Here at Exygy, we do a lot of custom WordPress work. We’re all accomplished sysadmins, but we hate taking phone calls late at night, and we really prefer to focus on building rather than hosting if we can. So we’re really digging the new(ish) wave of WordPress-focused hosts that have come on line lately to help us with our WordPress work. These are kind of like Heroku was for Rails — the “Herokus for WordPress”! Here’s a quick comparison of a three of the most popular WordPress-focused hosting providers:

	WP Engine	Page.ly	Pressable
Largest Plan:
– Pricing	$249/month, custom plans are available	$149/month, custom plans start at $1050/month	$25/month
– Limit	400k visits	~750k visits (100GB)	100k pageviews
Middle Plan
– Pricing	$99/month	$49/month	n/a
– Limit	100k visits	~200k visits	n/a
Smallest Plan
– Pricing	$29/month	$24/month	free
– Limit	25k visits	~25k visits	5k pageviews
CDN (content delivery network)	managed CDN built in, no extra charge	use any CDN or use their built-in one, Edgecast, for $25/month per 50GB	built-in CDN, no charge
Git	yes	only with custom plans	not sure
SSH	no	only with custom plans	not sure
Support	phone support – 9am to 6pm Central Time. WordPress experts	no phone support. live chat and support system are available. WordPress experts	phone and email support – may not be 24 hours
Notable clients	HTC, Foursquare, Sound Cloud	Get Satisfaction, Vonage, Twilio, Yammer	Reuters, McGraw Hill Companies, 500 Startups, Reebok Crossfit
Other	-Optimized for fast site loading times. -Tight security, plus if site is hacked, they will un-hack it for free.	-They claim to be the largest and most trusted WordPress host and the most secure WordPress web host. -Advanced caching and fast load times.	-They also claim fast load times
Website	http://wpengine.com	https://page.ly	http://www.pressable.com

Conclusions

Pressable

Pressable seems like a solid web host that is geared toward smaller sites and sites that don’t get a lot of traffic. If you are creating a new blog and want to get started out for free, Pressable is a great option.

Pros

• Free up to 5,000 pageviews per month.
• Only $25 up to 100,000 pageviews a month.

Cons

• Not as well known as the other 2 options.
• Seems to be geared toward smaller sites, so it may be difficult to grow with them.

Page.ly

Page.ly is definitely a step up from Pressable if you look at both their prices and their bandwidth limits. They seem to be a good option for already established, medium-to-large sites with a decent amount of traffic.

Pros

• Less expensive than WP Engine.
• Higher bandwidth limits than WP Engine.

Cons

• Custom plans start at $1050/month, so your costs could go up substantially if you outgrow their Pro plan.
• Git is only available with custom plans.
• CDN costs extra.

WP Engine

WP Engine has positioned itself as the premium WordPress hosting provider, based on both price and what they offer. They seem like a great option for people who run a lot of WordPress sites, sites that get lots of traffic, and especially sites where security is important. They offer both scalability and very tight security.

Pros

• Premium service and support.
• Tight security and easy scalability.
• They seem to get a lot of love on Twitter.
• We use WP Engine for many of our clients’ sites and several of our own (including this site!), and we love it.

Cons

• More expensive than the other 2 options.

Full disclosure: We have an affiliate relationship with WP Engine. We use WP Engine for many of our sites and our client sites, and recommend it highly as a top-notch WordPress hosting service. If we seem biased toward WP Engine, it’s not because of our affiliate relationship, it’s because we love their service.