WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world, powering a huge percentage of websites and blogs. If you want to build your business website or blog on WordPress, it makes sense that you would want to choose a web host that is experienced and reputable. The quality of your web hosting provider can have a huge effect on the potential future success of your WordPress website. For example, website speed can have a massive impact on how well your website does. A delay of just one second when your website is loading can decrease your page views by 11%, meaning that one in ten visitors will turn away for every second your website is loading – just one of the main reasons why choosing a reputable, top-quality WordPress web host for your site is crucial. Read on to find out more about our top WordPress hosting companies for Canada.
| Image | Product | Features | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
 | GreenGeeks
| 9.6 | Visit GreenGeeks |
 | SiteGround
| 9.5 | Visit SiteGround |
 | WHC.ca
| 9.4 | Visit WHC.ca |
 | HostUpon
| 9.3 | Visit HostUpon |
 | WP Engine
| 9.2 | Visit WP Engine |
 | HostGator
| 9.1 | Visit HostGator |
1. GreenGeeks: Top WordPress option for Canadians
Price: From $2.95
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Tickets, live chat, telephone
With a data centre located in Canada, you can rely on GreenGeeks for excellent local hosting performance. And, they are one of the few hosting companies that are completely dedicated to making the planet a better place, with several eco-friendly measures in place including putting their energy consumption back into the grid three times over via wind energy. Customer support is excellent and 24/7, and many plans come with unlimited disk space. They offer a range of hosting plans that are specifically designed for WordPress and a lot of free extras including site migration, SSL certificates, a free domain name and more. Along with high-quality data centres around the world, they will ensure that your site works at maximum performance thanks to SSDs used in combination with LiteSpeed and their custom PowerCacher tool. And if you’re not happy, they offer a thirty-day money-back guarantee no questions asked.
Pros
Cons
2. SiteGround: Fastest WordPress hosting in Canada
Price: From $6.99
Disk space: 10GB
Support: Tickets, live chat, phone, tutorials, knowledge base
SiteGround is one of the most well-known WordPress hosting providers around the world. They are one of the few hosts that WordPress actually recommends for its users, and they offer a custom WordPress plugin known as SuperCacher to maximise website speed and performance. Their system is custom-built around speed and security to ensure that your WordPress site is always performing at its best, but they can handle a website on almost any CMS. On the downside, none of their high-quality global servers are located in Canada, but they do offer a CDN such as CloudFlare so users can easily get around this. They have a user-friendly back-end with tons of different support options for users including tutorials, a knowledge base, and 24/7 customers support via live chat, email ticket and telephone.
Pros
Cons
3. WHC.ca: Top Managed WordPress host in Canada
Price: From $3.89
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Tickets, live chat, phone
With data centres located on both the West and East coasts, WHC are known for being reliable. Since it started back in 2003, WHC has earned a reputation as one of the best local WordPress hosting options in Canada. Along with hosting plans and domain names available, you can also get further business services from WHC including email marketing plans and SEO campaigns with free trials available for you to try out. Customer support is excellent and you can get in touch 24/7 via live chat, email, or phone, with support agents who speak multiple languages to ensure that everybody gets the support that they need.
Pros
Cons
4. HostUpon:
Price: From $2.96
Disk Space: Unlimited
Support: Tickets, live chat, phone
This web hosting provider is about as Canadian as you can get, with a well-optimised data centre located in Toronto, locally based sales and support staff, and a dedication to customer satisfaction. They offer a range of hosting plans that are specifically designed for WordPress, with plenty of freebies to enjoy including free transfers from old hosts for your WordPress website, unlimited disk space, a free domain name, and 24/7 customer support. They also have three servers located in the US, which is handy for Canadian businesses with an American target market.
Pros
Cons
6. WP Engine:
Price: From $35
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Live chat, tickets, phone
If you are looking for premium managed WordPress hosting, WP Engine is the market leader. Unlike shared hosting that is designed for WordPress, managed hosts tend to be more expensive because they manage much more than simply hosting your site. Everything in WP Engine’s server stack is designed and optimised for WordPress, enabling them to easily deal with any issues without hassle and provide their customers with peace of mind that all WordPress major updates will be dealt with on their behalf. Whenever an update occurs, they will even test your site for you to ensure that everything is still working correctly. They offer a huge range of site security options including active blocking of DDOS attacks, live, real-time detection of threats, and a free repair service for sites that do get hacked.
