Church Web Hosting Ranked

2026 UPDATE: We launched our own web hosting service called ChurchHost. We’ll be glad to copy your site so you can give it a try on a temporary URL without committing to leave your current host. No questions asked refunds. Generous CPU and memory reserved per site, LiteSpeed Enterprise and a thoroughly modern control panel.

Which church web hosting providers are the best?

We surveyed customers using our church WordPress themes to ask them to rate and provide feedback on different aspects of the web hosting company they use. 200 churches responded, giving us plenty of data to rank web hosting providers with. This list of hosting companies will help your church make the best choice and avoid getting stuck with a bad host.

We are including web hosts that received at least three responses for in our survey. Most of the churches are using providers that are not specifically church web hosting. By that, I mean they are hosting providers in general. There are very few church web hosts other than ChurchHost. What a church needs is good hosting, so let’s take a look at who does and doesn’t meet that need.

Shady Web Hosting Reviews

Before we dig in, I want to tell you one reason we did this survey. Maybe you searched for “best web hosting” or “web host reviews”. That’s a good thing except that much of what you will read is manipulated. The hosts are typically paying affiliate marketers $50 – $200 per referral which tempts people to do crazy things like create fake ratings, write fake reviews, etc. It seems to me (generally speaking) that web hosts turn a blind eye since it is to their benefit.

If you think used car salesmen are bad, try web hosting marketers. I’m speaking generally. There are some good folks in this industry. Just be aware.

Our Solution (New)

ChurchThemes, LLC was renamed Sunday Pixels, LLC in 2026 in order to launch ChurchHost as a brand that compliments ChurchThemes. You can think of these as sisters.

ChurchHost

We launched Church Host because over time we have become dissatisfied with most recommendations in this survey. We also want to be able to provide you with a more complete church website solution.

What Makes ChurchHost Different

• We know ChurchThemes customers. Experiencing problems with your theme or plugin? We can log right in and take care of things for you without having to ask you to send us WordPress admin, hosting control panel and/or FTP details. Secure and quick. We also provide church site advice.
• No pricing gimmicks. No asterisks or tiny gray text hidden at the bottom. No surprise price hikes. We don’t offer add-ons that you don’t actually need. And we definitely don’t charge you for downloading your own site’s backups. Crystal clear pricing and yes we’ll pro-rate a refund if you pay for a year in advance and decide to leave.
• Try without leaving your host. We’ll make a copy of your site for you to test on our servers at a temporary URL and refund 100% with no questions asked if you want to stick with your old host.
• Incredible speed with LiteSpeed Enterprise. We license the Enterprise version of the LiteSpeed web server. Combining this with Redis object caching and the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin is the ultimate performance combination. It’s the only plugin that conveniently interfaces with both LiteSpeed Enterprise and Redis.
• Fast and secure containerized hosting. Each site is isolated on the server in its own “box”, almost like a Virtual Private Server (VPS). This serves two purposes: 1) Protect your site in the case another site on the server is hacked, 2) Preserve your site’s speed in case another site on the server is attempting to use an inordinate amount of resources (only their site slows).
• Fewer sites per server. We do not overload our servers with customers. Plenty of CPU and memory is allocated for each site so you don’t experience slowdown. This also means less issues as a server with many sites can be problematic. We can do this in a cost-effective manner due to the per-site pricing model of the Enhance control panel. With cPanel’s ever-increasing per-server pricing, we’d need to load hundreds of sites on a server just to keep costs down.
• True managed WordPress. It seems like “every” host these days offers “managed WordPress” service. The definition is blurry but we consider it to include technical support for WordPress issues, something not every host will help with.
• No security or backup plugin required. Included are daily offsite backups, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), real-time intrusion detection, WordPress vulnerability protection, real-time IP blocklist, optimized ModSecurity rules, PHP hardening, malware scanning and automatic repair attempts, bad bot blocking, free automatic SSL, HTTPS enforcement, HTTP/3 protocol, brute force prevention, WordPress auto-updates, DNSSEC and 5 Gbps DDoS protection.
• No false “Unlimited” promises. We don’t say “Unlimited Storage” or “Unlimited Sites” because it would be a lie. Storage can be limiting by capping the number of files. Sites can be limited by allowing only a certain amount of CPU and memory usage across all your sites. See what I mean? We just offer an appropriate amount of storage for the vast majority of church sites and allow storage upgrades for the few that need it. We also allocate CPU and memory per site, not per account.
• Optional email hosting. A minority of churches want email hosting with their web hosting. Many “managed WordPress” hosts don’t offer email. We offer it on our second plan in order to keep the entry plan at a lower cost for churches not needing email.

