Many small businesses and startups have managed to grow thanks to WordPress solely – a platform that allows building a website fast and for free. But what about large sites? You may wonder if there’s any point in using WordPress for your large-scale project.
And we may reassure you that a large WordPress website can be a success. But there is a couple of “buts” here, the most significant of which is the hosting you choose for your project.
What is a Large WordPress Site?
It’s all clear with WordPress in the term ‘a large WordPress site’. But ‘large’ is rather a subjective notion. You might consider a large 100-page website, while some experts would take it for quite small. Most commonly, sites with 500+ pages are seen as large-scale.
Think it is impossible to run a website like this on WordPress? Such high-traffic blogs as Time Magazine, Observer, Reader’s Digest, Boing Boing, Playstation Blog, and Sony Music have proved the contrary. These WordPress-based websites contain numerous pages with loads of content. Yet, you won’t have any trouble launching any page on them.
However, developing a large site on the WordPress platform is a challenge anyway. To ensure your site’s performance, you’ll have to optimize most of its components. Surely, you’ll need to cram your project with extra security plugins and advanced SEO tools. The information stored should be well-structured so that your site is easy to navigate. But the main thing with which you should start is, by all means, hosting. Here, you cannot afford to make a mistake.
You should also carefully choose the type of hosting that will match your project the best. Want to know the best hosts for a large WordPress site right away? Get our Top 6 hosting companies that not just survived our hard-line test drives but also showed excellent results.
List of Tested Hostings For a Large WordPress Site:
| 1. HostGator | 6. SiteGround | 11. GoDaddy |
| 2. Bluehost | 7. KnownHost | 12. Scala Hosting |
| 3. IONOS | 8. a2hosting | 13. LiquidWeb |
| 4. Web.com | 9. DreamHost | 14. iPage |
| 5. GreenGeeks | 10. WebHostingPad |
1. HostGator – The #1 Choice for a Large Website in 2023
| Product Name: | HostGator |
| Official Website: | hostgator.com |
| Founded in: | 2002 |
| Hosted websites: | 2,273,368 |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $2.75 p.m. |
| Money-back guarantee: | 45 days |
When planning the launch of a large WordPress site, you should choose a host that can offer you the exact hosting type and a 100% matching plan with all the necessary features for your project. HostGator is a host like this. It has separate WordPress packages, as well as diverse, well-equipped plans for cloud, VPS, dedicated, or reseller hosting types.
HostGator Pluses
The company has all you need to host a large WordPress site:
- 99.97% uptime;
- fast & reliable servers;
- unlimited bandwidth in all plans;
- strong security tools;
- 1-year free domain, SSL certificate, and business email;
- customizable backup storage;
- 24/7 support for all plans.
HostGator Minuses
- You may shop around for cheaper hosting providers, though you won’t find many.
Pricing
The WordPress hosting tariffs start with the Hatchling plan at $2.75 p.m. The other two are the Baby ($3.50 p.m.) and the Business plan ($5.25 p.m.) You can also subscribe to a managed plan, with all the extras your project requires included.
2. Bluehost – A Host Recommended by WordPress Itself
| Product Name: | Bluehost |
| Official Website: | bluehost.com |
| Founded in: | 2003 |
| Hosted websites: | 4,584,636 |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $2.95 p.m. |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
Bluehost is a strong player in the market, based in US Utah. For seventeen years, this company has been recommended by WordPress as the number one hosting solution for the platform. This is the easiest host to integrate with a WordPress site of any size.
Bluehost Pluses
You can pick a variety of plans for WordPress, WordPress Pro, and Online Store hosting. Bluehost offers great support. When ready to pay a medium-size subscription fee, be sure to pick an adequate plan having all the necessary features for your site.
Bluehost Minuses
This provider’s downsides include US-only servers and limited feature complement in the cheapest plans.
Pricing
The cheapest Plan (Basic) at Bluehost will cost you $2.95 p.m. However, we would recommend using at least Choice Plus at $5.45 p.m., while the best solution for a high-traffic blog or a large business will be the Pro plan at $13.95.
