Cheap, Fast, and Secure Web Hosting Providers

There are hundreds or even thousands of web hosting sites out there. We know that reliable web hosting is at the top of everyone’s must-have list for a hosting site.

However, that means something different for each person searching for the right hosting site for them. Which site is the fastest or the least expensive or offers the most storage? What about up-time guarantees and traffic limits and security? How do you begin to compare hosting sites and pick the right one for your website?

Bluehost vs WP Engine vs WPX Hosting

We broke down three of the top-rated web hosting sites for you, taking into account all the things that matter most when you’re considering which site is the best for you. The three we examined were:

When considering what you got for signing up for the different hosting sites, we examined the following criteria: sign-up fees, renewal fees, how fees were implemented (monthly or by usage), contracts (monthly or yearly), refund policy, and number of websites each plan supports.

Bluehost:

Of the three hosting sites we analyzed, Bluehost is the least expensive. There are four levels of hosting available: $2.79/month for their Basic plan, $5.45/month for their Plus plan, $5.45/month for their Prime plan, and $13.95/month for their Pro plan. All fees are monthly and stay the same for your first contract period, which can be one, two, or three years. Upon renewal, the price per plan per month increases to $7.99/Basic, $10.99/Plus, $14.99/Prime, and $23.99/Pro. For those who have multiple websites, the Basic plan will only support one site, but the other three support an unlimited number of sites. There is a 30-day refund policy in place.

WP Engine:

WP Engine is the most expensive of the three options we analyzed, and they have five pricing plans from which to choose. The top two tiers of their hosting plans are called Premium and Elite. Because these two are intended to host much larger numbers of website and considerably higher volumes of traffic, calling the company directly is necessary to sign up and determine cost. So we focused our review on the three plans that are intended for the average needs of someone with a website. Their plans are priced per month as follows: Personal for $29, Professional for $99, and Business for $249. The cost per month does not go up when you renew, which you can do on a monthly or yearly basis. For those who have multiple websites, the Personal Plan allows for one website, the Professional allows for ten, and the Business gives support to 25 websites. There is a 60-refund policy in place, which is double that of Bluehoust and WPX Hosting.

WPX Hosting:

WPX Hosting recently changed its name from Traffic Planet. A statement by Terry Kyle, the co-owner, reported that the reason for the name change was simply because the name Traffic Planet no longer fit the overall aesthetic of the brand, so they made the change to WPX Hosting in October 2016. No operations were affected by the transition. WPX Hosting has three pricing plans available for its customers. They are: Business for $23.99/month, Pro for $49.99/month, and Elite for $99/month. All fees are per month and the cost to renew is the same. Contracts can be either monthly or yearly, and there is a discount of two free months for signing up for an annual contract – you pay for ten and get twelve months. For those who have multiple sites, the WPX Hosting plan allows for the most sites in their Business hosting plan than the other three. They support five sites in their Business plan, 15 sites in their Pro plan, and 35 sites in their Elite plan. There is a 30-day refund in place for all three plans.

When considering how functional these website hosting sites would be for you, we looked at the following criteria: traffic limits, storage limits, scalability, data transfer, uptime guarantees, and included services. Here is what we found for each hosting site.

Bluehost:

There is no traffic limit to hosting on Bluehost, however if your site gets larger than tens of thousands of simultaneous users, they recommend upgrading to a different kind of hosting (i.e. not shared) within the Bluehost site. You have unlimited storage with Bluehost, and they do offer scalability from one plan to another if your site continues to grow. None of the three web hosting sites offered a 100% uptime guarantee, but Bluehost promised advance notification (except in case of emergency) of any maintenance that might cause downtime. Bluehost will migrate an unlimited number of GBs to their site at a cost of $149.99. Additional services include email storage, email accounts, and daily, weekly, and monthly backups.

WP Engine:

Unlike Bluehost, WP Engine does have limits to how much traffic you are allowed on your websites, and it’s on a per-plan, per-month basis. The Personal plan allows for 25,000 visitors per month, the Professional plan for 100,000 visitors monthly, and the Business plan for 400,000 visitors per month. Storage limits also depend on which plan you have. The Personal gets you 10GB, the Professional gets you 20GB, and the Business gets you 30GB. WP Engine also offers scalability, and boasts of a 99+% uptime guarantee. Free data migration is offered with each plan for you to transfer your information to them, and additional services offered include staging, transferable installs, and multi-site readiness.

