Rating the best service providers - Web Hosting, Domain Hosting, Wordpress Hosting and Website Building - warrants a deep research into how an individual web hosting service performs in terms of speed, reliability and support. It also requires an analysis of usability and value for money, among other external factors. Here is our detailed process of review
Website hosting services are like real estate holders of internet, that you buy a peice from, for your website. If you want to have your own website, these platforms put up your website and keep it running so the customers can access it when they type in your URL. There is a wide variety of these services based on the type of plan (Shared, VPS, Dedicated, Wordpress, Cloud) and the pricing. You can choose to have monthly or annual plans, based on which the pricing can vary from 0.73$/month to 6$/month
These services attend to a plethora of businesses. Whatever your need, you can get a plan which is custom made for you. Some web hosting companies can even help you build your entire website, while others just provide you the server space for your website. You can choose a hosting platform depending on your business model, size and requirements by weighing the features on factors given below.
The larger and more complex a website is, the more comprehensive configuration package is required. The main ones are broken down as follows:
Shared Web Hosting is the most basic package offered by any company. Your website would sit on the same server along with several other websites, so you're sharing the server, and any other resources, such as memory or CPU. This services works best for basic websites such as email sending, file sharing, and basic ecommerce sites. It is also the cheapest alternative and therefore smartest option for smaller organizations or startups.
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is designated for direct purposes, more than a what a shared server does. Mostly, you'd still be sharing a server, but this service makes a virtual server of your own. Which means all the resources are only yours, memory storage, processing power and beyond. This is safer and a much more reliable alternative that keeps the site segregated from the others while still maintaining affordability. VPS is often a great option for SaaS providers, game makers, programmers and companies that have outgrown their shared hosting.
Dedicated hosting is a very different service. In addition to getting your own server, this service also lets you take full control over that server. That means you have full access and can set things exactly the way you like it. However, this package comes with a premium suite of features that may not be needed by most of the businesses. Dedicated hosting plans are ideal for large organizations or websites with much higher traffic.
WordPress, also known as WP, is a shared hosting service that caters to a more specialized clientele. The servers are optimized differently, to have features particularly attractive to WordPress performance - faster load time, pre-installation, security features that work specifically with WordPress, and WordPress updates. Useful for businesses that have websites created on WordPress.
Without a web hosting service that suits your needs, your ability to run a successful business is going to be seriously impaired. There is a plethora of web hosting providers competing for the share of the pie. To choose the best one, you have to start by keeping the following points in mind:
Shop for a Web Hosting company after evaluating your disk space and bandwidth needs. If your site features lots of graphic heavy media, tons of pages, and large traffic flow, you're going to need decent bandwidth and disk space for smooth functioning of your website. If your site is going to be basic and not generate a huge amount of traffic, you should be able to get away with less disk space and bandwidth.
Keep compatibility in mind, as well. In the task of looking for a website hosting service provider, there is a chance that you might overlook one of the very important criteria: the type of operating systems supported by the service. You're not going to want to switch operating systems so double-check operating system compatibility before settling for a service provider.
Availability and reliability are important features to consider when looking for a web hosting platform. The best companies offer availability rates of 98 and 99 percent, frequently referred to as “uptime”. However, it's easy to make such claims, so make sure to check yourself whether these clams are actually true.
Security is a very serious concern. Choosing a service provider without knowing about its security features is a big mistake that can lead to serious consequences. Firewalls, Daily Backups, and User Authentication etc. should be included in the service package. It's also good to receive notifications, once in a while, when changes are being made to the account as it would help alert you to suspicious activity.
Now that you know what factors affect the hosting quality of a service provider, how do you evaluate those factors? Here are some features important to weigh during your decision making process.
Uptime, the percentage of time that a hosting service is up and running, is guaranteed by various companies. This is one of the most important features that tells you about the reliability of a platform because you don’t want your website being unavailable or unreachable to your customers. Therefore, never compromise on uptime.
Load time is another important feature which helps evaluate the speed and bandwidth capabilities of a service provider. Average attention span of human beings has shrunk over the years to become smaller than that of a goldfish! So, if your website takes even a drop too long to load a page, your business is dead before it even starts. Be sure your hosting service has a fast load time.
If it's middle of the night, you get a call from a client saying that your website is down. What would you do? Having an issue with your website is nothing to take lightly. Therefore you want to make sure customer service is available and competent enough to resolve your queries without a significant down time for your website.
The number of servers and their respective locations play a huge role in the speed of your website and service. The more the number of servers available, the faster the service, but where are those servers found in the world would also affect the connectivity of the servers. You should always look for servers in locations close to you.
Yet another leader in the scoreboard is Bluehost, arguably one of the largest website hosting providers in the world, Bluehost powers over two million websites globally.
From Shared hosting, to managed hosting, to WordPress hosting WooCommerce, Bluehost has its hypothetical hands in all of hosting pots, all this while delivering best services at top standards.
