If you run your own business, it is compulsory for you to make a decision on web hosting. It used to be a matter of luxury years back, but today, the business world demands that your business at least have an online page with business details in view.
Making that decision on the best web hosting companies to choose can be quite cumbersome. But from going through the stress of testing out a few web hosts and gathering analysis from my research, I have been able to wade through the web host options and streamline to the best web hosting companies in 2020.
Here Are The Best Web Hosting Companies You Should Consider
1. SiteGround
SiteGround is unarguably one of the best web hosting companies you should consider. They have one of the best reputations and are recommended by WordPress.org.
They have a powerful backend, the best technical support system, and are considered among the leading options when it comes to shared hosting service. In fact, they are considered to be the first choice in shared hosting, with high security and speed. And you will be able to receive prompt updates automatically. They however offer one of the shortest free-trials with their shared hosting. It lasts only for 30 days. But then, that is sufficient to evaluate their services with a 30-day money-back guarantee. They are constantly working to keep their services permanently among the best.
SiteGround is particularly known for its GoGeek plan which is their highest-tier shared plan. The plan is imbued with tools and features which developers will find helpful. This includes Git repo creation and staging server.
However with the recent development in SiteGround, after exhausting the introductory pricing, your subsequent pricing will be tripled. For instance, the lowest shared hosting price which is about $4 per month will become $12, and their highest tier will move from $12 to $35. It seems like a turnoff but considering their great services and extra benefits, it becomes a great choice.
SiteGround is one of the best with cloud hosting and dedicated servers. If you are considering upgrading your website for a much better hosting power because of your sites’ increasing traffic, you should consider this web host for ease of upgrade.
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You can connect with them via chat, email, and phone calls. Their customer support is always available across all channels.
SiteGround’s uptime is among the most transparent. It guarantees an impeccable 99.99% uptime every year (or you will receive free hosting for one month) and have its yearly average and uptime for the previous month right on its site.
For the first byte, Siteground loads in 0.39 seconds. And about 0.96 to have a full-page loaded.
SiteGround’s Pricing And Plans – Regular
Startup plan is $14.99 per month with one website and a storage of 10GB.
GrowBig plan is $24.99 with increased backup options and 20GB of storage.
GoGeek plan is $39.99. It has advanced features, 40GB of storage, and is permitted to have unlimited traffic.
SiteGround’s Pricing And Plans – Special Offers
The Startup plan is $3.95 per month, one website, 10,000 monthly visits, and a storage of 10GB.
GrowBig plan is $5.95, unlimited websites, increased backup options, 25,000 monthly visits, and 20GB of storage.
GoGeek plan is $11.95. It has advanced features, 30GB of storage, and 100,000 monthly visits.
With special features such as unique server architecture, proactive server monitoring, proprietary WordPress caching plugin, unbreachable account isolation, and backups that are automated daily, newbies and professionals should best consider SiteGround.
2. GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks offers one of the topnotch eco-friendly “green” hosting solutions. They may not be as popular as many of the other web hosting companies, but they have been offering great services to their customers for over a decade already. They power their hosting services using renewable energy.
WordPress sites can get easy set-up in a snap. You will be able to set up using an available automatic one-click WordPress Installer option and also keep your WordPress site up-to-date using auto-updates. In addition, users will be opportune to enjoy their advanced security features with daily backups. These features will keep your site and data secure and safe.
GreenGeeks also stay abreast of trends in technology such as CDN, PHP7, SSD, and much more. This latest technology keeps your website’s speed accurate and secure.
They are also exceptional when it comes to their customer support system. They offer 24/7 customer support through chat, phone calls, or through their ticket system. Their response-rate is great and attend to a wide range of hosting issues.
GreenGeeks Ecosite Lite plan costs $9.95 per month on regular rates. The 12-month term is $4.95 per month, the 24-month term is $3.95 per month, and a 36-month term is $2.95 a month.
You will be able to use unlimited disk space, email accounts, and bandwidth. One website, free SSL from Let’s encrypt, unlimited MySQL Database, Cloudfare CDN, available developer tools, 1GB memory, and 2 CPU Cores among others.
GreenGeeks Ecosite Pro plan costs $14.95 per month on regular rates. The 12-month term is $7.95 per month, the 24-month term is $6.95 per month, and a 36-month term is $5.95 a month. You will be able to use unlimited disk space, email accounts, domains, and bandwidth. Free SSL from Let’s encrypt, unlimited MySQL Database, Cloudfare CDN, 1.5GB memory, and 2 CPU Cores among others.
