This is the most in-depth guide to the best web hosting services.
Here you’ll find web hosts with the best performance, security, pricing options, user-friendly features, and a lot more.
Truly, web hosting is a popular topic because where you host your website, to a large degree, can affect how much traffic you generate, the leads you’ll end up getting, and even the sales you’ll generate.
Whether you’re a beginner to online marketing or you’ve been in the trenches for years, you’ll always be in need of a reliable web host.
That’s why I created this ultimate comparison guide for 2023 to help you make the right decisions for your business.
At least, you’ll be able to discover what makes each provider great, where they need improvements, and what to look out for, depending on your business’ goals.
What Are The Best Web Hosting Services?
After going through this comparison guide, you’ll be able to choose the best one for you.
I have used some of these web hosts over the years, done a lot of migrations, and managed several accounts.
Based on my experience, my favorite web hosts are Bluehost, WPEngine, Siteground. I’ll explain ‘why’ in a bit. Keep reading.
Remember that the best web hosting services are classified based on uptime, security, site speed, user-friendly features, and relevant integrations with other online tools.
Another aspect of being the best web host provider is the ease of entry. For example, most providers are 100% free for the first month or you might be charged a few dollars to get started.
If you’re on a tight budget, for example, you can start with the lowest-tier plan and continually upgrade your account as your site grows,” says Brian Edmondson.
For beginners and small businesses, this might be a factor to consider when picking a platform. But, of course, it’s not the only factor.
Web Hosting Services Reviews (Web Hosting Plans Compared)
Now let’s dive into the meat of the guide. We’ll look at the overview of each provider, dig into some of the core features, highlight the pros and cons, and shed some lights on the pricing structure.
Here are my top picks for the best web hosting in 2023.
- Bluehost
- WP Engine
- Siteground
- Hostgator
- Flywheel
- Cloudways
- Hostinger
- Kinsta
- GreenGeeks
- WPX Hosting
- DreamHost
- HostNine
- iPage
- HostPapa
- Liquid Web
- A2 Hosting
- Inmotion Hosting
- AccuWeb Hosting
- Namecheap
- Domain.com
- GoDaddy Web Hosting
- WordPress VIP
- EasyWP
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend tools, products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you purchase a tool using my one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep all of my in-depth content free of charge for readers.
Alright, let’s dive right in to go over the best web hosting platforms out there.
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the reliable web hosting companies around. It’s the official WordPress recommended hosting service provider. Bluehost was started in 1996 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah.
With Bluehost, you’re assured of 99.99% uptime, unmatched security, and user-friendly interface. Bluehost starts out at $2.95/month, which is 63% Off their regular plan.
Even when your website generates a lot of traffic, Bluehost can shoulder the heavy bandwidth and keep your business alive throughout the day.
Bluehost offers a wide array of hosting plans for both small businesses and large organizations.
It offers 24/7 expert support via phone, email, or live chat — you’ll never be left alone when there’s a problem with your website.
With its free domain name for the first year, 1-Click Install WordPress feature, and a FREE SSL Certificate, you can quickly launch and secure your website in 30 minutes to begin your online marketing journey.
Bluehost also integrates seamlessly with Cloudflare — a content delivery network (CDN).
This tool bulletproofs your website against DDoS attacks and fake traffic coming from spam and low-quality sources. With CDN, your web files are hosted on a network of services — thus, increasing site speed.
If you’re looking for the best web hosting company that you can trust, Bluehost should come to mind. It provides an easy-to-use interface that makes it easier to install essential software from the Control Panel.
Who Is BlueHost Web Hosting Best For?
Given that Bluehost is currently powering over 2 million websites, you might be wondering if it’s worth it for you.
Well, there are no standard rules to follow when looking for the best web host, but if you want to get started immediately with an affordable provider that will work for your small or large business website, Bluehost is highly recommended for you.
It’s for blogs and portfolios, online stores, and business’ websites. You’ll get everything you need to build the perfect website that will power your business.
Key Features
- Built-in security
- 1-Click WordPress Install
- Free domain name
- 24/7 expert support
- User-friendly dashboard
- Fast web pages
Pros
- It has an easy-to-use dashboard that anyone can understand.
- You’ll get a free domain name to get started with (for 1 year)
- You get access to a full suite of tools.
- It offers fully customizable themes to make it easier for you to build out your website
- At $2.95/month, Bluehost is one of the cheapest providers you can find
- It’s the #1 recommended host by WordPress
- There are no hidden charges when you sign up with Bluehost
Cons
- Higher domain renewal price is often higher than the competition.
- During signup, there’s a strong upsell. Although, users can easily uncheck these addons and only pay $2.95/month.
Pricing
Bluehost offers 3 different plans namely:
- Blogs & Portfolio
- Business
- Online Store.
The Blogs & Portfolio plan further offers 3 pricing options and plans:
- Basic: It’s recommended for a new blog/website. Starting at $2.95/month.
- Plus: It’s ideal for multiple blogs/websites. The cost is $5.45/month.
- Choice Plus: This is for growing blogs and websites. It’s priced at $5.45/month.
The Business plan further offers 3 pricing options and plans:
- Basic: This is for a new blog/website. It’s priced at $2.95/month.
- Plus: Multiple blogs/websites should use this plan. The cost is $5.45/month.
- Choice Plus: For a growing website. Pricing begins at $5.45/month
- Pro: This is mostly recommended for top website performance. It costs $13.95/month
The Online Stores plan further offers 3 pricing options and plans:
When you need a professional eCommerce website, the Online Stores plan is the most recommended. Pricing begins at $6.95/month.
Like the other plans, the Online Store plan has 3 pricing options as well:
Starter: For those just getting started with selling online. It costs $6.95/month.
Plus: This plan is for eCommerce businesses that want to grow their presence. It costs $8.95/month.
Pro: If you need Advanced Ecommerce Features, use this plan. It’s priced at $12.95/month.
Founded in 2003, Bluehost is a leading web hosting company.
2. WP Engine
You’ve a ton of cheap hosts that you might want to choose from when you’re just getting started. However, if you want a performance-oriented, concierge service, then WP Engine web hosting service is your best shot.
WP Engine was founded in 2010 with headquarters in the United Kingdom. It currently has more than 80,000 customers in 140 countries around the world, and powers 500,000 WordPress sites.
WP Engine is a provider for WordPress websites. It offers managed plans that will serve you well on the WordPress CMS. In comparison to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans might be on the high end.
If you want a robust hosting to power your WordPress site, you should consider WP Engine. It’s received a lot of positive reviews from real customers.
To help you make the right decisions, let’s do a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. Here you’ll know the core features, performance capabilities, support options, and other important information you need to know about this web host to help you decide if it’s right for you or not.
If you’re looking for a website that’s optimized, secure, and fast-loading – without messing around with technical stuff yourself – managed hosting from WP Engine is a great option worth considering. This provider has become a top name in the WordPress hosting environment.
Who is WP Engine For?
WP Engine is for businesses that are running their sites via WordPress. It’s also for developers and designers who aren’t professionals at web hosting maintenance; they just want to focus on developing new tools and software.
WP Engine will also benefit small businesses that want to explore the opportunities in WordPress platform.
Last but not the least, businesses that have outgrown their shared hosting plans can use WP Engine to improve performance for their WordPress site.
Key Features
- Easy to use website setup tools
- WordPress staging sites.
- Cutting-edge site security.
- Automated site migrations.
- Reliable website backups and restores.
- 24/7 expert customer support.
- Geotarget tools to meet the needs of your audience by serving location-specific content.
- Client site transfer for developers
Pros
- Unmatched speed and optimal performance for WordPress sites.
- Trusted and dedicated customer support via Phone, Live chat, etc.
- Your files are secure and protected.
- Page Performance solution makes it easier to quickly test and improve your site.
- A free Content Delivery Network (CDN) in all plans.
Cons
- WP Engine is quite expensive. Pricing begins at $25/month (billed yearly).
- The managed hosting is limited to shared servers (or dedicated servers on the custom plans).
- The startup plan only allows 1 website.
Pricing
WP Engine has some flexible plans and pricing to suit your WordPress needs. Let’s quickly explore them:
- Startup ($30/month): This is the first hosting plan that allows up to 25,000 visits per month, 10GB of storage space, one website, an SSL certificate, global CDN, and up to 50GB of bandwidth.
