iPage is a very good choice for users who are on a budget and are just getting started. This provider offers some of the cheapest initial plans on the market, while still maintaining the quality of their services. Security and uptime are impressive, especially at these rates and you can also feel better about yourself knowing that your web hosting provider only uses green energy for its services. More pretentious users, with more complex businesses might feel unsatisfied with their loading time or the fact that they don’t use the standard cPanel.
HostGator is a web hosting company from Houston. It was founded in 2002 and it also has offices in Austin, Texas and India. In 2012 it was sold to Endurance International Group, for 225 million dollars.
HostGator offers shared hosting, VPS, dedicated, reseller hosting services and it hosts over 9 million domains.
BlueHost is on the market since 1996 and nowadays is one of the largest providers in the industry, hosting over 2 million websites.
This provider is praised for its affordable starter plans, the fact that it uses top-notch technology, it is reliable and trustworthy.
JustHost was founded in 2008 and it is currently owned by Endurance International Group.
They have received mixed reviews over time, being praised for the affordable prices and criticized for reasons like servers' unreliability and downtime and their questionable money back guarantee policy. Overall though, it is seen as a cheap, user friendly web hosting provider, perfect for beginners, but not only.
HostPapa is a web hosting provider that is best tailored for small businesses. The pricing for standard shared hosting is good and the plans include most of the needed features, although the cheapest tier is a bit limited. Customer support and security are among HostPapa’s strengths, while performance leaves room for improvement. Overall, we think this provider is a good place to start if you are at the beginning of your online journey, but if you run a more complex business, you might need more than they can offer.
GreenGeeks is a web hosting company based in California. GreenGeeks's servers and hardware are energy-efficient. The company buys wind credits to counteract the carbon footprint of their servers.
InMotion is an independent web hosting company based in US, with offices in California and Virginia. It hosts over 300.000 domains on its servers and ranks first in numerous charts. It offers a wide range of hosting services and solutions, from shared hosting to VPS, dedicated, reseller, and so on, covering all kinds of needs and preferences.
Arvixe is a web hosting provider that was founded in 2003, in California. It offers various hosting plans, from shared to business and dedicated servers and it is compatible with both Linux and Windows. The company has over 100 hundred employees who work remote.
DreamHost offers a wide range of web hosting solutions, from shared hosting to VPS and dedicated servers. They also offer optimized WordPress hosting and Cloud services and they currently host over 1,5 million websites.
DreamHost boasts on being carbon neutral. They try to neutralize their emissions by investing in renewable energy projects and purchasing carbon offsets.
GoDaddy is one of the most popular web hosting providers on the market today and, since 2013, the largest ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) accredited registrar in the world, being four times larger than its nearest competitor.
GoDaddy also had its share of scandals and controversies over time, with different organizations.
Last updated December 2, 2024
Regardless of the type of business or service you provide, you will most likely need a website to publicly display and share your goodies. If you want to exist in this day and age, you have to be present online. And for your site to be part of the world wide web, you will also need a web host. You can think of it like a storage place, but with online files and documents instead of actual, material things.
Web hosting is that fundamental Internet service that allows people and businesses to store and make their website accessible and publicly available. Web hosting companies rent you the space/server you need to store your site.
The servers are powerful computers that store, process and deliver your site's data to the users, through browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla, etc.
So you want a website, right? The first thing you will need to do is register a domain name. This is basically the name you want your site to be registered under. It is what people will type into their browsers, in order to find your website. Once you know what domain name you want, you have to look it up and check if it's available or already taken. If the name is still unused, then you can purchase it. Although the majority of web hosting companies require that you have your own domain name before hosting your website, they will also offer you the possibility of buying one with their help, easing your burden.
There are several types of web hosting options, based on cost, storage capacity, server speed, reliability and so on...
Here are the most common ones:
It's an entry level option, for the average user and wallet (bloggers, small organizations with little Internet traffic, etc). "Shared" simply means that your website is placed on the same server with hundreds or thousands of other sites. While this is an affordable way to go, it does have its downsides, such as: slower speed, due to the crowdness and a lower security. The main advantage is obviously the cost. Shared hosting is cheap because the cost is divided among you and all the other clients using the server.
It's a better option than shared hosting and it basically divides the server into more virtual servers, as many as there are users. So even though you are sharing the main server with other users, their number is not that high as with shared hosting (it is usually limited to 10-20 users) and your website will have its own virtual dedicated server. For an average of a 25$/month users have access to better security, higher speed and root access to their own virtual space. Root access is necessary if you want to change your server settings or install software. Although the performance of your website is clearly improved, it can still be affected by the other websites registered on the server.
It's an upgrade from the aforementioned ones, hence more expensive. On this type of hosting your site will be the only one stored on that particular server. That gives you more control, a better security and performance. The only disadvantage this type of hosting has it's its price. This option is a good deal for more experienced users or websites with higher traffic. You can usually start with a shared hosting and upgrade to dedicated hosting once your business thrives, while keeping your same account as well.
Think of it as an opposite of the Virtual Private Server hosting. While VPS splits one server into several other virtual ones, cloud hosting takes a team of servers (which are called a cloud) and makes them work together, hosting several websites. The main advantage here is the unlimited capacity of dealing with heavy Internet traffic. Also, should one server crash, your site's functionality won't be affected, because the other servers that it's connected with will still sustain it.
This type of hosting is popular among larger websites such as Facebook or Google, so, as you can rightly expect, it is pretty expensive.
There are several factors you need to be aware of when choosing the best web host for your site. There are many options out there, just as there are types of customers and businesses. The main types of web hosting solutions are: shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and cloud hosting. Each of them comes with certain prices and features.
Here are some important aspects you have to have in mind before making a decision.