GreenGeeks Ecosite Premium plan costs $24.95 per month on regular rates. The 12-month term is $13.95 per month, the 24-month term is $12.95 per month, and a 36-month term is $11.95 a month.
Users will be able to use unlimited disk space, email accounts, and bandwidth. One website, free SSL from Let’s encrypt, unlimited MySQL Database, Cloudfare CDN, available developer tools, 2GB memory, and 3 CPU Cores among others.
3. InMotion
InMotion Hosting is most preferable for great VPS Hosting. They have excellent technology, a sea of loyal customers, a topnotch customer support system, and a wide range of nice hosting plans.
They have one of the longest trial periods offered by web hosting companies which lasts for a 90-day period. This gives new customers sufficient time to test things out with their hosting services and make a decision.
InMotion has easy set-up, very straightforward hosting plans, and lots of similarities. They also have no confusing tiers or pushy upsells.
They have customer support that is available for all levels — whether as a newbie who prefers to be guided through the basics or a pro who can digest all the technical nuances. Their customer support is available 24/7 through mediums such as emails, phone, chat, Q&A, and tutorials. You will easily have access to their chat support login in your admin panel, and their phone number at the top of their page.
Their VPS hosting options are among the best. Check out their hosting plans below:
A. InMotion Shared Business Hosting Plans
The shared business hosting plans offer three options for users. These include Launch, Power, and Pro plans. The Launch plan starts with $3.49 per month, while Power is $4.49, and Pro is $7.49 per month.
Bear in mind that these prices vary depending on how many supported websites, domains, and databases will be involved.
B. InMotion VPS Hosting Plans
This hosting plan also offers three options. They include; VPS-1000HA-S, VPS-2000HA-S, and VPS-3000HA-S. The VPS-1000HA-S starts at $29.99 every month, VPS-2000HA-S starts at $49.99 per month, and VPS-3000HA-S starts at $74.99 per month.
The prices however depend on the amount of storage, RAM, IP addresses, bandwidth, and others.
C. InMotion Dedicated Hosting Plans
InMotion Dedicated Hosting has three options users can consider. They include Essential plan, Advanced plan, and Elite plan.
Essential plan starts at $99.99 per month, Advanced plan starts at $159.99 per month, and the Elite plan starts at $229.99 per month.
These hosting plans however vary in their prices based on the cost of monthly data transfers, RAM, IPs, and others.
D. InMotion Reseller Hosting Plans
The Reseller hosting plan has 3 options for users: R-1000S, R-2,000S, and R-3,000S.
The R-1000S plan starts at $22.39 per month, R-2,000S plan starts at $31.99 per month, and R-3,000S costs $43.99 each month. These hosting plans vary in their prices based on bandwidth, disk space, etc.
E. InMotion WordPress Hosting Plans
InMotion WordPress Hosting plans are of three options too. They have the Launch plan, Power plan, and Pro plan.
The Launch plan starts at $3.49 a month. The Power plan starts at $4.49 per month, and the Pro starts at $7.49 per month. Their prices depend on their speed, a number of websites, type of support, and others.
4. NameHero
NameHero is just about 5 years in the web hosting business. It was founded in 2015 in the US with its servers situated in Michigan and Arizona. They are ranked the best WordPress web hosts for this year, 2020 by Darrel Wilson – BusinessInsider.
They offer high-speed cloud hosting for websites of different sizes. Their high-speed optimization is enabled by their cloud hosting technology which accepts a huge volume of web traffic. Users can choose from a variety of their hosting plans which include shared hosting plans, reseller, and VPS hosting plans.
And instead of making attractive offers of unlimited web hosting for their customers, like most web hosting companies do to attract customers, but only to offer them frustrating experiences after their users attain a particular figure. NameHero rather offers affordable services that meet their requirements and customer expectations.
NameHero’s shared hosting plans are accompanied by free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and free SSD that are secured by RAID 10. SSDs use flash memory for data storage and don’t have moving parts. This helps to speed-up the website’s loading time with less possibility of any hard drive failure. RAID 10 secures the SSDs combining disk striping for data protection and disk mirroring.
NameHero offers shared hosting plans, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting plans. Check out their different hosting plans below:
A. NameHero Shared Hosting Plan
NameHero’s shared hosting plans are in four different options. They offer Starter cloud plan, Plus Cloud plan, Turbo Cloud plan, and Business Cloud plan. NameHero’s four-tier shared hosting plans:
i. Starter Cloud
Users will be able to enjoy all the shared hosting features with just one website, and up to 10,000 monthly visits.
ii. Plus Cloud
Customers can host up to 6 websites, and enjoy shared hosting features. It is best for websites that receive up to 25,000 monthly visitors.
iii. Turbo Cloud
With this plan, users will be able to host an unlimited number of websites, and with up to 50,000 visits a month.
iv. Business Cloud
This plan supports up to 100,000 visits per month and hosts an unlimited number of websites each month.