- Growth ($115/month): This plan covers up to 100,000 web traffic, and allows up to 10 websites to be hosted. Also, there’s 24/7 phone support. You can even import your own SSL certificates.
- Scale ($290/month): This plan is for advanced users as it provides more resources. You can host up to 30 websites, and receive 400,000 visitors each month.
- Premium and Enterprise: These are custom plans, so pricing will vary. They provide lots of additional resources and support, and move your hosting up from a shared setup to dedicated servers.
WP Engine is one of the best managed WordPress hosting service that I’ve used.
Siteground
Siteground is a powerful web hosting provider with impressive features, great customer support, excellent performance, and speed. Siteground has received a lot of love and praise from businesses in recent years.
I absolutely love Siteground. It’s especially great when you’re starting out and want to beat competitors with easy to use tools.
SiteGround is privately owned and was founded in 2004. They’re based in Bulgaria, where they have two offices. They also have an office in Madrid, Spain.
In the past few years, Siteground has generated a lot of media attention and built a strong reputation in the digital marketing environment. It’s now become a web hosting solution for individuals and businesses that want affordable high-quality hosting solutions.
We’ll dig deeper into the core features of Siteground, highlighting the three main WordPress hosting packages: StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek, and exploring the pros and cons thereof.
Siteground offers different hosting solutions — depending on the type of website you have. They have the Shared, Cloud, WordPress, and Dedicated plans — as well as other specialized plans.
The good thing about this web host is the free Cloudflare CDN and SSL certificates that customers get. The Shared plans are a good starting plan for anyone; since it’s packed with awesome features.
I love the fact that SiteGround’s servers are fast and rock solid. An optimal uptime performance is also assured.
The most important aspect of Siteground is the impressive and reliable customer support. It’s second to none in the web hosting industry. I have heard good experiences with the tech support; I must say they responded quickly and fixed the issue.
So is Siteground a reliable web hosting solutions provider for your business? Can you stake your business’ website on their server? What does it cost? These and several other questions will be answered in a bit.
Who is Siteground For?
Siteground is trusted by people with over 2 million domains. But, of course, the web host isn’t for everyone.
It’s worth it for successful small businesses. It can also be a starting web host for personal and business websites. The second group of people are marketers who want to sell more via their eCommerce sites. And the Cloud hosting plans are for huge businesses that want to scale.
If you’re a WordPress site owner, then the Managed WordPress solution from Siteground will suit your needs — since it’s great tools that can power your site or blog.
Key Features
- Site builder with premium features to quickly launch your WordPress site.
- Transfer your websites easily with the WordPress migrator plugin.
- Insanely-fast websites through SSD and ultra-fast networks.
- Access free Let’s Encrypt SSL that secures your data
- Efficient daily backups and restores.
- Managed WordPress features on all plans.
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 99.99% uptime rate.
- Easy Site Management
- Trusted email service solutions.
- Manage your domain and site in one central dashboard.
- Clean client interfaces to manage sites easily.
- Simple staging tool.
- Dynamic caching feature makes your WordPress site load up quickly.
- WordPress autoupdates
- Unlimited databases
- 100% green energy for the environment
Pros
- Official WordPress-recommended web hosting provider.
- Award-winning 24/7 expert support
- Fast web servers for improved site performance.
- It operates on Google Cloud to deliver a superior hosting service.
- Fully managed service.
Cons
- Setting up backups can be complicated (especially for newbies)
- No free domain name
Pricing
Siteground offers four hosting solutions, which include:
- Reliable web hosting
- Managed WordPress hosting
- WooCommerce hosting
- Cloud hosting
The Reliable Web Hosting solution has 3 plans, which are:
- StartUp: You can host one website on this is an entry-level plan. Pricing starts at $3.95/month.
- GrowBig: This plan allows unlimited websites to be hosted. It’s priced at $5.95/month.
- GoGeek: This is a huge plan for up to 100,000 monthly traffic, 30 GB storage space, etc. It costs $11.95/month.
The Managed WordPress hosting equally has 3 similar plans but with different pricing options:
- StartUp: Pricing starts at $3.95, one website can be hosted, 10,000 monthly visits, etc.
- GrowBig: This allows Unlimited websites to be hosted, up to 25,000 monthly visits, and it’s priced at $5.95
- GoGeek: This plan begins at $11.95/month, allows up to 100,000 monthly unique traffic, you can host unlimited websites, 30 GB of space, and has all the features of StartUp and GrowBig plans.
The High Performance WooCommerce Hosting has 3 plans:
- StartUp: This is an entry-level plan that allows you to host one website. Pricing starts at $3.95/month.
- GrowBig: This plan allows unlimited websites to be hosted, 20 GB storage space, Unmetered traffic, 25,000 monthly unique visits, etc. It’s priced at $5.95/month.
- GoGeek: Again, this plan allows up to 100,000 monthly traffic, 30 GB storage space, etc. Pricing begins at $11.95 per month.
The Managed Cloud Hosting has 3 plans:
- Entry: Get an easy start on the cloud with this 2 CPU Cores, 4 GB memory, 40 GB SSD storage space at $80/month.
- Business: If you’re looking for optimal cloud experience, this 60 GB SSD storage that costs $120/month may be right for you.
- Business Plus: This is an advanced performance plan with 8 GB memory, 80 GB SSD storage, and costs $160/month.
- Super Power: This plan starts out at $240/month. It comes with 120 GB SSD storage space, 5TB data transfer, 10 GB memory, and a lot more.
SiteGround is a solid affordable web hosting service, founded in 2004. It’s a great hosting service if you’re on a budget and just starting out online.
WPX Hosting
“WPX is still the fastest WordPress host…twice as fast as the rest”, says Matthew Woodward.
The statement above was from a case study that Matthew Woodward conducted to test out 12 web hosts and determine the best. WPX won!
WPX Hosting can save you from terrible experiences from other web hosts. Their customer and technical support will respond to you quickly.
To give a quick background; WPX Hosting was founded by Terri Kyle in 2013 as Traffic Planet.
According to Terry, he was frustrated by cheap web hosting providers that weren’t able to shoulder huge traffic spikes, delivered poor quality support, and had slow-performing servers.
WPX Hosting is best for WordPress users who want premium managed WordPress hosting solutions with unmatched speed for their websites. Considering they take speed and quality customer support seriously, website owners can’t seem to ignore them.
Today, WPX Hosting powers thousands of websites from around the world, and they have been able to satisfy pretty much all their users. Hardly will you find any negative reviews of WPX. Yes, they are so awesome!
In this review, we’ll get into the crux of WPX hosting, why it’s preferred over other web hosting companies, the core features, pros and cons, plans and pricing, etc.
Who is WPX Hosting For?
WPX Hosting is right for WordPress users who want premium managed hosting services. Hundreds of thousands of website owners are already using WPX.
In particular, bloggers, affiliate marketers, online influencers, content creators, and every WordPress user who wants speed, reliable and trusted customer support system, and useful tools, can benefit immensely from WPX.
If you do have the fund, it can also be a starting web host for your personal and business websites.
WordPress users are always looking for a premium managed solution. If that’s your case, then you’ll love WPX — you’ll have access to great tools that can power your website or blog.
Key Features
- High-Speed, custom CDN that triples the speed of your site.
- Unlimited site migrations from your previous web hosts.
- Unlimited SSL certificates to secure your site.
- 24/7 expert and technical support.
- Staging environment.
- 1-Click WordPress installations (it’s beginner-friendly).
- Manual backups and quick restores.
- Malware Scanning & Removals.
- 30 Day Money-Back guarantee, no questions asked.
- 28 Day Automatic backups and instant restores anytime.
- 99.95 Uptime guarantee (your site will always be live).
- Reliable servers all over the US and UK.
Pros
- 3x your WordPress site at no extra cost.
- Enhanced WPX Cloud for faster speeds
- 37 second customer support (WPX responds insanely fast)
- Lightning fast web servers (1.13 seconds according to Matthew’s study)
- WPX’s experts will move your site to their server for free
- Get free SSL certificate forever
- Malware and hacking are removed for you at no cost.
- Fully managed service.
