Best WordPress Hosting Services In Canada For February 2024 - Forbes
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Updated: Jan 2, 2024, 4:38pm
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WordPress is the most popular content management system – (CMS) in the world today. Reliable hosting is a vital part of any WordPress website, helping to ensure your site remains live and performs faster for users.
We researched the best WordPress hosting services on the market today, evaluating providers based on pricing, uptime, customer support and other factors. Read our comprehensive guide to find the best hosting solution for your WordPress site.
Featured Partner Offer
1
Bluehost
On Bluehost.com’s Website
Starting price
$2.95 USD ($4.05 CAD) per month
Storage and bandwidth
Unmetered bandwidth, and SSD storage starts at 10GB
Extras and inclusions
Free domain name and SSL for a year, free CDN
2
Hostgator
On Hostgator’s Website
Starting price
$2.75 USD ($3.68 CAD)per month
Money-Back Guarantee
30 days
Inclusions
Free SSL certificate, free website transfer
3
Namecheap
On Namecheap’s Website
Starting price
$1.58 USD ($2.15 CAD) per month (with 24 months contract)
Money-Back Guarantee
30 days
Inclusions
Free SSL certificate, host three sites, low-cost VPS hosting
4
DreamHost
On DreamHosts’ Website
Starting price
$2.59 USD ($3.47 CAD) per month
Money-Back Guarantee
97 days
Inclusions
Top-rated tech support, free domain name, free SSL certificate
The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content and guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.
We reviewed more than 25 hosting services using a detailed methodology to help determine the 10 best WordPress hosting services for small businesses. Our ratings consider factors that include starting package price and the number of sites included in each plan, how many features come with each plan, what real users of these hosting services think about them and what our panel of experts think about them based on their findings. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.
$1 USD ($1.33 CAD) per month
(billed annually, renews at $8 USD ($10.64 CAD) per month)
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Yes
$1 USD ($1.33 CAD) per month
(billed annually, renews at $8 USD ($10.64 CAD) per month)
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Yes
IONOS is a reliable web hosting service that gives you a 99.9% uptime guarantee. When you purchase hosting, you get a free domain for a year and a free SSL certificate to ensure you meet the security standards of a safe website.
There are three plans to choose from. The Growplan is the most popular and starts with a $1 USD ($1.33 CAD) per month introductory price for 12 months. Then the price jumps to $8 USD ($10.64 CAD) per month. In this plan, you get a single f website, 50 GB OFstorage and 15 GB of RAM. There is daily backup and recovery of the site to ensure that you are protected if there is a hack or problem with the site.
The Growplan is an upgrade from the Startplan, which is $2 USD($2.66 CAD) per month for the first 12 months and then bumps up to $4 USD ($5.32 CAD) per month. This plan is limited to one website with 25 GB of storage and 9 GB RAM. It’s enough to get you started, but the promotion on the Business plan is tough to beat. The highest-tiered plan is the Boost plan for $6 USD($7.98 CAD) per month, jumping to $12 USD ($15.97 CAD) per month after the one-year introductory price. This plan gives you the maximum central processing unit (CPU) and memory resources for the fastest site possible. It also comes with malware protection and site analytics to help you assess your performance.
Who should use it:
IONOS is best for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) looking to scale their website over time with more visitors and sales.
Learn more: Read our Ionos Review
$5.95 USD($7.91 CAD) per month
(three-year term, renews at $12.99 USD ($17.28 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
$5.95 USD($7.91 CAD) per month
(three-year term, renews at $12.99 USD ($17.28 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
HostGator WordPress hosting stands behind its product, offering customers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its service. There are three hosting plans to choose from, with HostGator starting with the Starter plan, which has an introductory offer of $5.95 USD ($7.91 CAD) per month. This is 54% off the renewal price after 12 months of hosting. The Standard plan is $7.95 USD ($10.58 CAD) per month to start with, which is 53% off the renewal price. The Business plan is $9.95 USD ($13.24 CAD) per month, or 64% off the renewal price.
All plans come with a free domain registration for a year, a free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth and disk space. All plans also come with a one-click WordPress Install button that makes launching the site a breeze.
