Choosing a web hosting service will be difficult. You’re most likely wanting for a web hosting supplier that provides WordPress, however you additionally need one which performs properly, comes on the proper worth, experiences just about no downtime and provides 24/7 buyer help. Whether you must begin a private portfolio web site for job looking otherwise you merely need to ensure that your small enterprise has a robust on-line presence, the appropriate web hosting supplier could make your life quite a bit simpler.
Here, we take an in depth have a look at a few of the best web hosting companies out there, together with DreamHost, A2Hosting, GoDaddy Web Hosting and extra. We’re specializing in business web hosting firms that supply WordPress, digital personal servers, shared hosting and lots of web hosting companies, together with quite a lot of month-to-month and annual plans.
How we selected the best web hosting service
It’s vital to notice that we did not explicitly “check” the web hosting supplier choices on this record. Instead, we compiled a aggressive overview primarily based on quite a lot of components, together with third-party scores and options provided by every web hosting firm. We’ve additionally weighted the rankings of those companies by the Better Business Bureau and TrustPilot. With that information in hand, we break up them into three tiers:
Best web hosting suppliers (prime tier): These web host distributors all have a score of A or greater from the Better Business Bureau, and a score of three.8 or greater out of 5 from TrustPilot. With the exception of three distributors with between 300 to 400 items of person suggestions, all the TrustPilot rankings are primarily based on at the very least one thousand person opinions. All of the distributors listed in our prime picks additionally say they provide 24/7 help and 99% web site uptime or higher.
Web hosts price trying out (center tier): These web host distributors all have A+ BBB scores, however not sufficient TrustPilot opinions for us to contemplate that score as impactful, whether or not it is constructive or unfavorable.
Other web hosting choices (third tier): Two of those web host distributors — MochaHost and Liquid Web Hosting — at present have F scores from the BBB. Others have TrustPilot scores under 3.5, although in three instances, that is from fewer than 500 customers.
Important caveats it is best to take into accout: The Better Business Bureau doesn’t charge firms exterior of North America, and to be BBB Accredited, firms have to pay a price to the group. TrustPilot, in the meantime, additionally provides a paid tier that gives firms extra interplay with their person scores. It additionally removed 2.2 million fake reviews in 2020.
If you need extra recommendation on what to remember whereas procuring for a web hosting resolution, the several types of web hosting out there and tips about dashing up your web site, be sure to scroll to the underside of this web page.
A notice on pricing: We’ve made each effort to confirm that the costs listed right here had been correct on the time of final publication. However, costs on this class are topic to frequent fluctuations and so they’re constantly topic to particular provides and restricted offers. Furthermore, lots of the costs listed right here mirror the month-to-month charges in the event you prepay for 12 months of service or extra. Please click on by means of to the distributors in query to confirm present pricing at any given time.
Best web hosting suppliers, in contrast
| Basics | DreamHost | SiteGround | GreenGeeks | GoDaddy Web Hosting | IONOS | HostPapa | Hostinger | A2Hosting | Hostwinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting worth for shared hosting | $2.59/month | $7/month | $2.49/month | $6/month | $4/month | $4/month | $1/month | $3/month | $5/month |
| Uptime promise | 100% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.90% |
| 24/7 customer support | Live chat; e mail; cellphone throughout sure hours | Live chat; help tickets; cellphone help | Live chat; e mail; cellphone throughout sure hours | Phone; reside chat | 24/7 cellphone help; reside chat | Live chat; help tickets; cellphone help | Live chat; help tickets | Phone; reside chat | Live chat; help tickets |
| Money-back assure | 97 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | None |
| Better Business Bureau score | A+ | A+ | A+ | A+ | A+ | A+ | None (situated exterior North America) | A+ | A |
| Better Business Bureau accreditation | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| TrustPilot score | 4.7/5 | 4.7/5 | 4.1/5 | 4.1/5 | 4.1/5 | 4.1/5 | 4.4/5 | 3.9/5 | 3.9/5 |
| Types of hosting | |||||||||
| Shared hosting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WordPress | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual personal server (VPS) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated servers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud hosting | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Reseller hosting | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| E-commerce hosting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Best web hosting suppliers
Dreamhost
With an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and 4.7 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot, DreamHost is one among our most really helpful web hosting suppliers for a number of causes. First, it provides a {custom} management panel, which lets you extra simply handle your personal hosting. While reside cellphone buyer help is not out there 24/7, the supplier is aware of reside chat and tickets. DreamHost additionally makes use of superfast SSDs for all its storage, has a free SSL certificates (for safer web shopping) and supplies SSH entry for these plans which might be supposed for extra technical customers.
