Need a new web hosting service for your company website or personal blog? We’ve tested the best options on the market
We’ve reviewed (and continuously re-reviewed) more than 100 web hosting providers and website builders, some free, some paid so we know what stuff the absolute top website hosting services are made of. No one reviews more web hosting providers than us. Certainly from the outside, it might seem like choosing which web host to go with is a daunting task with so many technical terms to grasp. Should you go for a shared hosting provider? Or just a landing page? How much bandwidth or transfer rate do you need? Should you get an email account as well? How much should you pay for your website? The answer, as any web hosting expert will tell you, is «it depends». After all, we have different needs depending on our circumstances. Businesses requirements, for example, are different from an individual website. Keep an eye on promotions in the last quarter of the year as some of our partners are gearing up for Amazon Prime Day (yes, even that one), Black Friday, Cyber Monday and even eyeing Christmas for tasty coupons and discounts. What we attempt to do in this buying guide is provide you with our curated list, looking at the most popular categories of web hosting available including e-commerce hosting, VPS hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud Hosting and email hosting. Here we’ll show the best providers in each category, along with a number of specialist hosting services, then provide some additional information to help you choose. We’ve provided a detailed summary for each web hosting provider and highlighted strengths and services which may be important for your choice, plus information on pricing and why each particular web host may be ideal for you After our featured list, we also impart some helpful information that aims to provide you with a more informed choice about the web hosting service you need, and the web hosting provider that may best suit you. Taking top honors in our web hosting provider charts, Bluehost is a company based in Utah which is owned by web giant Endurance International Group (EIG). It offers basic shared hosting from $2.95 monthly (on a three-year contract), with WordPress plans starting at $20 per month (although that’s also a discounted introductory rate). For the money, you get automated setup for WordPress, not to mention other popular apps via a Mojo Marketplace-powered system. There’s also a cPanel-based area to allow expert users to tweak things. Furthermore, Bluehost provides a Weebly-based website builder. This is a basic browser-based affair that lets you create a website of up to six pages, and there are no extras like site templates included. But still, it’s better than nothing, and more functionality is in the pipeline – plus you get this builder with the basic account. There’s also good customer support on offer, a free WordPress site migration tool and the end result is a mix of user-friendly aspects alongside a good amount of power, and potential tweaking for more advanced users. Hostgator delivers an impressive range of hosting services, ranging from domains to dedicated servers at very competitive prices and backed by a 99.9% up time guarantee. This applies as much to their VPS hosting as any of their other hosting options. Hostgator offer three specific VPS hosting plans, starting with the Snappy 2000, which comes with 2GB RAM,2 cores of CPU, and 120GB of disk space. The allocations are generous and should accommodate all but the most demanding websites. An upgrade from that, if required, is the Snappy 4000, which upgrades RAM to 4GB and storage to 165GB. For more demanding sites that don’t yet require their own server, you can opt for the Snappy 8000, which comes with 8GB RAM,4 cores CPU, and 240 GB storage. Pricing depends on whether you pay monthly or commit to one of their annual plans. For example, the Snappy 2000 VPS hosting plan costs $29.95 if you only want to pay from month to month, but if you commit to a 3-year contract it comes down as low as $19.95 a month. Additional benefits include a 45-day money-back guarantee, not to mention free transfers for new accounts within the first month after you’ve signed up. There’s lots to like here considering the minimal impact on your wallet, if you’re happy to commit. Hostinger is one of the biggest providers of free web hosting via its 000webhosting brand. It has well over 30 million users, and some of the lowest prices thanks to low running costs and overheads. Hostinger prefers to use its own technology (for example, it has its own customized control panel instead of the ubiquitous Cpanel), so that it can better control performance and features. There are three plans available, Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Global, all of which offer unlimited websites and unlimited bandwidth for your account. The Cloud Startup plan comes with 100GB of SSD storage,3GB of RAM, and 2 CPU cores. The Cloud Professional plan increases these to 140GB storage,6GB RAM, and 4 CPU cores, the Cloud Global plan extends these further to 200GB storage,16GB RAM, and 8CPU cores. All plans come with a free SSL certificate. Pricing depends on how long you commit to the service. For the Cloud Startup plan, it costs $29.99 on a month to month basis. However, if you commit for a year the monthly cost falls to $12.95 a month. For a two-year contract, it drops to $9.95 a month, and for a four-year contract it falls to $7.45 a month. InMotion Hosting is a popular web host that’s been in business for over 15 years, with an impressive array of plans on offer including reseller hosting. All plans include assisted set up and migration, especially useful for those coming from other web hosts.
