Best Web Hosting Providers
THE BEST WEB HOSTING IN 2020 IS FAST, SECURE, RELIABLE, AND HAS CUSTOMER SUPPORT THAT CAN COMPLETELY SUPPORT YOU.
Want to jump straight to the answer? The best web hosting provider for most people is definitely Bluehost.
Web hosting services come in all shapes and sizes.
Shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS, managed hosting, server cores, different RAM, CDNs, SSL certificates. It’s endless.
We’ve managed hundreds of websites ourselves over our careers. Using our first-hand experience, we waded through all the hosting options and narrowed it down to the best web hosting providers.
Read in-depth reviews of these below — plus, tips for saving money, the best types of hosting for different situations, and our method for picking the right web host.
The Top 3 Best Web Hosting Providers
- Bluehost – Best Web Host for Beginners
- HostGator – Best Scalability for Price
- SiteGround – Best Customer Service
#1. Bluehost – Best Web Host for Beginners
Normally $7.99/month
Free domain and SSL certificate
Recommended by WordPress
30-day money back guarantee
Get a 63% discount
Bluehost is one of the most popular and best choices for web hosting.
They’ve been around a long time, offer great hosting at a great price, and have a great reputation for supporting their customers.
If you get stuck or have a problem, they have 24/7 support by phone or live chat. No hoops to jump through either. They list their support number and live chat options right on their site, you can reach it within two clicks.
They also offer fantastic analytics and SEO tools to help you optimize your site’s performance—while attracting more visitors.
Their SEO tool that scores and tracks how well your website is ranking for specific keywords. This gives you a good idea of how you should optimize your site for the best search rankings.
They also offer hosting that will support whatever direction your business grows.
Let’s say you start with a standard shared hosting plan and want to install WordPress. They have an easy 1-click install to make that happen. Then if your site keeps growing and you want to upgrade to managed WordPress hosting to speed up your site and improve security, they have that too. Or if you want to get more control by upgrading to VPS or dedicated hosting, they have plans for both.
The point is that Bluehost covers everything you could possibly need from a host. That’s what makes them the best for beginner website creators.
If you start with them, you’ll never need to switch to someone else.
#2. Hostgator – Best Scalability for Price
Normally $6.95/month
Month-to-month at $10.95
Free domain and SSL certificate
45-day money back guarantee
Get a 61% discount
HostGator is another web host that caters to small businesses.
They’re also a bit of a mixed bag.
While HostGator does have an extensive how-to guides for technical support, it doesn’t offer any sort of email support — just phone and live chat. So be prepared to get on the phone whenever you have a question.
Unlike some hosts, Hostgator does include support in all its plans. If you want a hosting plan that’s cheap and includes support, this is the host for you.
HostGator does offer Windows hosting in addition to Linux, as well as a variety of options to upgrade, including cloud hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress, and a dedicated server. Shared hosting plans start at $2.75/month.
HostGator tends to rank highly on tech publications like PCMag, but customer reviews are pretty dreadful: it has only one star on Trustpilot. If you’re interested in trying HostGator, I recommend taking full advantage of the 45-day money-back guarantee and testing out their support thoroughly before committing.
#3. SiteGround – Best Customer Service
Normally $11.95/month
Free SSL, email, CDN, & backups
Recommended by WordPress
30 day money back guarantee
Get a 67% discount
SiteGround comes with two things a lot of web hosts don’t: a rabid fan base and glowing reviews.
Their reputation is stellar. Along with DreamHost and Bluehost, SiteGround is one of WordPress’s three recommended web hosts. WordPress hosting is built into all of its shared hosting plans, you’ll get automatic updates, streamlined security, and expert technical support.
Where they really shine is their shared web hosting. SiteGround’s servers are ultra-fast and extra secure, and they are constantly deploying new updates to keep them that way.
Their highest tier plan (GoGeek) is suped up with tools developers will find especially useful, including a staging server and Git repo creation. Lots of small business and personal websites will probably find this overkill, but if your needs are more complex than the basics, SiteGround has a lot to love.
There is one downside. Once you blow through SiteGround’s introductory pricing, your plan’s price will triple.
For example, its lowest tier of shared hosting jumps from $4/month to $12 and its highest tier jumps from $12/month to $35. That doesn’t feel great.
In fact, it was the reason for most of the one-star reviews on TrustPilot. Watch for this when you’re comparing pricing and remember that your hosting plan will last a lot longer than the promotional period.
SiteGround also has the shortest trial period of all our other shared hosting our top picks: only 30 days. This isn’t a major problem though. You’ll be able to easily evaluate any host within a month.
SiteGround does have cloud hosting and dedicated servers. In fact, SiteGround is one of our top picks for cloud hosting. If you think there’s a chance you’ll need to upgrade to some serious hosting power once you generate lots of traffic, SiteGround is a great option that will make upgrades easy later.
SiteGround’s customer support is available 24/7 across all channels — phone, chat, and email — and its knowledge base is rich and well-organized.
SiteGround also has the most transparent uptime: it has a 99.9% annual uptime guarantee (or you get a month of hosting free) and posts both its annual average and the previous month’s uptime right on its site.
SiteGround’s annual uptime compared to last month’s.
SiteGround is an amazing option for businesses with room to grow. There’s plenty of upgrades to support you along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment