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Looking through the Google Plus community and Slack chat history, there have been many suggestions regarding hosting for Craft websites. It may not be possible to get a single conclusive answer, but I still want to know...

What hosting company do you recommend for a Craft website?

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TL;DR

Personally, I've had great experience with DigitalOcean.

It is a VPS solution with virtually nothing pre-installed. I've found it to be amazingly fast and stable, even for sites with a high volume of traffic. Spinning up a new VPS "droplet" is incredibly simple and painless.

Since it's basically an "empty" server when you create a new droplet, I've found that DigitalOcean pairs well with ServerPilot. Keep in mind that ServerPilot requires your droplet to be created with Ubuntu 14.04, and must run its setup before you do anything else with your droplet.

ServerPilot gives you an easy interface to setup the common software you'll need to run your site... namely PHP & MySQL. Using both services combined, we're able to easily spin up a new droplet, set it up with ServerPilot, and be up and running quickly!

Only downside... email hosting is not included in either service. So you'd need to find a separate service to handle email hosting. (We use Zoho, which I find to be adequate. I'm still on the lookout for the "perfect" email solution, but that's a topic for another day.)

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    DO user here too. Love it. Regarding email, you could technically install your own email service but that requires some technical know-how & is generally a hassle. Along with that, email is too critical of a communication line for some people that it may be worth just using Google Apps or Zoho for that peace of mind & stability. Never used Server Pilot but I may give it a go for my personal site!
    – Seán O'Grady
    Apr 23, 2015 at 21:12
  • I have also had only good experience with Digital Ocean - I even recently had the company I work for move to them.
    – Marty
    Apr 23, 2015 at 21:26
  • Virtualmin GPL is a free, decent, minimally-ugly on-server GUI for management I've been using for a few years. It has a one-step install script and makes software updates + vhost/cron/backup management all easy without being too bloated or in the way like Plesk or CPanel. (As an alternative to ServerPilot.)
    – Matt Stein
    May 5, 2015 at 18:56
  • The biggest benefit from the setup Lindsey describes is ServerPilot. These guys do an outstanding job of setting up the server, security updates, multiple versions of PHP per domain name and user management. Best part its free if you don't need SSL or multiple SSH users. Its also important to mention that SeverPilot works with any Ubuntu machine - dedicated, virtual, and even a local VM (I used one to test their service)... Can't recommend them enough.
    – Jason McCallister
    May 22, 2015 at 21:07
  • Totally agree with this. I prefer Forge to ServerPilot, but they are both great choices, as written up here: How Agencies & Freelancers Should Do Web Hosting
    – andrew.welch
    Jul 28, 2017 at 2:09
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Shameless plug here: We, fortrabbit, really ♥ Craft. And we are one of the official Craft Hosting Partners — for good reasons.

Need some more convincing? Have a look at our Craft marketing page or ask us in the support chat if you have questions. Our install guides help you getting started quickly with Craft:

Our little command line tool fortrabbit/craft-copy helps you deploying Craft more easily.

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    You beat me to it! I was about to include a not-so-shameless plug. You guys are awesome, happy customer here
    – Nathan D Huening
    Jul 27, 2017 at 20:48
  • I just added an answer not noticing it was a five year old question. Just so happened I was recommending you, too. I can't recommend you enough.
    – Jay
    Jan 14, 2019 at 11:42
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If you're looking for a fully-managed hosting provider, ArcusTech is top-notch. Their servers run Craft very well and we've rarely had any issues with them.

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Servd.host is the new kid on the block for Craft hosting. It's a managed platform built specifically for Craft so integrates deeply and automates all of the server setup, maintenance and DevOps things that you might need.

Disclosure: I own it and am therefore biased, but our clients like us too!

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I've got Craft sites running well on both WebFaction and Tsohost's cloud hosting platform.

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    +1 for Webfaction: inexpensive and a nice middle-ground between custom controls (their concept of webapps lets you run different sites with different versions of PHP, for instance) and the responsibility of a full-fledged VPS.
    – James Muspratt
    Apr 29, 2015 at 19:27
  • Another +1 for Webfaction. All the speed of a VPS with all the don't-have-to-manage of an otherwise crappy shared service.
    – Matt Stein
    May 5, 2015 at 18:53
  • Ditto WebFaction, big fan
    – Nathan D Huening
    Jul 27, 2017 at 20:47
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As a heads up, I would avoid Cloudways. It looked ideal in theory but I've had a few problems and found their support to be fast but lacking and quite resistant to the idea of Craft.

