There are around sixty thousand plugins in the WordPress repository and a hosting company on every corner of the internet, all of them the best one according to somebody’s affiliate post.
This isn’t that list. This is the short stack we actually build client sites on. Two hosts and two tools, plus the reasoning behind each pick. If you disagree with the reasoning you’ll pick differently, and that’s a better outcome than copying our list.
On this page
What hosting actually has to do
Hosting is the service that stores your site’s files and serves them to visitors. Every WordPress site needs it, and the reason it matters more than it sounds is that slow loading and downtime cost you money directly, in bounced visitors, in rankings, and in leads that never arrive.
What separates good hosting from cheap hosting is short: reliable uptime, real speed, daily backups, security handled for you, and support that answers when something breaks at an inconvenient hour. That last one is worth more than most people expect, because the day you need it, it’s the only thing that matters.
The hosting we use
SiteGround, the default for most sites
The best support we’ve dealt with from any WordPress host, and that’s the reason it’s first. For anyone who isn’t technical, that support desk is the difference between a problem and a crisis.
The renewal price looks high next to the introductory offer. Weigh it against what you stop having to think about, uptime, security patching, speed tuning. It’s cheaper than the hours it saves.
Hostinger, for price and for VPS
Good value on shared plans and a genuinely cheap way into a VPS when a project needs one. We use it ourselves.
Renewal pricing stays reasonable, which is not true of everyone in this category, and it’s the better option if you’re hosting several sites or reselling hosting.
There’s a third category worth knowing about: hosting bundled with the page builder itself. We ran a site on Elementor Cloud for a full trial and wrote up what it’s actually like. One dashboard, no licences to manage, and a clear ceiling on what it’s for.
Page builders, and their real cost
A page builder lets you design layouts visually instead of writing every section by hand. It makes building faster and it makes editing possible for the person who owns the site, which is the part that matters after we hand over.
The cost is real, though, and most posts on this topic skip it. A builder adds weight to every page it renders, and it makes your layouts dependent on it. Leaving one later means rebuilding, not just deactivating. So the choice isn’t “which is prettiest”. It’s which one you’re willing to be married to.
The builder stack we use
Elementor, the builder
The most widely used page builder there is, which is the practical argument for it: whatever you’re trying to do, someone has documented it, and whoever inherits the site after you will know their way around.
It builds to the design rather than to a template’s idea of the design, and that’s the reason we’ve stayed on it for client work.
Crocoblock, for anything dynamic
This is the one that earns its place on client work. Listings, filters, custom post types, conditional content. All the things that would otherwise mean custom code or a pile of separate plugins, each adding weight and its own security surface.
One dependency instead of eight is the whole argument, and it’s the same argument as the section above.
If you buy it, look at the unlimited-sites licence rather than the single-site one. The maths stops being close after the second project.
Notice what isn’t on this list: a caching plugin, an SEO plugin, a forms plugin, a security plugin. Those exist on every site we build, but they’re not decisions. They’re commodities, and arguing about them is how blog posts get to fifteen items. The four above are the ones where the choice actually changes the project.
How to choose for yourself
Three questions, in this order:
- Who maintains this in a year? If it’s you, weight support and simplicity heavily. If it’s an agency, ask them what they build on and why. A straight answer is a good sign.
- What does the site have to do beyond existing? A brochure site and a site with listings, filters and bookings are different projects. Decide before you pick the stack, not after.
- What happens when you want to leave? Ask it about the host, the builder and the agency. Own your domain, own your hosting account, own your site.
That third question is the one people skip and regret. We wrote a whole post on the version of it that applies to hiring the company that builds your site, and it’s the same principle: the tool and the vendor are both easier to choose when you’ve thought about leaving them.
And whatever you pick, keep the plugin count down. Every one you add is code you now depend on. It’s why we’d rather solve a job like connecting WordPress to Zapier without installing anything than add another dependency to a site we’re responsible for.
Or skip the research and let us build it on a stack we already maintain for a living.
