The great thing about launching a website or blog on WordPress is that you can do it no matter what budget you might happen to have at your disposal. Continue reading to find out how to launch a site for cheap:
What to pay attention to when choosing an excellent cheap WordPress hosting setup?
(Well, that is, apart from the price, obviously…)
As you’d expect, not all cheap WordPress hosting offers are the same. Even though the price might be mighty similar, you will find differences under the hood. Mainly in a couple of areas:
- allowed traffic
- disk space available
- number of websites allowed
- server locations
- ease of use and set-up
- actual speed and performance
Here’s what those mean for your overall experience with cheap WordPress hosting:
Best cheap WordPress hosting offers in the market
Refer to this comparison table for a quick view over the hosting landscape (more detail below the table):
Bluehost | SiteGround | Namecheap | A2 Hosting | InMotion | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cheapest plan | $2.95 per month | $3.95 per month | $2.88 per month | $3.92 per month | $3.99 per month |
Sites allowed | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Traffic allowed | Unmetered bandwidth | 10,000 visits / month | Unmetered bandwidth | Unmetered bandwidth | Unmetered bandwidth |
Average loading speed | 1.60 seconds | 1.66 seconds | 1.77 seconds | 1.82 seconds | 1.77 seconds |
Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit |
1. Bluehost (www.Bluehost.com)
- From $2.95 / month
Bluehost is one of the few hosting firms officially recommended by WordPress.org. Apart from that, they have a good track record with WordPress sites and offer easy installations.
To be more precise, you basically get to select an option where Bluehost takes care of installing WordPress for you, so you don’t have to worry about the technical details of site building.
What’s also great about Bluehost is that you get one free domain name as part of your hosting plan. No need to buy it separately, which reduces your overall annual cost of running the site.
Here’s data on Bluehost’s load times:
- New York: 0.85 seconds.
- Stockholm: 1.80 seconds.
- Melbourne: 2.14 seconds.
2. SiteGround (www.SiteGround.com)
- From $3.95 / month
SiteGround is another company recommended by WordPress.org and another excellent choice for a cheap and reliable WordPress host.
Similarly to Bluehost, you get an easy auto-installer for WordPress, and a simplified signup process overall.
SiteGround also boasts about their award-winning support that’s available 24/7 on live chat and over the phone.
Lastly, SiteGround offers good performance:
- New York: 1.16 seconds.
- Stockholm: 0.75 seconds.
- Melbourne: 2.98s seconds.
3. Namecheap (www.Namecheap.com)
- From $2.88 / month
As the name indicates, Namecheap is another viable option when looking for a cheap host.
In fact, Namecheap is the cheapest options on this list, while still offering good numbers regarding actual performance and available disk resources (20 GB SSD-accelerated).
On the downside, this is not a “WordPress host” per se, with no specific WordPress-optimized features. Though, a WordPress website will run on Namecheap with no problem.
When it comes to the installation, it can be done relatively quickly via a tool called Softaculous.
Here’s some performance info about Namecheap:
- New York: 1.11 seconds.
- Stockholm: 2.22 seconds.
- Melbourne: 3.14 seconds.
4. A2Hosting (www.A2Hosting.com)
- From $3.92 / month
A2Hosting‘s offering has become very competitive recently, mainly due to their pay-monthly billing model, available even on the cheapest tier hosting.
With some of the other companies, you might be forced to pay yearly or even for two years up front to get the lowest price.
On top of that, WordPress is pre-installed for you right when you finalize your purchase with A2Hosting.
Here’s some performance info on A2Hosting:
- Melbourne: 2.93 seconds.
- New York: 0.93 seconds.
- Stockholm: 1.61 seconds.
5. InMotion Hosting (www.InMotionHosting.com)
- From $3.99 / month
InMotion Hosting is the best solution if you want to host not one but two WordPress websites on your server. The entry level plan at $3.99 / mo allows you to do that (although you do have to pay for two years up front).
WordPress doesn’t come pre-installed, but you can get it running with the help of a quick installer script.
Performance data for InMotion:
- New York: 0.50 seconds.
- Stockholm: 1.43 seconds.
- Melbourne: 3.38 seconds.
What’s next
If you’re planning to launch a website or blog on WordPress, there are only two elements that are mandatory. One of them is hosting; the other is a good domain name. Do you have yours already? If not, maybe this handy domain name generator can help.
With the domain and hosting out of the way, it’s time to get to work on the fun stuff:
- Here’s a complete beginner’s guide on how to make a site with WordPress – step by step from zero to hero
- Here’s a massive roundup of the best free WordPress themes available in the market – to make your site looking like it’s prom night