B. NameHero Reseller Hosting Plan
NameHero’s Reseller option is a great consideration for you to set up your own hosting business. The hosting plan is completely white-labeled, which makes it easy for you to add your own business’ name as a replacement for NameHero, while you also decide your own prices. Use WHMCS to automate the process after making a decision on your desired package. You may also do your set-up manually using Web Host Manager. You will be able to back up your sites and that of your clients every night.
Reseller options are
i. Starter plan
This Startup package plan is the cheapest for a reseller hosting option. It comes with an option of a free domain, a privilege to host as many websites as you want, and free SSL access for all your accounts. The Starter plan also includes 500GB monthly bandwidth and 50GB of SSD storage.
ii. Corporate plan
The Corporate plan comprises the above features with a free dedicated IP, including a complimentary WHMCS license. It also has a monthly bandwidth of 2000GB, and 100GB of SSD storage.
iii. Entrepreneur plan
This is the third option of the three plans, it includes free SSL certificates for all accounts, free domain opportunity, and also being able to host an unlimited client. It also comes with a 2000GB monthly bandwidth and 75GB SSD storage but doesn’t come with a WHMCS license.
C. NameHero VPS Hosting plan
VPS hosting plan is offered by NameHero as a solution for websites already generating over 100,000 visits every month. You will be able to scale the bandwidth allocated, memory-based, and disk space. NameHero VPS offers nightly backups, free domain name, Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificates, and use SSD protection by RAID 10.
This hosting plan comes with four options: Hero 2GB, Hero 4GB plan, Hero 6GB plan, and Hero 8GB plan.
i. Hero 2GB
The NameHero cheapest VPS hosting plan offers 2 CPU cores, a free cPanel license, and 2 dedicated IPs. It allows up to 5TB of traffic, 30GB of SSD storage, and 2GB of RAM.
ii. Hero 4GB
The Hero 4GB plan allows 5TB of bandwidth, 90GB of storage, and 6GB of RAM. Additional features include free cPanel license, 2 dedicated IPs, and 4 CPU cores.
iii. Hero 6GB
This plan allows 6GB of RAM, 90GB of storage, and 5TB of bandwidth, with a free cPanel license, 2 dedicated IPs, and 4 CPU cores.
iv. Hero 8GB
This fourth NameHero VPS option gives room for 120GB of storage, 5TB of bandwidth, 8GB of RAM. More features include free cPanel license, and 2 dedicated IPs, and 6 CPU cores.
All NameHero VPS plans have 99.9% uptime.
5. Lyrical
The Lyrical Host is gaining so much popularity around the world. It is a small and independent hosting provider that offers personalized service. The web host company was kickstarted by Jenni Brown, a blogger in the UK. She began the hosting company having bloggers in mind.
Jenni’s focus was to create a viable alternative to the huge web hosts around that provides personalized service and simple pricing. Hence, Lyrical aims at offering top-tier hosting service to users and not charge that level of prices.
The web host has constantly received a 5/5 star rating on Trust Pilot.
Lyrical Host Price And Plans
Lyrical host offers 3 tiers of plans: Tiny, Mighty, and the Boss plan.
The Tiny plan allows just one website, Mighty plan accepts up to three websites, and the boss plan allows unlimited websites, bandwidth, and storage.
Lyrical web host provides services that are comparable to the premium market end – that means hosts that have price tags that begin with $100 a month mark. And even though Lyrical proffers premium hosting, their charges aren’t premium.
Lyrical monthly plans start at $11.99. Their domain names and prices are revealed on their site here.
6. GeekStorage
GeekStorage is a privately owned web hosting company situated in Norman, Oklahoma. It was founded by Matthew Eli and Jay Higdon, in 2007 with a mission to offer real quality hosting services for developers. They currently have three data centres which are located in the United States, and one in Europe.
GeekStorage offers web hosting plans with a 99.9% guarantee in uptime, PHP and Ruby support, and an enormous bandwidth and SSD storage space. All their hosting plans allow daily offsite backups of your website. And even with their most basic plan, you will benefit from having Site.Pro website builder and RvSiteBuilder installations.
They offer full e-commerce support and free SSL features by Let’s Encrypt for all their plans, which are often only found on higher-priced hosting plans of many other web hosts.
GeekStorage makes use of cPanel for ease of interface navigation for its users. They enable one-click installation of most of their apps by employing Softaculous for their servers. Their available custom server stack aids optimum protection, performance, and efficiency. And all their servers employ CloudFlare and LiteSpeed for great performance and protection.
