Searching for the best shared hosting to get online without breaking the bank?
If you’re a small-scale business or an individual with a modest budget, you probably don’t need powerful dedicated servers or VPS hosting. Instead, shared web hosting should offer everything that you need at a much lower price.
To help you make the best decision for your needs, we’ve narrowed down ten of the best shared hosting companies.
Let’s dive in!
A brief intro to shared web hosting
Shared hosting plans are incredibly cheap, which is why they’re usually popular with new website owners. The reason for this is that, as the name suggests, your website shares server resources with many others.
This solution is generally best for small sites with low traffic, such as blogs or local business sites. There are many benefits to shared hosting for these types of properties, including:
- Affordable plans for those on tight budgets
- User-friendly setup process
- No need for server configuration
That said, sharing space with other sites means yours might be affected if another website experiences a security breach or traffic spike. However, quality shared host services will usually mitigate this risk as much as possible.
Ten best shared hosting services of 2023
Now that we’ve explained the concept of shared hosting, let’s look at some of the best companies that offer this service. When compiling this list, we considered not only the available features but price, performance, and ease of use as well.
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is a reputable provider and a popular choice for hosting, even among more experienced users. It offers decent speed and uptime and is one of the companies officially recommended by WordPress.org (although you can host any site on its servers).
Bluehost’s Basic shared hosting plan starts at just $2.75 per month for a single website and includes the following:
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 50 GB storage
- Free one-year domain registration
- Up to 25 subdomains
More expensive plans, such as Choice Plus, give you unlimited websites, storage, and domains for $5.45 per month. Also, you’ll receive unmetered bandwidth, spam protection, and site backups.
Another advantage of Bluehost is that its services are scalable. You can always start with the Basic plan and easily upgrade when you need to.
2. Hostinger
Hostinger is arguably the most price competitive provider on this list. Although we experienced small performance issues with this platform, it’s still a reliable choice for low-traffic websites.
Here’s what you get when signing up for the Single Shared Hosting plan, which starts at just $1.99 per month:
- 1 email account at your domain
- 100 GB bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- 2 subdomains
- The Litespeed Cache WordPress plugin
Note that if you want a free domain, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium Shared Hosting plan. It’s still affordable, starting from just $2.89 per month. Plus, it also provides 100 subdomains and unlimited websites, emails, and bandwidth.
3. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is another trustworthy provider that delivers one of the fastest services on the market. We took this company for a test drive and were pleasantly surprised by the speed its servers provide.
Shared hosting plans from this provider start at $2.99 per month for a single website. The basic Startup plan includes:
- 100 GB storage
- Up to 5 databases
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free site migration
If you want to avail of A2 Hosting’s ultra-fast technology, the Turbo Boost plan comes highly recommended. It includes unlimited sites, storage, and databases, giving you a near high-end experience from just $9.99 per month.
4. HostGator
HostGator is a competitively priced provider that offers excellent customer support around the clock. We tested its services ourselves and were impressed by the fast turnaround.
This platform’s shared plans start from $2.75 per month for a single website. They all come with a $100 credit towards Google AdWords and Bing Ads, which is an excellent bonus for start-ups.
The entry-level Hatchling plan includes:
- Free one-year domain registration
- Free SSL certificate
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Unmetered storage
- Free website transfer
The Business plan comes with additional benefits such as a free dedicated IP address and extra search engine optimization (SEO) tools, starting from just $5.95 per month.
5. GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is a unique platform that proudly delivers eco-friendly hosting services. Although we found its performance inconsistent at times, it’s still a reliable option with excellent speed and high security.
This host’s shared plans start from $2.95 for a single website. The Lite plan packs impressive features for an entry-level service, such as:
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free one-year domain registration
- Nightly backups
- Free content delivery network (CDN)
- Unlimited email accounts at your domain
- Unlimited databases
- LightSpeed Cache
If you want to double your plan’s performance quality, it’s worth considering the Pro plan, which starts at $5.95 per month.
6. InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting could be your ideal choice if you value high-quality support and performance. Although its plans are a bit pricier than others on this list, it may be worth the investment if it ticks other boxes for you.
Its shared hosting plans start at $2.29 per month and come with $150 in advertising credits. With the basic Launch plan, you’ll get:
- 2 websites
- 50 GB storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 10 email accounts
- Free SSL certificates
The top-tier Pro plan includes access to 100 databases, 200 GB storage, and unlimited email accounts. It starts from $12.99 per month and comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee.
👉 Our full InMotion Hosting review
7. DreamHost
DreamHost is another WordPress recommended provider that offers cost-effective hosting without sacrificing performance. It makes things simple by providing only two shared plans, and a generous 97-day money-back guarantee.
The Shared Starter plan gives you the following features for just $2.59 per month:
- Free one-year domain registration
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 50 GB storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 5 subdomains
The Shared Unlimited plan comes with unlimited storage, unlimited websites and domains, and also includes email. Starting at just $3.95 per month, it’s an excellent value.
One of the most notable things about DreamHost’s shared hosting is that it offers affordable month-to-month billing on all plans, while many other shared hosts require you to pay for at least one year upfront.
8. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is another popular provider that offers fast loading times at affordable rates. While its entry-level plan does not include free SSL certificates, you get one free Office 365 email for the first year, and one-click setup for GoDaddy registered domains.
The Basic plan starts at $2.99 for a single website. This entry-level plan includes:
- 100 GB storage
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 10 MySQL databases (1 GB each)
- 1 MSQL database (200 MB)
- 50 FTP users
- Free one-year domain registration
If you need more resources, you can easily upgrade to the Ultimate plan. For just $12.99 per month, you’ll get unmetered storage, unlimited websites and databases, SSL certificates, and premium DNS.
9. FastComet
This hosting company proudly supports small businesses and start-ups, which is its primary target audience. FastComet is excellent for SEO due to its fast servers, CDN, and 99.9% uptime guarantee.
The basic FastCloud shared plan starts at $2.95 for a single website. The main features include:
- Free website and domain transfer
- 15 GB storage
- Free CDN
- Free SSL certificate
- Daily backups
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited domains
If you expect your business to grow quickly, you might want to consider FastCloud Extra, which comes with a Rocket Booster feature for extra powerful performance. This premium plan starts at $5.95 per month.
10. SiteGround
Our final recommendation is SiteGround, which offers a lot of room to scale your website. The platform ranks highly in terms of features, performance, and support. It’s also officially recommended by WordPress.org.
The StartUp plan is suitable for sites with up to 10,000 monthly visits and comes packed with top-shelf features starting at just $1.99 per month:
- 10 GB storage
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Daily backups
- Free CDN via Cloudflare
- Free email at your domain
- Unlimited databases
If you want to level-up, the GrowBig plan can accommodate up to 25,000 visitors. From $9.99, you get unlimited websites, 20 GB storage, speed-boosting caching, and on-demand backups.
Conclusion
Shared hosting is the optimal solution for anyone on a tight budget, or if your website does not require more robust resources. However, choosing from dozens of different companies might be confusing and frustrating when starting a new website.
In this article, we’ve given you an overview of ten of the best shared hosting options.
If you’re still not sure where to start, Bluehost is the most popular and budget-friendly choice, especially for first-time website owners. However, all the providers on our list offer excellent services at reasonable prices.
If you’re using Bluehost and WordPress, you can follow our guide to set up Bluehost and install WordPress. Or, you can check out our more general guide on how to make a WordPress website if you want to use another host.
Do you have any questions about choosing the best shared hosting provider for your needs? Ask us in the comments!
* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no additional cost on your part.
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