its limitations, but generally speaking, a website builder will give you the most creative freedom in creating a blog site.
As a whole, making a choice on how to host your blog is entirely up to you. However, if you wish to have full ownership and control of your blog and its content, blog hosting sites are not the way to go.
Bottom line
Hosting your own blogging platform can be a real challenge. After all, there are several details to have in mind. For example, email accounts and how much storage or bandwidth you might need.
And yet, choosing a reliable hosting service for blogging can ease your way to success. Our top pick is Hostinger which includes an intuitive in-house hPanel for easy site management, e-commerce for monetizing your blog, SEO Marketing Panel, 1-click WordPress installation, and of course, all the essentials, such as a free domain or SSL certificate for a seamless and secure blog hosting service.
Overall, you can have excellent results without spending heaps of money. So, let us know if you have chosen your hosting provider in the comment section below!