Of course this is not all the features but these are things that differentiate ChurchHost from many other hosts. Please give us a zero-risk try. If you’ve been happy with ChurchThemes then I think you will be happy with our hosting as well.

Survey Results: Best & Worst Church Web Hosting

We have a lot of information to share further down but let’s not beat around the bush. Here are the best church web hosting providers according to the churches we surveyed. One of the questions we asked was, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your church’s web hosting provider?”

Above Average

These four hosts came out on the top half.

SiteGround

UPDATE: I personally no longer recommend SiteGround. As a customer, I found that I had to pay extra every single month just to be able to download my backups. They did not do that before and I had no idea about it until I had already onboarded. Their support is still fast and helpful but don’t expect to actually get “Unlimited” sites on your plan since all your sites will share limited resources (at ChurchHost resources are allocated per site, not per account).

Churches gave SiteGround’s hosting an a strong average rating. While InMotion Hosting leads in most categories, SiteGround has an advantage in the category of WordPress Support. The churches we surveyed use WordPress so it’s clear they appreciate support with WordPress issues, something most hosts will not lend a hand with unless they are a pricier “managed” WordPress host like WP Engine. SiteGround starts at only $17.99/month (regular price, which has nearly doubled in the last few years).

Customer of 2 years

I have sought help from their tech support staff 5 or 6 times and they have always been polite and efficient.  Most of the time, the issue was resolved during a webchat with them. I chose siteground.com because it was recommended by churchthemes.com and am absolutely satisfied with the quality of service and cost.

Customer of 2 years

I have not had a problem, they have worked to resolve any issue that came up. I found them especially helpful when I was first starting out with WordPress.

InMotion Hosting

If we had not been surveying churches using WordPress, InMotion Hosting may have received an overall ratings closer or even better than SiteGround. InMotion Hosting dominated every category except help with WordPress issues (scoring only an average of 7.9 there). They scored high for general support and beat out all other hosts, including SiteGround in Speed, Uptime, Features, Ease of Use and Value.

One thing to note is that they still use the ancient cPanel control panel that originated in the 1990’s. It’s stable and full-featured but has a dated interface and can be confusing to some. ChurchHost uses the modern Enhance containerized hosting control panel which was designed as a next-generation alternative to cPanel and Plesk. SiteGround has a nicely designed proprietary control panel.

Customer of more than 5 years

They are always up, never experienced any slow downs. They communicate well for maintenance outages and security threats. WordPress is preinstalled and easy to use / upgrade. Email is secure and easy to use.

Customer of more than 5 years

Our web hosting service has been extremely reliable. In the past 5-6 years, we have only experienced one outage when a hacker gained access to the server and uploaded a page to our website. The access was the fault of our web hosting provider, not ours. It was fixed in very short order.

Customer of 2 years

…good provider. They provide quick and efficient service. It is priced right for us.

Namecheap

WARNING: As of writing (June, 2024), their free SSL certificate is available only if you have your domain registered with Namecheap. Choose another host if your domain is registered elsewhere as you’ll end up having to pay for a certificate which you should not need to do. SSL is essential and nearly every host provides it for free these days.