With the use of RAID 10 protection and SSD storage for their servers, you are assured of excellent integrity of data and high site-loading speed.
GeekStorage has hosting packages that are categorized into 5 different aspects. They have Unlimited hosting, Performance Hosting, Reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and Dedicated servers. With their unlimited plan, you’ll get unlimited SSD storage space, email accounts, bandwidth, subdomains, and MariaDB databases – a faster alternative to MySQL.
Their packages emphasize a lot on their server speed. With slightly ranging differences in pricing plans, you will be given access to a wide range of features and services. Every tier on VPS hosting doubles in the price range and allows double the SSD storage, RAM, CPU cores, and network port speed. You also have different management levels to meet users’ budgets and needs for their hosting plans. They have the self-managed level, basic management level, and the Premium management level.
GeekStorage users are allowed to upgrade or downgrade their plans at any point with a process that is quick and hassle-free. They also offer a 30-day refund upon dissatisfaction in their services.
GeekStorage has great reviews on TrustPilot with a 4/5 rating. Their unlimited Web Hosting plans are Economy plan, Deluxe plan, Business plan, PX-1, PX-2, and PX-3.
i. Economy plan – This will give you access to unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, 3 hosted domains, and a monthly fee of $7.99.
ii. Deluxe plan – This offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited SSD storage, unlimited hosted domains, and $10.99.
iii. Business plan – This offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited SSD storage, unlimited domains hosted, and $26.99 per month.
iv. PX-1 – With PX-1 you’ll have access to 10GB storage, 3 hosted domains, and $7.99 per month.
v. PX-2 – With this plan, you will be able to use 20GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosted domains, and a $10.99 fee per month.
vi. PX-3 – It offers 40GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth and Hosted Domains, and a $15.99 monthly fee.
Resellers of Webmasters needing high performance and flexible hosting can consider VPS hosting plan starting at $7.50 per month. And for webmasters and resellers who prefer high-performance hosting and dedicated resources, Dedicated plans would do at a starting fee of $99 per month.
7. HawkHost
HawkHost was founded in 2004. It currently boasts of data centers situated in different areas around the world. These locations include New York City, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Dallas, Amsterdam, Toronto, and Singapore.
The company has a client area that supports 25 different languages. They have 2 shared hosting, 2 semi-dedicated hostings, 3 reseller hosting, 3 VPS hosting plans, 2 cloud hosting plans, and 5 cloud server plans, with free SSL certificates and domain services.
Hawkhost shared hosting plans come with Primary and Professional hosting plans. Their Primary plans are $2.99 per month with 10GB space, and the Professional plan is $7.99.s And they have features such as free unlimited SSL certificates, CloudLinux OS, Unlimited bandwidth, MySQL/MariaDB, databases, 10 GB to unlimited SSD storage, domains, unlimited IMAP/POP3 email accounts, free migrations, cageFS, and Imunify360 for optimal security, support for multiple versions of PHP, Python, Ruby, and free Memcached server.
They have affordable hosting prices with a 30-day guarantee of refund to cut down on the risk of a significant commitment. They have great customer support that can be reached through the ticket system, email, live chat, online contact form, and phone. Their blog is imbued with vital information about their services and tutorials.
Hawk Host Reseller hosting plan starts at $12.99 per month. With the reseller plan, you will be able to create your own web hosting business and make good cash.
The Semi-dedicated hosting starts at $15.99 per month. It offers all the benefits you’d get from shared hosting, along with extra memory, CPU, emails, and much more.
Cloud compute is $5 per month, with full root access, and unprecedented scalability.
VPS hosting starts at $5 per month and with this, you’ll be able to customize anything you need and much more.
Worst Web Hosting Companies
While we have a list of the best performing web hosting companies around, there are others we just will not advise anyone to put their money and time on. These worst web hosting companies have rated by my experience with them, reviews, and the experiences of others.
We strongly advise you not to go for any of these hosting service providers to avoid ugly experiences with your business:
1. Bluehost
Bluehost has been around for quite a long time and its website currently boasts of them hosting over 2 million websites around the globe. But does customer experiences actually reveal anything great about this web host? Well, here are a few things you must read about Bluehost.
i. Bluehost’s Persistent Technical Flaws
This web host has continued to record repeated technical issues. How many times have I experienced cPanel showdown? A host of several other reviews also reveal some recurrent technical issues experienced by thousands of other users. And why is the issue recurrent on Bluehost?
