Best Drupal Hosting of 2022

Nexcess is a managed cloud provider. It recently teamed up with Liquid Web—an excellent managed host—and took over its entire CMS hosting operation.

It currently provides managed services for a whole bunch of PHP-based applications, including Drupal. Here is what you can expect:

Features

Nexcess features a custom control panel you can use for 1-click Drupal deployment. Its user-friendly interface offers statistics on resource expenditure, which comes in handy with a cloud platform.

Speaking of, Nexcess hosts Drupal websites on its cloud plans. These range from a basic cloud server to a 32 CPU core, 32GB RAM beast.

It doesn't really matter how small you start. You can scale up in one click—Nexcess has perfect virtual server hosting for growing websites.

There is even an autoscaling feature, which functions as a resource boost. If your current server gets overwhelmed, the provider automatically adds extra CPU power and RAM to handle the traffic. You can deal with traffic spikes without purchasing a larger server.

And if you need to scale even further, Nexcess can build custom Drupal cloud server clusters for you. These are enterprise-grade solutions that can handle a project of any scope.

Drush—a CLI for Drupal—is enabled by default. It's an easier way to manage a Drupal installation.

There are several features developers would love. For example, you can deploy staging servers in one click—great for safely implementing major website changes. SFTP and SSH support are also in the mix.

Nexcess specializes in managed cloud hosting. The management covers free migrations, 24/7 monitoring, updates and security hardening, and compliance assistance (for PCI and GDPR standards).

So, while Nexcess targets more advanced users, it can make your life a whole lot easier. Compliance assistance is particularly useful for building business websites.

Lastly, you can get handy add-ons like premium SSL certificates and Nexcess' proprietary CDN. These are paid, but they can get your site an extra boost.

Support

The Nexcess support team is available via phone, chat, and email and is reasonably fast. The chat is only available during working hours, though, which is not ideal.

Nexcess has proper Drupal experts and developers on its support team. The provider even has an excellent system to connect you with a CMS pro right away and go around the standard frontline channels. The result is much faster problem resolution and higher quality.

All in all, the support is solid.

User Reviews

Nexcess is often considered the best managed hosting platform for PHP-based CMSs and it gets plenty of praise for this. Many Drupal webmasters and agencies love the flexibility and assistance they get.

The merger with Liquid Web did affect its operations somewhat. The team had trouble keeping up with requests, which resulted in a few complaints in early 2020. It's nothing major, though, and the provider seems to be back on track.

Overall, the impressions on the Web are positive.

Pricing

Nexcess has a bunch of preset managed virtual servers. The smallest one starts at $49/month and gets you 50GB storage and 1TB bandwidth. You can scale up to 800GB storage, 32 CPU cores, 32GB RAM, and 10TB bandwidth for $849/month.

The autoscaling is free for 24 hours each month. Afterward, it's $3 per 30 minutes. It's solid for handling even extended periods of high traffic without significantly increasing hosting costs.

Verdict

If you need a platform that can scale with your Drupal website and support you along the way, there's no better choice than Nexcess. The features and resources perfectly complement the scalability and dev-friendliness of the CMS.

It's hands-down the best web hosting for Drupal in most use cases.

Cloudways is a unique host and a game-changer for many CMS users. Its managed cloud structure is a godsend for users without the technical skill or the time to manage a cloud server.

Here is how the service works:

Features

Cloudways is a hosting provider without a data center. Instead of running its own facilities, it built the platform on top of AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, and Google Cloud—some of the top cloud computing companies. To learn how cloud computing works, read our comprehensive beginner’s guide.

Cloudways lets you pick which infrastructure you want to use and it handles the difficult part of managing it. You just need to focus on your website.

The service retains the same flexibility as the original platforms. For instance, if you host Drupal on DigitalOcean, you get all the capabilities of the original provider.

It allows you to scale your servers freely, add block storage, and deploy instances in any way you see fit. You can even choose between different server types—for instance, standard and high-frequency Vultr servers.

Cloudways charges by the hour, so you're not locked into a specific configuration.

The only difference with Cloudways is that the plans come with full management and an easy-to-use control panel. They are a breeze to use yet incredibly powerful and have the elasticity to handle traffic changes—ideal for more ambitious Drupal projects.

You can create a Drupal website with one click from the admin dashboard. The installation comes preloaded with Drush for faster management.

You get standard managed hosting features like daily backups, managed firewall and system patches, SSL installation, a free migration service, etc.

