Best hosting for web design agencies

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How we chose what to compare

We looked at three hosts that agencies commonly consider. We compared what each vendor publishes on its own site: pricing, plan limits, staging, migrations, support and trial terms. We did not test, benchmark or survey any of them. Where a vendor's page did not state something, we say so instead of guessing. Prices change often, and several pages were showing Black Friday offers when we checked, so use the figures here as a guide only.

Premium managed WordPress: Kinsta

Kinsta sells managed WordPress hosting with plans that start at one site. Its Launch plan lists at $35 a month for one WordPress install, 75,000 estimated visits a month and 15GB of storage. Kinsta also sells several other single-site plans, sized by visits or bandwidth; Single 35k, for example, is the same $35 list price with 35,000 visits and 10GB. Kinsta's multi-site plans start at 2 installs, with list prices of $70, $115, $225, $340 and $450 a month for 2, 5, 10, 20 and 40 installs. When we checked, a Black Friday promotion for new customers halved these prices (Launch was $17.50 a month) until December 1, 2026, so the price you pay may differ from list.

Every plan we saw includes free one-click staging, unlimited free migrations and 24/7 human support in 8 languages. Kinsta also runs an Agency plan. Its plans page lists it from $170 a month for 20 installs during a three-month promotion that ends December 1, 2026. Kinsta's pages give different figures for the price after that, so ask Kinsta before you budget. The page lists benefits that include up to $10,000 in hosting credits for eligible agencies, free hosting for your own agency site, a listing in the Agency Directory and an unbranded WordPress admin experience.

Drawbacks: the entry plans cap you at one install, and extra sites cost $30 a month each, so many small client sites add up quickly. Kinsta's plans are also limited by visits or bandwidth, which you need to watch on client sites. On the plus side, the pricing page offers new customers a free first month on select plans and says all plans are covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee after any free period.

Visit Kinsta →

Larger WordPress builds: WP Engine

WP Engine's plans page lists three levels: Essential, Business and Enterprise. Essential starts at $28 a month billed annually ($336 upfront), and scales from 25,000 to 400,000 visits and 10GB to 50GB of storage depending on the size you pick. Business costs considerably more, and Enterprise is priced through sales. The plans page we read does not show site counts per plan, so ask WP Engine how many client sites each size allows. Prices are shown in your local currency, so check yours before you compare.

One-click staging and development environments are listed on its Essential, Business and Enterprise plans. Essential includes 24/7 chat support, and Business adds phone support. Business includes managed site migrations and Enterprise includes hands-on migration and onboarding. Transferable sites are listed on all three plans, which the page describes as suited to agencies and freelancers. That matters if you build a site for a client and later hand the hosting account over.

Drawbacks: Essential runs on shared environments and does not list migrations or Git-based CI/CD. Those arrive on Business, which costs considerably more; check the vendor's site for the current price. The first-year discount is for new Essential customers only and cannot be used on renewals or upgrades. WP Engine's Trustpilot score is also the lowest of the three, at 4.2 out of 5. We could not find a refund policy or free trial stated on its pages.

Visit WP Engine →

Budget and control: Cloudways

Cloudways works differently. You choose a server size and a cloud provider, and you can host more than one site on a server. The Flexible plans for WordPress and PHP start at $14 a month for 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 25GB NVMe storage and 1TB bandwidth. Larger options run to $99 a month for 8GB RAM, 4 vCPU and 160GB. The provider choices listed are DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud.

Cloudways lists free advanced staging and cloning, free migration and 24/7 support by live chat or ticket. It offers a 5-day trial with no credit card, but not on AWS or Google Cloud. Billing is hourly and usage-based, invoiced on the 1st of the following month, and you can upgrade or downgrade at any time.

Drawbacks: usage-based billing means your bill is less predictable. Offsite backups cost $0.033 per GB, and bandwidth overage is charged by provider, for example $0.02 per GB on DigitalOcean. A server holds several sites, so one busy client site can slow the others on it. The page also states no refund policy. Also, we could not confirm any agency billing or white-label tools, so check the vendor's site before relying on them.

Visit Cloudways →

Side-by-side comparison

The Trustpilot ratings were checked in November 2026. They are customer opinions, not our own testing, and the review counts differ.

Which one should you choose?

• Choose Kinsta if you want managed WordPress with free staging, free migrations and an agency plan, and most of your clients have one site each.
• Choose WP Engine if you build bigger WordPress sites, want transferable sites to hand to clients, and value phone support on its Business plan.
• Choose Cloudways if you want the lowest entry cost, are comfortable managing a server, and would rather choose your cloud provider than rely on per-site plans.

If you resell hosting to clients, read each vendor's terms first. We could not confirm reseller rules or client billing tools on any of these pages.

Sources

• Kinsta pricing
• Kinsta plans
• WP Engine plans
• WP Engine managed WordPress hosting
• Cloudways pricing
• Kinsta on Trustpilot
• WP Engine on Trustpilot
• Cloudways on Trustpilot

Prices and ratings checked November 2026. They change; confirm on the vendor's site.