As WordPress, the world-renowned open-source content management system (CMS), gears up to celebrate its 20th anniversary, a recent study has shone light on the most reliable WordPress hosting providers. Emerging at the top of the list are Kinsta, Liquid Web, and WP Engine.
StatusGator, a well-known data monitoring tool, conducted the study, analyzing historical data pertaining to all downtime events for each service. The results showcased that WordPress hosting providers, on average, encounter 11 hours and six minutes of downtime per annum.
Two Decades of WordPress Influence
Conceived by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress was introduced to the digital world on May 27, 2003, as a branch of b2/cafelog. The platform has since evolved into a CMS behemoth, empowering over 43% of the most popular domains worldwide.
Reflecting on the origins of WordPress, co-founder Mike Little tweeted on January 25, 2023, “20 years ago today, I commented on Matt's blog & kicked off the project that became WordPress. Now WordPress powers over 43% of most popular domains. It is made by a worldwide community of thousands of contributors & millions of users.”
Mullenweg attributes the birth and success of WordPress to Little's initiating comment, describing the event as “the butterfly effect”. As the official 20th anniversary approaches on May 27, 2023, WordPress is planning a series of commemorative events throughout the year.
Ranking WordPress Hosts for Reliability
StatusGator's study revealed an interesting landscape of WordPress hosts, with Flywheel, Cloudways, Hostinger, and DreamHost also ranked among the top seven for reliability.
Liquid Web topped the charts with the fewest hosting-related downtimes at just 0.6 instances per year. Conversely, Hostinger experienced the most downtime with 36.0 instances per year. Notably, some providers, including GoDaddy, Anchor Host, and HostPress, did not disclose their downtime information publicly.
The study categorized downtime events as either critical or non-critical. Critical events encompassed shared hosting, VPS, data center, dedicated servers, and DNS, while non-critical downtime included email, help centers, live chat support, cPanel, and billing and subscription services.
As WordPress enters its third decade, these insights offer valuable perspectives for users in choosing their hosting providers. Reliability remains a key factor, and as this study shows, there is a clear hierarchy in the hosting space.
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