- Unlimited free email accounts for your business.
- No need to pay extra on renewals (unlike web hostings like Hostgator, SIteground, etc.)
- Monthly hosting plans are accessible (if you don’t want to pay yearly).
Cons
- The entry-level hosting plan is expensive (it starts at $24.99/month) compared to other shared WordPress hosting services. Although, you benefit more with WPX.
- There’s no cPanel interface that most WordPress users are used to. However, WPX has its own custom interface which is easy-to-us.
Pricing
Siteground offers three premium WordPress hosting solutions, which include:
- Business: Business is the entry-level plan that costs $24.99/month. It allows up to 5 websites to be hosted, 10 GB storage space, 100 GB bandwidth, and WPX Cloud CDN. It’s suitable for beginners to WordPress premium hosting and personal websites.
- Professional: This WPX hosting package costs $49.99/month and allows you to host up to 15 websites. It’s suitable for websites that generate 20,000+ traffic each month. Also, there’s 20 GB storage, 200 GB bandwidth, and of course, WPX Cloud CDN for speed.
- Elite: With this premium hosting plan, you can host up to 35 websites on the WPX server, enjoy 40 GB storage, WPX Cloud CDN for improved speed, and unlimited Bandwidth to handle huge traffic.
WPX Hosting is a managed WordPress hosting company that is known for its outstanding performance.
Hostgator
HostGator is one of the oldest hosting providers that has made web hosting easy and affordable. If you want to get your website up and running quickly without breaking the bank, look no further.
The hosting company was launched in 2002. There are now more than 400,000 customers who are happily hosting their sites with Hostgator. It’s built a great credibility and it keeps improving and adding modern web hosting features.
If you’re creating new websites, you can take advantage of the easy-to-use website builder (known as Gator). If you’d prefer to move your site over to the provider, the migration assistance will come handy.
HostGator is proudly recommended for small business websites and individuals who want cheap hosting packages.
It also offers WordPress cloud packages, great customer support, and server speed to make your quest for a reliable beginner-web host fun.
To get you started, we’ll dive into the audience that will benefit from Hostgator, the features, the pros and cons, and also the plans & pricing. At the end of this review, you should be able to decide if this web hosting service is right for you.
Who is Hostgator For?
Hostgator is a good option for smaller websites, especially for individuals and small businesses. It provides the essentials to get you started, and you can always upgrade your plan to access additional features and privileges.
If you’re starting a blog on WordPress platform or building a simple portfolio website, you should consider this web hosting company.
Interestingly, their cloud-based WordPress hosting will deliver an amazing experience for you — give you peace of mind due to the iron-clad security features, and so on.
Key Features
- Free domain name for 12 months (i.e., 1 year).
- Easy 1-click WordPress Install
- A beginner-friendly website builder included
- Good uptime and response rate
- Data centers spread across Texas, Provo, Utah, and Houston.
- Get your money back on trial period if you’re not satisfied.
- It’s PCI Compliant.
- Free and reliable SSL Certificate on every plan.
- 24/7 live chat and toll-free phone service.
- It’s cheap: starting at $2.75/month
Pros
- Get free domain name for 1 year to start your new website.
- An unbeatable 99.9% uptime guarantee!
- You get enhanced features on the shared plans than most providers.
- An informative customer support knowledge base you’ll find irresistible. Live chat support is quick and interesting.
- Efficient cloud hosting for WordPress sites at high speed.
- Unmetered hosting resources at a price you’ll love (available for all hosting packages).
Cons
- Free domain name for 1 year is only available on Shared Annuals Plans.
- The Control panel design is really old, which doesn’t deliver good user experience
- There’s a limitation on their unmetered hosting for larger organizations.
Pricing
That said, here’s the breakdown of Hostgator plans and pricing:
- Hatchling Plan: This basic plan allows 1 website to be hosted, 1-click WordPress installs, Free SSL certificate, Free domain name, free website transfer. Pricing starts at $2.75/month.
- Baby Plan: You get unlimited domains, 1-click WordPress installs, and other features in Hatchling. It’s priced at $3.95/month.
- Business Plan: This plan comes with dedicated IP, Free SEO Tools, Free domain name, Free SSL certificate, Unmetered bandwidth, and so on. It costs $.5.95/month.
Note: When you sign up for a HostGator plan, how much you’ll pay will depend on the time frames that vary from 1 month to 3 years. If you subscribe for several years, then you’ll pay lower for each month.
HostGator is an American provider of shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated web hosting.
Flywheel
Flywheel hosting is a reliable web hosting service provider that provides one of the best WordPress hosting for web developers. Web designers and creative agencies can also benefit from Flywheel hosting packages.
The web host provides reliable solutions and the best speed that gives your website wings.
Flywheel web hosting provider was founded in 2012 and has gained traction as one of the leading WordPress hosting services.
If you’re looking for a reliable web host without all the technical headaches, then you should consider Flywheel.
Aside from providing your business with hosting services, it also makes website creation a lot easier. You can even take advantage of the one-click staging features and the demo sites to create a website you’ll be proud of.
Flywheel hosting has an easy to use interface with a clean dashboard that users will quickly navigate. The powerful network structure is built for speed, balance, and safety.
Flywheel also employs the Flywheel Cloud Platform (powered by GCP) to ensure very fast loading of websites.
The sites built using Flywheel are pretty easy to scale since they’re hosted on a resilient platform that’s reliable and powerful.
In recent years, Flywheel has garnered plenty of positive reviews from both web developers and web designers.
Given its focus on the WordPress platform, the provider is able to deliver top notch dedicated hosting solutions — for your WordPress websites — with a promise of reliability and quality.
Who is Flywheel For?
Flywheel hosting is definitely not suited for every business or entrepreneur. It’s majorly for freelancers who specialize in website development, website designs, etc.
Busy creators and marketing agencies can also benefit from Flywheel plans. If you fall into any of these categories, then you might want to try Flywheel hosting.
Key Features
- Free SSL certificate and Update DNS
- Nightly backups and quick restores of your site.
- Simple SFTP access secures your data.
- Free clean up service (in case your site is hacked)
- Boost WordPress site speed with Free CDN + custom caching
- Get 24/7 customer support from real humans.
- Hosting plans are optimized for WordPress CMS
- Access to powerful development tools
- Quickly transfer bill to clients
- You can manage 1 or 100s of websites
- Migrate 1 or multiple websites.
- Collaborate with team members
- 1-click Staging for your website
- It uses Google-cloud platform — so no configuration is required.
Pros
- A powerful suite of WordPress-specific (and security) options.
- Amazing expert support to answer your questions.
- Fast, stable performance.
- Multiple advanced features best suited for freelancers and agencies.
- Easily manage 1 or 100 websites.
- Easy collaboration with team workers
Cons
- Expect to pay more than some competitors, especially when you host multiple sites.
- You can’t access SSH due to the managed security and performance exclusively provided by Flywheel.
- There’s no built-in Git deployment for web developers.
Pricing
Flywheel’s plans cater to both business owners and freelancers (with an emphasis on agencies). They offer a wide range of offerings, but for this review, we’ll focus on their Pay-per-Site plans:
- TINY plan ($15/month): This plan allows up to 5,000 monthly visits and is recommended for personal and portfolio websites.
- STARTER plan ($30/month): This plan supports up to 25,000 monthly visits and is perfect for freelancers, small sites and personal blogs.
- FREELANCE plan ($115/month): The FREELANCE plan is ideal for websites that generate up to 100,000 visits per month. You can host up to 10 sites. Online stores and mid-size websites can benefit from this plan.
- AGENCY plan ($290/month): The AGENCY package can successfully manage 400,000 monthly visits, with 50 GB disk, and 500 GB bandwidth. If you’ve got a high-traffic blog or an established eCommerce site, this might be the right plan for you. Up to 30 websites can be hosted.
Flywheel is a web host that offers blazing fast site speeds, friendly and efficient service, industry-leading management tools, and inspiring design.
Cloudways
Cloudways is one of the foremost PaaS providers in the online marketing space. The platform enables users to on top cloud infrastructure portals such as Amazon EC2, Google, DigitalOcean, and Vultr.