Pros
Cons
7. HostGator:
Price: From $5.95
Disk Space: Unlimited
Support: Tickets, live chat, phone
HostGator is one of the oldest and well-known names in the WordPress hosting industry. They are owned by a company called EIG who manage a range of other well-known hosting brands such as BlueHost. However, they are more suitable for US users and not always a great fit for Canadian website owners, although you can get around the lack of local servers by using CloudFlare. They offer a range of WordPress-specific hosting plans, with the cheapest plan allowing for up to 100k visitors. On the positive side, they offer a huge range of support options including video tutorials and a large knowledge base on top of the standard phone, live chat and ticket support.
Pros
Cons
8. InMotion Hosting:
Price: From $7.26
Disk Space: 40GB
Support: Tickets, phone, live chat
InMotion Hosting is known for the range of business hosting solutions that they offer. In terms of support and quality, they tend to go further than your standard Canadian web hosting provider. They offer hosting plans that are specifically designed for WordPress websites, offering 40GB of disk space and up to 20K monthly visitors. However, they do not have any servers located in Canada, meaning that most Canadian users will need to use a CDN to maximise speeds and performance. Customer support is good, with community forums where users can seek support from one another alongside the typical phone, live chat, and ticket support options.
Pros
Cons
9. Cloudways:
Price: From $10
Disk Space: 25GB
Support: Live chat, tickets, telephone
Like their name suggests, Cloudways is all about cloud hosting. They use data centres from other providers, allowing you to deploy and manage apps on them. They are partnered with a range of providers including Digital Ocean, the Google Cloud Platform, Linode, Vultr, Amazon AWS and Stackpatch. Although their hosting services are not specific to WordPress, they do offer a range of WordPress exclusive features that you can take advantage of including well-optimised server stacks and a custom caching plugin. Speed won’t be an issue for Canadian users with partners that have servers located in Canada. Although there are some new things to learn since they do things a little differently from your average hosting provider, it’s definitely worth it for the excellent and seamless scalability that they offer.
Pros
Cons
10. DreamHost:
Price: From $2.59
Disk Space: Unlimited
Support: Tickets, Live chat, telephone
While DreamHost might be a better option for those living in the US, Canadian users can still take advantage of this hosting provider by using a CDN to optimise speeds. They have been around for quite a long time and have made a name for themselves in the hosting industry. They are one of the most reputable options for both the quality of services and the support that they offer. They have a range of plans available that are specifically designed for WordPress, with many options to choose from whether you want a shared WordPress hosting plan to a premium managed WordPress plan called DreamPress. DreamPress is the ideal option for those who want to take advantage of as many WordPress-specific features as possible. With their basic WordPress plan, you’ll get SSD hosting, unlimited disk space, and a generous 97-day money-back guarantee.
Pros
Cons
11. BlueHost:
Price: From $3.95
Disk Space: 50GB
Support: Tickets, phone, live chat
Although BlueHost’s reputation did not do very well when they were first bought by EIG, they have managed to slowly redeem themselves with excellent customer support and some good WordPress-focused plans that offer better performance for WordPress sites specifically. They offer a range of WordPress plans with automatic WordPress updates, instant WordPress installation, and a useful staging environment. They offer excellent round-the-clock support with a variety of options to choose from and a thirty-day money-back guarantee for new users.
Pros
Cons
When you are just getting started with your website and are perhaps using WordPress to build it yourself from scratch, you might be looking for a Canadian web hosting provider that offers good value for money, gets the job done, and is easy to use. If you are looking to start a business site, eCommerce store, or blog, WordPress is usually the way forward. It is simple to get started with and free to use.
However, how do you know whether the website that you are planning to build is best hosted with a standard shared hosting plan that supports WordPress or a tailored, managed WordPress hosting plan? Read on to find out more about WordPress and WordPress hosting, along with some key things to look out for when choosing the best WordPress host in Canada.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that currently powers over 25% of the entire internet. You can install WordPress on the majority of web hosting providers, with most of them offering one-click installation of the software. Like most open-source software, WordPress is mostly free to use and tends to be the first choice of site building platform for many small to medium businesses, eCommerce stores, blogs and forums because it’s easy to use and build websites with.
WordPress hosting describes any web hosting provider that offers plans that support WordPress. Different web hosts will often offer a variety of different types of hosting including cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS hosting and shared hosting, Choosing the right type of hosting for you will depend on your specific needs and the level of expertise that you have.
When looking for a WordPress host, shared hosting is the most popular and also typically the least expensive option. This type of hosting works by allowing various websites to share one server, which reduces the cost by a huge amount. Although there are some downsides to this hosting type, it is still the most popular option for the majority of WordPress users.