Learn more: Read our full HostGator review.
$2.95 USD ($4.05 CAD) per month
(billed annually, renews at $16.15 CAD per month)
10 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth
Yes
$2.95 USD ($4.05 CAD) per month
(billed annually, renews at $16.15 CAD per month)
10 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth
Yes
Bluehost WordPress hosting gives you lots of options to make sure you get the plan that best meets your needs. Prices start at $3.97 CAD per month for the first 12 months, renewing at $16.15 CAD per month. This Basic plan includes one website, custom themes and 10 GB of storage. You get the domain free for the first year as well as the SSL certificate. If you have multiple sites, you need to upgrade to the Choice Plus plan for the introductory price of $7.39 CAD per month. It renews at $27.12 CAD per month.
The Choice Plus plan is recommended because it offers free domain privacy and automatic backup for one year. You can also benefit from using staging sites to work on design and content before launching things live. The Pro plan gives you a free dedicated internet protocol (IP) with unlimited SSD storage. It optimizes CPU resources for the best user experience (UX) experience for your visitors.
If you need more power and control over the website, you can get the virtual private server (VPS) plan for $40.68 CAD per month with a 36-month term. Sites that get a lot of traffic will want to upgrade to a dedicated server for full speed and functionality, starting at $122.07 CAD per month with a 36-month term.
Learn more: Read our full Bluehost review.
Who should use it:
Bluehost’s dashboard makes managing multiple websites a breeze, making it the ideal choice for web developers with multiple projects.
$2.59 USD ($3.44 CAD) per month
(three-year term, renews at $5.99 USD ($7.97 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
$2.59 USD ($3.44 CAD) per month
(three-year term, renews at $5.99 USD ($7.97 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
All DreamHost plans are WordPress responsive and DreamHost recruits and trains the best support technicians to help with WordPress hosting installations, themes and plug-ins. Their Shared starter plan is only $2.59 USD ($3.44 CAD) per month for one website, unlimited traffic and WordPress preinstalled. You can add email for as little as $1.67 USD ($2.22 CAD) per month.
For those looking to maximize their WordPress platform, the DreamPress plan is designed specifically for WordPress websites. This plan is $16.95 USD ($22.55 CAD) per month and offers free automated WordPress migrations, on-demand backups, one-click restoration and Jetpack preinstalled.
For those looking for a VPS, DreamHost has you covered. The plan is only $13.75 USD ($18.30 CAD) per month and has unlimited websites, traffic and bandwidth. All plans come with a one-click WordPress installation to make getting started as straightforward as possible.
Who should use it:
Non-tech-savvy developers who need to reach out to tech support will appreciate the responsiveness of DreamHost’s service team.
$3.99 USD ($5.31 CAD) per month
(two-year term, renews at $11.49 USD ($15.29 CAD) per month)
100 GB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth
Yes
$3.99 USD ($5.31 CAD) per month
(two-year term, renews at $11.49 USD ($15.29 CAD) per month)
100 GB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth
Yes
InMotion WordPress hosting focuses its plans based on speed and performance. It starts with the Core plan with a one-year introductory price of $4.49 USD ($5.97 CAD) per month for one year, bumping up to $11.99 USD($15.95 CAD) per month after that. This plan comes with a free SSL, is available for two websites and comes with 100 GB of storage. This plan is 20x speed and performance, whereas the Launch plan has 6x speed and performance, significantly impacting the efficiency of your site for visitors. The Launch plan is $8.99 USD ($11.96 CAD) per month to start with and moves to $16.99 USD ($22.61 CAD) per month after the promotion ends.
There are two other plans to pick from that come with free domains, SSL certificates, unlimited websites and unlimited bandwidth. The Power plan starts at $8.99 USD ($11.96 CAD) per month and moves to $21.99 USD ($29.26 CAD) when the trial ends. The Power plan has 30x the speed and performance on the site, whereas the Pro plan has 40x the speed and performance. The Pro plan runs $16.99 USD ($22.61 CAD) per month as an introduction and moves to $30.99 USD ($41.24 CAD) per month after that.
Who should use it:
Website owners seeking the fastest speeds will appreciate the Pro plan offered by InMotion, which provides up to 40x standard speed and performance.
