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SiteGround Review

SiteGround is one of the most popular web hosting providers out there.

Over two million website users trust SiteGround for their hosting needs.

They offer a wide range of hosting options, plans at different price points, and phenomenal customer support.

Whether you’re a small blog, medium-sized business, or large online store, SiteGround has an option for you.

In a nutshell, SiteGround is a host that your business can grow with, which is pretty darn important.

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SiteGround Compared to The Best WordPress Web Hosts

SiteGround fares exceptionally well against other products in its category.

It’s without a doubt a key contender for top web hosting for WordPress services.

But what I love most about it is that they’re both extremely scalable and dedicated to supporting your WordPress website.

They are actually one of only three web hosts that are officially recommended by WordPress.

Whether you’ve got 10,000, 25,000, or 100,000 visitors each month, there is a plan for you.

There is also room for exponential growth for websites starting out without committing to the highest available plan.

SiteGround also supports your WordPress website with their specifically designed features (which we’ll discuss below) and their 24/7 WordPress wizard customer support team.

But I appreciate that you may have different needs or wish to explore your hosting options a bit further before committing to one host.

That’s why we’ve taken the time to research and test some of the top web hosts for WordPress for you.

Be sure to see all of my top picks before making your decision.

 

Who is SiteGround Best For?

If I were extremely broad, I would say SiteGround is excellent for just about anyone who wants to host their website on WordPress.

But to get specific, I’d say SiteGround is best for a small website owner who has little to no experience running a website and expects their website to grow over time.

With flexible plans and excellent customer support, SiteGround is great for beginners and scaling over time.

 

SiteGround: The Pros and Cons

The Pros

Top-Notch Customer Support:

Ever had seemingly unresolvable issues with technology and tried everything under the sun to fix it to no avail? Yeah, me too.

Building a website doesn’t have to be scary or traumatic when you have SiteGround support on your side—your wish is their command.

The customer support team is phenomenal.

They receive almost a 100% satisfaction rating every year.

Their 24/7 support comes via a live chat channel, phone support, and a helpdesk ticketing system.

Even the most complex issues are resolved in an average time of 15 minutes, so you can get back to business asap.

These things are super important for a beginning website owner to combat the inevitable challenges they face.

WordPress Recommended:

SiteGround hosts over 80% of the two million domains on WordPress.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that they are experts at managing WordPress.

Many of the support team are highly trained in WordPress and will happily assist you with WordPress-related troubleshooting, compared to other hosts, who will simply tell you it’s not their issue (which truthfully, it isn’t).

This is also why SiteGround has developed and implemented WordPress-specific features, such as the SG Optimizer, WP Auto Update, and Supercacher, in their plans.

Low Introductory Price & Money-Back Guarantee:

With a monthly hosting solution starting as low as $4.99 per month, SiteGround is a perfect option for even the most beginner website creators.

Furthermore, the lead-in hosting plan includes all of the key features a new website owner would want in a plan, rather than having the absolute bare-bones to get the user to commit to a higher plan immediately.

If something goes wrong, or your website doesn’t function the way you expect it to, you can get a full refund of your hosting fees within 30 days of signup.

Excellent Uptime & Site Speed:

Uptime and site speed go hand-in-hand. Uptime refers to the amount of time the server stays up and running, while site speed refers to how quickly your website loads.

You can see below that SiteGround’s average uptime over 12 months is 99.98%, with only 73 minutes of total downtime over the whole year. Reliable uptime means your website is virtually guaranteed to be running around the clock, keeping visitors happy.

Have you ever heard the notion that if your page doesn’t load within three seconds tops, you’ll lose the visitor’s interest?

You won’t have to worry about that with SiteGround.

They claim that they load your website four times faster than other hosts, so you won’t have to worry about visitors losing interest while waiting for your graphics to load.

And, as you’ll see here, their slowest load time between 2019 to 2020 was 693 ms.

Free Website Transfer:

Many people are worried about making the switch to a new host. After all, it’s a scary process.

What if you lose your entire website or cause irreparable damage?

With SiteGround, you don’t need to worry.

They’ll do it for you.

Most hosts will just move the files over.

But SiteGround will also make the necessary tweaks to ensure everything is working smoothly for you after the transition.

No blood, sweat, tears, or big bucks required in switching to a new host.

SiteGround includes the WordPress migrator plugin in their plans, though if you prefer a professional to do it, it will cost you only $30 per website.

Free Daily Back-Up:

Most hosts will only back your website up every other day or even once a week.

So, if anything happens to your website that you can’t fix, you might be forced to go back an entire week, meaning you’ll lose everything you’ve done in the meantime.

But, with SiteGround, the worst-case scenario is that you’ll only lose the changes you’d made in the 24 hours since the last backup.

If that’s not the peace of mind for someone making constant changes to their website, I don’t know what is!

Great for Scalability:

When you’re just starting out in business, there is no way but up, right? With SiteGround’s flexible range of plans, you don’t have to worry about outgrowing your host. Simply upgrade your plan as your business grows.

 

The Cons

Renewal Price:

As dreamy as the promotional rates of SiteGround’s hosting plans are, once the honeymoon is over, it’s truly over.

When you renew, your rates will jump up quite high.

The cost of your plan will essentially triple across the board once your promotional period is over.

Ouch.

The best way to combat this is to sign up for the longest term available on the promotional period, which is either 24 or 36 months before you face the higher renewal rates.

No Monthly Billing Cycle:

The higher renewal rates might be easier to cop if you could pay month-to-month. But unfortunately, monthly billing is not something that SiteGround offers.

Personally, this is not a deal-breaker for me, but I can certainly appreciate how it may be restrictive and frustrating for some.

Storage Limitations:

The low amount of storage space available on the shared hosting plans is unlikely to bother most of you reading this post.

However, if your site does grow beyond 40 GB, you’ll have no choice but to switch to the more expensive cloud hosting plans.

The StartUp plan includes just 10,000 site visitors, so if your website traffic grows exponentially too quickly off the bat, you may find yourself needing to upgrade your plan sooner than you think.

 

SiteGround Pricing

SiteGround offers three tiers for their shared hosting options:

1. StartUp
2. GrowBig
3. GoGeek

These tiers’ pricing remains the same across the board for web hosting, WordPress hosting, and WooCommerce hosting.

Cloud hosting has its own levels and pricing, which we’ll discuss.

StartUp

As the name suggests, this plan is perfect for those new to business or looking for smaller websites.

The StartUp plan allows you one website, 10 GB of space, and up to 10,000 monthly visitors.

Pricing starts at $4.99 per month on the introductory offer.

Some other features included in this plan are:

• Free WordPress Installation
• Free SSL
• Daily Backup
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• Free Email

Overall, it’s a great plan for those who are just getting started.

The only thing to be wary of is outgrowing your monthly visitors limit.

If you think you’re going to scale quickly, it would be worth starting straight off with the GrowBig plan.

 

GrowBig

The GrowBig plan is perfect for medium-sized businesses or those who know they will be managing more than one website.

You’ll have access to unlimited websites, 20 GB of webspace, and up to 25,000 monthly visitors.

Pricing starts at $7.99 per month on the introductory offer.

Aside from the features included in the StartUp plan, this plan also includes:

• On-demand Backup copies
• Speed-boosting
• Caching
• Staging environment
• Add collaborators to your site

It’s easy to understand why GrowBig is SiteGround’s best-selling plan.

It includes a range of great features that are easy to use and will fit the brief most in need of a website out there that expects a steady traffic flow.

 

GoGeek

The GoGeek is the most extensive shared hosting plan SiteGround has to offer.

As the name suggests, it’s designed for ‘technology geeks’ who want lots of control over their website.

The GoGeek plan will give you unlimited websites, 40 GB of webspace, and up to 100,000 monthly visits. N

eedless to say, it’s truly designed for large businesses with a high volume of traffic.

Pricing starts at $14.99 per month on the introductory offer.

The GoGeek plan includes all the features mentioned above, as well as:

• Register your clients with white-label access to Site Tools
• Use more server resources for higher process execution time
• Ultrafast PHP for faster page loads
• Priority support from SiteGround’s most experienced customer support agents

In a nutshell, this plan is for those of you who know what you’re doing with websites.

If you don’t understand some of the plan’s technological features, it may not be the best plan for you.

Unless, of course, you have a specialist on your team to manage your website and need access to high volume traffic capabilities.

 

Cloud Hosting

We’ll touch on the cloud hosting product offerings shortly, but in terms of pricing, there are four plans for SiteGround’s cloud hosting:

• Jump Start
• Business
• Business Plus
•  Super Power

As you can see in the screenshot below, the pricing ranges from $100 to $400 per month.

The major difference in the plans is CPU cores, memory, and SSD space.

Due to the easy scalability of the cloud hosting options (which you’ll learn about shortly), you can confidently start with the Entry plan if it’s your first time using cloud hosting.

SiteGround Offerings

SiteGround Web Hosting

SiteGround offers fast and secure web hosting for websites of any kind.

Their general web hosting product is optimized for a range of Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more.

You’ll be able to build and launch your website quickly and easily with their full website solution, including your choice of site builder: WordPress or Weebly.

If you’re an online store, you’ll be able to install the shopping cart of your choice for free.

Domain registration is easy and affordable with SiteGround, so you’ll be able to enjoy the convenience of managing both your domain and your site in one place.

You’ll also have access to an unlimited number of email accounts when you create your domain, which is perfect for managing different areas of your business.

SiteGround WordPress Hosting

SiteGround is one of the few web hosting companies that offer hosting options specifically for WordPress.

As mentioned previously, they are even highly recommended directly by WordPress.

With SiteGround, you won’t need to download and install WordPress manually.

Instead, you’ll be able to automate the process with a simple click of a button using the WordPress Launch feature.

Upon login to your new website, you’ll be prompted to set your site up simply and easily with SiteGround’s WordPress Starter kit.

The whole process takes minutes from start to finish, even for a beginner!

One of the most popular features of SiteGround’s WordPress hosting is the free SiteGround Migrator plugin.

This feature is perfect for users who may hold their website with another host and wish to transfer over to SiteGround.

Better yet, if you’re not confident in your abilities to navigate the migrator plugin, you can have a WordPress whiz from SiteGround do it for you for an additional fee.

SiteGround WooCommerce Hosting

SiteGround also offers hosting options for users looking to build a powerful online shop using WooCommerce.

This plan comes with WooCommerce pre-installed, saving you time and hassle, allowing you to straightaway focus on uploading products to your online store.

With WooCommerce, you can sell any type of product or service online.

SiteGround will support your ecommerce growth by keeping your website safe with a unique AI anti-bot system, free pre-installed SSL, and custom Web Application Firewall (WAF).

If you choose the WooCommerce GrowBig or GoGeek plan, SiteGround will also include a convenient staging tool.

You’ll be able to develop your store safely, testing changes and updates made on the staging copy before going live.

SiteGround Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is a relatively new way to host websites.

It’s an ideal solution for businesses and websites of medium to larger sizes, which have the capacity to grow very quickly.

If you are starting to outgrow your shared hosting plan, cloud hosting is the next step.

SiteGround’s cloud hosting will provide you with guaranteed resources with your very own RAM and CPU.

You can also upgrade the RAM, CPU, and disk space of your cloud plan at any time.

Better yet, there is no downtime with this process—the resources are added immediately.

If you want to automate the scaling process, you can do that, too!

SiteGround’s unique auto-scale option will adjust your CPU and RAM to meet the needs of unexpected traffic surges, preventing any slowness or downtime.

The best part is that the scalable amount is pre-determined by you, so you’ll still have control over the scale’s parameters.

Finally, cloud hosting with SiteGround will also include a free dedicated IP.

This feature will give you peace of mind that your website is safe from IP blacklist due to other webmasters’ actions.

 

The Best WordPress Web Hosting Service

Not sold that SiteGround is the perfect match for you?

Or maybe you simply want to know what else is out there, so you can ensure you’ve chosen the best of the best. I get it.

That’s why we’ve written a whole post about the best WordPress web hosting services out there.

Here are the contenders I’ve reviewed:

 

• Bluehost — Best WordPress hosting for new websites
• WP Engine — The best for managed WordPress hosting
• Hostinger – The best for cheap WordPress hosting
• SiteGround — The best support for affordable WP hosting
• DreamHost — The lowest day one spends for WP hostin
• gNexcess — The Best For Customized Managed Hosting Solutions
• A2 Hosting — The best for moving an existing site to better WP hosting

 

The bottom line: Would I recommend SiteGround for your web hosting needs? Absolutely.

They have a range of plans to suit any business and budget, and they compete well with their competitors in terms of features.

They excel in site speed time and offer phenomenal customer service.

With all this in mind, they are a sound choice.

Source: feedproxy.google.com

Bluehost Review

 

Bluehost enables you to get a website up and running in minutes. It’s a reputable web host used by millions to host their online projects, start businesses, and create something new.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

What makes Bluehost so popular?

It’s easy to use, even for first-timers, and it’s a great price.

You get a free domain name upon signing up (usually $10-15 per year) and hosting costs as little as $2.95 per month.

Bluehost also comes loaded with features to help you get set up quickly.

Find out more about what you get, and why I think Bluehost provides the best value for your money.

Bluehost Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services

Bluehost offers shared hosting plans at an entry-level price.

If you’re diving into creating a website as a first-timer, Bluehost is a safe and affordable option.

Plus, as I mentioned before, you get a free domain name when you sign up.

This is a nice perk that sets it apart from the rest, along with its customer support options and affordable additional hosting tiers.

I couldn’t name Bluehost as the hosting provider that gives you the best value for your money without seeing how it measured up to other providers on the market.

To determine which hosting provider was genuinely worth your time, I compared dozens of competitors and narrowed it down to the top seven choices.

See all of my top picks for cheap web hosting to get a more detailed overview of each one and a buying guide.

 

Who is Bluehost Best For?

Bluehost is ideal for beginners that are starting a website for the first or second time.

Say you’re a blogger getting started in your niche, Bluehost enables you to get an easy start without sweating all the technical details.

Along with their customer support features and easy-to-navigate cPanel, Bluehost ensures your learning curve is as small as possible and gets your site publicly available to the world with plenty of uptime.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to start an ecommerce business with tons of products and need the best site speed and dedicated hosting, you might want to look at other options first.

 

Bluehost: The Pros and Cons

Pros

24/7 customer support:

Not every company can boast 24/7 customer support, especially at such a low entry-level price.

Bluehost’s customer support is there for you as you start your site, and anytime you need extra support troubleshooting site errors are bound to happen.

One year of a free domain:

Possibly one of Bluehost’s most appealing features is the free domain name you get for a whole year.