You’ll enjoy a reliable website hosting experience from Cloudways — it’s Managed Cloud Hosting Platform has received a ton of positive reviews from online entrepreneurs.
It has a simple control panel for beginners and intermediates who want a clean interface. If you’re looking for great customer support with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, you might want to try Cloudways.
Cloudways has a powerful managed cloud hosting capability. It delivers an awesome web hosting solution to customers who want to launch web applications on different cloud servers.
It’s got a fair pricing model. It all boils down to the provider you choose with DigitalOcean, which costs $10/ month. Cloudways’ servers are optimized for speed, performance, and reliability.
Let’s quickly dive into the audience, the features you should look out for, pros and cons, and some essential information about pricing.
Who is WP Cloudways for?
Cloudways may not be suitable for everyone and every business model. But if you’re a website design agency, startups, eCommerce businesses, manufacturing companies, and online course creators, Cloudways will work for you.
Key Features
- Enhanced speed and fast loading apps and websites.
- Enjoy a 14-day free trial period.
- 1-click WordPress installations and SSL Certificates
- Custom control panel
- server management
- Staging and cloning
- Vertical scaling
- Free automated backups and restores
- Dedicated 24/7 expert customer support
- Beginner-friendly WordPress Migrator plugin
- Advanced caching
- Easy to use Team collaboration tools
- CloudWaysCDN that delivers superior site performance and speed.
Pros
- Choose From 5 Flexible Cloud Hosting Services
- Optimal and Insanely Fast Servers
- Clean and Easy To Use Control Panel
- 24/7 Support & Live Chat
- Free SSL Certificates
- 1-Click Staging For WordPress
- Free WordPress Caching Plugin
Cons
- There’s no email hosting.
- Lacks File manager
- Support can be technical
- Can’t register a domain name
- Bigger Server costs users more money.
- Multisite SSL limited to 100 sites
- There’s no cPanel, it only uses cloud hosting.
Pricing
Cloudways has a pricing model that’s similar to other cloud-based web hosting providers. Users can sign up at no cost, but hosting plans begin from $10/month with DigitalOcean.
Cloudways has 5 hosting plans you can choose from. Each plan, of course, has different pricing — which is being influenced by the infrastructure and features you’ll enjoy.
Let’s go through the plans and pricing options:
- DigitalOcean: Plan begins from $10/month to $80/month. You get RAM from 1GB-8GB, 1 core to 4 core processors, anywhere from 25 GB to 160 GB storage space, and bandwidth from 1TB to 5TB.
- Linode: This plan costs somewhere between $12/month to $90/month, RAM from 1GB-8GB, 1 core to 4 core Processors, 20GB to 96GB in storage space, and bandwidth from 1TB to 4TB.
- Vultr: This is one of the preferred plans. Pricing starts from $11/month to $84/month, 1GB-8GB RAM, Processors from 1 core to 4 core, a huge storage space ranging from 25GB to 100GB, and almost unlimited bandwidth (up to 4TB).
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): This plan costs anywhere from $85.17/month to $272.73/month. It comes with 3.75GB-15GB RAM, vCPU from 1-4, 4GB storage, and 2GB bandwidth capacity.
- Google Computing Engine (GCE): Plans begin from $73.62/month to $226.05/month. Up to 3.75GB-16GB RAM, vCPU from 1-4, storage at 20GB for your convenience, and a huge bandwidth — up to 2GB.
These are the featured plans. With Cloudways, you can get additional plans, and even customized plans. It all depends on your budget.
Note: These are Pay-As-You-Go plans. It’s easy to scale up (or scale back down) when you’re using Cloudways. That means you’ll be paying more for a bigger bandwidth, and vice versa.
Remember that all hosting plans, regardless of the monthly cost, come with reliable 24/7 expert support, free SSL certificates, free site migrations, and unlimited application installations.
You can get started on any of the hosting plans. You have a 3-day free trial period, then you can pay-as-you-go. So there’s no need to be tied into a particular plan or contract.
Cloudways offers customers freedom of choice, optimized performance, 24/7 expert support, and simplicity in their cloud hosting.
Hostinger
Hostinger is a trusted web hosting provider for small businesses and beginners to online marketing.
They’ve got an outstanding customer support team to help sort your hosting issues along the way.
The features of Hostinger are attractive to anyone who wants to get their website quickly hosted. The introductory prices can get you in quickly. It’s great value for money!
Hostinger started in the faraway city of Kaunas, Lithuania. It was a small company at the time, often referred to as “Hosting Media.” It’s got bigger dreams of making a mark in the web hosting industry.
Within 6 years of being in the trenches and attracting over 1 million users, the company formally changed their name to Hostinger.
That was the beginning of newness in the company. Hostinger has grown exponentially over the years.
They now have 39 shops in different countries, established 6 data centers globally (with one data center in their home country of Lithuania). Hostinger now has well over 20 million users as of 2019, and there are no signs of slowing down.
As a Hostinger user, you get to learn, create, and grow, and they might have successfully delivered on this promise with their level of services and cheap hosting plans.
Who is Hostinger For?
If you’re just getting started in website design and hosting, Hostinger is designed from the ground up to serve you.
It’s for portfolio websites, blogs, and company sites that require a reasonable bandwidth capacity, nothing huge or fancy.
Key Features
- Trusted, high-quality, and reliable shared hosting packages.
- Free Domain Hosting & Free SSL on Business Plan.
- A clean and easy to use Website Builder
- Simple hosting tools for your WordPress sites.
- Cheap and reliable hosting plans, pricing starts at $0.90/month
- 30-Day money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.
Pros
- You get fast loading websites.
- A verified 99.9% uptime guarantee
- The cache manager enables faster page loading.
- A custom dashboard to manage your sites.
- A fun and prompt expert support.
- Free domain name to kick start your new site.
- Unlimited and essential features
- The pricing structure is good, cheaper than most web host services.
Cons
- There’s no daily backup
- There’s no Free SSL certificate on the Single and Premium Plan (only on Business plan)
Pricing
Hostinger offers a variety of plans and pricing that will suit all sorts of online marketers, including bloggers, small businesses, and enterprise users.
There are 3 buckets of plans that you can choose from:
Shared Hosting Plans:
- Single: Host 1 website, weekly backups, no free domain name included. Pricing begins at $0.99/month.
- Premium: Free domain name, host unlimited websites, unlimited email accounts, and weekly backups. It’s priced at $2.89/month.
- Business: Free domain name, daily backups, host unlimited websites, and pay $3.99/month.
Cloud Hosting Plans:
- Startup: It comes with 2 CPU Cores, 3GB RAM, and more. Pricing begins at $7.45/month
- Professional: 80 SSD GB, 6GB of RAM, 4 CPU Cores, the cost is $14.95
- Global: 16 GB of RAM, 8 CPU Cores, and up to 200 SSD GB. Pricing starts at $37.00/month.
VPS Hosting:
The first plan costs $3.95/month, and is recommended for beginners who want to experience what it’s like to host with a reliable provider.
Once you’ve outgrown this entry-level plan, you can upgrade to a higher plan that’ll better suit your needs.
Hostinger is a popular and very affordable web hosting platform. It’s great for beginners and if you’re on a tight budget.
Kinsta
Kinsta is a premium, managed WordPress-only web hosting solution. It’s designed to seamlessly manage every aspect of your WordPress management.
It’s integrated on the Google Cloud Platform and has 18 different global data centers.
It comes with powerful and handy features to optimize your hosting for performance, stability, and security. You’ll love their infrastructure, as it’s one of the best out there.
Kinsta was launched in 2013. It’s an idea by a group of WordPress experts who were not satisfied with the web hosting services available for WordPress sites at the time.
Today, Kinsta prides itself as one of the trusted and most stable WordPress host providers in Europe and America.
One thing to know about Kinsta is that it’s really easy to use.
The list of core features such as shopping cart tools, built on the Google Cloud Platform, having 20 global data centers, synced with Amazon Route 53, KeyCDN, four different types of caching, and more, makes Kinsta a powerful platform for WordPress users.
The company was founded in 2013 and currently operates out of Los Angeles. Although Kinsta is still a new kid in the block, it’s making some ambitious moves of reaching and serving the high end of the managed WordPress industry.
Since Kinsta only provides managed WordPress hosting solutions, they claim to have the best expert support and an optimal infrastructure for WordPress.