3. IONOS – The Largest Hosting Company in Europe
| Product Name: | IONOS |
| Official Website: | ionos.com |
| Founded in: | 1988 |
| Hosted Websites: | 349,326 |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $1/mo |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
Europe’s best choice, 1&1 IONOS, is based in Germany and offers reliable and secure servers for hosting. The company has ultra-cheap packages for low budgets, but it can completely arm your high-traffic WordPress website, too.
IONOS Pluses
Besides cheap hosting packages, IONOS offers a variety of scalable business solutions, including those oriented on WordPress. Your large site is sure to benefit from quite common freebies (for top providers only!) and this provider’s specialties:
- 1-year free domain, email, and SSL security certificate;
- 99.9% uptime;
- unlimited storage;
- ASP.NET hosting;
- Windows-based servers, etc.
IONOS Minuses
The provider offers great extras, but many of them should be purchased separately. Cheap packages are too feature-limited.
Pricing
WordPress solutions from IONOS include basic WordPress and WP Pro plans. Theoretically, you can start with the cheapest Business plan at $1 p.m., but you’ll need to optimize your WordPress site with too many add-ons and pay a pretty sum for them. It will be more logical to choose the Unlimited plan for $8 p.m. with daily backups, DDoS attack and malware protection, unlimited SSD storage, and other features indispensable for a large website.
4. Web.com – An Established Hosting Provider from the US
| Product Name: | Web.com |
| Official Website: | web.com |
| Founded in: | 1999 |
| Hosted Websites: | 189,124 |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $5.95/mo |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
By offering top-reliable servers with an uptime of 99.99%, the American hosting provider Web.com is sure to let you build and launch the fastest WordPress site possible. Thanks to the company’s expert team, you can get a ready-to-use website fully equipped for your specific domain.
Web.com Pluses
The provider’s advantages include truly robust, fast servers and interesting hosting packages for WordPress hosting. Any plan you choose will have unmetered bandwidth, an SSL certificate, and other important things.
Web.com Minuses
All Web.com plans are offered at great promotional prices. However, after the promo period is finished, be ready for a rapid jump in price. Web.com does not offer features like SSL certificates or CDN for free.
Pricing
The cheapest hosting for your WordPress website can be bought for $2.75 p.m. But when you need it to be large, consider subscribing to Plus ($3.95 p.m.) or Premium (5.95 p.m.) – their feature sets are more suitable for a large WordPress website.
5. GreenGeeks – Large WordPress Hosting
| Product Name: | GreenGeeks |
| Official Website: | greengeeks.com |
| Founded in: | 2008 |
| Hosted Websites: | - |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $2.95/mo |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
GreenGeeks – is a large WordPress hosting provider based in Los Angeles, CA, USA. The system stands out from the crowd due to its eco-friendly approach. The system is currently considered the top green energy host, which makes it one of the most popular companies across the globe.
GreenGeeks Pluses
Along with notable energy consumption and environmental protection, GreenGeeks provides several types of hosting packages, integrated eCommerce engine and website builder, Cloudflare CDN for higher speed, unlimited data transfer option and scalable CPU. What’s more, the company offers professional customer support, sufficient disk storage space, dynamic account administration tools etc.
GreenGeeks Minuses
The system does not offer set up pricing solutions and domain name fees. There is no round-the-clock phone support as well.
Pricing
GreenGeeks currently offers three premium subscriptions. The most affordable of them – the Lite Plan – costs $2.95/mo. The price of other subscriptions constitutes $4.95 and $8.95 per month respectively.
6. SiteGround – Reliable and Ultrafast Hosting for Your WordPress Project
| Product Name: | SiteGround |
| Official Website: | siteground.com |
| Founded in: | 2004 |
| Hosted Websites: | 190,658 |
| Free Trial: | No |
| Starting Price: | $3.99/mo |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 days |
SiteGround – is a reliable and ultrafast hosting for your WordPress project, the use of which does not require any web design/coding background. With its several data centers located worldwide, the company offers a broad range of powerful security features that help prevent malware threats for your WordPress website. These include daily backups, free SSL Certificate connection, server monitoring etc.
SiteGround Pluses
The software works great for setting up, customizing and hosting personal and business WordPress websites. It ensures fast project load speed, automated WordPress plugin updates, integrated eCommerce features, availability of external extensions, free WP installation and email migrator tool. If you have already hosted your WordPress project with another company, SiteGround allows moving it to its servers for free. Professional support team, in its turn, will help solve challenging issues to simplify the hosting process.