Namecheap did surprisingly well. I say it was a surprise because they are known more for domain name registration than web hosting. We use them for managing our own domains so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that they also excel at web hosting. Churches rate them above average in 5 of 7 categories. Their strong point is speed while their weakest category of performance is uptime (last place).

There were no written comments left for Namecheap, just ratings.

DreamHost

We have in the past recommended DreamHost, not because we feel they are number one, but because they offer free hosting to non-profits who qualify, and that is useful to churches without a budget. With that said, they are an above average host and are worth considering on a paid basis as well (which we recommend, if at all possible, so that your church has some “skin in the game”).

Customer of more than 5 years

We love that non profits get free shared hosting and it meets all of our needs.

Customer less than 1 year paying $30/month for DreamPress plan

Monthly emails can be crude and ungodly – but then these guys are not Christians.

Customer of more than 5 years

You can’t beat the unlimited storage and bandwidth offered. WordPress can get slow due to the shared hosting model.

Other Worthy WordPress Hosts

This is an update for 2024. The original survey was done some time ago now and there are other hosts that I would personally recommend.

• Cloudways – Fantastic for the geeky or adventurous (or freelancers and agencies). Your website will run on its own server in the cloud. You choose a plan based on performance and storage and can configure it using their UI in a way that prevents you from derailing it. You then add an “app” which is your WordPress website (add as many as your server can handle). The price to performance ratio is excellent and it is highly configurable with good support. We use Cloudways.
• WP Engine – I no longer recommend them as of 2026 for three reasons: 1) Their lawsuit against WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s company leaves a bad taste in my mouth and 2) What I have been hearing from others more recently indicates they are not providing as good a service as they used to. 3) Excessive upselling. Pay more for this! Pay more for that! Even though you probably don’t need this or that.

Now we’ll continue down the ranking of hosts according to the survey…

Below Average — Take Caution

Careful with the bottom half of this list which churches rate below average. All four hosts are owned either by GoDaddy or EIG. These are not companies with sterling reputations. EIG owns more than 50 web hosting brands so check that list and avoid them.

Bluehost

Bluehost might be the most popular shared hosting provider. They are an EIG brand and WordPress.org recommended host, something that has generated some controversy. I assume many churches sign up for them simply because WordPress.org recommends them. Not everyone has problems with them but there are other hosts that get more love from their customers so it’s not a worthy recommendation in my opinion (the three other recommended hosts are better).

Customer of 2 years

Dashboard gets kind of complicated for non tech people. I’m not on it much, but when I need to be, it takes awhile to find what I need.

Customer of 3 years

I like the access I have to make changes, the usability of the hosting user interface, and the cost effectiveness and variety of hosting plans. I dislike that the bigger it gets, the worse the support in terms of knowledge of initial support technicians. Also, support response time gets slower. (i.e. longer waits)

Customer of less than 1 year

Our host is low cost and provides value for the dollar. We have very little technical knowledge, but manage to get by.

GoDaddy

2024 Update: Based on my own experience and what I have seen with our customers, I recommend that you avoid GoDaddy. Performance can be good but the customer service in my experience (and others I’ve heard from) is bottom rung.

GoDaddy isn’t the worst but they are below average. I had a good experience with them many years ago but then it was one issue after another. The straw that broke my camel’s back was their sleazy marketing. That, from what I understand, has been cleaned up. We’ve seen too many issues with churches using our themes on GoDaddy hosting, in particular having to do with outdated software.

Customer of 2 years

Our web host is nothing exciting – it keeps our website up and available. One thing that kind of irritates me though – they come out with new services or offers for new customers but they never seem to throw a bone to the loyal and faithful ones they already have.

Customer of 4 years

They have ad campaigns that we do not always agree with.

Customer of more than 5 years

Our church made the decision to use GoDaddy before I came on board. Although I would have chosen a different web host due to GoDaddy’s somewhat negative reputation, the service has been satisfactory enough that it hasn’t been worth moving to another web host…

HostGator

HostGator is a very popular web host, purchased by EIG in 2012. I’ve been told they were a very good host before that. Unfortunately, they are no longer providing the best web hosting for churches. I observed them to be in the bottom 20% of web hosts when I ran HostingReviews.io (sold and subsequently destroyed, unfortunately). Your church will probably be better off avoiding this host.