Other issues we like about Dreamhost: It provides free shared website and email hosting to 501(c)(3) nonprofits. For all others, the pricing is fairly clear — there aren’t any hidden gotchas within the charges. Plus, it supplies a 97-day a refund assure, one of the crucial beneficiant provides out there.
SiteGround has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.7 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. It sits within the center floor between a shopper web hosting supplier and one which caters to enterprise companies. If you have bought a small enterprise with extra complicated web wants than a typical small enterprise, SiteGround is a perfect resolution — and if your corporation finally ends up increasing, the service has choices to develop with you.
Although choices begin as little as $7 a month, in the event you go as much as its GoGeek plan you may get a number of different helpful options, together with entry to a staging server and one-click Git repo creation. All of its plans embody SSL, each day backup, CDN, e mail, unmetered visitors and limitless databases. It additionally differs from another companies in that it units limits on bandwidth and storage up entrance, whereas most others declare to be limitless bandwidth or unmetered bandwidth however have guidelines within the fantastic print (extra on that under). You’ll additionally get a 30-day money-back assure and a 100% renewable vitality match.
As is the case with most different companies, if you wish to get the bottom worth, you may should pay for a 12 months of service upfront. After that 12 months, the worth will go up. Support contains 24/7 reside chat and cellphone entry, and tickets which might be answered in a median of quarter-hour.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.1 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. If you have ever been anxious in regards to the great quantity of energy giant information facilities devour, you would possibly need to try this service. The “inexperienced” within the firm’s title displays the Green Geeks’ dedication to the atmosphere. It purchases 3 times the vitality it truly makes use of in wind vitality credit, primarily placing vitality again into the economic system. The firm does this by means of a type of renewable vitality certificates, which, whereas sophisticated, implies that it isn’t simply vitality impartial, it is truly serving to gasoline the inexperienced vitality economic system.
Even although it is inexperienced, GreenGeeks nonetheless provides plenty of energy for your web sites. Its primary shared web hosting plan provides limitless web area and e mail accounts, unmetered information switch, an SSL certificates, a free area title for the primary 12 months, a nightly backup, CDN and a 30-day money-back assure. It additionally provides reside chat and e mail help 24 hours a day, seven days per week, twelve months a 12 months. It additionally has cellphone help most hours of the day.
GreenGeeks is among the extra developer-friendly web hosting suppliers, too, with a number of PHP variations and Git preinstalled.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.1 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. While the location is maybe best identified for buying domains, it additionally provides quite a lot of web hosting companies, together with WordPress, WordPress ecommerce and reseller hosting. However, it doesn’t provide cloud hosting.
The service’s most elementary shared hosting plan contains unmetered bandwidth, one-click WordPress set up, a website and Office 365 e mail (for the primary 12 months).
GoDaddy provides 24/7 cellphone help and reside chat help as properly.
- Shared hosting beginning at $4/month (for first 12 months)
- Business hosting beginning at $1/month (for first 12 months)
- WordPress hosting beginning at $1/month (for first 12 months)
- Unmanaged digital personal server hosting beginning at $2/month
- Managed digital personal server hosting beginning at $40/month (for first six months)
- Dedicated servers beginning at $60/month (for first three months)
- Cloud server hosting (by the hour)
IONOS from 1&1 has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and a TrustPilot rating of 4.1 out of 5. It’s focused towards small and medium companies, with a deal with taking your first steps on-line or scaling up. You’ll discover a number of completely different hosting plans and choices, together with WordPress hosting, e mail hosting and domains and transfers. Just watch out in terms of pricing — plenty of the hosting package deal charges appear low, however go up after a sure period of time.