$4.33 CAD per month
(three-year term)
Yes
500 GB bandwidth, 10 GB disk space
$4.33 CAD per month
(three-year term)
Yes
500 GB bandwidth, 10 GB disk space
MochaHost WordPress hosting provides fast hosting services with a 100% Network Uptime Guarantee. All plans come with a free SSL certificate for as long as you have the hosting. We particularly like the 180 Days Risk-Free Guarantee the site boasts, showing its confidence in keeping you up and running at lightning speeds.
Plans start at $4.43 CAD per month, but if you have a WordPress hosting account, you can benefit from the optimized hosting plan specifically designed for WordPress. There are four WordPress plans starting at $8.65 CAD per month. The difference between the Starter and Premium plan is the server power and the RAM. You get a better-optimized experience with super server power in the Premium plan with 2 GB of RAM compared to one. The Premium also offers a staging tool and is WooCommerce optimized. There is also an Advanced plan and Professional plan that provide more guaranteed RAM, additional CPU cores and increased server power.
Who should use it:
MochaHost is the best WordPress hosting service for those that want a low-cost, zero-risk web host between its competitively-priced plans and its 180-day guarantee.
$8.99 CAD per month
(two-year term, renews at $15.99 CAD per month)
20 GB of SSD storage
Yes
$8.99 CAD per month
(two-year term, renews at $15.99 CAD per month)
20 GB of SSD storage
Yes
GoDaddy plans all use new optimized hardware to make sure the servers are as fast and reliable as possible. All plans come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, free SSL certificate, automated daily backups and an easy-to-use cPanel dashboard. There are a number of prototype WordPress themes that make launching a new site fast and easy.
There are four plans that GoDaddy offers for WordPress hosting starting with the Managed WordPress Basic plan. This plan has an introductory price of $8.99 CAD per month that renews at $15.99 CAD per month after two years. Then, there is the Managed WordPress Deluxe plan, which is $13.99 CAD per month for two years before moving up to $21.99 CAD per month on renewal. This is for one website that has 40 GB of SSD storage, three free Microsoft 365 mailboxes, website backup protection and a one-click staging site. The Managed WordPress Ultimate plan offers 60 GB of SSD storage space with five free Microsoft 365 mailboxes, website backup protection and a one-click staging site. It starts at $21.99 CAD per month and goes up to $29.99 CAD upon renewal.
The Managed WordPressCommerce Store’s plan’s introductory price is $26.99 CAD per month and goes up to $39.99 CAD per month upon renewal (after one year). This plan is ideal for those who wish to sell on their WordPress sites, such as marketplaces including eBay, Walmart, Amazon and Etsy, and receive hassle-free managed hosting.
Learn more: Read our full GoDaddy review.
Who should use it:
Website owners looking to maximize their databases will appreciate the multiple databases allowed on GoDaddy WordPress hosting plans.
$5.24 USD ($6.97 CAD) per month
(first billing cycle-only, renews at $6.99 USD ($9.30 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
$5.24 USD ($6.97 CAD) per month
(first billing cycle-only, renews at $6.99 USD ($9.30 CAD) per month)
Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Yes
Hostwinds WordPress hosting gives you a lot of bang for your buck with a lot of features in all three of its plans. All plans use solid state drives, come with free SSL certificates and have a modern cPanel to admin from. You can have unlimited subdomains, making expansion easy. Plans include unlimited emails, instant setup and a free dedicated IP address.
The Basic plan starts at $5.24 USD ($6.97 CAD) per month and moves to $6.99 USD ($9.30 CAD) per month after the promotion period. This plan is focused on one domain but offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The Advanced plan starts at $6.74 USD ($8.97 CAD) per month, with costs increasing to $8.99 USD ($11.96 CAD) per month after the promotional period. You can have four domains in the Advanced plan. The Ultimate plan allows unlimited domains for $8.24 USD ($10.96 CAD) per month as an introductory offer. The plan then goes to $10.99 USD ($14.62 CAD) per month after that.
Learn more: Read our full Hostwinds review.