Remember that the Kinsta web hosting platform is available in 12 different languages, such as English, French, Japanese, Spanish, etc.
The features you’ll get from using Kinsta web host and the pricing model are indications that it’s a premium WordPress provider. That being said, Kinsta also claims of being a “WordPress host for everyone.”
Kinsta is truly phenomenal. They also answer technical questions promptly. It doesn’t matter what type of WordPress site you intend to host, you can be assured of good service.
Given that Kinsta web hosting provider is relatively new compared to more widely web hosting providers like Liquid Web and WP Engine, can it still serve you well?
Here, we examine who this web host is for, the pros and cons, as well as the plans and pricing structure.
Who is Kinsta For?
Truth be told, Kinsta can serve individuals and organizations that want to host their sites on the WordPress platform. It’s also for web design agencies who want to host multiple clients’ websites.
So if you have a small business or part of a large organization, signing up with this web host will be worth it.
Key Features
- Free SSL certificate and Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
- Trusted DDoS detection for security networks.
- Access to hardware firewalls and SSL support.
- Trusted 24/7 expert support
- Access and use essential tools from one unified hosting dashboard
- Enhanced staging environments for developers
- Speed enhancing tools to insanely boost your site’s loading times.
- Kindsta is powered by Google Cloud Platform
- Free and reliable site migrations
- Regular uptime checks (every 2 minutes).
- 1-click cloning capability
- Automatic backups and easy restores
Pros
- Kinsta server is fast
- The cloud-based architecture is built to improve WordPress site speed.
- 99.9% uptime guaranteed
- Easy to use tools and features.
- Offers reliable and quick customer support.
- Simple set-up and migration
- Kinsta is built to withstand sudden traffic spikes
- Effectively optimised for eCommerce
Cons
- It’s quite expensive compared to other WordPress hosting services.
- No email hosting
- There’s no phone support.
Pricing
Although Kinsta isn’t the cheapest WordPress hosting provider out there, in terms of performance, quality features, and support, you’ve nothing to worry about.
Let’s look at the available plans and pricing options. Bear in mind that all plans come with free migrations and a hack fix guarantee.
- Starter: Get started with 1 website, up to 20,000 monthly visits, Free SSL and CDN, as well as 10 GB disc space. It costs $30 monthly.
- Pro: The Pro plan begins at $60/month and comes with free SSL and CDN, 2 WordPress installs, 20 GB space, and 40,000 monthly visitors.
- Business 1: Install 5 WordPress sites, 30 GB space, and of course, free SSL and CDN, among other features. Pricing is $100/month.
- Business 2: In this plan, you get free SSL and CDN, up to 10 website installs, 250,000 monthly site visits, and 40 GB disc space. Pricing starts at $200/monthly.
- Business 3: Free SSL and CDN, 20 WordPress installs, 400,000 monthly visitors, and 50 GB disc space. The monthly charge is $300.
- Business 4: Free SSL and CDN, 40 WordPress installs, 600,000 monthly visitors, and 60 GB disc space. Pricing begins at $400/month.
- Enterprise 1: This is the first enterprise plan that’s priced at $600/month and allows up to 80 website installs, free SSL certificate and CDN, and 1 million visitors.
Kinsta offers powerful managed WordPress hosting.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is another reliable web hosting provider with headquarters in California. The company offers reasonably priced Shared hosting and reseller hosting. They have 4 different data centers.
GreenGeeks was founded with a goal of designing environmentally-friendly hosting solutions.
You’ll have access to a wide variety of shared hosting plans that will serve anyone, from individuals to large companies. Their pricing structure is flexible and affordable with plenty of useful features.
In 2007, Trey Gardner founded GreenGeeks in Los Angeles, California. The company has now grown to power well over 500,000 websites.
Given the huge amount of energy the web hosting industry uses regularly, GreenGeeks aims to curtail the impact on the environment by purchasing wind energy credits.
It’s worthy to note that this company purchases 3X the amount of power they use. They’re now an EPA Green Power partner.
They have been in business for over 10 years. If you’re seeking a solution that puts the environment at the forefront, then GreenGeeks should come to mind.
Their web hosting service is well-known in the WordPress hosting industry.
They also offer amazingly fast website performance, 24/7 U.S. based expert support, and an environmentally-powered platform that you can trust.
The automatic 1-click WordPress install is a great add-on to GreenGeeks’ features.
You also enjoy managed updates, improved security tools, free site migrations, free CDN, and you can choose a data center from 5 different data locations.
Who is GreenGeeks For?
GreenGeeks will work well for small and large organizations. More so, if you want to contribute to the society via renewable energy, then this web host provider is what you should be considering at this time.
Key Features
- Free domain name for the first 1 year
- Free and simple drag and drop website builder
- Free Wildcard SSL certificate to secure your website
- Enhance your website with speed technologies
- Built-in scalability with automated upgrades
- Reliable and timely 24/7 expert support
- Advanced security tools that deliver peace of mind.
- Unlimited web space and data transfer
- 1-Click WordPress installer
- Daily backups and quick restores
Pros
- GreenGeeks provides environmentally-friendly hosting solutions. It cares about the environment.
- All of the essential hosting features you require to build a functional, fast, and secure website.
- GreenGeeks prices are competitive, especially for all the features they provide.
- It provides one of the best expert support.
- It’s beginner-friendly with a simple hosting dashboard.
- Helpful customer support and valuable user knowledgebase.
Cons
- There’s no Phone support provided — from midnight to 9am EST. That means you’re stuck if you experience a technical issue in the early hours of the morning, You can only do live chat or email support.
- The Setup Fee for Monthly Billing is $15, which may not be a good idea for everyone. Although the fee is waived if you pay yearly or more.
- You don’t get the Setup Fee and domain fees when you ask for a refund of your hosting payment.
Pricing
GreenGeeks Shared hosting is in three different packages:
- Lite: This plan is $2.95/month and perfect for small businesses and blogs. It comes with Free Wildcart SSL, Free domain name, and a lot more, 1 website install, and a host of other features.
- Pro: If you have a growing website and require more speed and resources, then GreenGeeks’ Pro plan is ideal. It costs $5.95/month, and you can host unlimited websites.
- Premium: This is an $11.95 per month hosting package. This hosting plan comes with 1-click WordPress install, unlimited websites, free domain name for the first year, PowerCacher included, etc.
DreamHost
DreamHost has been around since 1997. It’s an established web hosting company. The company currently hosts more than 1.5 million websites and 400,000 customers globally.
DreamHost isn’t another Godaddy brand or Endurance International Company, they’re independent and employee-owned.
Over the years, they have been advocating an open source and community-built software — particularly WordPress.
The company has simplified the way we do web hosting by providing easy to use features and tools, which cuts across a custom dashboard, a 1-click automatic WordPress install, simple and automatic WP updates, unlimited storage space, and unlimited bandwidth, and free SSDs, which makes your website fast.
WordPress users seem to love DreamHost, hence there are well over 600,000 WordPress websites and blogs on their server.
DreamHost is quite easy to set up and use, especially with the free domain name that comes with it.
Other essential features such as cloud storage, an affiliate program that pays handsome commissions, etc., are some of the perks you’ll love about this web hosting provider.
You’ll find the Shared hosting solutions affordable especially when you’re just getting started.
The performance is good since it runs on Debian Linux. The VPS and dedicated hosting solutions also offer free web hosting solutions to nonprofits and charities based in the U.S.
A desirable uptime is guaranteed. However, if users ever experience downtimes, there’s free day’s hosting credit that comes with every hour of downtime.
The data centers are equipped to weather stormy events such as fires and earthquakes. This is in addition to the system’s three-megawatt power supply backup.
So you have nothing to worry about the security of your website. Your website will not only be hack-proof, it’ll also run smoothly at all times.
Who is DreamHost For?
DreamHost will work best for organizations and web design agencies that need a reliable hosting package and great uptime.
Individuals can also take advantage of the packages, especially with the free domain name to get started.
Key Features
- Free domain name for new websites.