EIG is the cause. EIG manages Bluehost and a host of over 80 other hosting companies. And to maximize profits, they often pack more than required websites into a server. And because of the huge load on the server, the server finds it difficult to handle and thereby crashes. Well, since there are good programmers available, the server is restored.
But then, the real problem is not solved. The server still serves more than required websites and hence crashes again after some time. And then it’s restored again. And then crashes again, and the cycle keeps going on.
ii. They Use Unethical And Unprincipled Business Practices
Bluehost incur unending customer complaints as a result of their unethical pattern of doing business. EIG is still a key culprit here. They lure people to opt for their program through some unconventional means only to squeeze some penny out of them. For instance, you are offered a juicy $2.95 per month for their hosting plan only if you will sign up for a 3-year package to claim that offer.
But the odd thing is that if you would rather just test things for a period of 12-months, you will have to pay $7.99 per month. And if you decide to back out of the package after just using 12 months, you will not receive a refund for the remaining 24 months. You can only request a refund after just 30 days. However, there are several better alternatives that make it easy for you to get a year hosting plan at cheaper rates.
Another red-light is the staggering figure of bitter complaints you’ll read regarding Bluehost’s payments. And if a lot of people are making such complaints, it is only wise to cool down and think properly before making a forward decision with the web host.
iii. Poor Customer Support Team
One of the core features of a progressing company is its customer support system. Bluehost’s customer support is not helpful and reliable to their customers. If you haven’t begun to enjoy the great services of the much better web hosting companies such as SiteGround, you may not understand the frustrating effect of Bluehost’s customer service.
A Blogger once ran into an issue with his website. He was terrified, thinking his website was hacked and tried to contact their customer support immediately. There was however no response from the team until after about an hour!
In fact, when the customer service rep eventually showed up, he didn’t seem to have a bit of empathy. He kept dishing out blames to the blogger over the issue. The fault was simply that the SSL certificate had expired and there was no auto-renew set. But their free SSL was actually not expected to come with an expired date – at least not without the knowledge of their customers. But then, in resolving, it still took some more hours to get the website fully restored again.
That should have been enough of a dilemma. He thereafter resumed working, and at a point asked two of his friends to provide him some feedback on his contents. Well, he got a terrifying response that his website could not be accessed. Apparently, the initial issue wasn’t totally solved.
The blogger guy managed to put in a final support request and switched over to one of the best web hosting companies with a far better customer support team, SiteGround.
2. GoDaddy
GoDaddy should rather keep the focus on selling domain names rather than offering web hosting services. Their customer support doesn’t exist at all. They have a server time-out rate which is at a very alarming rate and a rather infuriating marketing tactic.
GoDaddy presents a bunch of services which they regard “necessary items” and expect you to pay for to receive a functioning professional presence online. For instance, they sell search engine visibility and ‘SEO’ packages which can cost you over $70 annually but actually produce no noticeable result on your website.
You won’t see them offering suggestions to help your ranking, or doing any alteration on your page. All you can literally access is a ‘buy it’ button expected to do some SEO trick for you. That is absolutely unrealistic.
GoDaddy has very slow servers too. They try to cut down costs by adding too many websites on their servers, which often results in some ugly experiences by users.
They often hold domains in their care for ransom. If for any reason you forgot to renew your domain, GoDaddy will only give you the privilege to get it back after paying some exorbitant fees to recover it. Unlike other domains that will expire and slide back into the sea of unused domains, GoDaddy will request an expiration fee of $80 from you. And they will put out the domain for sale with hopes that someone else will grab your domain name. That is horrible.
Their DNS is sticky. They have a back end or user interface that appears confusing and clunky. Their email is garbage too. They give fewer concerns about Web security. A bot or user may be at your login screen making several guesses of your passwords without getting any security move from GoDaddy.
3. Atspace
You may consider Atspace if you have a website with terrible traffic. Or you just want to learn a few things about hosting. Otherwise, Atspace is a horrible option to consider. Even when considering the free option of this web host.
You’ll continue to enjoy free hosting until you start getting some fair traffic on your website. And since it is free, your hosting plan will become an avenue for ridiculous advertisements. When you switch to their paid plans, it still stays the same. They also employ dubious strategies such as advertising or redirecting in your error pages.
Their WordPress hosting services are a huge mess. And a large chunk of tools used in running a fast content management website fails with this web hosting. What about their support team?
They always see nothing with them and their servers. The blames always turn back to you, your themes, plugin, or even WordPress.
Currently using bluehost right now and it’s been great but siteground seems really interesting might just migrate soon.
That’s interesting. If you find Bluehost great then why not stick with it? Are you monitoring for pagespeed and uptime? Curious