You’ve created an artist website for free using WordPress and now you are looking for the best web hosting for artists with WordPress sites in 2024? Look no further! This post reviews the 5 best hosting providers for WordPress you can find in the market. Whether you are just starting out with a small artist website or you are having a long-established WordPress site with sophisticated hosting requirements, you can be sure to find the best pick for your needs!
You are building your artist website with WordPress and now you are looking for the best hosting provider for your WordPress site? Then you are in the right place!
This post will give you a selection of the best website hosts for artists with WordPress sites. All hosting providers on the list are established names in the industry, highly reliable, and already host thousands of artist websites!
Are you looking for the best website builder for artists? Then check out the top paid & free website builders (easier to use than WordPress).
As you are here, I think you already know how important it is for artists to have their own website. Your website is the only place on the web that really belongs to you.
An account that you create on social media and art sharing sites doesn’t really belong to you. You’ll always be at the odds of those platforms. They can change their algorithms and community rules any time, affecting your reach negatively.
Besides, such platforms may restrict or suspend your account whenever they deem the art you post inappropriate. My recent experience with Instagram showed clearly that social media can actually kill your art career…
Apart from that, there are many other good reasons why an artist should have a website.
With a self-hosted WordPress site, you have the greatest control over your website site possible. You also have the greatest creative freedom and the broadest range of functionality.
You can present your art and yourself as the artist just the way you want. WordPress is great for artists to show their work with a portfolio site. But WordPress also allows you to create an eCommerce site to sell your art. All you need to do is add WooCommerce to your site and you are good to go. To learn more, you can read the full WooCommerce tutorial here.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the best web hosting for artists with WordPress sites in 2024!
As someone who has built their own artist website on WordPress from scratch (the one you’re on right now), I have taken a look at the best WordPress hosting providers that I can recommend for artists to host their site.
I’ve evaluated all the web hosts on the list according to value for money, performance and ease of use in order to help you find the best hosting service for your artist website!
So, here we go:
How do I create an artist website for free?
If you want to create an artist website for free, then WordPress is already the best bet for you!
WordPress itself is completely free, and many of the plugins and themes you need to create your website don’t cost anything either.
With WordPress.org, you can start building your website completely free. You can create a portfolio gallery to showcase your artwork, start a blog, and even sell your art.
WordPress’s built-in editor, the Gutenberg editor, is easy to use and comes with decent design features out of the box. If you want more design possibilities, you can download any third-party page builder. I’m using the Elementor page builder for my site.
Despite being completely free, the basic version of Elementor comes with powerful editing features that allow you to create more sophisticated page layouts. If that’s not quite enough for you, you can add more free extensions, such as Essential Addons for Elementor.
Further reading:
As I already mentioned above, selling on WordPress is completely free, too. The WooCommerce integration allows you to create a full-fledged web shop with an unlimited number of digital and physical products, product variations, upsells, cross-sells, discount codes, tax and shipping calculations, and so on.
Learn more: Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists
WooCommerce comes with powerful e-commerce features and functional, visually appealing product galleries. The artworks in the screenshot are from my ‘Holy Sinners‘ and ‘BL∆CK NIGHT‘ series.
WordPress is extremely scalable and you can add additional features as needed.
However, one thing you should make sure right from the get-go is to choose a WordPress theme with sufficient functionality, including e-commerce capability.
It’s true that you can change themes on WordPress any time you like. But making everything look good in your new theme is a hassle you can spare yourself if you start right away with the right theme!
Some of the best and most performing eCommerce-ready WordPress themes for artists are:
Which is the best hosting provider for WordPress in 2024?
There are heaps of hosting providers out there that specialize in WordPress hosting. However, that doesn’t mean that all of them provide the best web hosting for your artist website. Why not?
Because the best hosting provider for your WordPress site always depends on your current needs.
Let me give you some examples.
If you have just launched your site and don’t have much traffic yet, you don’t need dedicated WordPress hosting. Shared hosting for a basic portfolio site is totally sufficient for you at that point in time.
Likewise, you don’t want to be paying for 200GB of web space, if your website is only 20GB in size.
That being said, the best hosting provider for your WordPress site offers a selection of plans for different needs and high scalability, allowing you to upgrade to a higher plan as your artist website grows.
The hosting providers on the list are tailored to different hosting needs. All you need to do is read through the review and pick the best web host for your artist site based on your current requirements.
Without further ado, let’s dive straight in to this review of the best web hosting for artists in 2024!
Best Web Hosting for Artists with WordPress Sites
Hostinger offers the overall best web hosting for artists with WordPress sites in terms of pricing, performance and array of features. Even the basic plan provides you with ample storage for your high-resolution artwork files.
Bluehost is another popular web host for artists using WordPress. Its pricing plans are flexible and cater to different hosting needs. Bluehost is easy to use and also a great option if you’re just starting out.
SiteGround offers premium WordPress hosting for more sophisticated requirements. Nevertheless, SiteGround’s payment plans are still pretty affordable and the web host is even endorsed by WordPress itself.
Top 3 Best WordPress Web Hosts for Artists at a Glance
- Why To Buy
- Great performance
- Competitive prices
- Free SSL & unlimited bandwidth with all plans
- Why To Buy
- Popular WordPress host
- Flexible plans for different needs
- Free WP migration tool
- Why To Buy
- Free domain & email with all plans
- Free SSL & CDN with all plans
- Unlimited traffic & databases
Round-up of the 5 Best Web Hosting for Artists Options for WordPress in 2024
1. Hostinger
- Why To Buy
- Great performance
- Competitive prices
- Free SSL & unlimited bandwidth with all plans
- Why To Avoid
- No WooCommerce support with the cheapest plan
- Pricing Plans
- Premium $2.99 / mth.
- Business $3.99 / mth.
- Cloud Startup $8.99 / mth.
Despite being one of the newer kids on the block of web hosting, Hostinger has quickly become a name in the industry. The company convinces with high-speed servers and great hosting specs at budget-friendly prices.
Hostinger comes with 1-click WordPress installation, meaning all it takes to get your WordPress site up and running on Hostinger is really just one click with the mouse.
Apart from that, Hostinger’s data servers are among the fastest out there. More so, it has a pretty long list of server locations around the world, including the US, UK, France, Lithuania, Singapore, India, Brazil and the Netherlands.
But there’s still more. Hostinger’s own website speed optimization tool, LiteSpeed (included with all plans), will boost your website loading times even more.
When it comes the loading speed, there are two factors to consider: First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). If both happen to be under 2.5s, your site has better chances of ranking in Google’s search results, and your visitors will have a much better user experience.
I have my artist website hosted on Hostinger, and the results below show that my website loads in less than two seconds. Pretty awesome!
In case something should ever go wrong with your site, you can always contact Hostinger’s 24/7 customer support that’s very friendly and helpful.
Hostinger currently offers three hosting plans, priced between $2.99 and $8.99 per month (36-month term). All plans include free SSL, a free custom domain for the first year and at least one free email account.
Another thing that’s great about Hostinger is the storage space you’ll get for your website. Even their cheapest plan comes with an ample 100GB of SSD storage, which is great for artists who want to upload lots of high-resolution images to their site.
If you want to open a WooCommerce store on your WordPress site, you’ll have to choose at least the Business plan for $3.99/month, because the lower plan doesn’t have WooCommerce support.
2. Bluehost
- Why To Buy
- Popular WordPress host
- Flexible plans for different needs
- Free WP migration tool
- Why To Avoid
- eCommerce support only with Online Store plan or higher
- Pricing
- Basic $1.95 / mth.
- Choice Plus $4.45 / mth.
- Online Store $8.95 / mth.
- Pro $12.95 / mth.
Bluehost ranks among the most popular web hosting providers because it is affordable and easy to use. It is great for WordPress hosting, and even WordPress itself recommends Bluehost!
Just like Hostinger, Bluehost offers all the ease you can imagine to install and manage your WordPress site. Apart from the automatic WP installer, there are many more features for WordPress users, including staging. Staging allows you to experiment with the design and layout of your artist site without sending it live yet.
What’s more, with Bluehost’s “Easy Onboarding” and “WordPress Academy,” anyone can get their WordPress site up and running quickly. The “Managed WordPress” service makes sure your site is optimized and secure at all times.
How can the best web hosting for artists using WordPress be any more convenient with all of Bluehost's WordPress-tailored features?
The average website loading speed is fantastic, too. Bluehost is faster than many other providers in the market. Bluehost’s performance is best in the US because its data centers are located there.
So, if you know that your website visitors mainly come from the States, Bluehost might be just the right choice for you.
Apart from that, Bluehost is easy to navigate, even for beginners who have never used cPanel management. A free domain name is included with all plans, and sometimes Bluehost offers massive discounts of up to 70%!
Currently, Bluehost has four different pans to choose from. The cheapest plan is only $1.95 per month (36-month term) and sufficient to host a simple portfolio site or art blog.
However, to start selling your art, you will at least need the Online Store plan with eCommerce support for $8.95 per month.
All plans come with customer chat support, free SSL and Cloudfare protection.
3. SiteGround
- Why To Buy
- Free domain & email with all plans
- Free SSL & CDN with all plans
- Unlimited traffic & databases
- Why To Avoid
- Not so much web space with all plans
- Pricing
- StartUp $2.99 / mth.
- GrowBig $4.99 / mth.
- GoGeek $7.99 / mth.
SiteGround is a premium web hosting service with lots of WordPress-focused features. Once you access SiteGround’s easy-to-use cPanel, you’ll find a whole array of WordPress tools, including an automatic installer, updater, migrator, cacher, and even a WordPress staging environment.
You can be sure to make a good choice when choosing SiteGround, because it is officially endorsed by WordPress itself.
SiteGround’s web hosting is top quality in all aspects. The server uptime is impeccable and your site will be automatically backed up on a daily basis. SiteGround does everything to keep your site secure from hackers.
