Websites are the most important places for an online presence to grow your business. Creating your website and maintaining it with constant improvements is essential. Web hosting service providers have a pretty important role for websites, and we are here to help you choose the best web hosting service provider for your needs. There are many web hosting service companies around, and all of them have different plans, offerings, freebies, hosting types, and, most importantly, performance.
The other thing to consider while choosing best web hosting service provider is the cost. The charge of the expenses in the web hosting industry is quite interesting. They come as packages with some of the services included and some excluded. For example, an X company brings a free domain with its most basic plan, but its CDN service is not free. In this case, this is not a suitable hosting service for a customer who already has a domain and needs CDN service for better global reach. That’s why those looking for a web hosting service should consider those variables depending on their needs.
Potential customers should keep in mind that the costs of web hosting services can often be misleading. Most web hosting companies offer very low, discounted prices for the initial period, but after that, the prices can go many times higher than expected. Sadly, this pricing seems an industry standard since almost every company does the same. You should check and plan for the non-discounted prices for the future of your website.
Here are the best web hosting services in 2023
| Bluehost | Best shared web hosting overall |
|---|---|
| G-Core Labs | Best server location options |
| Hostinger | Best WordPress hosting |
| SiteGround | Best easy-to-use hosting |
| HostGator | Best shared web hosting |
| A2 Hosting | Best flexible web hosting |
| InMotion Hosting | Best reseller web hosting |
| GreenGeeks | Best green web hosting |
| Liquid Web | Best managed web hosting |
| NameCheap | Best unlimited web hosting |
Gcore
| Hosting types: | Dedicated, VPS |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $3.70/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.99% |
| Server locations: | 42 different locations all around the world |
| Money-back guarantee: | – |
| Bandwidth: | Unlimited (Limited on some locations) |
G-Core Labs is a high-tier hosting, CDN, and network infrastructure company that has been around since 2011. They have launched their first services; CDN and web hosting, in 2016. G-Core Labs offers a variety of services such as video streaming as well.
G-Core Labs offers VPS and dedicated server options with a lot of choices. The most impressive part of G-Core Labs’ hosting plans is the number of data centers in their catalog. They have 42 locations to choose from in addition to 10 more to be added in the future. They have so many choices that we can’t simply put all of them here.
The cheapest options of G-Core Labs’ VPS hosting services offer 1 core CPU with 512 MB RAM and 20 GB SSD storage, and it runs Linux operating system. This tier offers a 200 Mbit/s connection speed, but the included total traffic is limited for some of the locations to 1000 GB, but not limited for other locations. The options can go up to 8 core CPU, 32 GB RAM, 1.2 TB storage, and a Windows operating system running on the server.
G-Core Labs charges no money for server and OS installation and provides DDoS protection on their Certified Tier III data centers. Their instances utilize the ISPmanager control panel which is very user-friendly and lets the administrator make any changes on the system easily. G-Core Labs also allows the users to choose the web server between Apache and Nginx. They guarantee 200 Mbit/s connection speeds as well. One of the most crucial features of web hosting companies, support, is also offered 24/7 in multi-language.
G-Core Labs works with a lot of gaming companies. In gaming, availability and latency are crucial. This gives us an idea about their servers’ quality.
G-Core Labs plans and pricing
As we said before, G-Core Labs offers so many options in so many different locations. We will just pick some of them as examples below.
- 1 CPU core, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, and Linux OS. It costs $3.7 per month in Amsterdam.
- 2 CPU core, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD, and Linux OS. It costs $10.3 per month in Amsterdam.
- 4 CPU core, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD, and Linux OS. It costs $25.3 per month in Amsterdam.
- 6 CPU core, 6 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD, and Linux OS. It costs $40.25 per month in Amsterdam.
- 2 CPU core, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD, and Windows OS. It costs $45.95 per month in Istanbul.
- 4 CPU core, 8 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD, and Windows OS. It costs $64.99 per month in Singapore.
- 8 CPU core, 16 GB RAM, 400 GB SSD, and Windows OS. It costs $93.25 per month in Amsterdam.
