The web hosting space is expanding. As such, it can be particularly challenging to sort through dozens of different options to determine which one is right for your business needs.
G2 Crowd released its Winter 2017 web hosting results, providing a side-by-side comparison of 13 popular managed website hosting companies — all of which offer a WordPress hosting option. Results can make it easier to choose your next host.
Each host was evaluated across a range of different categories, including overall satisfaction, satisfaction by category, and satisfaction by feature. In calculating the Grid Scores, G2 Crowd also took into account the overall market presence and NPS scores.
Let’s look at the results.
Feature satisfaction breakdown
Scores were amassed for a number of different features including storage limits, email hosting, eCommerce integration, security tools, CMS support, and more. Ratings represent the overall reviewers’ satisfaction with each feature, wherein the features were identified by G2 Crowd.
WP Engine and Siteground received highest scores across the Hosting Management feature comparison chart. Overall, companies performed best in the CMS Support category, with an average of 87%. Five out of the 13 contenders scored more than 90% in satisfaction — WP Engine (98%), Pantheon (95%), SiteGround (92%), InMotion Hosting (90%), and iPage (90%).
G2 Grid also evaluated companies on their hosting plans — looking at overall satisfaction for Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Colocation Services.
The majority of hosts — with the exception of GoDaddy, Pantheon, and HostGator — did not receive scores for all plans because they either had fewer than five responses (*n/a) or selected that they do not offer that specific feature (*gray box). Twelve out of 13 hosts received scores for shared hosting plans, five of which received scores greater than 90% — WP Engine (92%), DreamHost (90%), SiteGround (91%), InMotion Hosting (91%), and FatCow (91%).
Overall satisfaction, and satisfaction by category, was also evaluated for each host. WP Engine again received the highest marks across all categories — scoring more than 90% across the board. Pantheon, SiteGround, and InMotion Hosting trailed closely behind.
G2 Crowd also looked at Net Promoter Scores (NPS). NPS scores range from -100 to 100 and represent the willingness to recommend a company’s product or service, and is used to gauge customer’s overall satisfaction.
Global standards consider anything above 0 as “good.” Fifty plus is considered to excellent, and 70+ is “world-class.” WP Engine scored higher than all other hosts in this category, with a world-class NPS of 87.
Despite coming up short across most feature comparisons, GoDaddy tied WP Engine with an overall G2 Score of 76. This is in large part because, although it received average scores across the features compared, it dominated the market presence.
This survey just looks at the breakdown for feature satisfaction, but when picking a web host, pricing also plays a role in the selection process. Each host on the survey offers a WordPress hosting option, and three of the hosts are exclusively WordPress.
When selecting a host, it’s important to first identify which features are most important to you (i.e., is eCommerce integration important to you? How much? How about email hosting?), then do your due diligence in evaluating pricing options (How much are you willing to spend? what type of traffic do you expect?). Asking yourself these questions can help you tremendously throughout the selection process.
Methodology
G2 Crowd is a trusted source for technology evaluations, aiming to “represent the democratic voice of real software users, rather than the subjective opinion of one analyst.” Data was gathered from the G2 Crowd user community as well as aggregated from online sources and social networks. It evaluated overall market presence (based on market share, size, and social impact) and customer satisfaction (based on reviews). The Grid Report was based off scores calculated using the G2 Crowd algorithm v2.0. To participate, companies needed a minimum of 10 reviews.
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