HostPapa
HostPapa has an A+ BBB rating and a 4.1 out of 5 TrustPilot rating. It’s a small business-focused hosting service that additionally provides free area switch. It provides all kinds of plan varieties, and a number of other add-on options like a web site builder and automated web site backup.
Unlike a few of the different companies, HostPapa additionally has a very nice Q&A piece on each web page that will help you determine which plan is best for you.
Hostinger
Hostinger is predicated in Lithuania, so it doesn’t have a BBB web page (that group solely focuses on US-based companies). However, it does have a TrustPilot rating of 4.4 out of 5 with greater than 2,000 opinions.
Hostinger provides a number of completely different plans with quite a lot of pricing tiers (although lots of the costs listed above are for probably the most primary type of the service, and will not embody all of the options you need). It’s additionally bought e mail hosting and a web site builder, and a 30-day a refund assure.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting has an A+ rating from the BBB and 3.9 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. The firm does plenty of issues proper: With each plan, the web hosting service contains SSD, web site migration, an SSL certificates and CloudFlare CDN (a bunch of servers worldwide that robotically determines the best route to attach guests to your web site for elevated pace and safety). Its Anycast DNS resolution duplicates DNS data throughout its international community, rising web site efficiency, in accordance with the location.
Customer help can also be robust: A2 Hosting’s Guru Grew help workforce is offered 24 hours a day, seven days per week, twelve months a 12 months by cellphone, e mail, on-line chat or ticket.
Like most web hosting suppliers, the printed pricing is a bit deceptive: The shared low cost web hosting price ticket of $3 a month is just out there in the event you join for the three-year plan and pay upfront. It provides a 30-day a refund assure or a prorated refund for unused service after that time.
HostWinds
Hostwinds has an A rating from the BBB and a 3.9 out of 5 stars from TrustPilot. Its web hosting choices are best suited for enterprise homeowners, with particular enterprise hosting plans and reseller hosting plans. Hostwinds additionally provides managed or unmanaged digital personal server hosting for Windows and Linux.
The service’s shared hosting plans additionally embody a lot of options, like SSDs, free web site transfers, limitless domains, e mail accounts and databases, a free SSL certificates and a Weebly web site builder.
Additional web hosting choices price trying out
The following web hosts have barely decrease or fewer TrustPilot scores than those above, however nearly all are nonetheless extremely rated with the BBB.
WebHostingPad
WebHosingPad has an A+ BBB score, however only a handful of opinions on TrustPilot. Its “all-inclusive” web site hosting plan begins at $2 a month and contains free SSL certificates, a free web site builder by Weebly, one-click set up WordPress, a free area and a 30-day money-back assure. It additionally provides limitless web sites, domains and e mail. WebHostingPad provides fewer companies than a few of the different suppliers, however the all-inclusive strategy could also be interesting if you need a easy technique to get began constructing and hosting a web site.
AccuWeb Hosting
AccuWeb Hosting has an A+ score from the BBB and 4 out of 5 stars from TrustPilot, however once more, fewer than 100 opinions. It stands out because of the big range of hosting choices it provides, together with a number of completely different managed and unmanaged Windows and Linux hosting plans. AccuWeb Hosting additionally breaks down what’s included in every plan extra clearly than a few of the different suppliers.
Web Hosting Hub
Web Hosting Hub has an A+ BBB score, nevertheless it has but to have a quorum of person opinions on TrustPilot. One standout function is full service web design for an additional price, so you do not have to construct your web site your self.
WP Engine Web Hosting
WP Engine Web Hosting has an A BBB score and a 3.4 out of 5 TrustPilot score (however with fewer than 200 opinions). As the title suggests, it is a WordPress hosting choice that works with a number of giant manufacturers, together with Yelp, Marriott and Etsy.
GlowHost
GlowHost has an A+ BBB score, however only a small handful of TrustPilot opinions. If you need to give it a attempt, the service provides a 91-day money-back assure.
Other web hosting choices
The following web hosts have extra combined opinions and both a low BBB or TrustPilot score. Again, we’ve not examined them ourselves, however would suggest doing extra analysis earlier than signing up.