For the most basic Shared hosting services, Bluehost's cheapest plan goes for around 2$ per month (on a three-year contract), and its WordPress hosting plans start at 1.81$ per month, which includes one website and 50GB of SSD storage (although, that’s a discounted introductory rate).
For the amount that you spend on Bluehost services, you get an automated setup for WordPress and also other popular apps via a Mojo Marketplace-powered system. There is also a cPanel-based area to allow expert users to make changes as they see fit.
Bluehost now also has its own website builder feature using drag and drop editing, live editing, mobile editing, and stock image repository. It also includes more than 300 website templates, full WordPress access and custom CSS.
Bluehost also offers one of the best customer support, a free site migration tool, which makes the end result a mix of user-friendly aspects and power. Bluehost also offers a professional service to help you get your website started. It is placed in first rank in our best website hosting platforms list.
GoDaddy is the #1 web hosting company in the world. Rightlfully so, they have over 18Mn customers worldwide with 77Mn domains under management.
GoDaddy’s Shared web plans start at as low as 1.21$/mo and go up to 6$/mo. While the starter plan doesn’t buy you a Free Domain, GoDaddy's Economy shared hosting plan gives you a free domain name, 100GB of storage, the ability to host one website, unlimited monthly data transfers, and free Business email.
GoDaddy's Business Hosting is the best of both worlds – the amped-up power of a Virtual Private Server, but with an easy-to-use control panel that doesn’t require a degree in Computer Science to operate. The plans start off with the Launch package, starting at as low as 14$/mo providing 60 GB storage, 2 GB RAM, 1 CPU, Unmetered traffic, Unlimited websites & databases, Standard SSL Certificate.
VPS Hosting Plans begin with the package named as Launch, offers 1 CPU Core, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB storage and is priced at 17$/mo. Then there is the Enhance package which is priced at 26$/mo, and offers 2 CPU Cores, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB storage. The grow package is priced at 32$/mo. 3 CPU Cores, 6 GB RAM, 150 GB storage. And the Expand plan being the costliest, at ₹ 3699/mo offers 4 CPU Cores, 6GB RAM, 150 GB storage.
GoDaddy offers domain names at a starting price of 2.55$/mo. They provide a long list of domain names such as .com, .co, .in,.life and many more
Hostinger comes out at the top when it comes to Cloud based and Premium Shared hosting owing to its speed, power and affordability.
For cloud offering, three plans available, Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Enterprise, all of which offer 300 websites and unlimited bandwidth for your account.
Cloud Startup plan combines 200GB of SSD storage, 3GB of RAM, and 2 CPU cores. Whereas, Cloud Professional plan raises these up to 250GB storage, 6GB RAM, and 4 CPU cores, and Cloud Enterprise plan extends these features further to 300GB storage, 12GB RAM, and 6CPU cores. All plans come with a free SSL certificate and domain name. Additionally these plans also come with daily backups and Google Ads credits
Cost of the plan mainly depends on how long you are willing to commit to the service. For the Cloud Startup plan, costs are 20$ on a month to month basis. However, if you subscribe for a year, the monthly cost falls to 11$ a month. Furthermore, for a two-year contract, price drops to 10$ a month, and for a four-year contract, it falls to only 9$ a month.
Hostinger also gives its users a very convenient choice of technology - cPanel or hPanel, Hostinger's own customized control panel. A relatively intuitive hPpanel allows for a better and more comfortable control of your website's performance and features.
When it comes to your website’s security, Hostinger uses server security tools like BitNinja which guards all its servers against cyberattacks. On top of that, the company also boasts its use of integrated custom security software that is updated regularly.
A2 Hosting was started in 2001 and has since been a reliable web host with an affordable price, high performance, features, etc.
A2 Hosting claims a 99.99% uptime commitment on its service. This means this is reliable hosting. On top of that, 24/7/365 support staff with expert system admins keep your server running at its peak in the best data centers.
A2Hosting offers customer support service around the globe through live chat, email, and tickets. The best part is, you can call them on their toll-free numbers. However, the tickets support the best way to resolve the technical issues. A knowledge base section is available on the website to getting start or self-help.
A2Hosting’s servers are fully optimized for WordPress hosting. Either order free auto WordPress installation during the signup process or install it with 1-click right from your cPanel control panel with the help of Softaculous. Apart from this, they have developed their very own A2 Optimized WordPress plugin for caching and compression.
Hostpapa is a small-business focused hosting service that also offers free domain transfers if needed. It also offers a wide variety of plans and add-on features, like website builder and automatic website backup
The web hosting plans start at 2.5$/mo (Starters plan) and can go upto 8.5$/mo (Business Pro). Starters plan includes only one website and 100GB SSD Web Space while Business and Business Pro plans include unlimited websites and unlimited SSD Web Space. All the plans include Free SSL Certificate, Free domain registration
Hostpapa also provides you with the advantage of having your own hosted email addresses. 100 email addresses are provided with the Starters plan, while Business and Business Pro plans include unlimited email addresses
Unlike some of the other services, Hostpapa also has a really informative QnA section on every page to help you figure out which plan suits you the best.
