WordPress hosting has evolved a lot. Previously, you had to make do with generic shared hosts that were located in a country far away from your website users. Fortunately, things have changed for the better.
Today there are many WordPress hosting options in India. In this post, I will walk you through some of the most popular and best web hosting providers in India to start your WordPress blog.
I will list their pros and cons so you can make an informed choice since web hosting can be a tricky minefield where you end up losing a lot of money if you pick the wrong hosting provider.
Finally, I will help you to pick the best WordPress hosting in India based on different parameters. So, stick till the very end of this guide.
Advantages of Indian web hosting
I know you’re eager to jump into the juicy details of the right WordPress hosting for your needs. However, I wanted to quickly highlight the benefits of hosting your WordPress website in India. If you’re already aware of the benefits, you can skip ahead by all means.
Low latency: This is perhaps the biggest advantage of Indian web hosting. By picking a server location in India, your website visitors will experience low latency and higher browsing speed, and thank you in the form of repeat visits.
Pay in rupees: Using an overseas web host requires a credit card for payment and not everyone has a credit card in India. Only 3% of Indians above the age of 15 years currently own a credit card which is not very encouraging if you wish to make payments for hosting services. Hence, you should select a domestic web host to be able to make payments in rupees by taking advantage of the multiple payment platforms like net banking, UPI, debit, and credit cards.
Indian support: Believe me, support is one of the most important factors to consider when picking a web hosting provider. The support staff should not only be knowledgeable but also be readily available when you need them. Using an Indian web hosting provider will ensure India-based support with working timings that align with yours.
Now, let’s get started with picking the best WordPress hosting service in India.
Hostinger
Hostinger WordPress hosting plans for India start at Rs 99/month. On the Single plan, you can install WordPress on one website and there is a traffic cap of 10,000 visitors per month.
I will suggest you opt for the Starter plan that allows up to 100 websites and 25,000 monthly visits apart from 100 GB SSD space. The plan is pocket-friendly at Rs 199 monthly and renewal costs Rs 299 per month.
You can choose from among 5 different data centers located in USA, UK, Singapore, Netherlands, and Lithuania. Unfortunately, Hostinger does not offer an India data center presently but that could change in the future.
If the majority of your visitors are from India, then the Singapore data center will be the closest and the best fit for your requirements.
Now, let’s go through the pros and cons of Hostinger’s WordPress offering.
Hostinger Pros
- Generous Starter plan offering 100 website installs, 100 GB SSD disk space, 25,000 monthly visits
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Free email hosting
- Free daily backups on the Business and Premium plans
- Free CDN on the Business and Premium plans
- WordPress acceleration using the LiteSpeed cache plugin
- WordPress multisite
- Managed WordPress that includes site building wizard, auto-updates, and WordPress friendly support
- 24/7 live chat support
Hostinger Cons
- Inode limit: Inodes are the files and folders on your website. The Single plan has a limit of 200,000 inodes and the Starter plan has a limit of 400,000 inodes. You will need to regularly monitor your inode usage to ensure that you stay within the limit set for your hosting plan.
- Database size limit of 3 GB: While this limit is good enough for small-sized websites, if you have more than 5 websites with a reasonable amount of content, then 3 GB will be quite insufficient for your needs.
- No CDN and backups on the starter plans: If you opt for the Single or the Starter plans, you will not get access to their CDN or daily backup features. The workaround is to get a free CDN like Cloudflare and use the UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin for backing up your site.
- No India data center
- No staging environment but it’s coming soon
Related: Types of web hosting services that you should know about
Bluehost India
The biggest advantage of choosing Bluehost over Hostinger is that it offers a dedicated data center in India and domestic support.
With a data center located in India, your site visitors will experience low latency and a better browsing experience.
Bluehost plans start at Rs 179 per month. The Basic package allows one WordPress website installation. I suggest that you go for the Plus package that offers unlimited website installations.
It costs Rs 459 per month if you select the 1-year option and Rs 279 per month if you select the 3-year option. My advice is to stick with 1 year for now. This way you will not get trapped in a long-term contract if you wish to switch over to a different host down the road.
WordPress hosting
Bluehost also offers truly unlimited WordPress hosting that is not limited by inodes (the number of files in your WordPress install) or the database size, unlike Hostinger.
The Pros and Cons below will present a complete picture to you.