- HostGator: A+ BBB score, 3.3 TrustPilot score
- InMotion Hosting: A+ BBB score, 3.3 TrustPilot score (fewer than 500 opinions)
- Bluehost: A+ BBB score, 2.6 TrustPilot score
- iPage: A+ BBB score, 1.4 TrustPilot score (fewer than 500 opinions)
- Liquid Web Hosting: F BBB score, 4.5 TrustPilot score (fewer than 500 opinions)
- MochaHost: F BBB score, 4.4 TrustPilot score
Planning your web hosting buy
Getty/Natnan Srisuwan
Now that you’ve a lay of the land for what forms of web hosting companies are on the market, listed here are a number of suggestions for in terms of truly selecting a plan.
Be cautious of the ‘beginning worth’
Despite the truth that web hosting companies sometimes record a low beginning worth, this low cost hosting worth will normally require you to pay up entrance for two to a few years of service — so it is probably not, say, $3 a month, however $72 upfront for two years. And as soon as that promotional interval is over, the worth to resume your service can find yourself being manner greater.
Switching suppliers? Look for free web site migrations
If your web hosting settlement is about to expire and the worth goes to go up, you might need to switch your web site to a different hosting supplier to reap the benefits of their introductory deal. Look for these hosting firm suppliers that supply free or low-cost web site migrations to take action.
One extra notice about migration companies: While these are helpful, they’re usually automated, which suggests not every thing might migrate over, and you might have to make some modifications. Make positive you analysis the way it will work for you earlier than you join.
Read the fantastic print on ‘limitless’ companies
While many web hosting companies provide what they name “limitless” or unmetered service for a certain quantity of bandwidth, disk storage and web sites you utilize, be sure to learn the phrases of service. Most truly do embody a definition with a restrict for use. But in the event you’re working a reasonably primary web site and are not attempting to reap the benefits of the system, you need to be fantastic.
Make positive you already know the distinction between web hosting and web constructing companies
Most web hosting companies additionally provide a drag-and-drop web site builder, serving to you get your web site up and working. But be sure to learn the fantastic print: Using one among these web site builders will usually lock you into the web hosting service, too. The builders might also be proprietary to the service, making it tough to maneuver your web site to a different service if you wish to achieve this afterward.
Website hosting definitions
When procuring for a web hosting service, you may see plenty of phrases thrown round that you could be not perceive. Here are a few of the typical choices you would possibly see, and whether or not they’re what you are wanting for.
- Cloud-based hosting is a superb choice if you need plenty of space for storing and it means that you can use cloud computing. There are many benefits to cloud-based hosting, together with assured server assets, redundant information storage and limitless web site development.
- E-commerce hosting is a well-liked choice for many on-line companies. In addition to serving to you run an e-commerce web site, many web-hosting service suppliers may give you a web server to host your web site together with an e mail server and different commonplace web-hosting options.
- Reseller hosting is right for people who find themselves desirous about utilizing their allotted laborious drive area and bandwidth to host web sites on behalf of third events. To do that, the reseller might want to buy the host’s companies wholesale after which promote them to prospects individually for a possible revenue at retail costs.
- WordPress hosting is a perfect platform for anybody desirous about making a custom-built web site. The web site hosting firm is fashionable with prospects as a result of it allows you to construct knowledgeable {custom} WordPress web site utilizing quite a lot of templates, plug-ins and widgets.
- Shared hosting is usually probably the most primary and least costly plan out there. While a shared hosting supplier ought to have every thing you want for a private or small enterprise web site, you’re sharing assets with others on the identical server, so in case your web site grows, you might want a special plan.
- Virtual personal server hosting is a step up from shared hosting, permitting you to get comparable capabilities and efficiency to a devoted server for their websites, with out going as much as a devoted server service. A managed VPS hosting service is usually dearer, however is best for these with much less technical backgrounds because it lets the corporate deal with the software program and system updates you request. An unmanaged VPS hosting service means the hosting supplier is just accountable for the bodily server and ensuring it is out there — you may have to deal with upkeep, upgrades and software program set up.
- Dedicated server hosting is the choice for web sites with giant numbers of tourists. With this dearer plan, you may get a bodily server (or a number of servers), supplying you with complete management over that machine and much more assets for working your web site.
More professional web suggestions
Originally printed earlier. Periodically up to date with new suggestions.