Cloudways puts a lot of resources into speed optimization. The servers feature a hybrid Apache and Nginx stack, combined with Memcached, Redis, and Varnish caching optimized for Drupal.

There's also a proprietary CDN that can serve cached content worldwide (for $1 per 25GB of data). Since you can host data in any of around 60 data centers, you can get unprecedented speeds practically anywhere in the world.

The CDN DDoS protection combined with a dedicated firewall, two-factor authentication, and an auto-healing system ensures the reliability of the Drupal cloud hosting. The cherry on top is the availability monitoring with 24/7 troubleshooting support.

More technically inclined users will love the app/server cloning features, staging, Git integration, and robust access controls. They are fantastic for individual developers or agencies coordinating Drupal development.

All in all, Cloudways offers a full suite of technologies and has everything you need to run a top-of-the-shelf Drupal website.

Support

This Drupal hosting provider support is available 24/7 through live chat and ticketing. Note that the Cloudways chatbot will try to assess your problem automatically before finding an agent.

This is effective for unloading the support team, but it can be annoying for users who know what they need.

The basic Cloudways support is there to assist you if there’s anything wrong with the platform. It will also point you in the right direction if you need help with Drupal.

If you need extra assistance, you can purchase more advanced services. These can be anything from setting up a customized server stack that better fits your website to troubleshooting your web app.

This goes way beyond the scope of regular managed support and can get you help from real CMS experts. Your hosted Drupal website will be in good hands.

User Reviews

Excellent features with near-infinite scalability and attentive support—what's not to love? Most customers seem to agree with that. These qualities earned Cloudways an excellent reputation on the Web.

Most complaints have to do with the costs of add-ons like backup storage and the CDN. It's true Cloudways doesn't really advertise the prices, but they aren't hidden either.

We outlined all of the costs below. As long as you're familiar with them, you shouldn’t have any trouble.

Pricing

Cloudways has flexible plans charged by the hour. The exact price depends on the cloud computing provider you pick and the size of the server.

The smallest DigitalOcean droplet costs $10/month—pretty cheap for Drupal hosting. It comes with 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM, and 25GB storage—a decent starter package. You can grow from there—the midrange server will set you back $42/month.

Offsite backup storage would cost you around $0.033/month per gigabyte. These are pretty standard rates for storage.

Cloudways CDN is $1 per 25GB of transferred data and it comes with a 40% initial discount. This is pretty competitive compared to leading CDNs like Akamai.

All in all, the pricing is reasonable considering you're getting a flexible cloud platform with the ease of use of managed Drupal hosting.

Kamatera is taking the cloud world by storm. It is one of the few cloud computing companies offering management for their virtual instances. This has scored a lot of points with users. And I haven't even gotten to the massive range of services you can purchase.

Let's jump right in and see if it's a good match for your Drupal site.

Features

Kamatera is a cloud computing company with data centers all around the globe. Its system lets you deploy servers any way you want. Scaling up or down is easy from the main control panel.

You can get anywhere from 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM, and 20GB storage to 104 cores, 512GB RAM, and 4TB storage. You can add multiple servers to a cluster to handle an even bigger workload.

The flexibility is fantastic for scaling a Drupal website.

The core plans are unmanaged, which is great for developers that like to tinker with the setup themselves. If you do need a bit of extra help, you can pay extra for managed Drupal hosting.

At the basic level of management, Kamatera's team can take care of scaling your server. If you need more help, the provider can take over. It’ll handle everything from optimizing your server stack to setting up applications—for the right price, of course.

The default setup comes without cPanel, but you can purchase a license. Still, you can deploy various versions of Drupal in one click, even without a panel.

You can add services like load balancers, a firewall, block storage, or offsite backups. Other than that, the way you optimize the servers is up to you.

You can deploy any OS and server stack you like—common options are available in the management panel. Alternatively, tech support can design something for you in exchange for a fee.

With this level of flexibility, you can get the best web hosting setup for an individual website.

Support

We contacted Kamatera's team on several occasions and we were never let down. Every agent we got in touch with provided prompt replies and demonstrated in-depth knowledge.

We even tossed a few curveballs their way, asking them how they would go about customizing the server stack to fit a Drupal site. We received a no-nonsense plan of action the same day.

Kamatera has expert engineers on its team.

Whether you need them to fix issues with the infrastructure or manage the software stack for you, they will deliver.

User Reviews

Developers and agencies all around the Web adore Kamatera. The provider scales easily and affordably and can fit a range of apps. Perfect for professionals and agencies designing high-end websites for a variety of different clients, it’s praised mostly by experts and experienced users.