Bluehost Pros
- India data center and support
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Unlimited websites, storage, and bandwidth on the Plus plan
- Free staging environment
- WordPress website builder
- Managed WordPress support
- Custom user panel
- Free site migration
Bluehost Cons
- Servers can become slow if overloaded with websites
- No free email hosting
- Daily backups only in the top tier
Must Read: What is managed WordPress hosting
GoDaddy
GoDaddy needs no introduction. It is the world’s biggest domain registrar and one of the biggest web hosting providers. Recently, it has introduced its hosting services in India along with India-specific hosting plans.
The shared hosting plans start at just Rs 99/month and go up to Rs 449/month when purchased for a 3-year tenure. The Starter and Economy plans allow only one website. It’s the Deluxe and Ultimate plans that you should be looking at since both the packages allow unlimited websites.
The bandwidth and storage are also unlimited on these two plans. However, all plans come with a limit of 2,50,000 files. Also, presently, there is no India-based GoDaddy data center but the company is planning to set up its servers in India in the future to meet the data localization requirements of the country.
WordPress hosting
GoDaddy offers dedicated WordPress hosting plans starting at Rs 329/month. They also have plans for large eCommerce sites running the WooCommerce plugin. Their WordPress plans come with daily malware scans (no malware removal though) and 1-click website backups and restore. They also have an auto-migrate feature if you wish to transfer your existing sites to GoDaddy.
GoDaddy Pros
- Affordable plans even on renewals
- 99.9% service uptime guarantee
- Free SSL certificates on WordPress hosting plans
- Unmetered bandwidth and website installs on the higher plans
- Unlimited websites on Deluxe and Ultimate plans
- Choice of data centers in North America, Europe, or Asia-Pacific
- cPanel for managing websites
- Free domain and email for 1st year
GoDaddy Cons
- No data center in India presently although plans are underway to set up in the future
- Maximum file limit of 2,50,000 in all plans no matter how many websites you host. This is similar to the inode limit in Hostinger
- Free and automatic backups are not available
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HostingRaja
If you’re looking for a web hosting company with India data centers, then you should definitely consider HostingRaja. It has servers located in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. Its hosting plans are quite affordable and start at just Rs 104/month (Silver Plan, 3 years minimum duration). The Unlimited plan costs Rs 283/month for a 1-year tenure.
One of the best aspects is that it offers SSD storage across all plans that will ensure high data transfer rates for your websites. The business plans offer much more punch in the form of higher RAM, CPU power, malware removal, and even a page load guarantee of under 3.5 seconds. Now, how do they guarantee page load times is not known but it surely is a unique feature.
SSL certificates are standard across all plans. They also offer WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. So there’s plenty to choose from. I will suggest that you pick one of the business plans since you also get free emails, backup, higher RAM, and malware removal on these plans.
HostingRaja Pros
- India datacenters
- SSD storage across all plans
- Unmetered bandwidth on business plans
- Free SSL certificate
- Malware removal and free backups on the business plans
- HTTP2 and TLS security that you get with Cloudflare
HostingRaja Cons
- A large number of fake reviews on TrustPilot and MouthShut make it difficult to know whether it’s a genuine hosting company or not
- No service uptime guarantee mentioned
- No mention of a user control panel
- Backups and malware removal only available on the business plans
- No exclusive WordPress features in WordPress hosting
Related: The 50+ most popular blogs on the internet right now
BigRock
BigRock was acquired by the Endurance International Group (EIG) a few years back. As you might know, EIG owns a host of web hosting companies, including, Bluehost and HostGator. The advantage of picking BigRock is the choice of an India data center for websites getting the majority of their traffic from India.
Another cool feature is that BigRock offers cloud hosting options as well in addition to the regular shared hosting plans. They also offer unmetered disk space and bandwidth although the unmetered disk space comes with certain limitations like not more than 25 percent server resource utilization.
It also makes use of Varnish web acceleration to speed up the websites which is a welcome offering. BigRock offers its customers a 30-day money-back guarantee across all plans so you can test their services before deciding to stay for a longer period.
BigRock Pros
- Choice of India and US datacenters
- Unlimited websites and emails on the Pro and Cloud Hosting plans
- Unmetered disk space and bandwidth subject to Fair Usage Policy (FUP)
- Free SSL certificate
- Website builder included
- Varnish web acceleration
- High-end servers
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 30-days money-back guarantee
BigRock Cons
- No free backups
- No exclusive WordPress features in WordPress hosting. Managed hosting is missing
- No malware scanning or removal
- Free domains not included
- No staging environment
HostGator India
HostGator needs no introduction. It’s one of the biggest and most popular web hosting companies in the world. The friendly blue alligator is one of the most eye-catching logos online and you can instantly recognize HostGator from its mascot.