Customer of 2 years

Pro: Relatively inexpensive for unlimited bandwidth and storage. Con: Our page goes down for a few minutes about once a month

Customer of 2 years

Sometimes it takes a few days for them to investigate an issue

Customer of more than 5 years

Overall I like Hostgator, but I get really tired of the cPanel ads, and clutter. Support is kind of hit or miss, you can get a great tech or a not so great.

Media Temple (Closed)

2024 Update: GoDaddy has shut down Media Temple and that’s fine with me because as a customer long ago I did notice a decline in customer service quality after GoDaddy acquired Media Temple.

Media Temple began in the late 1990’s and enjoyed a good reputation until recent years. The change may have to do with their being acquired by GoDaddy in 2013. They’re the most expensive web host churches reported using, starting at $20/month. Our company decided not to host churchthemes.com with Media Temple several years ago after noticing their service degrade.

Hostinger

They were not in the survey. Their rise in the last several years has been like a rocket. Everything looks attractive, pretty much. Incredible marketing, but avoid. My friend Kevin Ohashi at Review Signal (the only review site I trust) uncovered some ethical concerns.

Rankings by Category

In addition to asking churches how they rate their web host overall, we asked how they rate them in different categories such as support, speed, value and so on. Here’s how the hosts stack up in each category.

Support Ratings

Isn’t it interesting that the support ratings and overall ratings are virtually identical? That’s probably because support is the most important aspect of web hosting for churches. InMotion Hosting edged out SiteGround in this category while GoDaddy did a one-up on Bluehost, though remains in the bottom half.

Best Support: InMotion Hosting takes the lead over SiteGround

Rank	Host
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	SiteGround
3.	Namecheap
4.	DreamHost
5.	GoDaddy
6.	Bluehost
7.	HostGator
8.	Media Temple

Keep reading for a related category – “WordPress Support”. Some hosts go the extra mile in helping you with WordPress-related issues while others will tell you it’s outside their scope of support.

Speed Rankings

Church website hosting needs to be fast. For one, Google uses speed as a ranking factor. Second, it’s helpful to users (presumably why Google considers it). While speed has a lot to do with the website itself, it can’t load any faster than your web hosting provider serves it. DreamHost, an above average host, unfortunately falls behind in the speed category.

Fastest Host: InMotion Hosting earns victory in the speed category too

Rank	Host
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	Namecheap
3.	SiteGround
4.	GoDaddy
5.	Bluehost
6.	HostGator	(tie)
6.	DreamHost	(tie)
6.	Media Temple	(tie)

Looks like a 666 tie for last place. Make of it what you will.

Uptime Rankings

InMotion Hosting shines again, this time with how churches rate their uptime. Media Temple scores a surprising second with Namecheap dropping to last place. SiteGround, as usual, is above average.

Most Reliable: InMotion Hosting scores a perfect ten on uptime rating. Impressive.

Rank	Host
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	Media Temple
3.	SiteGround
4.	GoDaddy
5.	Bluehost
6.	DreamHost
7.	HostGator
8.	Namecheap

Feature Rankings

Now onto features… Which hosts provide church websites with the best tools?

Best Features: InMotion Hosting leads the pack with best features

Rank	Host
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	SiteGround
3.	Namecheap
4.	DreamHost
5.	GoDaddy	(tie)
5.	HostGator	(tie)
7.	Bluehost
8.	Media Temple

Ease of Use Rankings

It’s nice to have features, but are they easy to use? Churches say not only does InMotion Hosting have great features but they are easy to use. Media Temple tanks in terms of ease of use. They have their own proprietary control panel while others are using cPanel (2026 update: DreamHost and SiteGround are using their own proprietary control panels now). Perhaps that has something to do it.

