Choosing the best web hosting services for your needs is very important. Nowadays there are many hosting providers. This post will help you to choose the right one.
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Web hosting is a foundation of your digital business. I am working with the same hosting companies for over 7 years, so it is definitely a long-term relationship. Presuming that everything works well of course!
In this post, I will provide my experience with some of the hosting providers and also add information about other website hosting options.
We will go over the important aspects of website hosting, pricings, the technical side of hosting, and end it with a FAQ that will cover not only web hosting services but also related topics.
The goal of this post is very straight forward.
I will help you pick a web hosting service that will cover all your needs, provide great service, and would be the best value for the price.
This post may contain affiliate links. It means that if you purchase a product or service through it, I will receive a small commission. It is important to add that it is at no additional cost to you. I am promoting only services I had some experience with in the past.
Table Of Contents
- Why Do You Need Web Hosting?
- My Best Web Hosting Choice:
- What Are The Best Web Hosting Services?
- Best Web Hosting Services – Top Picks
- Best Web Hosting Services – Great Platforms
- Choosing a Best Hosting Service – Conclusion
- What Is The Best Cheap Web Hosting?
- Best Cheap Web Hosting – Conclusion
- Best Web Hosting For WordPress
- Best Web Hosting For Small Business
- Free Web Hosting Providers
- Why Should You Avoid Free Web Hosting Services?
- Best Alternatives for Free Web Hosting
- What’s next?
- FAQ
Why Do You Need Web Hosting?
When creating any business, you need to be located somewhere. If you are selling services you might need an office, or you work from home. In case you are selling a product – you need a store.
In any case, you need a location where your clients can find you. In classic business it is brick and mortar place in digital business – it is web hosting,
Every site you ever visited is hosted somewhere. So when starting your online business, you need to be hosted too. This is where website hosting companies come into play. They provide you with their hardware so you can buy just a small portion of their capacities for your needs.
My Best Web Hosting Choice:
What Are The Best Web Hosting Services?
There are several aspects to consider when deciding on best web hosting services.:
- Speed – you must make sure that your page loads as fast as possible. This is influenced by many factors and hosting speed is one of the main ones.
- Uptime – if your hosting won’t work, nobody will be able to access your site. Hosting services uptime is shown in percents. It is the amount of time that hosting servers are working with no problems.
- Support – when you have a problem, you need help immediately. You can not wait half a day for a reply while you are losing money as your site is broken. Fast support is important!
- Pricing – when you will be making many thousands of dollars a month, pricing will be more of a secondary priority. The top priority will be speed and uptime. But we all have to start somewhere. At the begging of your digital business every cent counts. Also, you do not have tons of visitors so it is better so start small.
other aspects that are important:
- Security – website security is critical. It may sound unimportant now but when your website will start to pick up on traffic you will see many attempts to attack it. But you will be solving your security issues mostly through the website itself (not the hosting) and third-party services (as Cloudflare – which I can wholeheartedly recommend)
- Ease of use – most of the web hosting platforms will have so-called C-Panel or another very intuitive front end that will help you to manage the site.
If you are starting out, and need hosting for your personal website or a small blog – any website hosting platforms for this list will do the trick. But it is important to look into the future, be prepared to scale, and have the needed support on your side for a reasonable price, so here are the web hosting top picks!
Best Web Hosting Services – Top Picks
1. HostGator – 2 Mil. Customers, My Favorite ($2.75/ Month)
For me, Hostgator is a top position. All my websites were at some point hosted on this hosting service. Through many years I had no problem with uptime or support. So I can wholeheartedly recommend it as your starting platforms!
HostGator was founded in 2002. Today, they boast over 2 million customers and 9 million websites. Their web hosting services are ideal for entrepreneurs, bloggers, and personal websites.
When it comes to building a site, HostGator provides an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. Their platform makes it simple to build a site from scratch and is eCommerce friendly. Additionally, one easy WordPress install is included with every plan.
If you have trouble at any step of the process, an extensive Knowledgebase is provided for all users. If there are any further questions, 24/7 customer support is also available via live chat and phone.
Reliability and consistency are important to HostGator, as is shown by their uptime guarantee. Their actual uptime hovers around 99.98%. While you could find quicker hosting, there would be a notably higher price. So in terms of speed, Hostgator is a top pick considering the price to value.
