Best Web Hosting Providers

8 Best Web Hosting Providers

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How Web Hosting Works

When you want to start a business in the real world, you need a physical location to set up, store, and sell your products. The same rules apply in the digital world when setting up a website.

When you set up an online business, you have a series of files, images, and HTML code that make up your website. These files take up space and need a place to live. Without an online home, your files would just sit on your computer and no one would ever see them. A hosting provider will provide a place on a web server to store all of your files and are responsible for delivering the files of your website as soon as a browser makes a request by typing in your domain name.

When you pay for hosting services, you are simply renting storage space on the internet — just like you would rent a physical store for your business.

What are the different types of hosting?

Before we take a closer look at each provider, here’s an overview of the main types of web hosting that you’ll encounter:

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common type of web hosting and is suitable for most online business owners. With shared hosting, several customers share storage space on one powerful server. There are several advantages to shared hosting including:

• Affordability — It’s much cheaper to share the space on a server than to rent the entire machine.
• Ease of use — Your server is preconfigured, well-organized, easy to use, and your hosting company does all the maintenance and security updates for you.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting includes all the features of a dedicated server, but at the price point of a shared server. Here are some of the top reasons VPS hosting might be a great fit:

• Functionality — VPS hosting is built on a cPanel and supports easy navigation with several intuitive tools.
• One-click features — You have access to one-click installs of WordPress, Magento, and Drupal.
• Easy site navigation — The clean interface makes site management a cinch.

Dedicated Hosting

Rather than sharing space, you get a server all to yourself if you choose a dedicated hosting package. Advantages to dedicated hosting include:

• Customization — You can customize the software and hardware to meet your individual needs
• Unlimited Resources — Since you don’t share the server with anyone, all the storage space is yours.
• Full control — You can configure the setup however you’d like.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is often considered the most reliable of all of the services. Rather than relying on disk space of a single server, it pulls its power from several resources, making sure you never have any downtime. Other benefits include:

• Scalability — You can add to your cloud space at any time.
• Unmetered bandwidth — You don’t have to worry about your site going down due to a server failure.

This article will lay out the 7 best hosting providers on the market. 

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The size and type of website you own will dictate the type of hosting plan you need. Your budget, the features you require, and how you built your site will also play a part in your decision. But ultimately, it’s best to choose one priority that you value most, and base your decision on that feature.

For example, if customer service and value for money are both important to you, but you’re most concerned about having great uptime, then HostGator is your best bet. But if great value for money is your non-negotiable top priority, then Bluehost will give you the most bang for your buck.

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Web Hosting Comparison

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1°Bluehost

Best overall hosting provider

Pricing plans from: $2.75 a month

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Utah-based Bluehost came onto the scene in 2003. Since then, it’s become one of the leading providers of web hosting services, and is currently owned by The Endurance International Group, which also owns competitor HostGator. Bluehost currently powers more than two million websites worldwide, primarily out of its data center in Utah.

Bluehost Pros	Bluehost Cons
99.98% uptime	Fairly expensive top tier VPS hosting plans
Free domain	One dedicated IP address

Bluehost is better known for its WordPress hosting, but it still has everything you need from a VPS service. And if you’re yet to purchase a domain name, Bluehost is the only that gives you one free of charge, forever.

The usual features are all on offer, and Bluehost boasts a brilliant uptime of 99.98%. Entry-level VPS hosting pricing is very reasonable too.

And if you’re looking for a VPS plan to power a photography website in particular, Bluehost ranks number one in our review of the best Photographer Website Hosting Providers.

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2° InMotion

Best for shared and VPS hosting

Pricing plans from: $6.39 a month

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InMotion started life in 2001, and since then has grown into a company with 300 employees and three offices across the U.S.. It also has two data centers in Los Angeles and Ashburn, Virginia, which are home to “thousands and thousands” of servers.

InMotion Pros	InMotion Cons
Unlimited CPU cores, domains and email accounts	Fairly expensive top tier VPS hosting plans
Free domain with 6-12 month plans	Other providers can better its 99.97% uptime

The company says it has “hundreds of thousands” of customers, which is a far cry from the millions that the bigger companies have. Instead, InMotion focuses on providing as high a level of service as it can muster to compete with the bigger companies.

InMotion sets the bar high when it comes to VPS hosting. All plans come with free backups, root access, and unlimited CPU cores and email accounts.

InMotion is perfect for any up-and-coming businesses or large personal site. With help available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and a ticketing system, plus a 30 day, money-back guarantee.

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3° A2 Hosting

Best for cloud hosting

Pricing plans from: $2.99 a month

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A2 Hosting started under the name Inquinet in a small, two-room office in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2001. The company is still an independently owned operation based in Ann Arbor, but has expanded to include data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.

A2 Hosting Pros	A2 Hosting Cons
Best value for money	No free domain
Anytime money-back guarantee	Only 99.95% uptime

If you’re either unsure or unconfident about VPS hosting, A2 Hosting can help. Its friendly, customer-centric approach makes you feel valued immediately, and staff are always on hand to help. Plus, if you’re unhappy with the service, you can get a refund anytime, no questions asked.

Features-wise, you can choose between Linux or Windows server hosting, while A2 Hosting also offers free backups, root access, and unlimited email accounts. It’s a little more expensive than InMotion, but you’ll be getting a very reliable service that puts you first.

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4°iPage

Best for cheap plans but at the cost of speed

Pricing plans from: $2 a month

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As a company, iPage has been around for a long time. It was founded in 1998, though the Internet Archive’s records show that by 1999 the iPage.com domain was unused and for sale.

iPage Pros	iPage Cons
1 year free domain	Poor 99.94% uptime
Multiple help and support resources	Only 1TB of bandwidth

Regardless, iPage began life as a web service provider — essentially a landing page like Yahoo. In 2002, it relaunched as a web hosting provider that is currently owned by the Endurance Group, the same company behind Bluehost and HostGator. In its present form, iPage hosts more than one million websites and has two data centers.

iPage may not have the cheapest pricing, particularly brilliant features, or the biggest capacity, but it does have a little bit of everything. From RAM to root access, free backups to SSL security, you’ll have access to everything you need -its customer service offers all the help you could need.