Easiest to Use: InMotion Hosting offers the easiest to use web hosting for churches

Rank	Host
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	SiteGround	(tie)
2.	Namecheap	(tie)
4.	DreamHost	(tie)
4.	HostGator	(tie)
6.	GoDaddy
7.	Bluehost
8.	Media Temple

Value Rankings

We know that cost is an important factor for churches.

Best Value: InMotion Hosting offers the best value in web hosting for churches

2026 Update: Check current pricing as this was written before COVID and there has been notable inflation since then (thanks to Uncle Sam’s money printing). SiteGround’s price for example has almost doubled.

Rank	Host	Rating
1.	InMotion Hosting
2.	SiteGround	(tie)
2.	Namecheap	(tie)
4.	DreamHost	(tie)
4.	HostGator	(tie)
6.	GoDaddy
7.	Bluehost
8.	Media Temple

WordPress Support

Of special concern to us as makers of church WordPress themes is how well a web hosting providers deals with WordPress support. By that I don’t mean does WordPress work on it. WordPress runs on pretty much every host and many have automatic installers. I’m talking about how well the host helps with issues relating to WordPress. Some hosts will help with WordPress issues and others will not (or at least not officially).

If you’re using WordPress, it’s ideal to go with a host that will lend an extra hand when there is a WordPress-specific issue on your website.

Best for WordPress: SiteGround is the best at helping with WordPress issues according to our survey, though consider that ChurchHost (not in the survey) can help with both WordPress and ChurchThemes issues, as well as provide church website advice.

Rank	Host
1.	SiteGround
2.	DreamHost
2.	HostGator
4.	Namecheap
5.	Bluehost
6.	InMotion Hosting
7.	Media Temple
8.	GoDaddy

SiteGround and DreamHost crush the others in this category. This might explain why SiteGround comes out as overall best host according to our church customers even while InMotion Hosting wins the other categories. Our customers use WordPress. If your church is not using WordPress, then InMotion Hosting looks like a great choice. If you are using WordPress, SiteGround offers more.

A note on DreamHost: Their shared hosting does not officially include support with WordPress issues. Their DreamPress plan does, but it costs quite a bit more. Don’t sign up for their standard shared hosting assuming you will get a “9.2” on WordPress support.

Cost of Church Web Hosting

Average Cost

Another question we asked was how much a church pays for their web hosting.

2026 Update: Pricing has increased since the survey was done. At this time you can expect to pay about $15 – $30 per month at regular price.

Price Hike Warning

It is common practice for web hosts to offer a drastically discounted rate for the first year. That’s not a problem, obviously. What is a problem is when they are not clear about the price being discounted for only the first year. If you sign up thinking it’s forever then when the second year bill comes in at double, you’re in for a shock. Our pricing at ChurchHost is crystal clear.

Billing Period Warning

Many hosts initially present a price that assumes you will sign up for a one, two or even three year term. I recommend monthly billing when you’re trying a host for the first time. Your church can always switch the billing period to get a lower price after you feel confident that they will provide your church with good service. I don’t recommend committing to more than one year because we hear sometimes from customers who would like to switch hosts but are locked into a two or three year contract.

If you will be signing up for an annual term from the beginning, make sure beforehand that they will prorate early cancelations. Some do, many don’t. It’s no fun losing money. Neither is it fun being stuck with a host that went from good to bad in order not to lose money.

Free Web Hosting for Churches

DreamHost offers free web hosting for US-based churches. The plan is basic but If your church is in a pinch and can provide a 501(c)(3) determination letter then DreamHost can save you some money.

Conclusion

Simply put, if you’re not going to use ChurchHost, look into InMotion Hosting. Either will move your church’s website for you (at no cost) so don’t let the hassle of switching hosts stop you from ditching a poor provider. If you’re a more technical user then we also recommend Cloudways.

We want to say thank you to the 200 churches that participated in this survey.