This eliminates the extra step of going through a third-party domain seller or investing more money at your site’s beginning.

Free SSL certificate:

An SSL certificate, otherwise known as a Secure Sockets Layer certificate, makes sure to authenticate the identity of your website and encrypts important site information.

In other words, it’s a must-have for any site you publish.

Thankfully, Bluehost provides SSL certification for free.

Quick site setup:

With Bluehost, you can easily get your site up and running in no time with their intuitive and guided step-by-step setup.

And if you happen to run into any trouble, you can tap into their chat support feature in real-time.

Beginner-friendly:

Bluehost is ideal for anyone venturing into creating and maintaining a website for the first time.

This is because there isn’t a need for advanced web management knowledge or coding when you set up your site through it.

To sweeten the deal, they’ve partnered with WordPress and ensured that installing WordPress is a seamless part of the process.

Cons

Charges for site migrations:

Admittedly, when it comes to migration perks, Bluehost isn’t necessarily your best bet.

If you want help migrating your site, Bluehost charges at least $149 to migrate your site to or from another platform.

Not the best fit for high traffic sites:

If you’re wanting to scale an already high-traffic site and need hosting to meet those specific needs, an entry-level Bluehost plan isn’t going to cut it.

You can always upgrade to their more expensive managed WordPress tiers, which we’ll get into below.

 

Bluehost Pricing

Bluehost offers several pricing tiers that are pretty clear-cut. But after going through them here, you’re still unsure which one can work best for you, reach out to them for a free consultation.

It’s worth noting the price points for each shared hosting tier I review here are only if you purchase a 36-month hosting plan upfront.

If you decide to go with a 12 or 24-month plan, the monthly amounts change accordingly.

Going with a month-to-month plan will also mean your monthly hosting fee will be a tad more expensive.

Regardless, Bluehost still stands as the most affordable and value-filled plan you can choose, especially as a beginner.

Now, here’s how each shared hosting tier breaks down along with its value.

 

Shared Hosting

A shared hosting Bluehost plan is hands down one of the easiest ways to get started building your site.

You can start with the Basic plan for $2.95, which is good to create one site with 50 GBs of space.

That’s generous when you consider they also include free CDN and a free SSL certificate.

It doesn’t stop there. Are you running a few websites?

Then you’ll want to try the Plus tier at $5.45 per month.

It includes everything in the basic plan tier, plus the ability to host and manage an unlimited number of sites, and you’ll get access to Office 365 for 30 days.

Not bad. It’s the most convenient tier if you want to reliably start more than one site from scratch without too much overhead cost.

Their most recommended tier, and the one that gets you the most bang for your buck under the shared hosting plan, is the Choice Plus tier at $5.45 per month with added security features.

You get everything in the first and second-tier, plus free domain privacy and free automated backup for a whole year.

Since internet security is a growing concern in the online world and the price for this tier is the same as the Plus option, this is the clear winner in my book as far as affordable shared hosting plans are concerned.

Added security features can only ever be a plus.

Finally, if you’re looking for a bit more than that, consider the Pro tier, sitting at $13.95 a month.

With this plan, you’ll get additional CPU resources as well as a free dedicated IP.

As you can see, Bluehost goes out of their way to personalize each tier, so they’re useful in covering what you need.

I recommend you take some time to comprehensively look through each tier and its offerings to get the best deal according to your goals.

 

VPS Hosting

VPS, or virtual private server hosting, is when hosting is within a shared server but acts as a dedicated virtual space for your site. VPS hosting has become very popular, as it is less expensive than dedicated hosting but gives you better security and potentially better performance than shared hosting.

Guaranteed resources are the name of the game when it comes to Bluehost’s VPS Hosting options.

They stack up against competitors well, as they charge you only $18.99 for the standard VPN feature.

This includes 2 GB of RAM and an additional 1 TB of bandwidth.

Looking through each Bluehost offering, it’s clear they’ve positioned themselves as a beginner-friendly web host, but they also burn the candle at both ends by offering affordable dedicated and VPS hosting.

That’s a double win as far as hosting you can rely on if you ask me.

 

Dedicated Hosting

The standout benefits of dedicated hosting are security, privacy, and even more control all around.

If you know you’ll want the best of the best to host your site for scale and reliability, then a Bluehost dedicated hosting plan is the way to go.

Is your site growing rapidly?

Do you see more traffic coming in day after day?

Here’s where you’ll want to look into dedicated hosting, yet another reliable Bluehost plan.

To illustrate the power of a dedicated hosting plan, they start you off at a whopping 500 GB of storage space, 4 GB of RAM, and 5 TB of bandwidth for only $79.99 a month.

This puts Bluehost as a premium contender in the market, even for their pricier hosting tiers.

 

Managed WordPress Hosting

This is an all-in-one managed platform that scales to any demand your website has.

All pricing plans for managed WordPress hosting through Bluehost include incredibly fast speeds, marketing tools, and multi-tiered security features.

The most dynamic hosting tier Bluehost offers is its managed WordPress option.

You can either go with the Build, Grow, or Scale option.

Each one offers a different hosting package to fit what you’re looking for.

To make the best choice if you decide to go with a managed WordPress option, you’ll want to base your decision on the amount of traffic they’re each appropriate for.

Each plan comes equipped with plenty of helpful features built to help your site grow.

This means storage space starting at 20 GBs, access to over 200 global servers, scheduled backups, staging environments, and free SSL certification, just to name a few.

What differentiates each managed tier is ultimately their traffic capacity.

Here’s a quick overview:

• Build – $19.95 a month, best for 50,000 monthly visitors
• Grow – $29.95 a month, best for 150,000 monthly visitors
• Scale – $49.95 a month, best for 500,000 monthly visitors

Breaking it down by traffic makes it easy to choose a managed WordPress hosting plan that’ll give you peace of mind and plenty of site uptime.

 

Bluehost Offerings

At this point, you’ve learned about Bluehost’s hosting pricing.

But the fun doesn’t stop there.

In addition to the hosting plans, Bluehost has other services.

 

Hosting

Unsurprisingly, shared hosting is Bluehost’s most popular hosting deal because it lets you get your foot in the door as far as getting your site up and running goes.

I’d say the number one reason Bluehost’s shared hosting stacks up high when you’re comparing it to other hosting providers is their free SSL certification and their free domain name deal.

But as far as hosting your site on a server where you’ll share space with other sites like yours, it does its job.

Now, while shared hosting might be the best affordable hosting option for beginners, it won’t be what you want to stick with as your site grows.

That’s why there’s dedicated hosting and VPS hosting.

Dedicated hosting is a more robust and reliable hosting option for powerful site performance, and VPS hosting offers increased power, flexibility, and control.

 

Online Stores

If you’ve already decided you’re going to start your online store with WordPress and WooCommerce, it can be as easy as choosing from the Standard or the Premium store hosting tiers to get started.

For a store with a robust payment processing system that comes equipped with plenty of analytics and the ability to create basic store backups, then go with the Standard deal at $15.95 a month.

Your store might be a bit more complex than a simple storefront with your product listings.

If you’re going to capture subscriptions or online booking and appointment scheduling, you’re better off with the Premium tier as a very reliable ecommerce option.

I’d say this is my top pick for a multifaceted online store with a lot of moving parts.

I’d rather pay a bit more for all the Premium features than need them and not have them for the sake of saving a few extra bucks.

 

Live WordPress Support

Bluehost offers Blue Sky, a service to teach users how to build, grow, and maintain any WordPress website through individual training and guidance.

Live WordPress Support starts at $29 per month for on-demand ticket support and backup assistance and goes as high as $149 per month for SEO tools, help with content optimization and mobile optimization, and access to Constant Contact.

Professional Marketing Services

In addition to hosting services, Bluehost has an offering to assist your business with design and marketing strategies to give you more time to focus on revenue-generating activities and running your business.

The four primary services offered by Bluehost in this realm are:

• Full-service website support with design, marketing, and content help
• SEO services to optimize your website and target keywords
• PPC services to assist with pay-per-click campaigns and best practices to get more customers
• Website migration assistance, including one-on-one consultations to review your website before and after any migration

The cost for these services is not listed on the Bluehost website.

You’ll need to contact them to discuss pricing and support options.

 

The Best Web Hosting Services

It’s never a good idea to make your decision based on only one piece of information.

I recommend you check out my list of the top cheap web hosting providers to make sure you’re making the best choice for your specific needs.

Here’s a quick overview of all my recommendations:

• Hostinger — Best web hosting plan under $1
• Dreamhost — The lowest spend on day one
• Bluehost — Best for new sites (especially WordPress)
• A2 Hosting — Best web hosting under $3 for online stores
• HostGator — The best way to host your existing site for a cheaper rate
• iPage — Best if you have multiple sitesGreenGeeks — Best price for managed WooCommerce hosting

 

All in all, Bluehost is a reliable web hosting service that gives you the best value for your money.

It offers a great entry-level shared hosting plan for as little as $2.75 a month, one free domain name for a year, as well as free SSL certification, and plenty of customer support you can tap into at a moment’s notice.

Any comments on Bluehost as a great hosting service for beginner websites? Let me know in the comments.

Otherwise, get started with Bluehost here.

Source: neilpatel.com

How to Make a Website in 6 Easy Steps

 

Making a website has gotten much, much easier over the years. It’s cheaper, faster, and more straightforward than ever before.

But what do you really need to build a website?

A stable internet connection and just an hour or two of your time is plenty.

You don’t need any web development experience or tons of money, don’t worry.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ll teach you how to make a website from scratch in just one afternoon.

Just follow my tactics below to avoid making the same mistakes I made when starting at ground zero.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Ready? Let’s dig right in!

Your 2-Minute Cheat Sheet

Here’s your quick-start guide to making a website.

Remember, this section doesn’t cover everything–just the crucial steps–everything is broken down in more detail below.

Start by choosing the right web host. We highly recommend Bluehost for speed and reliability.

Oh, and it’s a fantastic price.

Then you’ll need a domain name that represents what your website is going to be all about.

A .com domain name is best because it helps you earn brownie points in the eyes of visitors.

One reason I like Bluehost so much is that they throw in a free domain name for the first year.

That saves you some cash and the extra step of having to go through a domain registrar.

Once you’ve registered your domain name, choose a content management system or CMS.

You can consider WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, among others.

I like WordPress the best and it’s what I use for my site.

If you go with Bluehost, WordPress is a one-click install.

Boom, now you have a version of a website up and running. Congrats!

But you aren’t done yet.

Next on your list would be to market your business.

Since branding is crucial today, you need to consider a logo, write your website copy, plan your marketing strategy, and definitely install Google Analytics.

Basically, the exciting stuff that you may know all about already.

Now let’s discuss how to build a website in more detail.

 

Steps to Build A Website

Keep reading or jump right to the step you need help with:

1. Choose Web Hosting
2. Select a Unique and Relevant Domain Name
3. Select a Good Website Building Platform or CMS
4. Design Your Website to Make It Look Awesome
5. Protect Your Website by Using a Child Theme
6. Configure Your Website and Add Relevant Content

 

Step #1: Choose Web Hosting

Do you remember how your school library had those large categorized bookshelves?

A web hosting company is precisely like that bookshelf, while the library is the internet.

A hosting service provider or a web hosting company stores your website on a server, making everything you put up on your website visible on the internet and your visitors.

These companies offer monthly or annual plans on shared servers, dedicated servers, or virtual private servers, allowing you to choose a plan according to your security and support requirements.

If your website doesn’t collect or store personal or financial data, you can always select the basic plan.

So, you don’t have to shell out a lot of money.

But how do you know which web hosting company or service is right for you?

Site Speed

If you want to earn money from your website, you need to get a stable and fast web host.

Fast sites have many things going for them. They rank better, help with SEO, and maximize conversions.

I would 100% recommend Bluehost, as it keeps loading time minimal and short.

That said, we would also advise you to avoid shared hosting or overly cheap services.

Shared hosting means you’ll be sharing your web server with thousands of other sites.

In other words, hosting speed will be slow–plus, you may even end up sharing the server with spammy sites, which you may end up with you facing the brunt of Google.

As for skipping cheap hosting services, the rule here is simple: You get what you pay for.

The level of security, speed, and uptime wouldn’t be as great when you pay $5 per month, especially when you compare it to plans costing more than $120 per month.

I’m not telling you to buy the most expensive plan–just avoid the cheapest hosting.

Uptime Dependability

Your web hosting service should always operate properly.

Otherwise, no one can access your website.

A good hosting provider provides you an uptime guarantee–something like “We offer a 100% network uptime guarantee” or similar claims.

For instance, if a hosting provider tells you 99% uptime, your site can be down for 3.5 days a year.

But providers offering 99.99% or 99.999% will have about one hour and five minutes downtime, respectively.

Look for a provider that offers a guarantee for insurance.

If your website goes down, you can be compensated with hosting credits.

Customer Support

You’ll need quick and efficient backup support when technical difficulties arise.

Chat, email, or telephone – there are various support methods.

In my experience, though, email is the absolute worst. It’s much better to receive support by phone or live chat.

Choose a hosting provider that offers 24/7 support.

This way, you’ll be able to get your business back online if something goes wrong within minutes.

You should also check your service level agreement (SLA) to get an idea of the kind of support you’ll receive.

Looking at the company’s website will give you an idea about their support team too.

Scalability

Scalability is vital for two reasons. First, a hosting provider should grow organically with you, enabling you to upgrade when needed.

Second, your website should be able to handle massive spikes in visitor numbers.

Consider the following questions to understand whether your web host is flexible:

• Will the web host upgrade you from an entry-level shared hosting plan to an intermediate VPS when your visitor numbers reach a certain level without any downtime?
• How easy is this upgrade process?
• Can the web host support seasonal fluctuations in web traffic seamlessly?

You should aim to get a solution that checks all three boxes.

Visit web hosting forums to learn about other people’s experiences with providers.

Then compare services and prices to determine the right plan based on your needs and budget.

With a web host provider in place, you can move on to Step 2.

 

Step #2: Select a Unique and Relevant Domain Name

Don’t go looking for the perfect domain name–there isn’t one.

Some names better than others, but ultimately, it’s a small part of your business.

The content of your website remains most important.

A domain name is your website’s address on the internet.

Mine is NeilPatel.com, and it reflects my personal brand.

Yours can be anything you want it to be, provided it’s related to your business, topics that you want to write about, or your name.

The options are endless!

Following are a few rules of thumb to help you choose the right domain name:

• Keep it relevant
• Stick to short, memorable names
• Avoid numbers
• Choose a .com, .org, or .net

Make sure your chosen domain name is available

Find the perfect name is also possible using the following methods:

Method 1 – Brute Force Method

Many have the creativity to come up with the perfect domain name independently.