Pricing

Kamatera has flexible servers, so the pricing is flexible too. The smallest 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM server would cost you $9/month, which is very reasonable.

If you need help figuring out what deal to go for, Kamatera has a price calculator. You can even try out free CMS hosting on a basic server for a month and see whether you need to scale.

Getting basic management would cost you $50 per server. This price is around the same level as your standard managed hosting. It is affordable for most users, but you might find it a bit much if you spend less than $50/month on infrastructure.

Extended support ups the cost to $120/month per server. It adds higher-end services like managing backups, server monitoring, optimizing performance, installing custom development technologies, etc. This makes it the best Drupal hosting for users that need assistance running high-end projects.

Verdict

Kamatera brings the cloud's flexibility yet offers to take care of most management tasks for you. It's excellent for developers and agencies that want a flexible platform at an affordable price. Average users in need of a robust hosting platform can get excellent service too.

SiteGround is a big name in CMS hosting. It is one of the few companies offering high-quality solutions without overcharging for management.

It has managed Drupal plans as well. Let's check them out.

Features

SiteGround runs its own control panel. It handles most cPanel functions and billing and it’s suitable for Drupal deployment.

SiteGround preloads the server with Drush. You can use it to easily manage Drupal themes, modules, and profiles.

You can integrate Drupal with Git with the SG-Git tool. This allows you to create repositories of your website to track changes and collaborate on development. It's an excellent feature for dev companies.

SiteGround has a proprietary caching system (although you can just use the CMS's internal system if you're hosting Drupal 9). You might need to do some work to enable various caching mechanisms like Memcached. Still, SiteGround has tutorials explaining how to do it.

And if you want an extra performance boost, the host integrates Cloudflare CDN for free. Its various points of presence can let you deliver cached content all around the world.

SiteGround’s security is top-notch too. The Cloud Linux account isolation, combined with the Guardian defense system and a robust firewall, leaves no openings on the provider's end. This, in addition to Drupal's inherent sturdiness, ensures fantastic data safety.

Unfortunately, there are no free Drupal migrations. If you need one, you would have to pay at least $30 per site. Admittedly, that's not awfully pricy, but some services do migrations for free.

The host provides robust access controls in the client dashboard. You can add collaborators who can work on your site, contact support, etc. It’s an excellent supplement to your Drupal toolbox.

You also get the typical shared Drupal hosting features like daily backups, SSL installation, emailing, etc.

Support

SiteGround has one of the strongest support teams in the industry. Aside from providing instant responses even in the middle of the night, its agents get extensive training in all things hosting.

The result is what you'd expect—expert assistance and a hands-on approach, all with a friendly attitude. You can turn to the agents with any problem and they will be more than happy to help.

To top it off, the knowledge base is remarkably well put together and easy to navigate. You can find handy guides on basic concepts like taxonomies or technical tasks like configuring Drupal caching.

SiteGround's support performs splendidly in every aspect.

User Reviews

You'd be hard-pressed to find a Drupal web hosting provider with more positive reviews than SiteGround. It scores a grade of 4.8/5 on TrustPilot and 9.7/10 and HostAdvice. And that's the average of a whopping 9,000+ reviews!

The bulk of them praises the support team for working out various problems. Overall, the platform elicits positive reactions, which is a testament to its quality.

Pricing

There are three shared plans to choose from. They are mostly the same, but the smallest lacks on-demand backups.

The plans are:

• StartUp—One website, 10GB storage, 10,000 monthly visitors, starts at $6.99/month, renews at $14.99/month
• GrowBig—Unlimited websites, 20GB storage, 25,000 monthly visitors, starts at $9.99/month, renews at $24.99/month
• GoGeek—Unlimited websites, 40GB storage, 100,000 monthly visitors, starts at $14.99/month, renews at $39.99/month

The promo pricing applies if you go for the annual deal. It's relatively cheap Drupal hosting, though not the absolute cheapest.

Keep in mind the number of supported monthly visitors is an estimate—the numbers can vary a little depending on your site.

Verdict

If you need a powerful plan at a reasonable price, SiteGround offers a great balance between the two. Its shared hosting can handle a few Drupal websites and is fantastic for first-time website owners. Meanwhile, the annual deals can fit most users' budgets. SiteGround has the best Drupal hosting for your first project.

Rochen is an independently owned provider specialized in content management systems. It's a significant contributor to the open-source community. It offers managed services for PHP-based apps like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and, of course, Drupal.