- 99.99% Uptime with constant monitoring
- There’s an Unmetered Bandwidth
- Build your site quickly with Free WordPress site builder
- Free SSL Certificate to secure your site
- Fast and reliable SSD storage tools
- On-demand site backups and 1-click restore
- 24/7 expert WordPress support
- Custom control Panel
Pros
- You have access to plenty of security features
- It’s affordable: WordPress hosting starts at $2.59/month.
- Extensive domain-management features and tools
- It comes with a money-back guarantee
- Cloud storage plans are affordable
- Reliable uptime and stability
- Clean and user-friendly control panel
- 24/7 guaranteed customer support.
- Great value for money.
Cons
- There’s a learning curve involved in the setup process.
- Help chat is slow to respond to questions/concerns.
- It doesn’t come with Windows servers
Pricing
DreamHost offers a spectrum of specialized hosting services to help your business grow and scale.
The WordPress hosting plans come in 3 separate packages:
- WordPress Basic: This package is ideal for new sites. And it’s recommended to users who are new to WordPress. Pricing starts at $2.59/month.
- DreamPress: This package is a Managed WordPress hosting solution that comes with professional staging, custom caching and email, daily backups and easy restores, etc. It costs $16.95/month.
- VPS for WordPress: This is a $27.50/month WordPress hosting plan, which allows up to 5 websites to be hosted. It allows more backend control.
The Shared website hosting, on the other hand, offers two distinct plans:
- Shared Starter: This is an entry-level shared hosting package for beginners. You can host 1 website, get a free domain name, receive unlimited traffic, fast SSD Storage, Quick site migrations, WordPress pre-installed, etc. It costs $2.59/month.
- Shared Unlimited: This plan is ‘truly’ unlimited since you can receive unlimited traffic, access Fast SSD Storage, Free SSL Certificate, easy WordPress site builder, Unlimited email (@ your Domain), and, of course, host unlimited websites.
HostNine
Although there are thousands of web hosting companies around the world, some of these companies have led the way.
I’m talking about companies like HostNine, Hostgator, BlueHost, and so on. Hostine was founded in 2006, Although it’s pretty new in the industry, HostNine has great customer support and unmatched hosting capabilities.
The company was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2012, the same company that owns and manages web hosting giants like BlueHost and HostGator.
Whether you’re looking for Shared Hosting plans or you’re better off with hosting your site and clients’ sites on a dedicated server, this company has got you covered.
From Shared Hosting to Reseller Hosting to Cloud VPS to Dedicated Servers, and even Domain Registration, you can expect the best from HostNine.
If you want your site to be fast and functional, then you need trusted data centers. That’s why there are multiple data centres in 3 continents — thus, you can host your site closer to your customers.
So if the majority of your customers/site users are based in the Uk, then you can host your site there. Bear in mind though that additional locations are only accessible to users on more expensive hosting plans.
If you care about site speed and optimized servers that will help your website to rank better in Google, HostNine has got you covered.
Who is HostNine For?
HostNine is ideal for small businesses, personal websites, and medium-sized organizations. They have some amazing features and data centers spread across the world to help serve your website faster to the target audience.
Key Features
- Unlimited disk storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Dedicated IP address
- Free site migrations
- 1-Click Softaculous app installer for WordPress
- Clean cPanel/WHM dashboard.
- Free domain name (on the Business and Enterprise plans)
- Free SSL certificates (on the Enterprise plan) for your sites.
Pros
- Reliable and upgraded cloud hardware with guaranteed protections
- SSD storage for faster website loading speeds
- 45-day no questions asked money-back guarantee
- Trusted 24/7 expert customer support
Cons
- There’s no free domain name on the Personal Plan (except you upgrade to Business Plan or Enterprise Plan)
- It’s expensive (at $9.12/month) compared to BlueHost or DreamHost.
- Some of the web hosting information is hidden in the terms and conditions
- No Free SSL in the Personal & Business Plans (except you upgrade to the Enterprise plan).
Pricing
HostNine provides three types of Shared Hosting packages namely:
- Personal: This basic plan allows 1 website to be hosted, Unlimited Storage and Unlimited Bandwidth, data center in the US central. It costs $9.12/month.
- Business: This improved plan is for unlimited websites, free domain name, data centers in the US, Uk, CA, SING, AUST, etc., Unlimited Bandwidth & Storage space, and so on.
- Enterprise: Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Storage, free domain name, free SSL certificate, data centers spread across the US, UK, Australia, and other countries.
iPage
iPage is one of the trusted web hosting service providers you can find. It was founded by Thomas Gony in 1998. They now have more than 1 million websites hosted in their servers.
In a bid to improve and scale iPage hosting services, Endurance International Group (EIG) acquired the company in 2010, and opened offices in 6 locations across the world and 2 data centers in the US.
If you’re looking for a reliable and good hosting partner that you can stake the future of your business in, iPage might just be your missing piece of the puzzle.
As an EPA green power partner, the company’s data centers and web servers are seamlessly powered by wind energy — this helps to minimize the emission of carbon imprints in the environment.
So if you’re looking for a hosting firm that’s contributing to the betterment of the environment, you should try iPage.
iPage offers low-cost and reliable web hosting services. It doesn’t matter the size of your business, you can choose from the hosting plans that meet your budget and needs.
The company has an excellent support team that you can reach anytime whenever you run into muddy waters.
They also have detailed documentation that will guide you through every aspect of web hosting. Let’s dive into the features, pros and cons, as well as the pricing plans.
Who is iPage For?
Is iPage suitable for you? Yes, it is if you’re a content creator and want a website that will serve your audience well. iPage will also work for eCommerce businesses.
Key Features
- Free domain name for 1 year.
- A library of 1,000s free website templates
- Free domain transfer.
- Free site builder to get you started.
- Free SSL Certificate for your site security.
- Reliable 24/7 expert support.
- Free $200 ad credits for you to run ads on Google and Bing.
- Robust analytics tools to easily monitor site performance
- Host unlimited domains with a single account
- Hosting plans are cheap. Pricing starts at $1.99/month
Pros
- iPage is cheap to get started with.
- It’s easy to use.
- The control panel looks clean and simple to use, especially for beginners.
Cons
- Additional costs at renewal (up to 3 times more)
- Too many upsells and add-ons you may not want.
- File is backed up for 14 days. That said, you’ll have to pay additional $100 to restore it.
Pricing
The plans and pricing are pretty straightforward. iPage offers just 2 plans, which are:
- WP Starter: This basic plan begins at $3.75/month, free 1 year domain name registration, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, pre-installed themes and plugins.
- WP Essential: This plan starts at $6.95/month, free domain name, with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, customized cPanel, automatic malware removal, etc.
HostPapa
Another powerful web hosting solution with over 500,000 websites on its data centers is Hostpapa.
That’s not surprising considering that Hostpapa has been around since 2006. The company was founded by Jamie Opalchuck and the headquarters is in Canada.
HostPapa is proudly suitable for small businesses. You can get started with the shared hosting plans, which is affordable and open to anyone who needs to build a website.
To help decide if HostPapa is worth it for you, we’ll cover the features, pros and cons, pricing and plans, as well as the value for money it offers (if any).
HostPapa is a full service digital firm that offers domain registration, site building, and web hosting solutions. Although there’s no dedicated server hosting, which allows customers to fully control their own hardware.
However, their Shared hosting plan and Virtual private server hosting, as well as the reseller hosting service will serve you equally well.
There’s a variety of customer support options such as phone support and email, in languages including English, French, Spanish, and German to answer all your questions.
The company has grown this big due to their features and handy tools. If you need a solution that’s a little more beginner-friendly or you’re a small business owner, then HostPapa is ideal for you.
Who is HostPapa For?
HostPapa is suitable for small businesses and beginners. The features are a bit limited for more advanced users and large organizations.
Key Features
- WordPress-friendly web hosting services.
- The servers are built to boost your website speed and performance.
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate for your website.
- Free and easy website builder.
- Easy to use cPanel.
- Free and easy domain transfer
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Free and seamless website migration.
- Expert support whenever you need it (via Live chat, Support tickets, Phone)
Pros
- Free domain name registration.
- Unlimited data transfer & disc space.
- Free website migration service (powered by Papasquared)
- Fast servers (PHP7, SSD & CacheCade Pro 2.0 caching)
- Free SSL Certificate & CloudFlare CDN
- Expert support team available 24/7
- 30-day money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied.