HostGator started its India operations a long time back and it has tied up with GPX to provide data centers located in India. Before I explain their hosting plans, you should know that HostGator offers an industry-leading 45 days money-back guarantee across all plans.
Their shared hosting plans start from Rs 299/month and go up to Rs 799/month for the Business plan. I recommend HostGator’s Baby plan that costs Rs 599/month with unlimited websites, bandwidth, SSD disk storage, and free Let’s Encrypt SSL.
HostGator does not require you to choose multi-year plans (and get stuck), rather you can pick monthly plans (that cost more). The advantage of monthly plans is that you can cancel anytime if you’re not satisfied.
WordPress hosting
Unlike other hosts, HostGator actually offers dedicated WordPress hosting. There are two plans to choose from, Starter and Performance. The Starter plan allows only a single WordPress install while the Performance plan allows two WordPress installs and offers a more powerful server, higher bandwidth, storage, and RAM.
However, there are no automatic backups, malware scanning or removal, staging environment, or CDN offered. If you want all this, then you will need to pick one of the Bluehost WordPress hosting plans that are offered along with HostGator plans since both the companies are owned by the EIG group.
Remember, you can always select a regular web hosting plan and install WordPress using cPanel. This way you will get unlimited websites but with lower server resources.
HostGator Pros:
- India server location
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Free SSL certificates
- Unlimited websites, bandwidth, and disk space (subject to their Fair Usage Policy)
- Unlimited email accounts
- Free cPanel to manage your websites
- Cloud hosting plans are also available
- Monthly payment options and not just yearly
HostGator Cons:
- No automated backups
- No malware scanning and removal
- WordPress plans allow maximum 2 installs
- No staging environment for WordPress hosting
MilesWeb
MilesWeb is a homegrown company launched in 2012. It has multiple data centers across the world, including India. The pricing of their hosting packages is quite simple and starts at Rs 200/month for the Solo plan that allows one website install.
If you need to host multiple websites, then you should go with the Multi plan that costs Rs 850/month (discounts are available) and offers unlimited website install. You also get a free domain, unlimited emails, SSD disk space, bandwidth, and free SSL certificates.
There’s also a website builder thrown into the mix for good measure. MilesWeb offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 99.95% uptime guarantee. PassionWP was earlier hosted on MilesWeb and one of the reasons for moving away from it was its less than satisfactory uptime. The lack of speed was another factor.
WordPress hosting
There’s no exclusive WordPress hosting offered by MilesWeb. Rather, the same shared hosting plans are repackaged as WordPress hosting plans. Needless to say that you can install WordPress apart from other CMS’s using their 1-click installer.
MilesWeb Pros:
- Monthly payment options without getting locked into lengthy contracts
- Unlimited SSD disk space, bandwidth, and websites on the highest plan
- Free SSL and website builder included
- India server location
- Unlimited email accounts
- Free migration
MilesWeb Cons:
- No free backups
- No malware scanning and removal
- Uptime is pretty poor
- No staging environment
Which is the best WordPress hosting service in India?
You’ve seen a list of the 7 top WordPress web hosting providers in India and also glanced through their pricing. But in the end, you will be hosting your sites on a single host only. So which one should you pick if you plan on picking an Indian WordPress web hosting service?
The first priority should be an Indian server location since most of your site traffic will come domestically. On this criteria, Hostinger and GoDaddy are eliminated since their servers are located outside India. Further, the strict file (inode) limit imposed by these two hosting companies acts as a dampener on choosing them for hosting your WordPress website.
HostingRaja promised a lot but all of it is doubtful in the face of the numerous fake reviews on sites such as Trustpilot and MouthShut. Further, there is nothing special about its WordPress hosting features.
MilesWeb is a web host that I have experienced and I was totally put off by their high downtimes and less than satisfactory speed. So I didn’t hesitate in switching over to Dreamhost (where PassionWP is still hosted but Dreamhost lacks India-specific services).
So, the choice boils down between BigRock, Bluehost, and HostGator. The interesting thing is that all three are owned by the EIG group so their services are more or less similar.
HostGator is good however their WordPress plans allow a maximum of 2 WordPress installs. Also, there are no automated backups and malware scanning included.
BigRock offers cloud hosting but does not offer dedicated WordPress hosting.
Therefore, to take full advantage of an India data center (for lower latency and higher speeds) along with a free staging environment, website builder, managed WordPress support, free migration, and a custom user panel, I recommend Bluehost as the best WordPress hosting provider in India that you should seriously consider for hosting your websites.
I hope this guide on the popular web hosting companies in India for WordPress websites was useful to you. If you want some other web host included in this comparison or need further help in selecting the right web host, let me know in the comments below.