If that’s you, you’ll need a domain name registrar to purchase the domain, and then search the availability of your prospective domain name.

Bluehost is a great place to start, as it gives you a free domain for one year with their hosting plans, and you can search availability.

I’ll also advise you to avoid going for domain names that have hyphens (like neil-patel-marketing.com) even when you get it at a dirt-cheap price. It can get confusing.

Method 2 – Use a Tool

Some of us are not very creative, and that’s okay.

If you get stuck when coming up with a domain name, try using name generators.

Just enter one or two keywords, and the generator will look for ways to combine those words into a domain name.

In addition to speed and downtime reliability, Bluehost also allows you to check domain name availability.

Visit the sign up now page and enter your domain name in the box, and voila! You’ll have a name.

Bear in mind that your preferred domain name may be unavailable.

Try mixing up words, using a thesaurus, or adding a verb if it happens.

After you’ve chosen your domain name, you’ll next need a website building platform.

 

Step #3: Select a Good Website Building Platform or CMS

A quick Google search about website builders and CMS will leave you overwhelmed with the enormity of options.

CMS stands for Content Management System.

It allows you to edit your website within the domain itself, helping you save tons of time and make everything way simpler.

Customizing layouts, settings, content, creating new pages and posts, and so on, becomes easier thanks to ready-to-use website templates.

Here are a few options to consider:

WordPress.

WordPress is number one when it comes to CMSs.

It’s popular, user-friendly, and super easy to use.

Moreover, the platform has over 58,000 plugins that allow you to do almost anything you want on your site.

Keep in mind that WordPress.com and WordPress.org aren’t the same.

While the former is a third-party site that allows you to create free blogs, the latter enables you to download the WordPress software to install on a website.

Wix.

Wix is another website builder that makes things super easy.

If you need a site with just a few pages, like restaurants, local businesses, freelancers, or portfolio sites, this could be a great option.

However, if you want to build a large site, Wix may lack the advanced features required for large amounts of traffic.

Drupal.

Drupal is the most advanced website building solution, which is why it has a steeper learning curve.

Though when you consider the level of customization it offers, the hard work seems worth it.

While I don’t recommend Drupal for beginners, if advance customization is a priority on your list, this is hands down the best option.

You can always hire an expert to learn the ropes of the platform.

You’ll now have a website up and running. All that is left to do is to make it look great.

 

Step #4: Design Your Website to Make It Look Awesome

For any website builder, you’ll have to install a theme.

Themes can be free and paid, but the latter is more professional-looking and gives you more flexibility when customizing your website.

They aren’t excessively expensive as well and can be bought for less than $100.

WordPress and Wix have some great free themes, but if you want to try out the premium variety, you can give StudioPress a shot.

Themes are built on the basic CMS but are customizable to give your website a unique look and allow it to function differently.

After all, shouldn’t an artist’s website look different from a SaaS or a restaurant?

Visual representation is incredibly important as your visitors judge your website in a fraction of a second based on how it looks.

If your site looks obsolete, untrustworthy, or doesn’t match its expectations, your visitors will be gone in seconds.

Luckily, choosing a good theme is easy.

I recommend reading reviews about the themes before choosing and never prioritizing visual appeal over functionality.

Yes, you want your website to look good with all those fancy fonts and colors, but that shouldn’t be at the cost of functionality.

Additionally, you can always change the theme at a later date. Just don’t change it frequently, as it will harm SEO and branding.

 

Step #5: Protect Your Website by Using a Child Theme

The best way to protect your website is to use a child theme.

A child theme is a style sheet stored separately from the rest of your theme’s files on the webserver.

Not only will it make your site hard to break, but it even protects you from redoing changes whenever you update a theme.

Keep in mind that different website builders have different names for creating a child theme.

You build a “child theme” in WordPress, but you create a “sub-theme” in Drupal.

Also, some websites don’t allow you to create a child theme, but you can always make a duplicate theme to serve as a backup, as in Joomla.

 

Step #6: Configure Your Website and Add Relevant Content

At this point, you’re done with most of the technical part and can now finally focus on the more interesting things.

Start by setting up navigation to make it easier for visitors to know what your website is all about and grant them easy access to different parts of your website.

Choose a couple of colors to represent your site without going overboard.

For instance, I chose orange and white.

Organize, separate, and highlight the important areas of your website to make it eye-catching and clear.

You can also install plugins to help your website function smoothly.

Here is a quick checklist of things you need to start marketing your business, especially if you want to earn money from the website:

• Get a logo.
• This will represent your brand, so be very careful here.
• Write your website copy, including the home page, About Me page, and other basic pages.
• Install Google Analytics code to your website to keep track of visitors.
• Start planning your marketing strategy to figure out your visitor’s likes and dislikes.

As for the last pointer, you’ll have to understand online marketing, content marketing, and the often neglected link building to gain visibility, generate leads, and achieve your business goals from your website.

 

Conclusion

Making a website does have its fair share of struggles, but the more experience you gain, the better you’ll become, and the easier it’ll be.

While we’ve covered all the necessary details for building your first website, if you find yourself getting stuck anywhere, you can turn to Google or YouTube to solve your problem.

Trust me, there are tutorials for almost everything out there on the internet.

Choosing a web host and CMS, designing your website, and marketing is just the tip of the iceberg.

You can’t expect overnight success, but was just a bit of patience, you’ll see real progress.

Source: feedproxy.google.com

Best Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting can be extremely lucrative. Whether it’s an add-on to your existing business, a side hustle, or the start of a standalone hosting company, there are plenty of ways to turn a profit in this space.

 

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Every website needs a hosting service.

White label resellers become that solution for their clients.

By renting servers at wholesale rates from web hosting providers and reselling them to other sites, it’s easy to generate a substantial ROI.

But it all starts with finding the right reseller hosting company for your needs.

Which one is the best?

Find out below.

Best Reseller Hosting Services

#1 – InMotion Review — The Best Reseller VPS Plans

InMotion is another industry leader in the world of web hosting.

They offer six different white label reseller plans, including three VPS reseller packages.

For those of you who want to take your reseller services to the next level, a premium VPS plan from InMotion has everything you need.

Every plan comes with free SSD storage, free billing software, cPanel and WHM, free domain reseller, 24/7/365 support, and white label resources.

InMotion is optimized for WordPress out of the box as well.

But if you select a reseller VPS plan, you’ll benefit from additional features like:

• Up to 50 free cPanel transfers
• Hosting optimized for e-commerce
• High availability with real-time redundancy
• Free server security, management, and maintenance
• Optional root access
• High performance with allocated resources for each site
• Scalable resources

The shared reseller packages start at $15.39 per month, whereas the VPS reseller plans start at $46.64 per month.

There’s definitely a significant difference between these starting rates, but the VPS reseller hosting’s quality and performance are unmatched.

All InMotion white label reseller hosting plans are backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee.

#2 – A2 Hosting Review — The Best For Billing and Client Management

A2 Hosting is synonymous with speed.

They are known for providing some of the fastest webs hosting servers on the market today.

When you sign up for an A2 Hosting reseller package, you’ll have the option to upgrade to a turbo reseller plan, which gives you and your clients access to servers up to 20 times faster than most other options.

In addition to the top-notch performance, A2 offers a free WHMCS or Blesta license with its reseller packages.

WHMCS and Blesta are two of the best client management and billing solutions for resellers.

So, you’ll have no problem managing your client lists at scale with A2 Hosting.

Other top features offered in A2’s reseller packages include:

• 24/7/365 guru support
• Free account migrations
• 99.9% uptime commitment
• Free SSL certificates
• Panel and WHM
• White label capability
• Developer-friendly tools

The entry-level reseller servers from A2 Hosting start at $18.99 per month.

Turbo reseller servers start at $29.99 per month, and I strongly recommend them.

Your clients will definitely notice a difference in terms of speed and performance.

The extra $11 is well worth it.

A2 also has a ton of guides and resources made specifically for resellers.

You really can’t go wrong with any of these plans.

#3 – Liquid Web Review — The Best Variety of Reseller Packages

Whether you’re starting a new reseller hosting business or scaling an existing one, Liquid Web has everything you need to succeed.

They offer a wide range of reseller options, including dedicated reseller servers, VPS servers, and cloud servers.

All of these options perform significantly better than an entry-level shared reseller plan.

Liquid Web also has a unique billing structure for reseller customers.

The program allows resellers to purchase any hosting solution at a discount.

But the exact discount is based on monthly revenue.

The more hosting solutions you sell, the higher your discount will be:

• $250-$500 per month — 5% discount
• $501-$1,000 per month — 7% discount
• $1,001-$2,000 per month — 9% discount
• $2,001-$5,000 per month — 12% discount
• $5,001-$10,000 per month — 17% discount
• $10,001-$15,000 per month — 19% discount
• $15,000+ per month — 20% discount

As you can see, there’s an opportunity to make a significant profit here with these discounts as your reseller program scales.

All of Liquid Web’s reseller packages come with a free WHMCS license.

This makes it easy for you to customize plans for clients, generate invoices, and provide support to your clients within a single interface.

Liquid Web allows you to give your clients complete control of their plans so that they manage things like service provisioning, reboots, and load balancing on their own.

Pricing for Liquid Web’s reseller program starts at $99 per month.

#4 – ResellerClub Review — The Best for Delivering Turnkey Sites to Clients

Reseller hosting is often associated with agencies already building sites for clients.

It’s an easy value add to take care of hosting for them as well.

But what if your agency’s forte isn’t web design or site-building, but you know your clients could benefit from getting a website and hosting through you?

With ResellerClub, you not only get an excellent array of hosting options, but also an incredibly simple way to deliver websites, blogs, and ecommerce stores that are ready to go in an instant.

More specifically, they offer over 400 Softaculous apps that take just one click to install through ResellerClub’s cPanel.

That means you can instantly implement content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, ecommerce platforms like Magento, customer service portals like osTicket, and much, much more.

So, in one fell swoop, you can hand a client a ready-to-go framework for anything from a web store or support page to a forum, blog, or appointment scheduler—plus, you’ll be providing solid web hosting as well.

ResellerClub’s reseller hosting is a little pricier than the others on our list, but not by much.

The entry-level Essential plan provides 40 GB SSD storage for unlimited websites for $17.99/month.

That price is for a three-year term, though, with one and two-year commitments slightly more and a higher base rate for a six-month term or month-to-month billing.

You can scale up to 50 GB, 100 GB, or 200 GB of storage (and higher data transfer thresholds) for $21.99/month, $28.99/month, and $45.99/month, respectively, for three-year terms.

You can add dedicated IP to any plan for an extra $3.99.

While the hosting side of the equation might not be as powerful or cheap as some others, you get the Cloudflare CDN and free, unlimited email on all plans, free hosting migrations, a billing and customer management dashboard, and, of course, a turnkey site installs vis Softaculous.

If you’re an agency looking to add site-building and hosting to your suite of client services,

ResellerClub is the easiest way to do so.

You can give ResellerClub a try risk-free, thanks to their 30-day money-back guarantee.

#5 – HostGator Review — The Best for Hands-On Resellers

Some resellers don’t want to get their hands too dirty with the technical side of hosting.

If their clients have any issues at all, they’ll run those up the ladder to their own provider’s customer support to solve the problem.

If that doesn’t sound like you and you relish getting under the hood to fine-tune settings, HostGator is the reseller hosting provider for you.

In all three of its reseller plans, HostGator offers its customers pinpoint control of resources and tools to allocate storage, analyze statistics, and manage every bit of the backend.

First, you get the most up-to-date WHM for monitoring servers.

Within it, you can limit packages and manage the DNS, disk space and backups, bandwidth, and databases, as well user controls for your clients’ cPanel accounts.

The cPanel you’ll provide clients comes full of useful features, like AWStats and Webalizer reporting, IP blocking, a web-based file manager, one-click installs of useful site features.

That’s great if your clients like having the same degree of control as you do.

Want to get really geeky? HostGator also supports a variety of programming languages and modules and allows for Secure Shell access and custom scheduling of cron jobs.

On top of all that, you get one of the most affordable long-term deals in reseller hosting from HostGator.

Here’s a look at their plans with current introductory pricing (for a three-year term):

• Aluminum: 60 GB SSD & 600 GB transfer for $19.95/month
• Copper: 90 GB SSD & 900 GB transfer for $24.95/month
• Silver: 140 GB SSD & 1400 GB transfer for $24.95/month

That introductory rate for the Silver package is perhaps the best bang for your buck currently available.

After three years, the rate will jump up a good deal around $15/month for Aluminum and Copper, but even that rate is one of the most competitive base prices on the reseller hosting market.

Silver, however, will cost you a good deal more.

With those low price points and the hands-on control to maximize server resources for your clients’ sites, you can perhaps turn a better profit reselling from HostGator than any other hosting provider.

Sign up with HostGator today and take them up on their 45-day satisfaction guarantee.

What I Looked at to Find the Best Reseller Hosting

There’s some really basic math you’re going to want to do in order to figure out which host is going to give you the best deal on the volume of reselling you plan on doing.

But working backward from the sticker price is only going to get you so far.

There’s still a number of important criteria to evaluate as you’re shopping around.

Use the factors below to help you compare your different options before making a final decision.

 

Hosting Type

By default, most reseller packages are offered on shared hosting servers.

But different providers offer various hosting options, including VPS reseller hosting, cloud reseller hosting, and even dedicated server reseller hosting.

The hosting type you select will have a direct impact on performance.

For example, shared hosting is considered to be entry-level.

So, your clients won’t necessarily have the highest performing websites if you’re reselling shared hosting.

Traffic spikes on one site could lead to crashes or slow loading times on another.

VPS or dedicated hosting would improve site performance for your clients.

These are more expensive, but you can pass those costs along to each client.

Quality and performance will both be a direct reflection of your brand and services.

Often, prioritizing quality is worth the added cost.

Choosing the right type of hosting is a crucial decision.

 

Number of Clients

There’s a big difference between selling reseller hosting services to 20 clients versus 200+ clients.

Be realistic, and ask yourself how many clients you plan to acquire and retain on a monthly or annual basis.

Some reseller plans are better for managing smaller client lists, while others are built to scale.

There are even reseller hosting packages out there that can accommodate an unlimited number of websites.

 

Billing and Client Management

The best reseller hosting plans set you up for success and come with add-ons or built-in tools for managing your clients.

Look for features like web hosting manager complete solution (WHMCS).

It’s an industry-leading web hosting and billing management tool.

You can use it to automate billing, collect payments, set up provisioning, and more.

Blesta is also a popular tool for billing and client management.

Some plans come with a free WHMCS or Blesta license, while others charge extra for access to these tools.