Pricing begins at $2.75 per month for a 36-month “Hatchling” plan. However, renewal rates begin significantly higher than their introductory rates, at $10.95 per month. Each plan comes with a 45-day moneyback guarantee.
Some features of the site are universal to all plans, including:
- Unmetered storage and bandwidth
- Unlimited pages and free email addresses
- Free migrations (within 30 days of original signup)
- Free SSL certificates
- A free domain for a year (included only with annual plans)
Higher tiered plans also come with dedicated IP addresses and a host of SEO tools to optimize your website. Dedicated website hosting services are offered at steeper prices if you need more individualized plans.
P.S.: I prepared a simple step by step by step guide on how to install WordPress on Hostgator.
Use my coupon code for 60% discount: COSTOFINCOMETry Hostgator Today!
2. Bluehost – Popular Choice for WordPress ($2.95/month)
Bluehost is one of the best web hosting services hands-down. Founded in 1996, Bluehost’s interface is beginner friendly and comes at a low cost for the product. They are currently the web hosting service of choice for over two million websites.
Bluehost also maintains a reputation as a web host with a nigh impeccable uptime of 99.99%. Their speed is very strong as well, with webpages loading at an average of less than half a second.
Furthermore, Bluehost integrates with Cloudfare, which is a content delivery network (CDN). This program works to protect against DDoS attacks. CDNs are also useful in increasing site speed by cutting the time it takes to retrieve data from a server.
With a great reputation comes great customer support as well. Bluehost’s web host plans include 24/7 live customer service via live chat, phone, and email.
Bluehost offers a whole host of products for the discerning customer, including:
- Domain names
- WordPress hosting optimized for WordPress platform
- VPS
- Shared and reseller hosting
- Dedicated servers
Pricing depends on your needs, but basic plans start at less than $3 per month with a three-year discount. The lowest tier plan includes everything needed to start one website. Amongst these options are 50 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth.
Additionally, all plans include free email accounts, SSL, and a 30-day moneyback guarantee. Instant activation is available so that you can get started immediately.
If you need more than any one plan offers, you can purchase add-ons. Services such as VPS can go up to $60 per month, while adding a domain name starts at $18 per year.
Although this website hosting service has plenty of pros, Bluehost has its downsides. While initial discounts make the plans incredibly cheap, the price jacks much higher after the premium period. Additionally, site transfers and mergers are not free in contrast to their competitors. Try Bluehost Today
3. Hostinger – Great and Cheap Hosting ($0.99/Month)
Hostinger web hosting services began in 2011, 4 years after their 2007 founding. They are an excellent choice if you want to learn the basics of developing code. Hostinger allows you to experiment with a host of systems and languages at one low price.
Options available for trialing include PHP, FTP, cPanel, and MySQL in addition to WordPress capabilities. This makes them one of the best web hosting services for entrepreneurs and coders.
Due to their unique approach to website hosting and coding languages, they offer a truly enormous knowledge base. This online database is filled with comprehensive guides and answers to questions. The problems solved in these seminars range from building a website to SEO. These tutorials, as well as their 24/7 live chat function, is available in over 20 languages.
Additionally, Hostinger guarantees an uptime of 99.9%. They are reliable in their loading speeds too, with pages taking an average of 0.2 to 0.5 seconds to load.
Hostinger is currently offering stupendous discounts on all plans, up to 90% off on their cheapest option. A basic plan costs $0.99 a month for a single shared hosting plan with an annual or longer purchase. The renewal price is fairly cheap too, at $2.15 a month after the promotional period.
A minimalist plan includes:
- A single site transfer
- One free SSL certificate
- Thousands of website templates
- One free WordPress site with 1-click installation
The tiered pricing increases both services and supply as cost increases. For instance, higher-cost tiers include a free domain and increased bandwidth from previous plans. Top tiers include unlimited email account access.
If you need additional domains, you can purchase a package annually for less than $10 per year. If you want a dot com, dot net, or dot co plan, you’ll pay anywhere from $10 to $25 annually.Try Hostinger Today!
4. Liquid Web – Best Web Hosting For Small Business
Liquid Web makes their name as a fully managed web hosting service. Their software and service allows customers to all but forget their site has to be managed at all. They offer several hosting options, such as dedicated services, cloud, and WordPress management.