Who should use it:
WordPress hosting website owners looking to choose a robust basic plan will get a lot of features included with Hostwinds Basic plan.
$2.50 USD ($3.32 CAD) per month
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Add-on for $7.99 USD ($10.63 CAD) per year
$2.50 USD ($3.32 CAD) per month
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Add-on for $7.99 USD ($10.63 CAD) per year
InterServer has three plans, one of which is optimized for WordPress hosting. You can migrate a site into the Standard plan with pricing starting at $2.50 USD ($3.32 CAD) per month. In all plans, you get unlimited storage space, unlimited data transfer, weekly backups, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) accounts and optimized speed. While SSL certificates are free, domains are discounted at $7.99 USD ($10.63 CAD) per year.
The Standard plan allows for unlimited websites while the Windows plan allows for 25 and the WordPress plan only allows one. Both the Standard and Windows plan offer unlimited subdomains while the WordPress plan doesn’t.
All plans come with unlimited email accounts, guaranteed mail delivery, mobile devices supported and spam filtering. Additionally, plans come with visitor statistics so you can easily view analytics.
Who should use it:
WordPress hosting site owners seeking to migrate to a new plan will benefit from the unlimited data transfer ability of InterServer’s plans.
$9.18 CAD per month
(billed monthly)
10 GB
Yes
$9.18 CAD per month
(billed monthly)
10 GB
Yes
Namecheap provides reliable, fast and secure hosting plans for WordPress hosting website developers. They have three plans available to choose from.
The first plan is the EasyWP Starter plan, which has a price of $9.18 CAD per month. This plan supports one domain name, three websites and 10 GB of SSD storage. If you need something more robust, you can upgrade to the EasyWP Turbo plan for $17.19 CAD per month. In the EasyWP Turbo, you get 50 GB of SSD storage and a free SSL
An upgrade to the EasyWP SuperSonic plan. It offers 100 GB of SSD storage and has an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. This plan is available for the first 12 months at $91.92 CAD per year.
Learn more: Read our full Namecheap review.
Who should use it:
Namecheap is one of the best WordPress hosting services for businesses that are on a budget as it is a very good value between its low price and large feature set.
WordPress is an open-source content management system – (CMS) used to build and maintain websites. WordPress hosting is a type of hosting that provides resources that are specifically optimized for WordPress websites. While there are specific hosting plans for WordPress websites, site owners can use any hosting provider to host their websites since regular hosting plans are suitable for WordPress as well.
Managed WordPress hosting is a service that provides website owners hosting with the most advanced technologies to ensure that the website is both fast and secure. Managed hosting will take care of issues such as backups, security checks and updates for plug-ins.
When choosing a hosting provider, there are many things to consider. Look at the following areas before making a final decision about a provider and a plan.
The type of hosting you choose is important to how the website will function, especially if it gets a ton of traffic. The types of web hosting services are:
You want to find a hosting plan that dedicates resources to making your site load and operate quickly. This is important because research shows that sites taking longer than two seconds to load have visitors leave before viewing the content.
When your website is down, visitors can’t view the content. This can cost a business owner money, as visitors might not return when the site is up and live. This is why you need to have a hosting plan that ensures sites remain up and live. Many hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. Look for one that is 99.99% of the time or more.
Hosting platforms should have the tools in place to help keep your website from being hacked. This is an added layer of security on top of the tools you employ on your specific website to maintain security protocols.
Ideally, you are able to get a server that is near your target audience to help ensure speed of delivery. While not all WordPress hosting companies offer a choice of where the server is located, if you have the option, choose one in the same geographical area as your audience.
Most website owners are not professional web developers. You’ll likely have a ton of questions when launching and maintaining your website. Having a hosting provider that offers 24/7 support is critical to handling issues as they arise.
Most WordPress hosting plans have a price range that falls between $2 CAD and $40 CAD per month, depending on the type of hosting you choose. Plans that dedicate more resources to your website will cost more. This includes being on your own server or having higher speeds. You can keep your costs down by having a shared hosting plan.
The main cost of WordPress hosting is the subscription plan itself, but there may be other costs associated with having a functional website hosted.