Pros:
Inexpensive and decent value for money
Easy to customise
Easy to install
User-friendly
Many hosts offer free domains, emails, and unlimited storage and traffic
Cons:
WordPress hosting features might be limited
Other sites on the server can sometimes impact yours in terms of speed and performance
Resources are shared between various websites
Now that you know more about what WordPress is and how it works, it is easier to see why some WordPress hosting providers stand out from the others. There are tons of different WordPress hosting companies available to choose from. Many will offer the basic features that you will require to get your site up and running, others offer features that you may or may not need, and some might even have an adverse effect when it comes to building and running your website.
When choosing a WordPress host, it is important to narrow down your list to just a few key features so that it is easier for you to see which hosts are the better options for you and which aren’t worth exploring further. Some of the main features to look for in a WordPress host include:
Domain Hosting:
When looking for a WordPress host, you will generally want to go with one that you can also use to easily register domain names. It will make setting up and getting support a lot easier when your hosting and domain name are with the same company.
Blog Hosting:
Many people decide to use WordPress for the excellent blog features this CMS offers, so it makes sense to look for a WordPress host that offers features to easily enable bloggers to download and start using WordPress immediately.
Email Accounts:
A personal email is often needed when you have a custom domain name. The best WordPress hosting providers will typically allow for an unlimited number of email accounts so that you and your team can easily communicate with clients, suppliers, customers and each other using custom domain names. Look for a WordPress host that allows you to easily set up your custom emails through your computer’s control panel and link them to the business apps that you use.
Disk Space and Bandwidth:
Unlimited features like storage, email, domains, and bandwidth are also important to look for when choosing a WordPress host. Although some hosting providers say that they offer unlimited features, some will actually have a fair usage cap that could affect the way that your website runs. The best hosts will make sure that you are notified when you are reaching your limits and let you know more about the scaling options that are available to you to ensure that your website continues to perform well.
Security:
When building a website, one of the main things that you want for it is security. Because of this, it is important to choose a web hosting provider that will provide you with peace of mind when you launch your website. You should be able to trust your web host to provide enough security so that nobody can affect your site or alter it in any way without your express permission. To achieve this, choose a host that offers a good level of general security features including security monitoring, free SSL certificates, software updates, DDoS protection and more.
Hosting Speed:
The fastest WordPress hosting providers will use a CDN to allow content from your website to be delivered to your site visitors from the server that is closest to their location. This is important since it results in shorter page load times and ensures that site visitors get a better experience on your site overall. It’s also extremely important if you are selling products online, with one in ten visitors leaving the site for every extra second it takes to load.
Server Location:
Server location is worth considering, although it is not as important a feature as it once was. As long as you are using a CDN such as CloudFlare, the data centre’s location is not a huge factor. However, it is still ideal to have a data centre that is local to your target market.
Server Uptime:
There are times where a server might go down and your site might be affected. While this is often unavoidable, the one thing that you will definitely want to avoid is a host that has low server uptime. If your site is not available to visit, users won’t be able to interact with it and you will lose revenue as a result. Look for a WordPress host with a high server uptime guarantee.
Customer Support:
The level of customer support that you will require will depend on a number of factors including your own experience and knowledge level. A good level of customer support could make all the difference if you are new to building websites and need to get in touch with somebody who can help with an issue that you are having. 24/7 customer support is ideal for when you are experiencing problems with your website that need to be dealt with as quickly as possible.
System Backups:
Since servers can sometimes crash and other accidents may occur, it’s important to choose a web hosting provider that is able to back up your website, database and email so that you can easily get it all back up and running quickly if the worst happens.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Although it’s possible to run WordPress on Windows hosting, it is not recommended. Linux is definitely the best hosting environment for running WordPress since the majority of WordPress apps run on Linux.
Yes – you can build your site with WordPress.com and they will take care of hosting for you. There is a free option, although it is limited in terms of what you can do with the branding and design of the site. Paid plans offer more customization and flexibility.
WordPress itself is free, although you do need to pay for hosting and a domain name. To build a WordPress site completely free of charge, you should use WordPress.com.
The fastest WordPress hosting services tend to be from managed WordPress hosting providers. Since they are premium, super-fast and focus solely on hosting WordPress websites, they do tend to be more expensive compared to other options.
The price of hosting your WordPress website will depend on what your website needs. A small business website or blog will usually be a good candidate for shared hosting, which costs an average of $5 per month. On the other hand, managed WordPress hosting, which typically comes in at around $30 per month, might be a better option for an eCommerce site, forum, or more complex website.
WordPress is one of the easiest options for beginners to use. It’s no surprise that around a quarter of the entire internet is powered by WordPress. It is one of the most user-friendly website building tools available and there is a massive community to turn to if you get stuck and need some help, along with tons of tutorials online that you can access for free.
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