SiteGround Minuses
The service offers a limited amount of disk storage space on all cheap subscriptions and it also has less data centers as compared to other popular hosts. As a result, WordPress websites may load differently with regard to the location a user resides in.
Pricing
The hosting provider has several subscription packages, the cheapest of which starts at $3.99 per month. There is also a separate package for WordPress websites. Plans available here also start at $3.99 per month. To cancel the selected subscription, you have 30 days – this is the duration of the refund term the software grants to its new users.
7. KnownHost – Enterprise Grade WordPress Hosting
| Product Name: | KnownHost |
| Official Website: | knownhost.com |
| Founded in: | 2006 |
| Hosted Websites: | - |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $3.47/mo |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 days |
KnownHost – is an enterprise grade WordPress hosting that is a nice pick for small and medium companies willing to host their websites on trusted and secure servers. KnownHost plans are perfectly optimized for all types of WordPress projects, offering professional hosting expertise only.
KnownHost Pluses
Deployed on ultrafast and secure NVMe servers and offering the advanced enterprise hardware, KnownHost projects feature the best hosting parameters only. The software offers handy one-click CMS installation and instant setup, intuitive management interface, free SSL certificate, 99.9% proven availability, LiteSpeed & LSCache tools, free DDos protection, active project protection due to Imunify360 solution etc. The company has several data centers located around the globe for greater user convenience.
KnownHost Minuses
Unlike its multiple competitors, KnownHost does not include a website builder. Free domains are unavailable here as well. Other demerits encompass limited bandwidth on cheap subscriptions and limited email hosting. Keep this in mind, when opting for one of KnownHost plans.
Pricing
The host has several pricing options for diverse user categories that range in integrated features, tools and budget. The cheapest solution costs $3.47 per month. As a WordPress website owner, however, you will be eager to find out more about hosting plans the system has for CMS-powered projects. Actually, there is a separate group of managed WordPress plans – Entry, Business and Corporate WordPress subscriptions. Their cost constitutes $5.98, $9.98 and $19.98 per month respectively. A 30-day refund term is included in all plans here as well.
8. a2hosting – Good Hosting for High-Traffic WordPress
| Product Name: | a2hosting |
| Official Website: | a2hosting.com |
| Founded in: | 2003 |
| Hosted Websites: | Over 464,959 |
| Free Trial: | No |
| Starting Price: | $5.99/mo |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 days |
a2hosting – is a good hosting for high-traffic WordPress websites, which offers several types of hosting solutions, professional customer support options as well as reasonable pricing. The software also exceeds the speed and uptime rates available on its Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans.
a2hosting Pluses
a2hosting works great for eCommerce and WordPress websites. This is also a nice pick for personal projects. The system additionally ensures free website migration services for Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans.
a2hosting Minuses
The host currently does not offer Windows hosting, while the Turbo Server feature is unavailable for cheap plans. What’s more, you will need to pay more, when upgrading to short-term subscriptions.
Pricing
a2hosting offers cost-effective pricing. The cost of its plans starts at $5.99 per month for shared hosting, when getting the annual subscription. If you wish to save more, go ahead to upgrade for a 3-year plan then.
9. DreamHost – Lightning-Fast WordPress-Optimized Hosting Solutions
| Product Name: | DreamHost |
| Official Website: | dreamhost.com |
| Launched: | 1996 |
| Websites Managed: | 633,564 |
| Test Plan: | No |
| Cheapest Plan: | $2.95/mo |
| Refund: | - |
Dreamhost – is a company offering lightning-fast WordPress-optimized hosting solutions for small and large-scale projects. Located in the USA, they offer a diversity of hosting features and tools for websites worldwide. Along with quick WordPress installation and automatic updates, the host grants high (up to 100%) uptime rates, SSD storage, simple custom control panel and several subscriptions to choose from.
DreamHost Pluses
The company employs in-house WordPress experts who are aware of all the CMS-related hosting issues and are always ready to help you solve the problems you encounter. All WP hosting plans include add-ons and robust features to help you succeed with your project. They also provide a domain name from DreamHost with a personalized custom email, a free “Let’s Encrypt” SSL Certificate, unlimited bandwidth and disk storage space.