Cons
- Expensive add-ons at checkout.
- No free backups.
- Renewal price is expensive.
- Automated site backups on the Business Pro plan only.
Pricing
HostPapa offers three major hosting plans, let’s go through each one of them briefly:
- Starter: This initial plan is $3.95/month, allows 2 websites to be hosted, free domain registration, Unmetered Bandwidth, 100 GB of SSD storage, and data centers in the US.
- Business: This plan also costs $3.95/month, allows unlimited websites, free domain registration, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited SSD storage, etc.
- Business Pro: This plan begins at $12.95/month, allows unlimited websites, free domain registration, unlimited SSD storage, performance enhancements, advanced features, and security enhancements.
Liquid Web
Liquid Web was founded in 1997 and has grown to become one of the most trusted web hosting firms offering packages such as VPS, managed cloud, dedicated, and managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting solutions.
This web host provider is perfect for small businesses that want to host their websites, online stores, applications, portfolio websites for creatives and designers.
It also offers advanced tools for web developers and digital marketing agencies.
The company’s headquarters is in Lansing, Michigan. The team behind Liquid Web are working hard to be the The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting®.
That is, they believe the more you rely on technology to fuel your business, the more you need experts to support and care for you.
The company currently has more than 30,000 customers across 130 countries. It’s continued to grow YoY, thanks to their reliable customer support options. They also claim to have the highest loyalty rates in the industry.
So if you want a web hosting company that you can trust and rely on, why not consider Liquid Web?
Liquid Web has distinguished itself from other web hosting companies by taking a different approach to the highly competitive Shared hosting race. Instead, it offers only high-quality, premium hosting solutions and packages that small businesses are willing to pay.
Another unique feature of Liquid Web is its exceptional server speed and stability. You can expect some of the best customer support in the industry. And given the quality of their products, their pricing model is fair enough, especially when you have a tight budget.
When it comes to Managed WordPress and Managed WooCommerce hosting solutions, Liquid Web is really good.
Although these managed plans aren’t designed for website owners on tight budgets, yet, it’s worth every investment if you consider the reliability, speed, and uptime that comes with it.
Who is Liquid Web For?
Are you a small business with a website that needs to be up and running quickly?
Do you have an online store or web applications, are you a content creator (writers, photographers, designers, developers) and you want a website to showcase your portfolio of work, then Liquid Web is for you.
If you don’t fall into any of the categories above but you’re a digital agency that wants to host multiple websites, then you can also benefit from Liquid Web. Why not give it a shot?
Key Features
- Free and seamless migrations from other web hosts.
- Reliable Cloudflare CDN.
- Automatic update of WordPress core.
- 24/7 expert support via live chat, email, or phone
- Unlimited traffic and pageviews
- Instant and automatic daily backups & quick restores
- Automatic plugin updates
- Security tools for WordPress sites.
- Free SSL certificates to secure your sites on Managed WordPress plans
- Automatic image compression (which speeds site loading)
- Multiple website management tools
- Simple environment scaling
- Fully managed hosting
Pros
- Fully managed hosting infrastructure
- Secure tech stack (i.e., PHP7, NGINX, SSD, HTTP/2, PHP Workers)
- Automatic daily file backups and plugin updates (every night).
- 100% uptime guarantee or you get credit for the downtime.
- Free SSL certificate, CDN, DDoS protection, and White-glove site migrations
- Access to premium tools at no extra cost, such as BeaverBuilder, All IconicWP, Jilt, Glew.io, iThemes sync, etc.
- Reliable email, phone, and live chat support.
- Strong 99.999% uptime record
Cons
- There are no Shared hosting plans, only advanced plans.
- The Knowledgebase isn’t well organized.
- Email hosting comes as a paid addon.
Pricing
As earlier stated, Liquid Web stands out from the crowd by their plans. Surprisingly, the company doesn’t offer shared hosting like you’d find on BlueHost and Siteground.
It offers other hosting packages. Let’s go through these briefly:
- Dedicated: This is a customized plan that delivers outstanding features and benefits to small businesses. The price is $119/month.
- VPS: This plan comes with root access and trusted Performance VPS. It costs $15/month.
- Cloud Dedicated: This is a single-tenant hosting package that will serve you well, especially for websites that generate a lot of traffic. The cost is $99/month.
- VMware Private Cloud: This plan comes with the security of a dedicated server, but offers tremendous benefits that you’ll expect from a cloud-based hosting solution. The price is $1,599/month.
- Managed WordPress: This is a WordPress-dedicated hosting plan that’s designed from scratch to appeal to WordPress site owners.
- Managed WooCommerce: This plan offers enormous all-in-one benefit for your WooCommerce online store. It’s perfect if you want to make your online store accessible to shoppers at all times. The price is $19/month.
- Server Clusters: What does your business need? Speed, reliability, performance, whatever your goals are, this plan can serve you well. It costs $743/month.
- Private VPS Parent: Do you want to be able to deploy VPS on your private server? This goes beyond the traditional hosting — although expensive but it’s worth it if that’s exactly what you need for your business’ website. Pricing begins at $329/month.
- High Performance: Take advantage of this high performance hosting plan to minimize latency and easily distribute traffic across different servers. The price is $1,127/month.
- High Availability: This plan costs $1,448/month and is suitable for businesses that want to minimize downtime due to excessive server load. It allows a multi-server environment.
- Database Hosting: Do you have a mission-critical database? If yes, then you can use this hosting solution to power it. Pricing begins at $1,498/month.
- HIPAA: This is a compliant hosting that’s suitable for healthcare company websites. It starts at $299/month.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is a web hosting provider that’s been around for roughly two decades. It was founded by Iniquinet, a web hosting startup in 2001.
The headquarters is in Ann Arbor, MI. As the startup grew, the name was changed to A2 as a tribute to their base location.
This web hosting vendor has been very supportive of the latest technology, which has contributed to its growing success.
For example, A2 was one of the web hosting providers to endorse PHP5 when it came to being in 2004.
The company also embraced Solid State Drive (SSD) hosting in 2013 to further support its SwiftServer platform.
Through this SSDs capability that was available to all Shared hosting plans, A2 was able to improve the speed for all other shared hosting providers.
But they never stopped there. It started using turbo servers in 2014 to enhance page loading times and beat other web hosting companies in the industry.
In this A2 Hosting review, we’ll take a closer look at the features, pros and cons, and equally dive into the pricing structure. In the end, you’ll be able to make informed decisions.
Who is A2 Hosting For?
A2 Hosting isn’t for every business out there. It’s primarily for web developers, large organizations, and agencies that need a robust hosting platform to serve their clients’ well.
Key Features
- Free and easy to use A2 Site builder
- Free automatic backups and quick restores
- Free and easy site migration tools
- Unlimited SSD space and transfer
- Free SSL certificate to secure your site.
- 99.99% Uptime guarantee.
- WordPress features and tools for improved speed.
- 24/7 reliable and expert support
- Site security tools.
- 1-click WordPress installs
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Site staging environment on the Managed Hosting Plans
Pros
- Unlimited storage & bandwidth
- Access to turbo servers that drives 20x faster loading pages
- HTTP/2, PHP7, SSD & Free CloudFlare CDN & HackScan
- Free and easy website migrations
- Pre-installed WordPress tools.
- Free automatic daily backups, file restores, and Server Rewind tool
- State-of-the-art security & free SSL certificate with Let’s Encrypt
- A2 Site Accelerator (TurboCache, OPcache/APC, Memcache)
- Money back guarantee (it doesn’t matter when you ask)
Cons
- It’s not for beginners or personal websites.
- Renewal rates are high.
- You can only access the 20x faster loading times on the turbo plans.
- There’s a server migration fee when you change data centers.
Pricing
When it comes to choosing the best plan from A2 Hosting, you need to be careful so you don’t get disappointed. Why? Because the $3.30/month initial fee will grow to $9.99/month after the first year.
That’s why you need to analyze the pricing structure before making a decision.
That said, here’s the pricing structure:
- Shared Hosting: This is good for beginners to host their blog, It’s Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress optimized. Pricing starts at $3.92/month.
- Reseller Hosting: Here you can set up individual hosting accounts for your customers, it’s fully white-labeled, free billing system option, clean WHM cPanel, and more. It costs $9.80/month.