Those in the market for a new eCommerce host may want to look at Liquid Web’s new WooCommerce service. They offer several options to help you get your site up and running. And, if none of their plans suit your needs, you can contact Liquid Web directly for a custom package.
This is made possible in part by their 24/7, 59-second answer support guarantee. That’s right – every phone call is answered in less than 59 seconds, every time. You can also take advantage of their knowledgebase, live chat, and email support options.
Liquid Web also guarantees an incredible uptime of 99.999%. If they fail to deliver on this promise, your account will be credited with 10x the price of your downtime. Their platform is built on PHP7 and Nginx, which keeps their loading speeds well beneath one second per page.
Although every plan comes with its own prices, the Starter plans for basic web hosting services begin around $20 to $30 apiece per month. Most of these plans come with:
- One website
- 5 TB of bandwidth
- 20 to 30 GB of SSD storage
- Monthly backups
If you’re interested in more high-performance options such as Cloud Dedicated hosting, you can expect to pay more than $150 per month. All of these plans can be customized with add-ons, such as email hosting for an extra $1 per month.
Those unfamiliar with the world of web hosting might be in sticker shock from those prices. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that Liquid Web delivers on its high promises. If you’re in the market for managed website hosting services, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option. Try Liquid Web Today!
5. Siteground – Web Hosting With The Best Customer Support!
SiteGround put out their hosting software in 2014. They are one of the best web hosting services if you desire excellent customer support. They also utilize Google Cloud-backed infrastructure for the best performance.
SiteGround has a high satisfaction rate – above 98% – and a reputation for the quick response. Their live chat and ticketing system also have above-average response times for the industry. Furthermore, their phone answer times average of mere seconds.
Their server speed is also good, especially for the price. The average loading time for a single page falls between 0.6 to 0.7 seconds. Larger pages may experience a loading speed of around 1 second. Furthermore, their built-in caching system, SuperCacher, and SSDs work to enhance server speed.
SiteGround also has several data centers around the globe, and they even let you choose the server location to best suite your needs.
Security is incredibly important to every site, and SiteGround offers several options that make them stand out from the crowd. For instance, they offer site isolation and HTTP/2 technology. Additionally, they use a web application firewall to protect from security breaches. Their software is patched and updated regularly to keep their customers as safe as possible.
Uptime is another essential piece of the puzzle. SiteGround guarantees an average uptime of 99.99%. Rarely do they dip below 99.98%, meaning that they keep their promise. When sites do go down, their team works to resolve issues immediately.
Basic plans begin at $3.95 per month and include a one-time setup fee of $14.95. This plan comes with:
- Unmetered traffic
- Daily automatic backups
- One free Let’s Encrypt SSL
- 10,000 visitors per month
- Free Cloudflare CDN
Managed WordPress and automatic installation is also available on every plan. All plans come with a 30-day moneyback guarantee if you are dissatisfied with the service.Try SiteGround Today!Back To The Table Of Contents
Best Web Hosting Services – Great Platforms
Here is the list of other great choices that have a long history on the market and are known to provide high-quality services and support.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is one of the best web hosting services on the market period. They have been dominating the speedy server market since 2001. They offer up to 15-20x page load time, which is incredibly beneficial when trying to rank on Google.
However, these fast loading times aren’t the only essential piece of your ranking puzzle. An offline site can damage your ranking and site traffic just as easily as slow loading times. A2 Hosting’s uptime of 99.9% – about 4-6 hours offline a year – means that your site’s downtime won’t affect your traffic.
Not only is A2 Hosting an incredibly fast web hosting service, but it’s also secure. HackScan monitors your account 24/7 for viruses, bugs, and other issues that may affect your site.
The data center for this web host also guards against DDoS, or denial of service attacks. These assaults attempt to flood a site’s servers with unexpected traffic to down a site for a time.
A2 Hosting offers hundreds of hundreds for users to peruse and find the answers to questions. Additionally, there are several options for live help with their “Guru Crew Support.” Customer service options include chat sessions, phone calls, and their internal ticketing system.
The actual price for a subscription depends on if you qualify for a discount or want shared hosting. Plans start at $3.92 a month and can reach $65.99 per month or higher, depending on your exact needs and services. Each plan includes a 30-day moneyback guarantee.
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