Apart from a free SSL certificate that’s included with all plans, you’ll also get enhanced security services, like real-time monitoring, web application firewall, and an AI anti-bot system.
SiteGround’s performance is fast and reliable. The server response time is excellent and you can be sure your website will load fast. The company has data centers around the world, including USA, Asia, Europe and Australia.
SiteGround’s pricing plans are not the cheapest, but they are worth every penny. All plans include a free domain and at least one free email address, free SSL and CDN, unmetered traffic and unlimited databases.
That’s already great. But what’s even better is that even their cheapest StartUp plan for $2.99 per month comes with eCommerce support. That means on SiteGround, you can start selling your art, while not paying more than for a cup of coffee each month!
The main difference in SiteGround’s plans lies in the amount of web space you’ll get and the number of monthly visits. For a new artist website, the StartUp plan should be totally sufficient!
4. DreamHost
- Why To Buy
- Flexible plans for shared & premium hosting
- Unmetered bandwidth & monthly visits
- Free WordPress tools with all plans
- Why To Avoid
- No free email with the Starter plan
- Pricing
- Starter 2.59 / mth.*
- Unlimited $3.95 / mth.*
- DreamPress $16.95 / mth.**
- DreamPress Plus $24.95 / mth.**
- DreamPress Pro $79.95 / mth.**
DreamHost is one of the established names in the industry; it has been around for about two decades. DreamHost provides some of the best web hosting for artists because of its flexible pricing plans and WordPress-focused approach.
WordPress users will get a 1-click WP installer and website builder, automatic updates, and free automated migrations with all plans.
Just like Bluehost and SiteGround, DreamHost is an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
When it comes to performance and security, you cannot go wrong with DreamHost. The provider gives a 100% website uptime guarantee, along with enhanced security services for all WordPress sites. Pre-installed SSL certificates, automated backups, and a firewall protect your site against the most common threats.
Fast SSD storage and NGINX hosting with the higher DreamPress plans make sure your website loads quickly.
DreamHost offers two very affordable shared hosting plans: the Starter Plan for $2.59 and the Unlimited Plan for $3.95 per month (billed triannully). You’ll get a free domain and unlimited bandwidth. However, there’s no staging included in those two plans, and no free email address in the Starter plan.
The three DreamPress plans provide you with everything you need for premium WordPress hosting. You’ll get your own dedicated server, priority WordPress migration, 1-click staging, unmetered bandwidth and traffic, and speedy NGINX hosting.
When you are just starting out, the WordPress Starter or Unlimited plan will completely satisfy your needs. The DreamPress plans are designed for larger WordPress sites that have been around for a longer period of time and already make some good money!
5. WP Engine
- Why To Buy
- VIP managed WordPress hosting
- Expert WordPress support
- Best security for WordPress sites
- Why To Avoid
- No domain and email
- Pricing
- WordPress Hosting $20 / mth.
- eCommerce Solutions $24 / mth.
- Custom Solutions $600 / mth.
WPEngine is all about VIP managed WordPress hosting. You will get the best of everything, whether it’s support, security, speed, or convenience. As WPEngine focuses exclusively on WordPress hosting, the content management system is already pre-installed.
All you need to do is migrate your site from where you had it hosted previously using WPEngine’s free automated migration plugin.
Some of the best-known names of the industry use WPEngine to host their sites. This includes HTC, SoundCloud, National Geographic, HelloFresh and Dropbox—to just name a few.
When hosting your site on WPEngine, you can be sure it’s in good hands. It’s practically hacker-proof thanks to WPEngine’s automated security updates, daily malware scans and backups, website firewall, and DDoS protection.
However, there’s also a list of disallowed plugins that may conflict with WPEngine’s features—or are simply not necessary because you’ll get the functionality directly from the hosting provider.
Of course, you’ll get tools for staging and caching, as well as managed WooCommerce hosting support with the eCommerce plan.
As to expect, loading times are exceptionally fast. The servers are optimized with the company’s very own EverCache technology, guaranteeing that your website loads at lightning speed. In fact, the average load time on WPEngine is 656 ms and the average response time is 123 ms.
WPEngine is considerably more expensive than shared hosting options, because it offers top-tier performance and support. That being said, it's surely not the best web hosting for artists with small WordPress sites.
WPEngine is aimed at large WordPress sites with high daily traffic that require advanced performance and security.
Apart from the price tag, another downside to WPEngine is that you don’t get a domain name and email address along with your subscription. That means you will have to register your domain with another provider, which some users find inconvenient.
However, if you have signed up and are not happy with their service, WPEngine offers a 60-day money-back guarantee for all of their annual billing plans!
I really like your writing style, superb information, thanks for putting up : D.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! (:
Thank you for these insights into WordPress hosting! I have been blogging on WordPress and recently updated and redesigned my blog. I also added my e-commerce jewelry store to my blog and having the store right on my blog is helping me become much more consistent about publishing content. Adding some plugins to help with SEO really helps too.
That’s really great to hear that you are back to blogging and also have an online store now! Keep it up and good luck with both your blog and your store!