- VPS Hosting: This is a $5.00/month hosting plan. It offers more power than the shared hosting. The speed, enhanced security, and developer tools will make your hosting life easier — if that’s exactly what you’re searching for.
- Dedicated Hosting: This allows you to choose your management levels. It also comes with site migrations, and other perks. Pricing is $99.59/month.
A2 Hosting is all about speed. In fact, they claim to be up to 20x faster than their competitors, boasting that their customer sites have 1-second page load times.
What Is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is an internet-based service that allows you to publish your website live on the web. A web hosting company provides the server, tools, and technology to help individuals and businesses to host their website and make it accessible from anywhere in the world.
Once your website has been hosted on a server like Bluehost or WPEngine, users can easily type in your web address (domain name) in their browser to access your website.
What Is The Best WordPress Hosting For Small Business?
Although BlueHost is equally great for WordPress hosting, however, you’ll benefit more if you choose WP Engine for your WordPress website or blog.
The best web hosting for small business is BlueHost. It’s ideal for new and established websites and the features are user-friendly.
More so, if you’re new to online marketing, website design and hosting, and you want to quickly understand the environment, you might want to start with Siteground.
What Is The Best Cheap Web Hosting?
Bear in mind that cheap doesn’t mean you’ll get average or mediocre hosting service. In fact, there are ‘affordable’ hosting solutions that let you pay a few dollars or zero dollars just to get started.
Yes, I listed BlueHost as the best web hosting solution. But Siteground is the cheapest web hosting service. Right now, it offers a 3-month Startup hosting for 0.99.
The company currently hosts over 2 million websites from around the world.
Kinsta, a WordPress hosting provider is equally cheap. You can get a 2-month free hosting if you pay yearly. That’s a huge savings!
Hostinger, iPage, and Hostgator are equally cheap and deliver some of the best uptime performance for both business websites and WordPress sites.
What Are the Best Free Web Hosting Sites?
Most online businesses and companies started their venture with free web hosting sites.
These sites can get you started on a temporal project or when you don’t have the initial hosting fee that premium providers charge.
According to an article on DotEasy:
“A lot of times, you may even get the same network bandwidth, security, and port speed from a free web host. The only difference, though, is the premium hosting features such as additional disc space, more scripting support, more email accounts, etc.”
Though, I’d advise you to upgrade to a paid hosting package once you’ve tested the waters. That way, you can have complete control over your files, and do a lot more with your website.
Below are the best free web hosting services.
- X10Hosting.com
- AwardSpace.com
- Freehostia
- FreeHosting.com
- Google Cloud Web Hosting
- InfinityFree
- 000webhost
What Is The Best Web Hosting For WordPress?
If you’re looking for a WordPress hosting solution that will serve both small and large WordPress-powered websites, then I’d recommend WP Engine, BlueHost, and Siteground.
What Is The Best Cloud Hosting?
Based on our analysis and reviews, the best cloud hosting solution is A2 Hosting, followed by Siteground, and InMotion.
What Are Different Types Of Web Hosting?
If you’re new to web hosting, you might have come across certain words, terms, and concepts that kept you wondering, “what could this mean?”
In this section, we’ll briefly go through each of the different types of web hosting that’s available today. Remember that every hosting solution is somehow dependent on the other.
Let’s dive right in.
1. Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a unique type of web hosting that utilizes multiple different servers to systematize and balance the load in order to maximize uptime.
In this case, your website will not be using a single server, but it’ll be tapping into a “cluster” that uses resources from a centralized pool.
2. Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular type of web hosting, which uses a single physical server to host multiple websites.
In this case, many site owners will be sharing the resources on a single server, which reduces the cost.
Shared hosting is ideal for websites that don’t generate high volume of traffic. If your website is huge, then you need to consider dedicated or VPS hosting services.
3. VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Servers)
A VPS hosting or Virtual Private Servers is a hybrid of a dedicated server and shared hosting environment.
This type of hosting is best-suited for businesses and individuals who have outgrown shared hosting. In this hosting plan, multiple sites will be hosted on a single server.
However, users will have access to a virtual machine that runs its own copy of an operating system. This gives users the opportunity to experience the capabilities and performance of a dedicated server.
4. WordPress Hosting
In its basic form, WordPress hosting is a type of web hosting that’s been optimized to suit the CMS, aligning with the performance requirements and security needs. It makes it pretty easy for anyone to get started with WordPress.
5. Dedicated Server Hosting
This type of hosting is used to provide a dedicated server with dedicated and accessible resources that a single client needs.
Dedicated hosting packages are ideal for large organizations, huge websites that generate hundreds of thousands and even millions of traffic.
6. Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller hosting is a type of web hosting solution that allows the account owner (usually an agency) to allot hard disc spaces and sizable bandwidth to other people who can easily log into their account and host their sites.
7. Colocation Web Hosting
Colocation hosting is similar to renting a space for your server.
The hosting vendor provides a storage space for you, power supply, internet connection, and makes available every resource you need to maintain and manage your own web server.
You’ll be able to share their bandwidth as your own. It costs a lot more than dedicated or even VPS hosting.
8. Ecommerce Web Hosting
Ecommerce hosting is a type of hosting that affords a company everything (tools, features, addons, expertise, etc.) they need to effectively sell their products and services on the web.
Just like WordPress hosting is ideal for WordPress sites only, eCommerce hosting plans are designed for online stores.
Can You Start Hosting On AWS (Amazon)?
Yes, you can start hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS) but you’ll need an AWS account to get started. AWS isn’t for newbies.
It’s for individuals and businesses that understand web hosting technologies, and you must have an existing website that you can migrate to your AWS account.
What Is The Fastest Website Hosting?
Based on customer reviews, comments, and testimonials, the fastest website hosting provider is Siteground.
How To Choose The Best Website Hosting For You
There are so many factors to consider when choosing a web hosting solution. Let’s quickly go through the important considerations you might want to make:
1. Rate your knowledge of web hosting: Are you a beginner, an intermediate, or an expert when it comes to web hosting? Depending on your answer; this would determine which web host you choose.
If you’re a newbie, then choose a hosting company that provides hands-on tutorials on every aspect of web hosting.
2. Estimate how much traffic your site will get: For example, if your website is going to get less than $20,000/month visitors, then you don’t have to waste money on dedicated or VPS hosting, a Shared hosting plan will do.
On the other hand, if you estimate that through your marketing activities, you can drive tens of thousands and even millions of traffic to your site, then you should choose a hosting firm that can withstand the traffic spike.
3. Understand server types: Before you decide on a web hosting company to use, you should understand the server types they provide.
This is important if you want a dedicated server for your site alone. If you wouldn’t mind sharing server resources with other website owners, then a Shared hosting server is recommended.
4. Read in between the lines: The web hosting industry is unpredictable. There are companies that offer unlimited bandwidth and disc space, yet, you find your site broken when there’s a huge traffic spike.
So you must read and ascertain the claims of a web host before jumping in.
5. Consider the cost: At the end of the day, how much you’ll pay is important. Focus on the features when making a decision based on cost. This is important.
6. Own your domain name: If a web hosting provider doesn’t allow you to own and manage your domain name, then you shouldn’t use them anyways. Your domain name is your asset, so own it.
This way, you’ll be able to transfer it to another domain registrar if you’re not satisfied with your host. It doesn’t matter if they provided a free domain name or not, you should be in charge.
Web Hosting Comparison (Summary)
When you’re new to web hosting, then a Shared hosting plan will be enough to effectively handle the traffic, file transfer, and server resources for your website.
However, as your website begins to grow, you can easily migrate from one hosting package to another or upgrade to a dedicated or VPS hosting plan.
I’d recommend BlueHost if you want to get started right now.
It’s affordable at $2.95/month, and offers some amazing features including free domain name, free SSL certificate, hassle-free WordPress installation, 24/7 support, and an extended 60-day guaranteed if you’re not satisfied with it.
I’d gladly recommend another alternative for WordPress hosting: WP Engine. Although it costs $25/month, it offers some amazing features you’d love, plus a 60-day money back guarantee.
That being said, I’d love to hear from you. What factors do you consider when choosing a web hosting solution for your business? Leave a comment below.