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I have several client Craft sites on Nexcess, using their ExpressionEngine shared plans. The support has always been excellent, and it performs really well. Note that you can use most versions of PHP, you'll just need to request it from support.

Update: Nexcess now offers Craft-specific hosting, and PHP versions can be selected in the hosting control panel.

I recently cloned a fairly query-heavy client site to the cheapest EEP 100 Nexcess plan and a ServerPilot-managed 2GB Digitalocean droplet with MySQL tuned a bit based on Percona recommendations. Both were using PHP 7. I didn't do extensive load testing, but with dev mode on, the Nexcess server outperformed my DO server consistently, on all front-end and control panel views.

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I use both DigitalOcean like Lindsey as well as Rackspace Cloud Sites. Cloud Sites includes email so that's a perk, but it is essentially shared hosting where as with DO you have a VPS.

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I use...

  • RamNode and Virtualmin GPL for fast, powerful, inexpensive development boxes that take minimal maintenance/sysadmin time (check out Virtualmin GPL's super-easy install script!)
  • Webfaction for modest production sites that need to be inexpensive and fast with zero required sysadmin time
  • ArcusTech for client production sites where I shouldn't be relied on as a sysadmin (which is all client production sites)
  • Amazon AWS when clients have web teams that would laugh at the quaintness of a single server instance

This basically has me covered at any scale, and I'm happy with each provider. Transactional mail goes through Mandrill when I can help it, as it's usually free and always fast and reliable.

I'm also in Seattle (United States), so when I say fast it's a geographically-relative term. Most of the above offer servers in various cities+countries.

Update May 2019: I no longer use Webfaction after its acquisition by GoDaddy, and I've settled on using Laravel Forge with Digital Ocean, Linode, or Vultr for most new production projects. I published a blog post last year comparing VPS providers, some of which are great for powerful+cheap development boxes.

For transactional email, I almost always use Mailgun.

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    You might like Ajenti more than VirtualMin.
    – Natetronn
    May 22, 2015 at 21:16
  • Ooh, and here I thought I tried all the things. Thanks @Natetronn!
    – Matt Stein
    May 22, 2015 at 23:28
  • @MattStein What plan do you use on ramnode that supports virtualmin gpl? kvm/openvz? and what size, etc. thanks!
    – Wes
    May 1, 2019 at 15:57
  • @Wes I just updated my answer, which has changed quite a bit since my original post. Virtualmin has run fine for me on KVM and OpenVZ servers with various specs (Ubuntu, CentOS, 1-8GB memory, 1-4 CPU cores). I used Centmin Mod (centminmod.com) for some time as well, which does away with UI bloat and provisions a really fast CentOS LEMP stack—worth comparing to Virtualmin if you're interested.
    – Matt Stein
    May 1, 2019 at 16:09
  • @MattStein thanks for all the info, and the blog post of vps comparisons too!... I too am looking to bail on webfaction :)
    – Wes
    May 1, 2019 at 20:35
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You can check out Web Hosting UK or Rshosting , user friendly support with SSD server to help better performance.

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We're using AWS to host Craft and it's worked out very well. We're using elastic beanstalk, as well, which has been super helpful with deployments.

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Linode.com is great... and they offer managed hosting too, if you want it.

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Since 4 years we moved all our EE sites over to UNIXy. These guys are amazing, fully managed, support request often answered in minutes, they think for you in finding the best possible set-up and are well known for there Varnish implementation.

Servers are located in the US and Europe. The later being important to us and pricing is sharp.

Last year we started out with a new server dedicated to our Craft customers. Currently we have 5 servers running and I've never experienced a security issue, downtime, or slow support over the years.

Love these guys 😀

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Hope you are doing good and safe.

Personally, I have a great experience using Cloudways that allows me to host my Craft CMS application on 5 cloud providers (DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode, Vultr, and GCE). Although I need to install the Craft CMS. However, it goes well and smoothly. Other than that, I didn't require anything when it comes to server resources.

I got a pre-installed stack consisting of Apache, NGINX PHP 7.3 and 7.4, Elasticsearch, and cache technologies to speed up my website performance (Memcached, Redis, Varnish, PHP-FPM). I chose DigitalOcean because it was under my budget and offer the perfect server location. The platform is easy to use and comes with SSH credentials.