 

Technical Ability

Ease of use with reseller hosting is not universal across the board.

Some platforms are definitely more user-friendly than others.

Some reseller hosting solutions are made for developers and other tech-savvy users.

Others are designed to accommodate beginners or agencies looking to add on to existing services.

Be honest about your technical ability and that of your team, and the learning curve associated with the tool.

It should be reasonably easy to determine if the plans you’re evaluating fit within your level of comfort.

The terminology and use cases described for each package can be very telling.

If it feels like you’re reading a foreign language, it’s probably not the best option for you.

 

White Labeling

Hosting for clients can typically be offered in one of two ways—managed or white label.

Some resellers build and manage sites for clients behind the scenes without granting the client access to their site’s hosting control panel.

Others simply re-brand the hosting services and give clients log-in access to manage the hosting service independently.

With a white label plan, the client never knows where you’re getting hosting from.

You’ll have the ability to put your own branding and logos on this dashboard.

Not every reseller plan comes with white label capabilities out of the box.

 

Conclusion

Every website on the Internet must have a web hosting service, and there’s no shortage of potential prospects for resellers in the hosting space.

But having success as a reseller starts with choosing the right program.

Which one is the best?

The top five options I reviewed are a great place to start your search.

 

Top Five Reseller Hosting Providers

InMotion — Best reseller VPS plans

A2 Hosting — Best for billing and client management

Liquid Web — Best variety of reseller packages

ResellerClub — Best for delivering turnkey sites to clients

HostGator — Best for hands-on resellers

 

Whether you’re a beginner, an experienced reseller, or somewhere in between, you can find what you need with the recommendations listed in this guide.

Source: neilpatel.com

Best Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting enables you to set up a website with a few clicks, but don’t expect anything fancy. Ads, a cap on how much traffic you can get, sudden downtimes, and little to no customer support are just some of the trade-offs that come with using a free host.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

You want a quick and easy way to start a website yet have no clue how web hosting works.

Or perhaps you know how it works but don’t have the budget or urgency to invest in one.

The good news is you can get a website up and running without spending a dime.

The bad news is also the fact that it’s free.

Free web hosting enables you to set up a website with a few clicks, but don’t expect anything fancy.

Ads, a cap on how much traffic you can get, sudden downtimes, and little to no customer support are just some of the trade-offs that come with using a free host.

 

Free Web Hosting Options

There’s some really great cheap web hosting options out there.

But if you really need a zero-cost option, check out my list of recommended products below.

#1 – Wix Review — Best Free Web Hosting With Website Builder

When it comes to building a simple blog or an online portfolio that highlights your work,

Wix is the best intuitive website builder you can count on.

With the help of its simple drag-and-drop interface, you can create a simple website in minutes.

Wix takes care of your website through free hosting so long as you don’t mind having Wix brand ads displayed on your pages.

Although free accounts can only use the Wix subdomain, there are enough templates and apps you can choose from to add a little bit of personal touch to your website.

Should you decide to create a website with Wix, you will get a storage space of 500 MB and a bandwidth of 500 MB, enough for a low-traffic site like an online portfolio.

If you want more flexibility, you can upgrade to premium plans anytime to access the custom domain, email, and ecommerce features.

Premium plans also eliminate ads so your website will look more professional and less cookie-cutter.

But even with ads, Wix has plenty to offer that will put the spotlight on your content.

Whether you’re a writer, designer, or photographer, Wix remains the best website builder to help you establish an online presence without touching any code. Sign up now.

#2 – Square Online Review — Best Free Ecommerce Hosting Platform

Square Online is a free ecommerce platform for aspiring entrepreneurs who are still getting their feet wet with online selling.

Unlike big names in the industry, Square Online lets you sell unlimited products without paying recurring fees.

To set up your online store hosted by Square Online, all you need to do is answer a few questions.

The platform’s Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) will then automatically generate a website with a design based on the answers you give.

The drag-and-drop editor only offers four customizable themes, but you get an assurance that every design follows your industry’s best practice.

Without touching any code, you can create your online store with a responsive design that fits in any device.

Square Online also offers the following to help you get started with your business:

• Square POS integration so you can automatically import your product catalog and let it sync with your online store for a seamless inventory management
• Payment processing system that accepts all major credit cards, Google Pay, and Apple PayIn-house and on-demand delivery
• Instagram integration
• Free SSL security
• SEO tools

In exchange for hosting your online store for free, Square Online requires a small commission fee of 2.9% + 30¢ for each product sold.

Should you decide to scale your business, you can leave the free plan and move to the premium plans starting at $12 per month.

Through a new feature called Square Online Checkout, sellers also have the option to sell their products and receive payment using only a link instead of a website.

Whether you’re an established brick-and-mortar store owner or just starting from scratch, Square Online has all the basics to help you navigate the unfamiliar world of ecommerce with ease. Start now.

#3 – DreamHost Review — Best Free Web Hosting for Nonprofits

DreamHost believes in every nonprofit organization’s advocacy so much that they’re giving them a shared hosting plan at no cost.

Aside from free web hosting, DreamHost also provides US-based charitable organizations with the following:

• Free domain
• Free backups
• Free shopping cart installation so you can accept donations with ease
• Unmetered transfer and unlimited monthly visitors
• Free SSL certificate to keep online transactions secure

To create a free hosting account, DreamHost does not require any credit card details and needs just your billing address for verification purposes.

You also need to attach a 501(c)(3) determination letter, a document from the United States IRS proving your tax-exempt non-profit status under the applicable sections of the tax code.

Since it’s a free account, you won’t have access to reliable 24/7 customer support.

However, DreamHost’s dedicated help center and ticketing system offset this, which more than meets the need for straightforward troubleshooting solutions.

Should you want more control over your account, nonprofit organizations can also avail themselves of a 35% discount off DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting plans.

This means you can host your site under a paid plan for as low as $11 per month.

#4 – SiteGround Review — Best Free Web Hosting for Teachers

SiteGround, one of the leading providers of top-notch shared hosting technology, is giving away its StartUp Plan for free to teachers.

This way, hard-working educators can focus on what they do best while SiteGround takes care of the technology that makes online learning possible.

In addition to a free hosting account, educators also get a free SiteGround subdomain which will serve as the home to their online course or a repository of their supplementary resources.

The plan also provides dependable 24/7 support via chat, phone, or ticketing system, so any technical issues will be resolved on your behalf.

This robust free web hosting also includes the following features:

• LAMP server, PHP, MySQL with PhpMyAdmin10 GB space and unmetered traffic
• Free emails with spam protectionCDN caching solution to make your website faster
• Free learning management system (LMS) to help you deliver efficient, user-friendly educational courses to your students

Whether your classes are entirely conducted online or through a hybrid of physical and online classrooms, SiteGround has the free tools you need to help your students adapt to a changing world.

#5 – WordPress.com Review — Best Free WordPress Hosting Service

Often confused with the open-source software WordPress.org, WordPress.com is the free platform where non-technical users can create websites.

Since it is powered by the same robust and world-class infrastructure behind nearly half of the world’s websites, WordPress.com is the best place to learn how to manage a website while you’re still not ready or able to pay for a hosting service.

Setting up a website is easy. You can select a WordPress subdomain and choose from any of the available themes.

Just like Wix, WordPress.com also displays ads to sustain its free platform.

While the ads may sometimes be annoying, this is a small price to pay for all the other features that WordPress.com has to offer:

• 3 GB storage space so you can publish both text and beautiful images
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL certificate for an additional layer of security
• Optional backups so you can save your files on your hard drive

While it has excellent performance for a free hosting platform, WordPress.com can’t beat the paid version in terms of flexibility.

The WordPress CMS installed on websites in paid hosting plans gives you direct server access and freedom to install plugins and themes of your choice.

Still, WordPress.com is good for starters, especially if you only want a simple, stripped-down website to showcase your writing portfolio or personal diary.

#6 – GitHub Pages Review — The Best Free Static Web Hosting for Developers

Anyone with basic coding skills is already familiar with GitHub, an open-source platform where developers store their coding projects.

GitHub Pages is where you can take these codes from the repository, have them go through a build process, and turn them into a simple static website.

A static website is ideal for those who prefer a small website that doesn’t need to be updated regularly.

It’s also perfect for students who want a test site to play around with or present for their school projects.

GitHub Pages is completely free, yet it comes with a range of outstanding features:

• One site per GitHub account
• Unlimited project websites1 GB of storage plus 100 GB bandwidth every month
• Standard github.io subdomain or custom domain name you own
• Free HTTPS to prevent others from tampering with your traffic
• Built-in integration with Jekyll, a popular static site generator, for more customization options

To build your static website, all you need to do is sign in to your account and create a new repository.

You can then use the Jekyll Theme Chooser to pick from one of the pre-made themes.

If you don’t like your theme or your static website’s content, no need to worry as changes are a simple edit and push away.

You can make these changes either via the web or locally on your computer.

Whether you’re a developer or a non-techy looking for easy-to-follow instructions, GitHub Pages has all the tools you need to create a free static site.

 

What I Looked at to Find the Best Free Web Hosting

Before we proceed, you have to remember that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

In the case of a free web host, it has limitations that don’t appeal to everyone.

Free web hosting is designed to meet the needs of a niche market like a new hobby blogger who doesn’t intend to earn from his website or a student looking for a free platform where she can test her web development projects.

With that being said, you can’t use the same criteria in selecting a paid hosting plan when zeroing on the best free web hosting to suit your needs.

Remember, you get what you pay for. And in the case of a free web host, you shouldn’t expect to receive round-the-clock support, daily or on-demand backups, and a 100% uptime guarantee, among others.

However, some free options are a cut above the rest. Use the following parameters to figure out whether a free web hosting service is worth a try.

Custom Domain

Most companies are willing to host your website for free so long as you’re also willing to use a subdomain.

For instance, Wix is a popular website builder that requires its free users to use a subdomain (e.g., neilpatel.wix.com).

A subdomain doesn’t look professional nor is it good for branding. So, unless you only want a stripped-down website you can play around with, it would be better to opt for a company that can host your custom domain for free.

A custom domain is one that you own (e.g., neilpatel.com). You can purchase it from a domain registrar or from any hosting provider that also offers domain registration on the side. Domains are inexpensive, and you’ll need to renew them annually.

If branding is your top priority, make sure to find a free web host that gives you the option to stand out in a sea of other freely hosted websites.

Security

While advanced security features don’t exist in free web hosting platforms, they should at least offer a free SSL certificate.

SSL (secure sockets layer) is a technology that encrypts the information that passes through your website. It protects your site visitor’s sensitive data like passwords and credit card data from outside intruders.

If you’re launching a basic ecommerce site on a free hosting platform, a free SSL certificate is non-negotiable.

However, some free web hosting services only offer a self-signed SSL, which misleads users into thinking that it’s the same as the industry-standard SSL certificate.

A self-signed SSL is issued by servers and not by trusted authorities like Comodo, Digicert, and Let’s Encrypt.

Since it’s not a standard version, websites with self-signed SSL will still show security warnings to visitors.

Hence, a self-signed SSL defeats the purpose of an SSL certificate even though it offers the same level of encryption.

Especially if you’re planning to sell a product through your website, having a self-signed SSL is no better than not having an SSL certificate at all.

Storage and Bandwidth

As a rule of thumb, never go with free web hosting unless you’ll use it for a basic website with little to no traffic.

A free web host isn’t designed to handle the huge traffic volume.

This is why it’s important to read the fine print of the hosting provider’s terms and conditions before signing up.

Unfortunately, a lot of free hosting providers tend to mislead clueless users by including “unlimited storage” and “unlimited bandwidth” in their list of features.

Disk space or storage space is the amount of server space allocated to your website files, while bandwidth is the amount of data allowed to transfer from the server to your visitors in a given amount of time.

If your website is hosted in a free platform, your disk space and bandwidth are best described as low and never “unlimited.”

“Unlimited bandwidth” is a promotional tactic by free hosting providers based on the assumption that sites on a shared server will not use up the available resources, which is rarely the case.

Instead of being swayed by these superficial features, pay more attention specifically to file size limit and CPU limit.

A file size limit is the maximum file size your website can upload, while the CPU limit refers to how much of the server’s central processing unit (CPU) your website is allowed to use.

Free web hosting providers can temporarily shut down your site without warning, so make sure you know exactly what and how much your limitations are.

Ads

The only reason why free web hosting continues to exist is because of the business behind it. And a business requires a source of revenue.

Some of the more popular free web hosts sustain their platform through ad space.

This monetization method may be effective, but it comes at the expense of your visitors.

You have no control over what appears on the advertisements or where they’re placed.

Not to mention ads, in general, tend to be obtrusive and take the joy out of consuming your content.

If you want free hosting but care about your site’s aesthetics and user-friendliness, you can opt for a company that supports their free platform through other means, such as the sales of premium hosting plans.

Customer support

Support for websites hosted in a free web host is limited at best. Unless you already have both the budget and need to upgrade to premium plans, there’s nothing else you can do.

When looking for the best free web host to entrust your website, choose one with an active community forum.

Check the latest posts and see how fast the response time is.

The more active users the service has, the quicker you’ll get a resolution to any problem you might face in the future.

In addition to a community forum, some free web hosts also have a self-service knowledge base where users can quickly get answers to their most basic questions.

 

Conclusion

Nothing beats a paid hosting plan for all the extra support, features, and functionality.

Still, if you need free web hosting or if you want to try out different web hosts before committing to an investment, there are some good free options available.

These are my top choices if you are looking to get online without spending a dime:

• Wix – Best free web hosting with the website builder
• Square Online – Best free ecommerce hosting platform
• DreamHost – Best for nonprofits
• SiteGround – Best for teachers
• WordPress.com – Best free WordPress hosting
• GitHub Pages – Best free static web hosting for developers

The best free web hosting for you depends on what you’re looking for.

Use the reviews and guide to help you narrow down your choices.

The post Best Free Web Hosting appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Bluehost Vs. Hostgator

While HostGator isn’t far behind, Bluehost’s appealing packages hit the sweet spot of affordability and usability—something both beginners and veterans will appreciate.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

In the world of web hosting, two big names are considered a cut above the rest—Bluehost and HostGator. Both web hosting providers assure top-tier service in an already saturated market with low-quality hosting options.

But which one is truly the best web hosting service?

If you read my past articles, you’ll know I’m a champion for Bluehost. But even keeping my personal bias aside, when I look at hard cold facts, Bluehost is still victorious over HostGator.

While HostGator isn’t far behind, Bluehost’s appealing packages hit the sweet spot of affordability and usability—something both beginners and veterans will appreciate.

Read on to learn more about the reasoning behind my verdict.

 

Bluehost or HostGator: Which is Better?

