Thoroughly tested and highly rated, these top web hosting services deliver the potent, flexible, and reliable feature sets needed to create attractive websites for business or personal use.
If you own a business of any size, web hosting isn’t an option; it’s a necessity. Many of our day-to-day activities involve researching topics online, so your business needs a reliable and accessible website, even if the pages simply detail locations, contact information, and hours of operation. There are simply too many voices out there on the World Wide Web, and word of mouth alone won’t get you very far online. Gone are the days when businesses are listed in yellow pages: if you can’t be found in a search engine, your business doesn’t exist in the eyes of a client. Businesses need a sharable website to build an online presence. Without a website, you have no discoverability and thus, earn no money. Granted, web hosting isn’t exclusively a business investment; if you’re aiming to host a personal site, blog, or project, hosting services are also highly valuable. Regardless of your website target, the services listed here have you covered. The first step in building your online presence is finding a web host, the company that stores your website’s files on its servers and delivers them to your readers’ and customers’ browsers. Bluehost, a PCMag Business Choice winner, is a reader-recommended option. 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. We’ll break them down. What Is Shared Web Hosting? 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. It’s cheap web hosting. In fact, you can find an option for less than $10 per month. You could think of the sites that share your server as your roommates; there’s really not that much separating you from them. Sure, you can close the bedroom door, but they can still cause nightmares for you in the kitchen and the bathroom. In web hosting terms, all the sites share a single server’s resources, so huge traffic spikes on Site A may impact the neighboring sites’ performances. It’s even possible that another site could take down the shared server altogether, if it crashed hard enough. What Is VPS Web Hosting? VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that multiple sites share the same server, but the similarities end there. In housing terms, VPS hosting is like renting your own apartment in a larger building. You’re much more isolated than in the roommate situation mentioned above; it’s still possible that a neighboring apartment could causes annoyance for you, but far less likely. In web hosting terms, Site A’s traffic surge won’t have nearly as much impact on 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. What Is Dedicated Web Hosting? 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. To extend the housing metaphor, having a dedicated server is like owning your own home. The means that your website taps the server’s full power, and pays for the privilege. If you’re looking for a high-powered site—an online mansion for your business—dedicated hosting is the way to go.
