These 10 top web hosting services give everyone from bloggers to business owners the tools and support they need to build a professional, reliable web site, at any budget.
Business owners, answer this important question: Does your company have a website? If not, it should. Naturally, online businesses demand websites for marketing and selling products or services, but even brick-and-mortar business need to be discoverable via the web. Word of mouth just doesn’t cut it anymore. These days, people discover new businesses via Bing, Google, and Yahoo, search engines that make it incredibly simple to find companies’ products, operational hours, and prices. If your business doesn’t appear in the search results, especially on the first page, it’ll be incredibly difficult for potential clients and customers to find you. The TL; DR? No website, no money. No one wants want that.
The first step in building your online presence is finding a web host, the company that will store your website’s files on its servers and deliver them to your readers’ and customers’ browsers. Web hosting services offer varying amounts of monthly data transfers, storage, email, and other features. Even how you pay (month-to-month payments vs. annual payments) can be radically different, too, so taking the time to plot exactly what your company needs for online success is essential. Many of these companies also offer reseller hosting services, which let you go into business for yourself, offering hosting to your own customers without requiring you to spin up your own servers.
You should also familiarize yourself with the many web hosting tiers that are available. In your research, you’ll find shared, virtual private server (VPS) , dedicated hosting, and WordPress hosting plans. Each tier offers different specs and features that you should take the time to analyze. I’ll break them down.
Shared hosting is web hosting in which the provider houses multiple sites on a single server. For example, Site A shares the same server with Site B, Site C, Site D, and Site E. The upside is that the multiple sites share the server cost, so shared web hosting is generally very inexpensive. In fact, you can find an option for less than $10 per month.
The downside is that all the sites share a single server’s resources, so huge traffic spike on Site A may impact the neighboring sites’ performances.
VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that multiple sites share the same server, but the similarities end there. A dedicated web host houses less sites per server than shared hosting, and each site has its own individual resources.
As a result, Site A’s traffic surge won’t impact Site B or Site C. As you’d expect, VPS hosting costs more than shared hosting. You’ll pay roughly $20 to $60 per month.
Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, is both powerful and pricey. It’s reserved for sites that require an incredible amount of server resources.
Unlike shared or VPS hosting, dedicated hosting makes your website the lone tenant on a server. The means that your website taps the server’s full power. That said, many dedicated web hosting services task you with handling backend, technical issues.
WordPress hosting is for people who want to build their sites on the back of the popular WordPress content management system (CMS) . Many WordPress hosts automatically handle backend stuff, so you don’t have to worry about updating the apps and CMS, and enabling automatic backups.
If you’re not sure of the type of hosting your business needs, you might want to start small, with shared Web hosting. You can always graduate to a more robust, feature-rich package of, say, VPS hosting or even dedicated hosting in the future. Unfortunately, some hosts don’t offer all hosting types. Consider how much you expect to grow your website, and how soon, before you commit to anything longer than a one-year plan. It’s worth spending the time up front to make sure that the host you select with is able to provide the growth you envision for your site, as switching web hosting providers midstream is not a trivial undertaking.
Once you decide you price range, you need to consider how long you’ll need web hosting. If it’s a short-term project—say, less than a month or two—you can typically receive a refund should you cancel your hosting within 60 days. Some companies offer 30-day money-back guarantees, others offer 90-day money-back guarantees. Once again, it’s beneficial to do your homework.
Many web hosts offer limited features in their starter packages and then expand the offerings (sometimes tremendously) for higher-tier plans. Read the small print to make sure the plan you are selecting offers what you need. If you need a site builder application to design your website, make sure that the low-cost web host you are picking actually comes with a site builder. Many of them require you to pay for the builder as a separate add-on. Website builders usually don’t cost a lot of money, but if you can find a web host that includes one for free, that’s money in your pocket. And, if it’s integrated with your hosting service, you’re more likely to have a smooth, supported experience.
You also want a web host with 24/7 customer support—if not by phone, then at least by chat. Forums, knowledge bases, and help tickets are all well and good, but sometimes you just need to communicate with another human to get things ironed out as quickly as possible. That said, not all 24/7 customer support teams are equal. Companies like GoDaddy and Liquid Web boast incredibly knowledgeable and helpful customer support squads—a fact that we confirmed in our in-depth reviews of those web hosting services.
When it comes to server operating systems, Linux is typically the default option. Still, some services offer a choice of Linux or Windows hosting. If you have specific server-side applications that require Windows, such as SQL Server or a custom application written in. NET, then you need to make sure your web host has Windows hosting. But don’t let the idea of a Linux host intimidate you. Nowadays, most web hosts offer a graphical interface or a control panel to simplify server administration and website management. Instead of typing at the command line, you’ll click easily identifiable icons.
Windows hosting is often more expensive than Linux hosting, especially in the dedicated server area. That’s not always the case, but it’s something you should be aware of as you shop around.
If you aim to have a web presence, you’ve got to have email. It’s a convenient way for potential customers and clients to send you a message, Word document, or other files. Thankfully, most web hosts include email in the price of their hosting plans. Some web hosts offer unlimited email account creation (which is great for future growth) , while others offer a finite amount.