Server scaling is one of the finest features that I really love. Before that, I was using shared hosting so thought to switch as my website's resources were increasing. So far, going well.

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I use Rackspace Cloud Sites and Arcustech

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  • I have used Could Sites in the past - how has it been for you using Craft? I have had a site using MODx and when traffic was high, the site would crash. This was some time ago though...
    – Damon
    Apr 30, 2015 at 14:12
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I've been using WiredTree for a couple of years and am very happy with their service. They are very helpful and quick to respond to inquiries 24/7 to any issues and queries you have with the server.

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I would recommend you to go with a managed host provider like Cloudways for Craft hosting. Some of its good features are:

  • ThunderStack consists of Nginx, Varnish, Apache, PHP-FPM
  • Vertical Scaling
  • Cloud providers i.e AWS, GCE, DO, Vultr and Kyup
  • 1-Click installations
  • Caches (MemCache, MemCached, Redis)
  • CloudwaysBot
  • 24/7 Support
  • User Friendly UI experience
  • Provides their custom Cpanel from which you can manage your server in 1-click
  • Latest PHP versions
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  • Thanks for the recommendation. Can you please add some details regarding why you recommend Cloudways?
    – Lindsey D
    Sep 19, 2016 at 15:48
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    I have edited my answer
    – Ahmed Khan
    Sep 20, 2016 at 8:49
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For websites in Switzerland i recommend to use Cyon (https://www.cyon.ch/). It runs on LiteSpeed Webserver and offers a easy to integrate fullpage cache solution comparable to Varnish cache without any extra cost (more information on LIghtSpeed Cache in German: https://www.cyon.ch/blog/LiteSpeed-Cache). It speeds up the craft installation to a maximum. The LiteSpeed Cache function is already available on the smallest hosting package for only CHF 9.90.

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AWS is good but it's quite expensive. I would suggest to to go for F(x) Data Cloud or Digital Ocean. They have the quality Service and both of them are highly reliable and appreciable.

Both will satisfy your requirements and are cost-efficient.

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I would highly recommend you for **F(x) Data Cloud** .The major reason for recommending you is that you will get more cost-Effective Plans, Higher Uptime, Custom SSD Storage and most importantly appreciable Technical Support. I have been using their 7 servers at this moment and quite happy with the Cost and Services. Visit: https://fxdata.cloud

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I can recommend the Craft CMS hosting by Kualo

  • LiteSpeed
  • Redis
  • Latest PHP versions
  • Block storage
  • Green hosting.
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I've moved from Digital Ocean onto Fortrabbit. They're an official CraftCMS hosting partner and they've been great. Amazing support, great speeds. Can't ask for anything more.

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Craft CMS is very light-weight in terms of resources and doesn't really require a dedicated or VPS setup - obviously dependant on website traffic!

We have used both Google and AWS but with yearly increases and support not being great, I think there is better options for website hosting in 2020.

For around £20-30 per month for cloud/shared hosting, Cloudway's are decent.

For cheaper hosting around £3-4 per month, we use Softdata.

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I have all my hosting through Media Temple I've never had a problem - love the support.

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    I have to say I've run two Craft sites on shared hosting ("GS") and found them to be extremely slow. Same goes for ExpressionEngine sites.
    – James Muspratt
    Apr 29, 2015 at 18:23
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    MediaTemple is one of the hosts we get the most support tickets for. Usually really random, obscure problems.
    – Brad Bell ♦
    Apr 30, 2015 at 3:44
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    I've also found MediaTemple to be very slow with a couple of Craft sites I had hosted there. It seemed to have gotten worse in the last few months. Moved to DigitalOcean and they fly along.
    – Patrick Nesbitt
    Apr 30, 2015 at 8:04
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    Very interesting. Thanks for the insight guys! Now I'm going to be watching like a hawk!
    – Damon
    Apr 30, 2015 at 13:36
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    I'd like to echo the iffy experience with (gs). It used to be terrible about 9 years go, had a brief period where it got much faster and more stable, and it's back to relatively slow performance (measured via Pingdom) and random weird issues. Awesome support, subpar service. Managed hosting is way cheaper at ArcusTech, and Webfaction has been my new home for shared-hosting-budget and even some VPS projects.
    – Matt Stein
    May 5, 2015 at 19:10

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