Features

Rochen runs a cloud setup based on VMware and deploys shared Drupal hosting servers on top. If you need something more powerful, you can certainly scale up into a dedicated cloud server.

It deploys Drupal with Drush as soon as you sign up for a plan. If you're not on the smallest plan, you can have extra installations in one click.

The Drupal hosting services run a premium version of LiteSpeed web server, which is blazing-fast when combined with PHP-based sites. The servers support PHP 7.4 and HTTP/3, which leads to even faster load times.

The server-level caching mechanisms are set up to get you the best content delivery times. Just keep in mind to run the LSCache plugin for Drupal for optimal results.

The CloudLinux CageFS feature gets you guaranteed resources and better account isolation. Rochen's proprietary web application firewall is there to prevent cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

And for caching other malware, Rochen runs the trustworthy system Imunify360. These powerful measures make it one of the best Drupal hosting companies in terms of security.

Rochen enables auto-updates by default, which can save you tons of time checking for core patches. However, this can be a bit tricky for enterprises with more complex websites. They usually prefer to handle updates manually, as they can often clash with custom-coded features.

If you already have a site, Rochen can handle the migration. It will migrate up to ten Drupal websites for free, which is quite the offer.

Rochen has a nice staging tool that lets you create changes on a test site before pushing them live. Developers can further use Git and SVG clients and access the site via SSH or SFTP.

On top of all that, you get the standard useful features like daily backups, Let's Encrypt SSL installation, emailing, etc.

As far as shared Drupal hosting goes, Rochen does everything right.

Support

You can contact Rochen's support 24/7 via email or phone. The chat is reserved for sales questions, which is not ideal.

Rochen has Drupal engineers always on call. If you have a technical issue with your website, you won't have to wait too long.

The provider guarantees an average response time of 15 minutes and that most issues get resolved on the first reply. We contacted the support team and found no reason to doubt the numbers. Rochen agents perform well.

The documentation is a bit limited. There's only basic info on the Drupal website hosting features but no guides of any kind.

The tech team is more than capable of helping out, but the knowledge base is not that handy.

User Reviews

Rochen is not as popular as other platforms, so you won't find thousands of user reviews. It does gather a small community that mostly likes the platform, though. You can find a few comments praising the support quality and platform performance.

The provider doesn't get many negative Drupal hosting reviews.

Pricing

Rochen has four Drupal plans:

• Solo—1 website, 10GB storage, 1 CPU core, 512MB RAM, $5.95/month, renews at $9.95/month
• Growth—5 websites, 20GB storage, 1.25 CPU cores, 1GB RAM, $9.95/month, renews at $18.95/month
• Pro—10 websites, 40GB storage, 1.5 CPU cores, 2GB RAM, $16.95/month, renews at $29.95/month
• Reseller—50 websites, 80GB storage, 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, $29.95/month, renews at $44.95/month

The plans are quite reasonable and can take you far. The prices are reasonable for the resources you get.

The Reseller plan is named so because you can white-label it and sell plans as your own. If you only need the extra resources for scaling, you can use it as regular Drupal web hosting too.

To learn more about this type of service, check out our list of the best reseller hosting providers.

Verdict

Rochen is a solid host if you want to start and grow a Drupal website from the ground up. The features make it a decent choice for personal users and agencies alike. The pricing is reasonable for the resources you get.

InMotion Hosting is an independent US-based provider that focuses on techy plans rich in resources. It tries to attract Drupal users to its managed virtual servers.

Let's see if the offer is worth your while.

Features

Let's preface this by saying InMotion Hosting runs two US-based data centers. There are no facilities in Europe, Asia, or any other continent. It's best used to target visitors from the US and speeds do suffer in other locations.

The provider suggests its VPS plans as best for Drupal. These come with 4GB-8GB RAM and 75GB-250GB storage. They are more suitable for larger websites.

Not to mention you get three to five free IP addresses included with the Drupal web hosting. This is ideal for businesses that do mass emailing or set up custom SSL certificates.

The hosting is fully managed, meaning InMotion's team ensures the server stack and control panel are working correctly. You can focus solely on running your website.

Other features include free migrations, automated backups, SSL installation, SSD storage, a security system, etc.

There is no default server configuration, but InMotion can install technologies that would best fit your Drupal website. Some options are Apache or Nginx, various caching mechanisms, Brotli compression, and more. You also get root access, so you can fine-tune the setup if you have the skills.

There are no particular Drupal hosting tools available by default. You are free to use whatever you want, but you would have to request the installation or do it yourself.