Bluehost can be a godsend for WordPress novices and experts, and those would want a highly-affordable hosting plan. It has a clearly organized dashboard with excellent customer support and several great features.

No wonder it’s one of three sites recommended by WordPress itself. If this sounds like your wishlist, make sure you sign up for a free trial with Bluehost.

HostGator is an insanely powerful web hosting provider that gives you excellent uptime and an in-depth (and fast!) customer support system.

Its feature-rich hosting plans include free website migration and an integrated site builder, making it a good choice for all levels of users. If you’re considering giving it a try, check it out here.

 

A Review of the Best Web Hosting Services

If you’re looking for a credible hosting solution for your website, you don’t have to restrict your options to Bluehost or HostGator.

There is plenty of fish in the sea.

Head over to our best web hosting service guide to find the perfect match for yourself based on your specific needs. From shared hosting options for startups to ecommerce hosting to scalability, we have something for everyone. And both HostGator and Bluehost made the list!

Bluehost Wins

WordPress-Approved:

An official endorsement for a company from WordPress means a lot to those looking for a WordPress hosting provider.

Precisely why I just had to include how one of the largest (and possibly the most renowned) hosting platforms, WordPress gives Bluehost the top spot on its list of the best WordPress web hosting providers.

Super Fast:

With an endorsement like that, one would expect the loading speed to be fast, and Bluehost certainly doesn’t disappoint.

If you want to make your business successful, you need fast site load speeds and server response time.

Bluehost’s speed is way faster than Google‘s recommended 200ms in most countries like the US (23ms) and Canada (92ms).

The average worldwide score stands proud at 153ms.

Incredible Server Uptime:

Uptime refers to the portion of time that your site is online. This is incredibly important because how else will your users access your site if it’s offline?

The industry standard for hosting companies is around 99%, but Bluehost outdoes this, with its average coming up to 99.9%.

While this is the minimum for their lower-level shared hosting plans, if you opt for its dedicated hosting of VPS hosting plans, you can expect it to touch near 100%.

Image Source: Who Is Hosting This

Flexible and Scalable:

Bluehost subscription plans are tailored to suit all kinds of users’ needs and give you enough flexibility to expand without having to switch hosting providers.

Upgrading to a higher-tiered hosting plan or something else altogether can be done seamlessly, without your site having to experience any downtime during the move.

Moreover, Bluehost has a custom interface that allows you to monitor and manage server resources to determine the right time to upgrade.

Solid Customer Support:

You won’t necessarily need Bluehost customer support daily, but when you do, just know it’s rock-solid and efficient. You can get the solutions to your problems via live chat, phone support dedicated to different hosting types, and of course, social media support.

Besides, Bluehost support can resolve support issues before you talk to a qualified professional—all you need to do is refer to the extensive support library that contains hundreds of detailed walkthroughs and FAQs to fix common problems.

Top-Notch Security:

Bluehost always offers its users good website protection. It provides secure shell access (SSH) to allow admin and web devs to securely access config files.

They also use anti-spam tools like SpamExperts, Spam Hammer, and Apache SpamAssassin to keep bot attacks at bay.

Other security features include password-protected directories, IP address blacklist, email account and user account filters, and digital certificates and private keys management access.

App and Integration Library:

One of the biggest USPs of Bluehost is its massive application library. You can enable all kinds of services and software through this app to add more functionality to your site and hosting account.

You can add eCommerce functionality as well as plug your hosting account into Google apps, which, in turn, will give you direct access to an even more extensive plugin library to choose from.

Offers Freebies That Matter:

Many web hosting providers give their customers freebies. Sadly, most of them are shallow and don’t offer any value.

After all, what else are you supposed to do with free 24/7 support or free WordPress installation? Not Bluehost, though.

All of its hosting plans include a free domain name (for the first year), a free SSL certificate, and even daily backups and website restoration.

Bluehost Losses

Higher Renewal Prices:

The introductory prices of Bluehost make it one of the most affordable hosting providers. However, make sure you’re ready for a price jump when you renew your subscription.

While this isn’t an issue unique to Bluehost as every hosting company does it, it’s important to point out to help you make the right decision.

No Uptime Guarantee:

Downtime is detrimental to any website as it indicates the possibility of losing potential sales and conversions. It’s also why an uptime guarantee is important.

Bluehost does offer excellent uptime, but as there’s no guarantee, you can’t expect compensation if you face downtime that’s below the specified percentage.

Considering most of the hosting providers’ rivals do give a guarantee to their users, one can only wish for Bluehost to follow suit.

No free site migration or ASP.net/Windows Hosting:

Many hosting services offer free migrations if you want to move an existing site to their servers, but unfortunately, Bluehost doesn’t.

If you don’t want to migrate your site over to Bluehost, you’re going to have to pay a fee of $149.99 to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts.

Additionally, Bluehost is a Linux-only hosting company, which means there’s no support for websites that need a Windows server to run.

As a majority of the market use Linux, this isn’t a deal-breaker. But if you need Windows servers, you may want to look elsewhere.

HostGator Wins

Reliable and Strong Uptime Guarantee:

HostGator consistently posts a 99.98-100% uptime, and this consistency isn’t without reason.

The hosting service offers an uptime guarantee, according to which if they drop below 99.90%, users will receive one month of credit on their accounts.

However, keep in mind that this is the standard as anything less isn’t generally tolerated.

(Almost) Unlimited Everything:

HostGator offers unlimited everything—well, sort of. You can expect unlimited disk space that allows you to store as much data as you need and an unmetered bandwidth that allows you to move an unlimited amount of data between your host server, site visitors, and the internet.

What’s more, you also get unlimited databases, meaning you can have as many WordPress installs as you want. This can be particularly useful for those who have several clients and want to test website changes before making them live.

But keep in mind, there are certain conditions like not using more than 25% of the server’s CPU, not sending more than 500 emails per hour, and so on, to keep things “unlimited.”

Best cPanel Hosting:

No web hosting provider offers a better version of cPanel than HostGator. And this isn’t an empty claim. You’ll find all sorts of tools and options to manage your site and domain from one place, with the cPanel Control Panel particularly having many such tools.

This includes file manager, FTP with user management, backup wizard, disk usage, domain manager, domain forward, DNS, database access through PHPMyAdmin, file compression, file upload, and file download.

One-Click Install and Free Site Transfer:

HostGator makes installing your preferred CMS as easy as clicking a few buttons. You can also use its unique QuickInstall tool to set up your website despite not having any technical knowledge.

In addition to this, you can transfer from another host to them without any hassle. All you need to do is sign up for a plan you wish to use, and HostGator will take care of the rest. Easy!

Free SSL and Domain:

You can’t expect a premium quality SSL certificate from every hosting provider, and you certainly can’t expect it for free.

However, HostGator breaks this notion by providing Comodo SSL for all users and their hosted domains. So, you don’t have to worry about encryption between your website on the web browsers you use.

You also get a free domain for one year—provided you sign up for hosting plans that offer this freebie.

 

HostGator Losses

Limited Features:

While the unlimited bit sounds nice, one can’t help but notice that most features offered by HostGator are pretty standard.

Also, shared hosting users can’t expect extras and will have to manually handle their websites’ administrative work. Ensuring daily backups, updating any core, plugins, themes, and security measures are entirely your responsibility.

Slow Customer Support:

HostGator offers 24/7 hosting customer service via live chat, phone, and email. And their support team is willing to help you and fix most of the issues you face, but it isn’t necessarily the best in the industry.

Many customers have complained about slow support responses, which can get particularly annoying when you get stuck while doing something important and need immediate help.

No Free Daily Backups:

If there’s one thing that every blog must-have, it’s a daily backup facility. Unfortunately, you won’t find any daily backup guarantee with HostGator as they only offer one backup a week.

Besides, you won’t be able to restore the site unless you pay for that. I recommend installing a plugin that does daily backing up for you.

You can choose HostGator’s premium backup and restore tool called CodeGuard that costs a one-time of $24 per year.

Or you can select a WordPress tool to create a copy of the entire site and send it to Amazon, Google Drive, or Dropbox.

 

Comparing the Top Hosting Platforms

There’s no doubt that Bluehost and HostGator are two of the leading web hosts that offer exceptional service. But you can always look for other alternatives—one that has all the features you need and meets your budget.

We’ve compiled a list of the best web hosting services to help you determine your right match.

• Dreamhost — Best option if you want quick and responsive website changes
• Hostinger — Low-Cost shared hosting options for startups
• Bluehost — Best for WordPress hosting
• Nexcess — Best eCommerce hosting
• HostGator — Most affordable option for startups
• WP Engine — Best option if you know your limits
• InMotion — Best option for scaling BIG
• Siteground — Best for WooCommerce hosting

To recap, Bluehost is better than HostGator. But the latter comes a close second.

You should consider Bluehost if you want an affordable hosting plan that offers excellent WordPress-specific support, along with some fantastic freebies.

HostGator will make a better choice if you want higher uptime and an intuitive cPanel control panel.

Regardless of your choice, you can be sure to have a reliable web hosting provider that ensures your site stays functional all year long, helping you provide a better customer experience while maximizing conversions and revenue.

The post Bluehost Vs. Hostgator appeared first on Neil Patel.

Source: neilpatel.com

Best Web Hosting for WordPress

So if you’re currently using WordPress or planning to use WordPress for your website, it makes sense to invest in WordPress web hosting.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top pick? The best WordPress website host for most people is Bluehost.

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS platform. According to a 2020 study, 455 million sites worldwide are powered by WordPress.

It’s what I use to manage my blog here at NeilPatel.com, as well as my other sites and ventures.

So if you’re currently using WordPress or planning to use WordPress for your website, it makes sense to invest in WordPress web hosting.

WordPress-specific hosting solutions will be your best option in terms of service, updates, performance, and installations for WordPress.

Which web hosting provider is the best option in this category? Check out my reviews and recommendations below to learn more.

 

The Top 7 Options For WordPress Web Hosting

• Bluehost — Best WordPress Hosting For New Websites
• DreamHost — Most Versatile WordPress Hosting Plans
• Nexcess — The Best For Customized Managed Hosting Solutions
• SiteGround — The Best For Scalable Traffic
• WP Engine — Best Managed WordPress Hosting
• A2 Hosting — The Best For Site Migrations
• IONOS by 1&1 — The Best For Pro Users

 

How to Choose the Best WordPress Web Hosting For You

Before you can find the best WordPress hosting plan for your site, you must know what to look for as you’re shopping around.

Since I’ve been using WordPress blogs as a major part of my business for many years, I’ve had to use and evaluate multiple web hosting options.

Use the following considerations as a buying guide as you narrow down your options.

Traffic Volume

How much traffic does your website get? For new sites, how much traffic are you expecting?

The answer to this question will definitely have an impact on the type of WordPress hosting solution that’s right for you.

A site that has 5,000 visitors per month should be on a different plan than sites with 50,000 visitors per month. Plans that can accommodate 100,000 visitors per month won’t necessarily be suitable for sites with millions of monthly visitors.

New websites and smaller sites will be fine with shared WordPress hosting (more on this shortly). But as your site grows, you might want to consider a VPS (virtual private server) or dedicated WordPress hosting solution.

Support

Most people don’t think to consider the customer service offered by their WordPress hosting provider. But this factor should definitely rank high on your list.

In an ideal scenario, your site will run smoothly 24/7, and you’ll never have any problems. Unfortunately, we live in reality—not a perfect world. So one day or another, you’re going to run into an issue and need some assistance.

The best WordPress hosting providers will have your back. They are available around the clock via phone, live chat, and email support. Agents will work diligently to quickly resolve your problems.

For those of you who currently have an active website on another hosting service, make sure the provider you’re considering switching to will help you with the site migration. The best customer support teams will do this for free.

Managed vs. Unmanaged

Your technical experience will help you determine if you want a managed WordPress hosting plan or an unmanaged WordPress plan.

Traditional WordPress hosting is more cost-effective. The host will make the WordPress installation pretty easy for you, usually with just a single click (assuming WordPress isn’t already pre-installed).

Managed plans are a bit pricier, but you’ll benefit from enhanced services. The best-managed WordPress hosting plans will come with features like automatic backups, automatic updates, maintenance, and other perks for those of you who prefer to be hands-off.

Site Metrics and Performance

All web hosting plans branded as “WordPress hosting” should already be optimized for WordPress. So right away, your site performance would be better than a non-optimized service.

But beyond that, there are other factors that affect the two most important site metrics you should be monitoring—uptime and speed.

The type of hosting you choose will have the biggest impact on these. For example, shared hosting will be slower than VPS hosting. Your traffic levels will also play a factor in your performance metrics.

Some providers are just better than others when it comes to speed and performance. The best way to get more information on this is by reading recent customer reviews. If people are constantly complaining about unexpected outages and downtime, you should probably stay away.

 

The Different Types of Web Hosting For WordPress

WordPress web hosting can be segmented into a handful of different categories. Here’s a deeper explanation of each one:

Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress hosting is the cheapest option. As the name implies, you’ll be sharing server resources with other websites on the same server.

It’s the best choice for new websites, small websites, small blogs, and sites that aren’t expecting a ton of traffic. These options are easy to get started and the maintenance is really low.

The downside of shared hosting is the performance. Because you are sharing server space, factors outside your control could slow down or potentially crash your site. A “bad neighbor” on your server might hog resources, for example.

Shared hosting isn’t great for business websites. As you start to get 10,000 to 25,000+ visitors per month, you might want to consider upgrading to another tier.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

VPS WordPress hosting is a step above shared hosting.

You’re still technically sharing a physical server with other websites, but the number of sites on that server will be much lower. Furthermore, the server gets split into several virtual servers (hence the name), so each site has its own dedicated resources.

The anatomy of VPS hosting helps prevent the traffic on other sites from slowing your site down. VPS WordPress hosting has improved performance and can accommodate higher volumes of traffic than shared plans.

Dedicated WordPress Hosting

With a dedicated WordPress hosting plan, you’ll have your own server for your website. This results in the highest possible performance, the ability to accommodate large volumes of traffic, and ultimate customization options at the server level.

It’s worth noting that most sites won’t need a dedicated server (it can also be really expensive).

This type of WordPress hosting is reserved for huge companies, sites with millions of visitors per month, and developers that want to customize the hosting environment for multiple websites on a single server.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is typically offered at the shared or VPS level. It’s definitely an upgrade from traditional hosting, and you’ll get tons of benefits.

The speed, performance, and customer support is better. Behind the scenes, everything will be more secure (which means the site will also be more stable). You won’t have to worry about updates, installations, or security—all of this will be handled by your host.