WPX Hosting:

WPX does not have traffic limits, but does have bandwidth limits and guidelines to follow. They allow 50GB for their Business plan, 100GB for their Pro plan, and unlimited GB for their Elite plan. They have storage limits comparable to WP Engine. Their Business plan gets you 10GB, the Professional gets you 20GB, and the Elite gets you 40GB. They offer scalability (upgrading or downgrading) at any time, and boast the highest uptime guarantee of the three hosting sites at an impressive 99.95%. With regard to data transferability, they offer the same number of free site migrations as the number of websites allowed per plan. In other words, they transfer five sites for the Business plan, 15 sites for the Professional plan, and 35 sites for the Elite plan. Additional services include daily backups, free email, and one-click install.

When assessing the security measures of these website hosting sites, we looked at the following: what do they have in place for free, what (if any) guarantees do they make, do they offer free SSL certificates, and how many SSL certificates are you allowed to have on your site.

Bluehost:

As part of all of its hosting plans, Bluehost offers basic security measures. Spam protection and sitelock (an additional line of defense against malware attacks) are optional upgrades. Each hosting plan comes with a free SSL certificate; more can be purchased and uploaded to your site.

WP Engine:

WP Engine boasts one of the best guarantees we found. If you get hacked, they will fix your site for free. They offer an Enterprise-grade infrastructure to all clients. (Enterprise is their highest level of hosting plans, so they are offering that level of security to clients who have purchased any of their hosting plans.) They also report that they block general threats and those specific to WordPress customers. Users of each plan also receive one free SSL certificate and the ability to add more on each site.

WPX Hosting:

Users of WPX hosting receive basic security measures in addition to new “Brute Force” measures, which were implemented at the beginning of 2017. Those include blocking access to your site if someone attempts to access portions of it too often in a small amount of time. They recommend purchasing additional security plugins to enhance what they offer, including Wordfence and iThemes. Users of each plan receive free and unlimited SSL certificates.

When considering the type of support these website hosting sites would have for you, we looked at the following criteria: what types of support were offered and how many hours per day the support was available.

Bluehost:

This site offers options for both phone and online chat support for all of its hosting plans. Both forms of support are available 24/7/365. Bluehost offers an extensive online knowledge base to help you find your own answers without contacting them if you would like.

WP Engine:

WP Engine differs slightly from the other two that we reviewed in that it offers different levels of support based on the plan that you purchase. For their Personal (most basic) plan, they offer online chat support only. For their other plans, they offer the option of phone support in addition to online chat support. Both forms of support are available 24/7/365. Like Bluehost, WP Engine has a thorough online knowledge base for FAQs and other issues.

WPX Hosting:

This hosting site does everything by ticket, but their response time is much closer to an online chat scenario than one where you wait a long time for a reply. You submit your request and wait to be contacted by someone to assist you. We tried it twice. The first time, the response took five minutes. The second time, it took less than a minute. Like the other two, their support is 24/7/365 and they also have an extensive online knowledge base.

A final concern that we took into consideration was whether or not each of our three hosting sites offered affiliate programs. Here is what we found.

Bluehost:

Yes, they do offer an affiliate program. Each new customer that signs up through your site earns you $65. It’s free to sign up.  You can earn unlimited commissions, and you receive free tech support dedicated to the affiliate program. Your first check won’t arrive until approximately two months after your first referral. However, it will come on a monthly basis after that.

WP Engine:

They also offer an affiliate program, and boast the largest payout of the three web hosting sites we compared. For each referral, you receive $200 or 100% of the new customer’s first monthly payment, whichever is larger. It’s free to sign up. You receive unlimited commissions, and also have access to links and banners to help with your promotions. There is also a program for sub-affiliates that can earn you $50/new customer that your referrals get. Checks are mailed on a monthly basis.

WPX Hosting:

They too offer an affiliate program, and the payout depends on which hosting plan you are on. They pay $70/referral on their Business plan, $150/referral on their Professional plan, and $300/referral on their Elite plan. It’s free to sign up. You wait longer on this site for your first payout (four months), but receive your checks on a monthly basis after that.

Conclusion

While these three are comparable in many ways, they also differ quite a bit in certain areas. We recommend taking the time to decide what is most important to you in terms of what you want for your site. Once you know that, you can look at these three web hosting sites and make the most informed and best decision for your website.