Good host for Wordpress

October 1, 2013 1:24 PM

Who would be good to host a Wordpress site, for someone with moderate technical grasp who wants an easy transfer?

I have an existing blog hosted by JustHost and I'm sick of them. I have transferred once before, but my skills are limited and doing that required me to raise my game a bit technically. I've forgotten most of what I then learnt. If I have to brush up my knowledge again in order to move to a reliable host with good service I will, but if the transition could also be easy that would be a significant advantage.

posted by Segundus to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Best answer: Wordpress has a list of a few hosting companies that provide simple installation.

I think MediaTemple also used to be on this list - not sure why they aren't anymore.
posted by Dansaman at 1:27 PM on October 1, 2013

I've always had good luck with DreamHost, although it's been a minute since I last needed hosting.
posted by General Malaise at 1:34 PM on October 1, 2013

I've been with Dreamhost for 14 years, and barely need to stir my brain cells to deal with Wordpress at this point. It's essentially self-maintaining.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:41 PM on October 1, 2013

Dreamhost has been excellent for me.
posted by TimeDoctor at 1:43 PM on October 1, 2013

Another one for Dreamhost. Friendly customer service. And if you happen to be a non-profit -> Free!
posted by nostrada at 1:46 PM on October 1, 2013

I just bought a domain name with A Small Orange and installed Wordpress on it. Was super quick and easy, and they have great customer service!
posted by anotheraccount at 1:50 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm using Dreamhost and I like them, but if you are used to cPanel (used by JustHost and many other hosting services), you should know that Dreamhost has their own admin panel which may throw you for a loop at first.

As long as you're comfortable using an FTP client and are willing to take advantage of their live chat help if and when needed, (live chat help has always been GREAT), it should be a fairly smooth transition.
posted by maudlin at 1:57 PM on October 1, 2013

Hostgator!!!!

Avoid 1and1. Really, avoid 1and1!
posted by yoyo_nyc at 2:19 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Dreamhost was a much better, more fully featured host a decade ago. These days they're overpriced for what they offer. I've been really happy with A Small Orange, which used to have a $25/yr plan for very low-resource users (now it's gone up to $35/yr, and so far I've found them to be excellent and super responsive). My partner, a web developer, says ASO is pretty great but tends to point his clients in the direction of Green Geeks pretty consistently.
posted by tapir-whorf at 2:20 PM on October 1, 2013

I've used Namecheap and I believe it was a one-click installation. Quite easy. It's been years since I did any serious coding, so I remembered none of it, but it took me maybe an hour to set everything up, and then perhaps an afternoon to tweak my theme's CSS to get it where I wanted it.

I've been pretty happy with their service so far, so I'd recommend it.
posted by Nyx at 3:20 PM on October 1, 2013

Came to say Dreamhost as well. With them for years -- very happy.
posted by Lescha at 3:22 PM on October 1, 2013

CyberLynk. I've used big hosts (BlueHost) and tiny hosts, and they are the first host provider I can recommend without reservation. http://www.cyberlynk.net They have a $25/year option that has tech support as good as my $200/month server. (I've used both.) They have cPanel and a one-click Wordpress auto-installer/auto-updater. I've helped other people get started with Wordpress on CyberLynk, and we were able to get them up and running in about 10 minutes. (Of course, DNS propagation and customizing WP themes took longer, but for a quick installation, it was excellent.) A transfer isn't much harder, you just export at one end and import at the other. There's a little funkiness around timing the DNS transfer-- don't forget to export before you transfer! But their tech support is actually great about helping you through that kind of thing, and that's a little unusual at that price point.
posted by instamatic at 5:02 PM on October 1, 2013

Hostgator will migrate everything for you. Info here.
posted by houseofdanie at 5:18 PM on October 1, 2013

Nthing Dreamhost. Plus they have humorous monthly email newsletters.
posted by kathrynm at 5:42 PM on October 1, 2013

Dreamhost. If you feel moderately techy, WebFaction, but their cPanel can be a little challenging.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:59 AM on October 2, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks and appreciation to all. Dansaman gets best answer just because I can't believe I didn't think of looking at Wordpress.org.
posted by Segundus at 1:02 PM on October 2, 2013

Response by poster: An update. I tried to sign up with Dreamhost; I got an email and a message on the site to say there was a problem with automatic approval and my account was suspended. It was signed "the happy Dreamhost account team" or something similar. They said they would be in touch within 24 hours; they were not. A query from me got a robot reply saying my query had been transferred to another team, and they'd contact me within 24 hours. They did not.

Having fallen at the first hurdle, and sixty hours in without any substantive communication, I decided to draw a line under it and told them to cancel.

At Hostgator the account was up and running within minutes, and they did indeed transfer everything for me painlessly and without problems.

I expect I was unlucky or caught Dreamhost on a bad day, but I thought I should report the facts.
posted by Segundus at 12:43 AM on October 13, 2013