Of course, web hosting is only one factor that plays into the total cost of building and maintaining a website. For a more detailed look at average costs, check out our article on how much websites cost.
Consider the following questions when assessing your WordPress hosting needs:
Forbes Advisor creates a rubric to rate and score each company in the list. We rated more than 25 hosting providers to impartially determine which ones are the best. The rubric considers four main areas of information when scoring the data, looking at 24 key criteria that were weighted to favour features that small business owners find valuable in a provider.
We wanted to know several things when it came to pricing, such as if the hosting plan offers a free service, if the plans it offers are priced competitively and offer a good value for the features provided and if there is a money-back guarantee. We also looked at how much a WordPress host charged users for renewal after the initial contract ends and the number of sites that are covered by each plan. This accounted for 10% of our weighted scoring.
This category includes a range of features that matter most to businesses when choosing a web hosting provider, such as the storage and bandwidth limits, one-click Word-Press installation, free site transfer, free domain name, free SSL certificates and uptime guarantees.
In addition to the key features, we also considered whether or not the providers offer extras that save businesses time and money, such as free business email, website builders, free domain privacy, enhanced security features, and automatic backups. We weighted features at 50% of our total score.
To gain a broader understanding of how others find the web hosting provider, we looked at third-party review sites to find out what actual users of the web hosts felt about the service they received. Turning to Trustpilot, we looked at the number of positive reviews each WordPress web host received and how many of them were quality reviews that were 3.5 or higher out of 5. These accounted for 10% of the total score.
Continuing with customer reviews, our experts looked at users’ opinions on several key metrics to determine the final ratings of each WordPress web hosting service. These criteria included ease of use, value for the money, stand-out features and popularity. This analysis made up 30% of the total score.
Canadian specific editing and research (including pricing) by Anna Rey.
IONOS, HostGator and Bluehost are the three best WordPress hosting providers that our research yielded.
WordPress does offer free and paid hosting services on wordpress.com.
No, not all. While that may have been the case some years ago, WordPress Premium is a hosting plan that provides up to 13 GB of storage, premium themes and monetization features.
Yes, you can build a WordPress site without buying a hosting plan. You would do this on WordPress.org, where the site is hosted for free.
You can host a WordPress site on your own server. Keep in mind that if you are migrating from a WordPress.org or WordPress.com server, you may need to rebuild the site on a new domain managed on the server.
Take the following steps to transfer your WordPress site to a new host:
To find out where your WordPress site is hosted, search for the domain name in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) website. Use the nameserver you find in the details to ping the server and find out if the hosting is operational.
Yes, you can host multiple WordPress sites on one server. This is a shared server configuration that may slow down some site functions because resources are used by all websites hosted on the server.
A self-hosted WordPress website is one that is hosted on a third-party hosting site rather than on WordPress.org or WordPress.com.
One word: scalability. Thanks to its many customization options, WordPress can grow through each stage of a business’s journey. The many plug-ins allow a website admin to expand and develop their web offering. This is one of the reasons why we have chosen to focus on WordPress hosting providers.
With shared hosting, the key thing is that your WordPress website shares a single server and other resources with several other websites. Additionally, with this hosting, you are responsible for maintaining your own website.
When it comes to managed hosting, everything is taken care of for you, including the implementation of features, standard website maintenance, automatic backups and updates.
One of the best ways to keep your WordPress site secure is to use a hosting service. These sites offer a number of security measures, such as providing a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate for your site, which establishes an encrypted link between site visitors and your website. Most sites also offer free backup of your data so that if there is an issue, a copy of everything you supply to them is available in a backup form. These sites also monitor their servers around the clock, so if there are issues, they can address them immediately.
Other ways that you can help keep your WordPress site secure are to make sure that you install all recommended updates from WordPress promptly, choose strong passwords, back your site up yourself frequently and revise them frequently and delete any unused or outdated files, themes and plug-ins.
Kimberlee Leonard has taken her professional experience as an insurance agency owner and financial advisor and translated that into a finance writing career that helps business owners and professionals succeed. Her work has appeared on Business.com, Business News Daily, FitSmallBusiness.com, CentsibleMoney.com, and Kin Insurance.
Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she manages a column at Inc. Magazine.
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