Prices for managed WordPress plans are higher than basic shared or VPS hosting solutions. But for the service and extras, you’re getting, the cost is definitely justifiable.

 

Examples of WordPress Hosting

#1 – Bluehost — Best WordPress Hosting For New Websites

Powering 2+ million sites across the globe, Bluehost is an industry leader in the web hosting space. This provider has been recommended by WordPress for 15+ years, making them a top consideration for most websites.

WordPress hosting from Bluehost starts at just $3.95 per month.

Bluehost is a great option for anyone building a new website from scratch. You can bundle your hosting and domain registration into a single plan, with a free domain name for one year. Other noteworthy highlights from Bluehost include:

Automatic WordPress installationHundreds of free WordPress themesFree SSL certificateAutomatic WordPress updates$200 in free marketing credits (Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising)Securely configure your WordPress login credentials

WordPress has excellent customer service and plans to fit budgets of all sizes. Bluehost’s support experts are available 24/7 via phone and live chat. They even have specific solutions for advanced WordPress users and ecommerce sites.

It’s easy to get started, and all plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#2 – DreamHost — Most Versatile WordPress Hosting Plans

DreamHost is another hosting provider that’s recommended directly by WordPress. They’ve been on this list for over ten years.

Regardless of your website type, budget, or hosting needs, DreamHost has a WordPress hosting solution for you. Plans start as low as $2.49 per month.

DreamHost has over 750,000 WordPress installations under their belt. They have basic WordPress hosting plans for new sites, managed WordPress hosting plans, and VPS for WordPress as well.

All of DreamHost’s WordPress hosting plans come with the following features and benefits:

• Award-winning customer support available 24/7/365
• Automatic WordPress updates
• Instant WordPress setupsFree SSL certificate
• Free privacy protection
• Free domain
• Free email hostingAdvanced control panel options
• Automatic daily backups

Whether you want a shared plan, managed plan, or VPS for powering multiple WordPress sites, DreamHost can accommodate your needs.

They have specific servers that are optimized for WordPress and boast a 100% uptime guarantee. DreamHost has a dedicated team of WordPress experts that can help you resolve any issue, large or small.

You’ll also benefit from a 97-day money-back guarantee. No other host on the market today offers this type of promise.

#3 – Nexcess — The Best For Customized Managed Hosting Solutions

If you’re looking for a completely customized fully managed hosting experience, Nexcess is your best bet. Use coupon code NEIL40 for 40% off for 4 months.

They offer a wide range of fully managed hosting options for various platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Drupal.

So, it’s an excellent choice for online stores as well.

Furthermore, their team is ready to help you build a completely custom hosting solution to match the specific needs of your business.

As a Nexcess customer, you get a ton of powerful features, including:

• Single-click auto-scaling to manage unexpected traffic spikes
• A 99.99% uptime guarantee
• Premium SSL certificates
• Proactive patches and updates
• Near-instant asset caching
• Automatic platform and plugin updates
• Proactive service monitoring
• Free white-glove site migrations
• Nightly backups
• Development site staging10 global data centers

With these advanced features comes a higher price tag. However, it’s on par with other managed hosting solutions. WordPress hosting starts at $19 per month paid monthly or $15.84 per month paid annually. Use coupon code NEIL40 for 40% off for 4 months. Sign up now.

#4 – SiteGround — The Best For Scalable Traffic

SiteGround is the third hosting provider recommended directly by WordPress. They offer managed solutions for sites of all sizes.

Whether you have 10,000 monthly visitors, 100,000 monthly visitors, or somewhere in between, SiteGround can accommodate your needs.

The entry-level WordPress hosting plans from SiteGround start at just $6.99 per month. Here’s a closer look at some of the features you’ll get from this provider:

• 24/7 support from expert WordPress agents
• Automated WordPress installation and powerful WordPress starter kit
• Free WordPress migrations
• Managed security and updates at the server and application level
• Performance optimized for WordPress sites
• Free SSL certificates
• Free daily backups
• Unlimited free email accounts
• Staging tools and developer toolkit
• Collaboration tools and whitelabel access

If you’re expecting your site to scale and need to upgrade plans to accommodate your growth, SiteGround has you covered. Your WordPress hosting plan is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#5 – WP Engine — Best Managed WordPress Hosting

With a name like WP Engine, it should come as no secret or surprise that this hosting provider specializes in WordPress hosting. More than 120,000 customers in 140+ countries rely on WP Engine for web hosting.

Their managed solutions are fast, reliable, and secure, with plans starting at $25 per month.

WP Engine’s prices are a bit higher compared to other options on our list. But their services are unmatched in the world of managed WordPress hosting.

These solutions are built for larger websites. For example, the entry-level plan can accommodate up to 25,000 visits per month, which is 2.5x higher than most entry-level plans from other providers. They even have managed WordPress solutions for websites with monthly traffic in the millions.

Other noteworthy highlights of WP Engine include:

• Premium WordPress themes and Genesis framework included ($2,000 value)
• Reliable hosting architecture
• Optimized for developers
• Unmatched speed and reliability
• Integrates with solutions like Cloudflare, Google, Amazon, BigCommerce, and more
• Application performance monitoring

WP Engine is a great option for large websites, developers, businesses, agencies, and marketers. If you’re looking for an advanced WordPress hosting solution, this will be the best option for you.

#6 – A2 Hosting — The Best For Site Migrations

A2 Hosting is another reputable and well-known provider in the web hosting space. They have shared WordPress hosting plans starting at $2.99 per month and managed WordPress solutions that start $11.99 per month.

So whether your needs are simple, complex, or somewhere in the middle, A2 has a plan for you.

Not many hosting providers offer both shared and managed WordPress solutions; most specialize in one or the other. So the fact that A2 gives the ability to choose is definitely a unique standout.

For those of you with an existing website looking to switch providers, A2 Hosting offers free and easy site migrations. You’ll also benefit from features like:

• Automatic WordPress setups
• Free SSL certificate
• Global data centers
• Turbo servers up to 20x faster (with select plans)
• Developer-friendly tools
• Free automated site backups
• Unlimited storage (with select plans)

If you read the reviews from current A2 customers, you’ll quickly see why this host is so popular. For fast, reliable, and secure WordPress hosting, look no further than A2 Hosting.

#7 – IONOS by 1&1 — The Best For Pro Users

IONOS by 1&1 isn’t necessarily the most recognizable name in the web hosting world. But that shouldn’t turn you away from considering their solutions.

This provider is my top recommendation for WordPress professionals.

Some of the top highlights and features from the WordPress hosting plans include:

• Multisite management tools
• Simple migrations
• Stage testing
• Smart updates
• SSD built to support fast loading times
• NGINX cloud server
• Third-party optimizations
• CDN caching
• Server-generated HTML and REST API caching
• Browser caching and dynamic content caching
• Free SSL certificate
• Daily cloud backups
• Free domain and email accounts24/7 support

For developers and WordPress experts managing multiple websites, IONOS by 1&1 will be your best option. Plans start at $18 per month. Best of all, you won’t be locked into a long-term contract. IONOS by 1&1 lets you cancel at any time.

Summary

If you’re running a WordPress website, you should definitely consider a hosting plan that’s optimized for WordPress.

Which plan is the best? It depends on what you’re looking for. The recommendations listed above will definitely be the best place for you to start your search.

Just use the buying guide at the beginning of this post to help narrow down your options.

The post Best Web Hosting for WordPress appeared first on Neil Patel.

Source: neilpatel.com

Best Dedicated Hosting

Are you serious about growing your business? Your website needs to be able to grow with you. Shared hosting limits your site’s space, and you’ll soon outgrow it. But what’s the next step?

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Dedicated hosting gives you everything you need for your business. It allows for customization, more storage, and lets you make the most of your online presence.

So, how do you choose the best-dedicated hosting service to give you the most value for your money?

Let’s talk about some of the best-dedicated hosting options in 2021 to make things easier for you.

 

Top 7 Options for Dedicated Hosting

• Bluehost—Best for Comprehensive Dedicated Hosting Features
• HostGator—Best Customer Support with Dedicated Hosting
• DreamHost—Best for Managed Dedicated Hosting
• InMotion—Best Dedicated Hosting for Technical Websites
• A2 Hosting—Best Dedicated Hosting for Website Performance
• Liquid Web—Best for Customizable Dedicated Hosting
• TMDHosting—Best Dedicated Hosting for Quick Startup

 

How to Choose the Best Dedicated Hosting for You

When you choose a dedicated host, knowing the features you need will save you time. You want one that helps your website perform at its best at all times. Factoring in these additional elements of a dedicated hosting service will help your website stand out.

Managed or Unmanaged

Whether you choose a managed or unmanaged host depends on your server knowledge and how much control you want over your dedicated hosting.

A managed hosting service means that the host takes care of server problems for you. They manage the operating system (OS), control panel, setup, and anything else that comes with the platform when you buy it.

Unmanaged hosting is cheaper, but that’s because you manage everything yourself. The host still does the bare minimum when it comes to network maintenance, but they won’t help you manage software, servers, security, or errors.

An unmanaged system means you have more control, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t know what you’re doing. Feeling comfortable with a managed hosting service can make it worth the extra cost.

Scalability

If you want to grow your business, get dedicated hosting that will grow with it. Scalable hosting allows you to configure your hosting to your individual website’s needs. It also prevents downtime associated with server limits.

Security

According to Forbes, data breaches cost companies an average of $3.9 million. A dedicated host with high-quality security helps protect your business.

It also means your customers feel comfortable shopping with you. That way, you can avoid problems and build trust with your customers.

Availability

A dedicated host helps you keep your website’s uptime as close to 100% as possible. Downtime can cost you website traffic and, by extension, conversions.

Find a provider that keeps up availability and guarantees maximum uptime. Ideally, you want a host with an uptime of at least 99.98% or higher.

Administration

Dedicated hosting gives you control over configuration and software installation, so you can work your website as you wish. Administrative access helps you tailor your service to your business. You control which services you use with your dedicated host.

Operating System and Hardware

Some hosts support more than one OS, but others don’t. If you choose the wrong one, you might not be able to use it with your website.

Hardware determines whether the server can meet your business needs. Check things like the CPU model and speed, RAM size, bandwidth, and hard disk capacity before you buy.

 

The Different Types of Dedicated Hosting

Different types of dedicated hosting servers focus on various areas of your website. What might be an advantage for one business could hurt another. You want the right kind of dedicated host so that you have everything you need for the future.

Basic Dedicated Hosting

Most people upgrade from shared hosting to basic dedicated hosting. Basic dedicated hosting is significantly better than shared hosting, but it still only gives you the bare bones of a hosting service.

These hosts usually have less RAM and customizability, and they have fewer features overall. They might not grow with your business as well as other higher-tech options.

High-End Dedicated Hosting

High-end dedicated hosts bump you to the next level when basic doesn’t cut it. They offer more space, better features, and you can do more to make your website stand out. They also have higher overall performance without getting too tech-heavy.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth servers work well for sites with a lot of streaming, audio, video, and similar content. They focus on speed when people visit your site and with uploads and downloads during data transfer.

These hosts range from standard metered to unmetered bandwidth, so you have the space to run streams without overloading your site.

Database

Database hosts are some of the most complex servers. They need high-end configurations and more resources in place to manage since they hold more information. With database hosts, you can run specific databases on the server, like MySQL.

Application

If you have a lot of apps on your site, an application server can manage them. It works with apps ranging from media files to chat software and tons of other stuff. When you have so much on your website, you want a dedicated host that can handle it.

Server-Mirroring

You’ve heard that you should back up your data, and server-mirroring hosts do it best. They synchronize your servers, so you don’t lose your hard work. They transfer your data from one server to the other and prevent data loss.

 

Examples of Dedicated Hosting

#1 Bluehost—Best for Comprehensive Dedicated Hosting Features

Bluehost is one of the best dedicated hosting services out there and for good reason. It’s cheaper than other dedicated hosts while still giving you tons of features for your website. Its 99.98% uptime also puts it near the top of the list when it comes to performance.

Bluehost has all of the basic dedicated hosting features, plus several more advanced ones, giving you room to grow. With access control and database management, you have everything you need at your fingertips and 24/7 access to customer support if you have a problem.

You can get three different hosting packages with Bluehost:

• Standard: $79.99 per month
• Enhanced: $99.99 per month
• Premium: $119.99 per month

Standard gives you four cores at 2.3GHz and 500GB of mirrored storage so you can back up your data. With 4GB RAM, you don’t get an impressive amount of storage, but it works well for simpler websites. 5TB bandwidth gives you the speed you need to keep things up and running with three IP addresses.

The Enhanced package bumps you to the next level with the same number of cores at 2.5GHz and 1TB of mirrored storage. It doubles the bandwidth to 10TB and gives you four IP addresses.

Premium, the highest tier, also gives you four cores at 3.3GHz and 1TB of mirrored storage. It once again doubles the RAM to 16GB, adds to the bandwidth for 15TB, and gives you five IP addresses.

With Bluehost, you get a free domain name for the first year, a free SSL certificate, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The biggest downside to Bluehost is that they only have one server location. It’s in the United States, so if you run your website internationally, you might want a different host.

#2 HostGator—Best Customer Support with Dedicated Hosting

HostGator’s 99.99% uptime and unmetered bandwidth make it an attractive option for business websites. HostGator is known for its excellent customer support, which you can access 24/7/365. It also has online resources like videos and knowledge base articles to help you set up your site.

HostGator gives you three options for dedicated hosting:

• Value Server: $89.98 per month
• Power Server: $119.89 per month
• Enterprise Server: $139.99 per month

The Value Server gives you four cores with eight threads and an Intel Xeon-D CPU. Its 8GB RAM and 1TB HDD make for plenty of storage.

The next level, Power Server, comes with eight cores with 16 threads and the same CPU as the Value Server. However, it doubles your RAM to 16GB and gives you a combined 2TB HDD and 512GB SSD to store bigger applications.

The Enterprise Server has the same number of cores and threads as the Power Server and the same CPU. The upgrades come with RAM at 30GB and 1TB of SSD for your most complex applications.

You can choose between managed or semi-managed hosting based on how much you want to customize your server. Plus, each of HostGator’s packages comes with unmetered bandwidth and compatibility with Linux and Windows OS.

HostGator has two servers, but like Bluehost, they’re both in the US. Despite the host’s superior performance, it’s not a great choice for businesses with primarily international customers.

#3 DreamHost—Best for Dedicated Hosting Storage

DreamHost doesn’t have the same features or performance as many other dedicated hosting providers on this list, but it does offer a lot of storage. With a fully managed server, 24/7 tech support, and 100% uptime guaranteed, the basics are definitely covered.