DreamHost Minuses
As for demerits, DreamHost does not have a handy cPanel, free domain names and phone support for the cheapest shared hosting subscription.
Pricing
DreamHost pricing is average. It starts at $2.95 per month for the most cost-effective shared hosting plan. As for WordPress subscriptions, they are provided as a part of the DreamPress package. It includes three plans – WordPress, DreamPress and VPS WordPress plans. The cost constitutes $2.59, $16.95 and $10 per month.
10. WebHostingPad – Best for High-Traffic WordPress Sites
| Product Name: | WebHostingPad |
| Official Website: | webhostingpad.com |
| Launched: | 2005 |
| Websites Managed: | 54,650 |
| Test Plan: | No |
| Cheapest Plan: | $4.49/mo |
| Refund: | 30 days |
WebHostingPad – is the service that works best for high-traffic WordPress sites and has powerful servers optimized for high load speed results. The company is known for the availability of free SSL Certificates for all types of domains, unlimited email accounts and opportunity of free 1-click WordPress installation with over 1000 templates available for customization.
WebHostingPad Pluses
Among the unspeakable advantages WebHostingPad has in stock, it makes sense to mention eCommerce integration, free malware protection to secure your website, analytics tools that help track, analyze and enhance project performance, marketing credits for Google AdWords, Bing and Facebook Ads as well as free WordPress website migration, if required. 24/7 customer support is included in all plans and is currently realized via phone, live chat and email.
WebHostingPad Minuses
Along with advantages, WebHostingPad has a number of demerits. These include limited integrated resources, unavailability of phone support for the baseline shared hosting plan, no free domains on all subscriptions. Some plans are also characterized by the limited amount of bandwidth and disk storage space. To get access to advanced tools, you need to upgrade.
Pricing
With WebHostingPad, you can choose from several subscription types. The most affordable shared plan currently costs $4.49 per month. WordPress subscriptions include Basic, Pro and Premium plans. They will cost you $2.99, $3.99 and $5.99 per month respectively. If you decide to cancel the subscription for some reason, you have 30 days to do that at no cost. In this case, you will get your money back.
11. GoDaddy – A Popular Domain Registrar That Offers Reliable Hosting Services
| Product Name: | GoDaddy |
| Official Website: | godaddy.com |
| Founded in: | 1997 |
| Hosted Websites: | 40,740,208 |
| Free trial: | Site builder |
| Starting price: | $5.99 p.m. |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
The good old domain registrar, GoDaddy, has hosting options, too. There were times when the provider’s hosting service was much criticized. However, there has been an upgrade in recent years. So, you can entrust the future of your WordPress site to GoDaddy now.
GoDaddy Pluses
GoDaddy hosting is business-oriented. The provider offers a huge set of plans, each having a one-year free domain, email, and SSL, as well as unmetered bandwidth. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime.
GoDaddy Minuses
All GoDaddy plans are more expensive than their analogs from other providers. The company offers great features, but chances are you’ll need to buy them apart from your chosen package.
Pricing
The cheapest WordPress solution at GoDaddy is the Basic plan. The first-year subscription will cost you $8.99 p.m., but you can save big, opting for a 3 year plan. In this case, the price of the Basic plan will constitute $5.99/mo only. There are three more plans: Delux ($11.99 p.m.), Ultimate ($18.99 p.m.), and eCommerce ($20.99 p.m.) For a high-traffic WordPress site, at least Delux should be chosen.
12. Scala Hosting – A Robust Cloud/Website Hosting Provider
| Product name: | Scala Hosting |
| Official Website: | scalahosting.com |
| Founded in: | 2007 |
| Hosted site: | Over 700,000 |
| Free trial: | No |
| Starting price: | $2.95/mo |
| Money-back guarantee: | Anytime |
A reliable and robust hosting provider with servers in European and the US countries. The company has over 13 years of experience, making it possible to choose from several hosting options – shared and dedicated servers, VPS and app hosting, reseller plans, White Label and business email hosting etc.