Support

You can contact InMotion's team 24/7 via the usual channels. The provider adds free Skype calls, which is a feature we'd like to see more hosts implement. The chat can be a bit sluggish at times, but it's not something you'll be losing sleep over.

The tech agents are friendly and eager to fix users' issues. Every time we reached out, we got the assistance we needed to move forward.

But the most impressive aspect is the knowledge base. InMotion goes as far as including multiple video tutorial series on building and managing a Drupal site, as well as handling various technical tasks. It's a real breath of fresh air to find a provider that dedicates so many resources to help its users.

User Reviews

InMotion Hosting reviews by Drupal users are somewhat mixed.

There are plenty of clients praising it for its outstanding performance and reliable platform. That said, InMotion did feel the impact of COVID-19 and struggled to keep up the customer support.

Clients noticed a delay in responses, which resulted in a bunch of negative comments. It's worth taking this into account before purchasing a plan.

Pricing

There are three VPS plans suitable for Drupal hosting:

• VPS-1000HA-S—4GB RAM, 75GB storage, 4TB bandwidth, 3 IP addresses, starts at $29.99/month
• VPS-2000HA-S—6GB RAM, 150GB storage, 5TB bandwidth, 4 IP addresses, starts at $44.99/month
• VPS-3000HA-S—8GB RAM, 260GB storage, 6TB bandwidth, 5 IP addresses, starts at $83.99/month

These are the prices for the 2-year subscriptions. The plans are very generous with the resource allocation. If you contact support, you might get an additional discount.

This makes InMotion very affordable compared to most midrange Drupal hosting providers. But keep in mind renewal costs are always pricier than expected, so make sure you check that in advance.

Verdict

Need a Drupal server that packs a bit more punch?

InMotion offers plentiful resources, flexible setups, and great tools for business users. The rates are fantastic, making InMotion Hosting one of the best providers for targeting US consumers.

A2 Hosting is a green provider based in Ann Arbor. The host works on the global scene and seeks to accommodate as many different apps as possible.

This is what its Drupal hosting can do:

Features

A2 Hosting optimizes its shared plans for Drupal.

The plans run on Cloud Linux, which boosts reliability and security. You get a plethora of other security tools, SSD storage, Cloudflare CDN, backups, webmail, and other tools.

The plans are dev-friendly for a shared platform. They support a range of PHP versions, various database programs, Python, Ruby, and even Node.js. Git is integrated by default, which is a massive help.

The higher you go with the Drupal hosting services, the more speed optimization tools you can access. This includes features like HTTP/3, script compression and merging, advanced caching, and more server resources.

Higher tiers switch you from Apache to LiteSpeed. This leads to improved load times for Drupal and lets you use robust caching modules exclusive to LiteSpeed.

A2 Hosting is generally well-optimized for CMS hosting, but the more advanced plans lack Drupal optimization.

Support

A2 Hosting support performs well. The team is well-staffed, so response times are fast. Better yet, the agents have real experience working with a variety of CMSs. They tend to fix issues without unnecessary delay.

There are a few good tutorials in the knowledge base too. You can find info on things like installing Drush and optimizing Drupal performance.

User Reviews

A2 Hosting has a good ratio of positive to negative reviews. With over a thousand positive comments on both TrustPilot and HostAdvice, there is no cause for concern.

Most customers love the support team. The fast infrastructure gets its fair share of praise too.

There is the occasional negative review of Drupal solutions here and there, though not enough to cause concern. A2 has a positive reputation overall.

Pricing

A2 Hosting has four shared plans (prices for the 3-year subscriptions):

• Startup—One website, 100GB storage, 1 CPU core, 0.7GB RAM, starts at $2.49/month, renews at $10.99/month
• Drive—Unlimited websites and storage, 2 CPU cores, 1GB RAM, starts at $4.25/month, renews at $12.99/month
• Turbo Boost—Unlimited websites and storage, 2 CPU cores, 2GB RAM, starts at $5.99/month, renews at $20.99/month
• Turbo Max—Unlimited websites and storage, 4 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, starts at $12.99/month, renews at $25.99/month

The plans are fairly priced and can get you plenty of resources as far as shared servers go. The further you scale, the more speed optimization tools you get. It is precisely what you want as your site grows.

Verdict

A2 Hosting is a reliable solution for PHP-based CMSs, Drupal included. The Drupal SSD hosting is fast and secure with decent support. The plans are reasonably priced, suitable even for first-time webmasters that want a slow start.