You can get two packages: Standard and Enhanced. The Standard plan starts at $169 per month and comes with four cores with eight threads and 4GB RAM. Its 1TB HDD and RAID 1 storage mean DreamHost has more capacity than most other hosting services.

When it comes to the Enhanced package at $299 per month, you upgrade to 12 cores and 24 threads, 16GB RAM, and 2TB HDD with RAID 1 storage. It’s a big price jump, but remember that each feature more than doubles—and, in some cases, quadruples.

You can choose from three Standard levels and six Enhanced ones that go up to 64GB RAM.

With each package, you get root access so that you can control your settings even with a managed server. Plus, it comes with DDoS protection.

The downside comes with the high price despite its fewer features. The most expensive option sits at a lofty $379.

DreamHost has international servers in the US, Asia, and Europe, making them a solid choice for international customers.

#4 InMotion—Best Dedicated Hosting for Technical Websites

InMotion accommodates businesses that have a lot of tech needs. This high-performance platform comes with features like:

• 99.99% uptime
• Tier 1 network
• Free SSD24/7 support
• Multi-layer defenseFast start times

It might look at first like InMotion only offers basic packages, but their Bare Metal and Managed options have plenty more in store. At $99.99 per month, Bare Metal is an unmanaged server with full root access. You can choose your OS, get automation with Ansible, and get up to 15 IP addresses. You even have RAM options starting at 16GB.

The Managed option, at $139.99 per month, gives you a fully managed server with cPanel and WHM included. You also get automated backup, so you won’t have to worry about losing data. It’s Linux-based, so you only have one OS option, but you still have RAM starting at 16GB and 15 IP addresses.

InMotion offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and customized solutions for your website. Considering its features, it’s an affordable dedicated hosting service.

#5 A2 Hosting—Best Dedicated Hosting for Website Performance

A2 Hosting is known for keeping websites running at top speed. With a commitment to 99.9% uptime and 24/7 customer service, it has the tools to keep customers on your site.

A2 Hosting offers three options for management, including unmanaged and two types of managed servers. With the managed version, you have no root access. Core gives you root access to your managed server for more customizability.

They use the SwiftServer platform for faster performance and claim to give you a website up to 20 times faster than other hosts.

A2 Hosting comes with three tiers:

• Sprint: $141.09 per month
• Exceed: $207.49 per month
• Mach: $290.49 per month

The Sprint package comes with 8GB RAM and 2x500GB storage with 10TB transfer. It gives you two cores with Intel 3.1+GHz.

The Exceed package offers a small upgrade with the same amount of RAM and storage. You get a 15TB transfer, plus four cores and Intel Xeon 2.4+GHz for a faster system.

With Mach, you make a wider jump to 16GB RAM, 1x1000GB storage, and 20TB transfer. This package sets you up for speed with over eight cores and the 2x Intel Xeon 2.1+GHz processor.

Unlike other hosting services, A2 Hosting has an anytime money-back guarantee.

#6 Liquid Web—Best for Customizable Dedicated Hosting

Liquid Web has fully customizable servers with real-time monitoring and root access. It looks pricey at first, but don’t let that deter you before you’ve explored what this hosting service has to offer.

Liquid Web comes with SeverSecure advanced security, Worldwide Cloudflare CDN, and business-grade storage. It also has a support team to manage its servers, and they offer 24/7/365 customer service.

You can get three packages of dedicated hosting service:

• Intel Xeon 1230: $199 per month
• Intel Xeon 4108: $299 per month
• Intel Xeon Gold 6130: $499 per month

The Intel Xeon 1230 comes with four cores, 32GB RAM, and 5TB bandwidth. It gives you impressive storage with 2x240GB SSD on the primary disk and a 1x1TB SATA backup disk.

When you upgrade to Intel Xeon 4108, you double your cores, RAM, and storage on both the primary and backup disks. With 8TB bandwidth, you guarantee speed and performance.

Despite its significant price jump, the Intel Xeon Gold 6130 doesn’t seem to offer anything new in terms of RAM, storage, or bandwidth. However, you do get 16 cores.

Every package comes with 250 Acronis Cyber Backups. Liquid Web also has value bundles if the basic packages don’t meet your bandwidth or memory needs.

#7 TMDHosting—Best Dedicated Hosting for Quick Startup

TMDHosting might not be as big or fancy as other dedicated hosting services, but it does give you a quality site fast. It focuses on power and speed, so you’ll have no problem upgrading if your site struggles with lots of traffic or other changes. With fully managed servers, you don’t need to sweat the tech.

TMDHosting offers four dedicated hosting packages:

• Starter: $159.95 per month
• The Original: $199.95 per month
• Smart: $249.95 per month
• Super Powerful: $299.95 per month

For a basic package, Starter gives you an impressive 1TB storage with RAID-10. You also get four CPU cores with eight threads and 8GB DDR4 RAM, so you have plenty of space for everything on your site.

The Original upgrades you to 2TB storage and six CPU cores with 12 threads. You get the same amount of RAM, so it’s not a huge jump. Then again, neither is the price.

At the Smart level, you get the same amount of storage as the Original. The upgrades come in the form of eight CPU cores with 16 threads and 16GB DDR4 RAM.

At the top, Super Powerful comes with 2x2TB storage with RAID-10. You still get eight CPU cores and 16 threads, but with 32GB DDR4 RAM, you’ve got plenty of room for memory and storage.

Each level comes with unlimited bandwidth, free setup, premium support, and a cPanel and WHM. TMDHosting claims that they can have your website up and ready to go in 20 minutes, blowing the 24+ hours of other hosting services out of the water.

Summary

A website is only as good as its dedicated hosting service. Choose one that gives you everything you need, whether that’s speed, customization, or support when you need it. You can find dedicated hosting you trust, so explore your options and determine which one fits your business. Use this guide as a resource for narrowing down your options with our methodology and top choices.

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Best Shared Hosting Companies

Web hosting comes in all different shapes and sizes. As a whole, these plans can be segmented into four main categories—shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated. Since shared hosting is the first tier of hosting options, it’s always the most cost-effective way to host your website.

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Web hosting comes in all different shapes and sizes. As a whole, these plans can be segmented into four main categories—shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated.

Shared hosting is essentially the entry-level web hosting category.

It’s ideal for new websites and smaller websites that don’t have a ton of traffic just yet. Since shared hosting is the first tier of hosting options, it’s always the most cost-effective way to host your website.

For those of you starting a new website from scratch, shared hosting will be the best option 99% of the time. These are the top hosting companies for shared plans:

 

The Top 6 Options For Shared Hosting Companies

• Bluehost
• A2 Hosting
• TMDHosting
• Hostinger
• DreamHost
• GreenGeeks

 

How to Choose the Best Shared Hosting Company For You

As you’re shopping around and evaluating different shared hosting companies, there are certain factors that you need to keep an eye out for. Make sure you take the following elements into consideration:

Speed

With shared web hosting, your site will be sharing server resources with other websites on the same server (that’s where the name “shared” comes from).

This ultimately impacts the performance of your website, including the site speed. Your site won’t be as fast as it would if you were on a VPS (virtual private server) or dedicated hosting plan. But that’s fine; most new websites don’t need top-of-the-line performance.

With that said, some web hosting providers are faster than others. If your loading times are too slow, it will cause visitors to bounce and ultimately create a negative experience for people on your website.

Uptime

Uptime is another crucial factor to consider when discussing site performance. If people can’t access your site, it’s going to be detrimental to your success.

Generally speaking, some downtime is bound to happen. Certain providers will guarantee uptime rates, like 99.9%, but those typically come with all different types of contingencies. For example, planned outages wouldn’t qualify for the guarantee.

Read some reviews from current customers to see if they are experiencing outages and downtime.

Traffic

Make sure you choose a plan within the shared hosting category that can accommodate the traffic you’re expecting.

For example, some plans won’t be able to accommodate more than 10,000 monthly visits. You might need to choose a tier that supports 25,000 or 50,000 monthly visitors. Once you get beyond these numbers (and it will probably take a while), then it might be time to consider moving away from shared hosting to a VPS or cloud hosting plan.

But for not, there are plenty of shared hosting providers out there offering plans to accommodate the traffic for new websites.

Security

At a minimum, your web hosting provider should be giving you a free SSL certificate.

But beyond that, some providers will go the extra mile to help protect your website from things like malware, brute force attacks, and more. So keep an eye out for packages and promotions that will protect your website from malicious attacks.

Some hosts will include these extras in your plan, while others will charge you extra to add-on a security package.

Limitations

The vast majority of shared hosting plans will have some restrictions for your bandwidth and storage.

Your bandwidth essentially restricts the amount of data that gets transferred from your site at any given moment. The more traffic you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need to accommodate that traffic.

This is especially true for websites with lots of videos, images, or dynamic content (all of these require additional bandwidth).

Although many hosts will advertise unmetered or unlimited bandwidth, that’s really never actually the case. So double-check your contract before making a commitment.

Storage can also be referred to as disk space. This is the amount of space your website can occupy on the shared server. Images, videos, files, databases, scripts, code, and more all eat into your disk space limits.

Similar to bandwidth, be wary of hosts promoting unlimited disk space—that doesn’t actually exist.

Support

If you’re new to the world of web hosting, you’re going to have some questions. It might not be today or next week, but eventually, you’ll need assistance.

Make sure you choose a web hosting provider that will be there to help you out. This is crucial in times when your site goes down, or you need a time-sensitive reply. If your site crashes on Friday afternoon, waiting until Monday at 9:00 AM EST isn’t really a viable option.

The best web hosting providers offer 24/7/365 support.

 

The Different Types of Shared Hosting Companies

Earlier I mentioned the different types of web hosting (shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated). But there is further segmentation within the shared hosting category itself. Before we dive into the company reviews, I want to quickly explain the differences between the following shared hosting types:

Linux Hosting

Generally speaking, Linux servers are the default option for shared hosting. Unless you’re super technical and need to run specific applications at the server level, you shouldn’t have to think twice about this— Linux servers will be just fine.

Windows Hosting

Some hosting providers let you choose your OS. So if you don’t want a Linux server, you might have the option to select a Windows server instead. This is really only necessary if you’re running custom server-side applications written in .NET or SQL servers—both of these need a windows hosting plan. But the vast majority of you don’t need to worry about this.

WordPress Hosting

As the name implies, WordPress hosting is designed specifically for WordPress websites. These plans will include features like one-click WordPress installations, automatic WordPress updates, security optimized for WordPress, and more.

If you’re running a WordPress site, it’s definitely a good idea to consider WordPress hosting. But with that said, you can still host your WordPress site without a WordPress-specific plan.

Managed Web Hosting

Managed hosting will be a bit more expensive than traditional shared plans. That’s because managed providers allow you to stay hands-off.

If you don’t want to worry about security, backups, updates, and other technical aspects of hosting your website, a managed hosting provider can handle all of these things for you. You’ll pay a little extra, but you really won’t have to do anything beyond running the site itself. Everything behind the scenes will be managed for you.

Domain Registrars

Lots of domain registrars also double as web-hosting providers. Avoid these.

There are certain instances when you can bundle web hosting and domain registration, but I’d only recommend that from a hosting provider. You should never get web hosting from a domain registrar—period.

Website Builders

Similar to domain registrars, lots of website builders also offer web hosting plans. Again, stay away from these. Even if you’re using a site builder to create your website, you should still get your hosting plan from a traditional hosting company.

 

Examples of Shared Hosting Companies

#1 – Bluehost — The Best Shared Hosting For WordPress

More than two million sites worldwide are powered by Bluehost. This is one of the most popular and reputable shared hosting solutions on the market today.

I also like Bluehost because they’ve been on WordPress’ list of recommended web hosts for 15+ years.

In addition to the WordPress hosting plans, there are plenty of other great reasons to choose Bluehost. Here’s why they rank so high on my list:

Free SSL certificate included with your shared plan

• The free domain name for the first year
• One-click WordPress installation
• 24/7 customer support
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• $200 in marketing credits

Bluehost makes it easy for your site to scale as well. As the site grows and you need more resources, upgrading your plan accordingly is a breeze. They also advanced extras like Cloudflare CDN, domain privacy & protection, spam protection, SiteLock, CodeGuard, and multi-server management.

Plans start as low as $3.95 per month.

#2 – A2 Hosting Review — The Best Hosting Company For Speed

A2 Hosting is another well-known name in the web hosting world. If you want fast loading times and outstanding performance on a shared plan, this will be a top choice to consider.

Certain plans come with turbo boost servers that are up to 20x faster than traditional shared plans. Here’s a closer look at those plans:

Sites of all sizes can rely on A2 Hosting for optimized performance. Other top features, benefits, and highlights of the shared plans included:

• Free and simple site migrations
• Free automated backups
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Speed and performance optimized for WordPress
• Free SSL certificate
• Guru support available 24/7/365

A2 Hosting is a great option for new websites, as well as existing websites looking to switch hosting providers. They offer WordPress hosting as well.

You can sign up for A2 Hosting risk-free. All plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#3 – TMDHosting — The Best Fully Managed Plans

If you’re looking for a hands-off hosting solution, I highly recommend TMDHosting.

While this might not be the most recognizable name in the industry, these managed shared hosting plans are second to none.

For new websites and existing websites alike, TMDHosting has solutions to accommodate your needs. Let’s take a closer look at the noteworthy highlights from this hosting company:

• 24/7/365 premium support
• Global data centersMilitary-grade security
• Optimized for open-source platforms (WordPress, OpenCart, Drupal, PrestaShop, etc.)
• Free application installation with 1,300+ apps
• Free components installation
• Free template installation
• Up to 16x faster page loading speeds
• Live malware protection
• Free domain
• Linux and Windows servers available
• Free daily backups
• 99.999% uptime guarantee

As you can see, managed plans from TMDHosting definitely come packed with features and benefits. If you’re migrating over from another host, TMDHosting will transfer your site files and databases for free. They’ll also compensate you for unused months on your other contract.

Shared hosting starts at just $2.95 per month. All plans are backed by a 60-day money-back guarantee.

#4 – Hostinger Review — Best Cheap Shared Hosting Plans

If you’re on a tight budget and don’t want to spend a fortune on web hosting, you should definitely check out Hostinger.

With shared plans starting at just $0.99 per month, this is roughly 25% of the price compared to entry-level plans from other providers.

Even at such a low introductory rate, you really aren’t sacrificing too much quality with a shared plan from Hostinger. Aside from the rock-bottom pricing, there are still plenty of reasons why Hostinger ranks so high on my list:

• 24/7/365 live chat support
• Automatic one-click WordPress installations
• Strong uptimes rates and loading speeds
• Easy to set up whether you’re creating a new site or migrating an existing site
• Free SSL certificate
• Simple, intuitive, and user-friendly control panel
• Flexible and built to scale

It’s worth noting that you’ll need to lock-in a 48-month contract to get the lowest possible rate. Since you have to pay for this contract upfront and in-full, it’s actually going to cost you more than just $1 today.

Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can sign up risk-free.

#5 – DreamHost Review — The Best Shared Hosting Features

DreamHost is one of the most reliable and reputable hosting solutions on the market today. They offer a wide range of hosting solutions, including feature-rich shared plans.

Plans start as low as $2.59 per month.

Why should you consider DreamHost? Let’s take a closer look to see what these shared plans have to offer.

• 24/7 support
• WordPress hosting
• Free domain name
• Fast SSD storage and email hosting
• Anti-spam protection and free WHOIS privacy
• 100% uptime guarantee
• One-click WordPress installs
• Unlimited traffic
• Automated WordPress migrations
• Automated backups

Some of the advanced features include canned CGI scripts, Crontab Access, Full Unix Shell, unlimited SFTP users, unlimited MySQL databases, and more. So if you’re a developer or a technical user, these will definitely come in handy.

It’s no surprise that 1.5+ million websites rely on DreamHost for web hosting. All plans are backed by an industry-leading 97-day guarantee.

#6 – GreenGeeks Review — Best Eco-Friendly Hosting Company

GreenGeeks is a bit unique compared to some of the other providers on our list. It’s definitely not the most popular or most recognized name in the hosting world.

But as the name implies, this provider offers eco-friendly hosting, which is extremely important in today’s day and age.

If you want to limit your carbon footprint and help protect the environment, GreenGeeks will be the best option for you to consider. Aside from this unique differentiator, here are some other reasons why 45,000+ websites rely on GreenGeeks:

• Free nightly backups
• Free SSL certificate
• Free domain for the first year
• Free CDN
• Unlimited email accounts
• LSCache included with plans
• Free site transfers24/7 tech support (chat, ticket, or phone)Developer-friendly tools and features
• Real-time security scanning and proactive server monitoring
• Built for speed and scalability

When you sign up for a GreenGeeks shared hosting plan, you can sleep well at night knowing that your site is stable and you’re making a difference in the world. Plans start at $2.95 per month, and they’re backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

 

Summary

Every website needs a hosting plan to be live on the Internet.

If you’re starting a new site from scratch or currently running a small website, shared hosting will be the best option for you. But which hosting company is the best?

Use the recommended providers and buying guide explained above to find the best-shared plan for your website.

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Best VPS Hosting Plans

Upgrading to a virtual private server (VPS for short) will drastically improve your site performance if you’re currently on a shared hosting plan.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

In a world filled with different web hosting options, VPS hosting has become a popular choice for websites in various categories.

Upgrading to a virtual private server (VPS for short) will drastically improve your site performance if you’re currently on a shared hosting plan.

For those of you who are starting a new site from scratch and expecting tons of traffic from the beginning, getting a VPS hosting plan out of the gate is a viable option as well.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of web hosting providers on the market today.

That’s why finding the right web hosting plan for your site can be such a tough decision.

Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place—this guide will provide you with everything you need to know about VPS hosting.

 

The Top 5 Options For VPS Web Hosting

1. HostGator — The Best For Reliable VPS Hosting
2. InMotion — Best VPS Plans For Ecommerce Sites
3. GoDaddy — Best Self-Managed VPS Hosting
4. Media Temple — Best Managed VPS Hosting Plans
5. InterServer — The Best Cheap VPS Hosting Plans

 

How to Choose the Best VPS Hosting Plan For You

As previously stated, the list of web hosting providers is seemingly a mile long.

But in terms of actual contenders, there are a couple dozen at most. When it comes to VPS hosting, specifically, the list is even shorter.

But as you’re shopping around and evaluating different VPS hosting providers, these are the factors that you’ve got to take into consideration:

Site Performance Metrics

Site performance needs to be the top priority for everyone seeking a VPS plan.

The term “performance” can be pretty subjective, but there are two metrics that matter the most:

UptimeSpeed

Most people searching for a VPS are upgrading from a shared hosting plan that they’ve outgrown.

Uptime and speed are the first two things to be affected when you’re sharing server resources with other sites.

You want to make sure that your VPS plan can accommodate your traffic needs.

If performance is affected at scale, then you need to look elsewhere.

Lots of web hosting providers will give you a guaranteed uptime rate.

However, those offers typically come with some contingencies (like planned outages).

Some sites can’t afford any downtime or slow loading times.

If you fall into that category, make sure you get a premium VPS plan.

For those of you who would rather save some money, just know that your site performance might be affected.

Dedicated Resources

Technically speaking, you’re still sharing server resources with other websites on a VPS hosting plan.

However, the number of sites on the same main server is much lower compared to shared hosting.

Plus, each virtual server will have its own dedicated resources.

As you’re evaluating plans, consider the following:

• RAM
• Storage
• Bandwidth
• CPUs

These resources will have a direct impact on your site speed and uptime (mentioned previously).

If you’re maxing out your resources, you can’t expect your site to run at peak performance.

Optional Root Access

Not everyone needs root access.

This feature only really matters if you’re a developer or need the ability to make custom changes to your virtual server at an advanced level.

If that’s the case, then you should be looking for a self-managed VPS plan.

Most people will be better off with a fully managed plan (no need for root access here).

It’s also worth noting that you can find fully managed VPS plans with optional root access, but that feature won’t really be utilized by the average user.

Operating System

On the technical side, there are two main options for VPS hosting—Windows VPS and Linux VPS.

A Windows-based platform will provide you with access levels and performance that’s similar to a dedicated server.

If you’re on a self-managed plan, you would be able to install common windows databases and applications like Microsoft SQL, ASP, SharePoint, and ASP.NET.

With a Linux VPS, your virtual servers will support web features like PHP, MySQL, and POP3.

Since Linux is an open-source OS, these hosting plans are usually more cost-effective.

You could eventually convert your Linux server into a Windows server, but doing the opposite would be much more complex.

Customer Service

Customer support piggybacks on our last point, especially true if you’re on a fully managed plan.

You want to make sure that your web hosting provider has your back.

• What happens if something goes wrong?
• Who do you contact if you have a problem or question?
• How do you resolve a time-sensitive issue?

If your site crashes at 10:00 PM on Friday night, waiting to contact a customer support representative at 9:00 AM Monday morning isn’t going to cut it.

Look for a VPS provider with 24/7/365 support via phone and live chat.

Features like free migrations from another provider or hosting type to your new VPS plan would also fall into the support category.

Some hosting providers are undoubtedly better than others when it comes to customer service.

Budget

The price for VPS web hosting varies significantly from provider to provider and plan to plan.

We’ve seen VPS hosting plans starting as low as $6 per month.

Other plans start at $250+ per month.

Most of you will likely fall somewhere between these two extremes.

In many cases, you can expect to get what you pay for.

If you’re signing up for the cheapest VPS hosting plan that you can find, don’t expect to have extremely high uptime rates and fast page loading speeds.

For those of you who want as many dedicated resources as possible, just know that they come at higher price points.

So you’ll have to weigh your performance and resource needs against your budget.

 

The Different Types of VPS Web Hosting

There are essentially two different types of VPS hosting—managed and unmanaged plans.

I’ll explain the differences between these choices below, and I’ll also provide you with more information on alternative options for web hosting (to make sure a VPS plan is right for you).

Managed VPS

If you’re not very technically inclined and don’t have a dedicated IT team, a managed VPS plan is definitely the best option for you.

In short, you won’t have to really handle anything on your own.

You’ll be able to just focus on running your website while the hosting provider takes care of the server behind the scenes.

Here are a handful of examples of what most VPS hosting providers will do for you on a fully managed plan:

• Set up the server from the start
• Install your control panel, applications, and OS
• Handle all application updates and OS updates
• Server monitoring and maintenance
• Automated backups
• Security patches

Some providers will offer a little more or maybe even a little less, but this is generally what you should expect if you choose this type of VPS plan.

Unmanaged VPS

An unmanaged, or self-managed VPS, is just the opposite of a managed plan.

You’ll be completely on your own when it comes to installing your software, control panel, security, maintenance, updates, and everything else listed above.

If you experience a hardware failure or an outage, don’t expect a ton of support from your hosting provider either.

This type of VPS plan is really intended for those of you who need complete customization at the server level.

Self-managed plans are usually cheaper as well since the hosting provider doesn’t have to do nearly as much.

 

Other Types of Web Hosting

VPS hosting isn’t for everyone.

So if you’re new to the world of web hosting, I want to quickly take a moment to explain your other options.

Shared Hosting —

Shared web hosting is the best option for new websites that aren’t expecting a ton of traffic.

You’ll be sharing resources with other sites on the same server.

These plans are cheap, but performance can be an issue.

If another site on your shared server has a traffic spike and uses up the shared resources, it can impact the uptime and loading speeds on your site.

Cloud Hosting —

Cloud hosting is pretty similar to VPS hosting.

Think of this as a hybrid version of a virtual private server.

Cloud plans come with several remote servers, each one with different responsibilities.

If something goes wrong with one of those servers, the others will pick up the slack and keep your site running smoothly.

Cloud hosting is generally cheaper than VPS hosting, and it’s easier to scale resources on-demand.

However, customization is limited to cloud plans.

Dedicated Hosting —

Dedicated hosting is the top of the line in the world of web hosting.

It’s designed for large sites with tons of traffic.

As the name implies, you’ll have one server completely dedicated to your website.

This also gives you ultimate control in terms of customizations at the server level.

Dedicated hosting comes at a higher price point, but the performance is second to none.

 

Top VPS Hosting Plans on the Market Today

With all of this in mind, let’s dive into the top VPS hosting plans on the market today:

#1 – HostGator Review — The Best For Reliable VPS Hosting

HostGator has been around for roughly two decades. The hosting provider powers 2+ million websites worldwide.

As one of the most trusted names in the web hosting industry, you really can’t go wrong with a HostGator VPS plan.

Here’s a look at the different plans and price points:

The VPS hosting plans from HostGator come with full root access and dedicated resources.

You’ll also benefit from features like:

• Complete customization and total control of the virtual server
• Free off-site backups of your server data every week
• Script installers, site templates, and development tools
• Unlimited domains, databases, email addresses, and FTP accounts
• Ability to scale CPUs, RAM, and disk space
• Exceptional customer support, 24/7/365

In addition to traditional web hosting, HostGator’s virtual private servers are commonly used for ecommerce sites, testing environments, gaming, and heavy application use.

All plans are backed by a 45-day money-back guarantee.

 

#2 – InMotion Review — Best VPS Plans For Ecommerce Sites

InMotion has a wide range of VPS hosting plans for you to choose from.

They offer managed VPS hosting and self-managed cloud VPS hosting, both powered by Linux SSD servers.

Managed plans start at $29.99 per month, and the entry-level self-managed VPS starts at $5 per month.

Most of you will benefit from the managed plans, as these virtual servers are optimized for ecommerce out of the box.

These plans are configured for speed and reliability with ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, and more.

Other advantages of using InMotion for VPS hosting include:

• Free private SSLs and scheduled snapshots
• Update databases, email, and domain settings with cPanel
• Security updates and server management (with a managed plan)
• DDoS protection and secure SSH keys (with a self-managed plan)
• Fast and automatic software installs, like NGINX

Overall, InMotion’s virtual private servers are fast and reliable.

Even the managed plans come with full root access.

InMotion’s 90-day money-back guarantee is arguably the best in the hosting industry.

 

#3 – GoDaddy Review — Best Self-Managed VPS Hosting

GoDaddy is a name that’s usually synonymous with domain registration and controversial marketing strategies.

But if you’re in the market for a self-managed VPS plan, this will be a top option for you to consider.

Standard RAM VPS plans from GoDaddy start as low as $4.99 per month.

The high RAM plans start at $9.99.

The self-managed plans are perfect for developers and system admins.

Features and benefits of using GoDaddy’s virtual private servers include:

• Full root access with SSH keys
• Command-line for complete power and flexibility
• Scalable performance options and a wide range of custom server configurations
• Unlimited hosting accounts with easy administration
• Easy monitoring and alert notificationsDDoS protection and free SSL certificate
• Ability to choose your data centre (North America, Asia-Pacific, EMEA)
• Backups and recovery console

These plans are great for testing environments, database servers, resource-heavy apps, email servers, and admins running multiple websites.

GoDaddy does have fully-managed VPS plans starting at $99.99, but the self-managed option is definitely the standout from this provider.

 

#4 – Media Temple Review — Best Managed VPS Hosting Plans

For businesses, ecommerce websites, agencies, and resellers, Media Temple is my top recommendation for managed VPS hosting.

The pros at Media Temple will handle all of the technical aspects of managing your server.

So you can spend more time focusing on your website and business.

In addition to the best customer support team in the world of web hosting, your managed VPS plan comes with benefits like:

• Ability to choose your control panel (cPanel or Plesk) and version
• MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl come pre-installed
• Customize your virtual server with any Linux-based app, software, or OS component
• Easily resell your hosting to clients with built-in reseller tools99.99% uptime guaranteed
• Scale your server resources on-demand with just a few clicks

Media Temple’s servers are fast and reliable.

These managed VPS hosting plans start as low as $55 per month.

 

#5 – InterServer Review — The Best Cheap VPS Hosting Plans

InterServer definitely isn’t the most well-recognized name in web hosting.

But for those of you who want a cost-effective VPS plan, InterServer is worth taking a closer look at.

This hosting provider offers managed and unmanaged VPS hosting, starting at just $6 per month.

Let’s takes a closer look at some of the features, benefits, and highlights of using InterServer for VPS hosting:

• 450+ cloud apps supported by one-click installs
• No limits on accessing or updating data
• Full root access with total control of your OS and control pane
• lAutomatically redirect server issues to another node
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• No fees for incoming or outgoing site transfers
• Remote backup service to keep data safe and secure

Unlike other hosting providers on the market today, InterServer doesn’t offer a free trial or any money-back guarantees.

However, they do offer month-to-month pricing, so you can cancel at any time.

The performance of these servers won’t be as high as some of the other plans on our list.

But when you’re paying rock bottom rates, top of the line performance probably isn’t your first priority.

 

Summary

 

VPS (virtual private server) hosting is an excellent option for sites that have outgrown a shared hosting plan.

Which VPS is the best?

Naming just one as the top pick is a tough call.

But you’ll be happy with any of the options on this list.

Just make sure you follow the methodology described earlier in this guide for choosing the best VPS plan.

For self-managed and managed plans alike, there’s something for everyone on my list.

The post Best VPS Hosting Plans appeared first on Neil Patel.

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