Scala Hosting Pluses
Scala Hosting has a developer- and user-friendly interface along with lucrative resource choice and free domain registry. Special attention should be devoted to its SPanel on managed VPS servers. The system guarantees 99.9% uptime rates, fast page load speed, website migration option and automated backups.
Scala Hosting Minuses
The hosting provider does not have a website builder that would simplify the project development/management process. The integrated Call-in SSD functionality is viable for VPS subscriptions only. Plan renewal prices are higher than initial rates the system offers.
Pricing
Scala Hosting has a separate group of plans for WordPress websites. They can also be used for Web Hosting subscriptions. There are generally 4 plans to choose from here. The cost starts at $2.95/mo, but it will eventually grow to $6.95/mo after the renewal. Another group of subscriptions – Fully Managed VPS Hosting Plans – starts at $14.95/mo.
13. LiquidWeb – Large Scale WordPress Hosting
| Product Name: | Liquid Web |
| Official Website: | liquidweb.com |
| Founded in: | 1998 |
| Hosted Websites: | 4,551,309 |
| Free Trial: | No |
| Starting Price: | $15/month |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 days |
Liquid Web – is a large scale WordPress hosting with more than 10 data centers around the world. The system offers several types of plans, including those for cloud, VPS and dedicated hosting. The host is also known for its professional customer support available round-the-clock.
Liquid Web Pluses
The hosting provider comes with an integrated user-friendly website builder and eCommerce support. It allows creating and hosting projects for personal and business use. Liquid Web also ensures 100% uptime guarantee, HIPAA and PCI compliance along with unmetered bandwidth, SSH access, reseller plans, WP-CLI, premium class server specifications and Git provided on all managed subscriptions.
Liquid Web Minuses
Liquid Web is not the easiest solution for newbies, while its plans are quite expensive for everyone. It does not provide any shared hosting options, which is a notable demerit for a hosting provider.
Pricing
As mentioned above, Liquid Web is not a cheap hosting provider. Its functionality and flexibility, though, are worth the pricing it sets for its plans. There is no free trial here, but the system guarantees a money refund that extends for 30 days after you sign up for the selected plan. The most affordable subscription currently costs $15 per month.
14. iPage – Easy WordPress Hosting
| Product Name: | iPage |
| Official Website: | ipage.com |
| Founded in: | 1998 |
| Hosted Websites: | Over 1 million |
| Free Trial: | No |
| Starting Price: | $1.99/month |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 days |
iPage – is an easy WordPress hosting, which has over 20 years of expertise in the web hosting niche. The system ensures fast, simple and safe WordPress installation that does not require any coding knowledge at all.
iPage Pluses
The host supports eCommerce functionality, which allows setting up and promoting digital stores. It also has a built-in website builder for hassle-free and convenient development of personal and business projects. iPage additionally offers unlimited domains and integrated website analytics.
iPage Minuses
The company has a lower page load time, when compared to its multiple competitors. It doesn’t have a traditional cPanel, offering vDeck dashboard instead. Finally, it sets extra fees for plan renewal and registering new domain names.
Pricing
iPage complies with user requirements, offering an affordable pricing policy. There is no free trial here, while the cheapest subscription costs $1.99/mo only. A 30-day money-back guarantee is available here as well.
How to Choose a Hosting Provider for a Large WordPress Site
Are you developing a large-scale website on WordPress? Pay thorough attention to your future host. It’s great when it offers affordable prices and freebies. However, your choice should be based on the following criteria:
- the server’s uptime – 99.9% is the minimum;
- enough RAM & SSD storage – opt for unlimited storage plans;
- security options: SSL certificates, malware protection tools, DDoS attacks protection. etc.;
- daily backup & restore tools;
- speed-boosting instruments like Cloudflare;
- 24/7 support.
One more thing to consider is the type of hosting itself. For a fast-loading large WordPress site, the capacities of shared servers might not be enough, and hosting your website on a virtual private server (VPS) might be the optimal solution.
Bearing all this in mind, we come to the conclusion that HostGator is the best hosting company capable of finding an adequate solution for your large-scale WordPress project. This provider has the best ratio of price/value. The other four from our Top 5 are also solid hosting companies, but with any of them, you might need to pay more for the same services anyway.