- 8 CPU core, 32 GB RAM, 600 GB SSD, and Windows OS. It costs $97.75 per month in Istanbul.
G-Core Labs’ VPS plans all include the same services except hardware capabilities and total traffic limitations in some locations. So, there is no confusion here with complicated plans with “free” extras.
- VPS hosting plans range from $3.70 to $116.40
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $104 to $95
Advantages and Disadvantages of G-Core Labs
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ A lot of locations to choose from | ✘ No domain or SSL included |
| ✔ A lot of hardware options to choose from | ✘ No NVMe drive options |
| ✔ Fairly cheap | |
| ✔ No “charge more after the first period” policy | |
| ✔ Option to select between Apache and Nginx |
Bluehost
| Hosting types: | Shared, Dedicated, VPS |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $2.95/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.98% |
| Server locations: | The USA (Utah), India, China, Brasil |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 day |
| Bandwidth: | Unlimited |
Since 2003, Bluehost has been one of the world’s biggest web hosting service providers. The company offers various hosting choices, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. It also offers specialized WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting.
Bluehost includes most of the necessities to shoot a website, even with the most basic plan: Shared Hosting – Basic. Your website’s domain comes free – for 1 year. Your Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate is ready without hassle too, as well as free Cloudflare CDN. The company also provides a website builder with WordPress integration. It uses cPanel & WHM as the control panel.
Bluehost provides fast SSD drives for all of its plans. Storage is unlimited except the cheapest option, Shared Hosting – Basic, limiting the storage to 50 GB which is still quite good. There is no free automatic backup feature. Bandwidth is unlimited on all of their plans.
The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. But you should keep in mind that the introductory prices will go up when your first plan expires. Getting into the 36-month offers is the best choice to save money.
We should also note that Bluehost is one of three hosting companies WordPress officially recommends.
Bluehost plans and pricing
Bluehost offers four different plans for its shared hosting service: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro.
- The “Basic” plan delivers 1 website support with 50 GB SSD storage. It provides a free website builder. The plan also has a free domain, SSL certificate, and CDN service for better delivery for better performance. It costs $2.95 per month.
- The “Plus” plan gives everything that the Basic plan provides and changes the number of websites supported and the limit of the SSD storage to “unlimited”. It also delivers 1-month Office 365. It costs $5.45 per month.
- The “Choice Plus” adds free domain privacy and free automated backup to the Plus plan while it costs the same. However, after the discount term ends, it will cost $18.99, unlike the Plus plan, which costs $13.99.
- The “Pro” plan delivers optimized CPU resources as well as free dedicated IP in addition to all the benefits of the Choice Plus plan. It costs $13.95 per month.
For BlueHost, the basic plan seems quite reasonable for one website. Customers should be careful while choosing between Plus and Choice Plus plans; they have different renewal prices.
- Shared hosting plans range from $2.95 to $13.95
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $79.99 to $119.99
- VPS hosting plans range from $18.99 to $59.99
Bluehost speed and uptime
BlueHost’s average response time for the last 6 months is 332 milliseconds. In the same time scope, the web hosting service provider’s uptime is 99.98%. Those are pretty decent numbers and reflect the quality of the hosting.
Advantages and disadvantages of Bluehost
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free SSL with all plans | ✘ Prices go up once the first plan expires |
| ✔ Free domain with all plans | ✘ There is no uptime guarantee |
| ✔ Free CDN with all plans | |
| ✔ SSD storage | |
| ✔ 99.95% average uptime |
Hostinger
| Hosting types: | Shared, Cloud, cPanel, WordPress, VPS, CyberPanel |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $1.39/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.95% |
| Server locations: | The Netherlands, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, the USA, Brazil |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 day |
| Bandwidth: | ~10000 Visits Monthly |
Hostinger is one of the earlier-founded hosting companies with the date of foundation of 2004. It was known as Hosting Media before, the company provides several different hosting options like shared hosting, cPanel hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting as well as CyberPanel VPS hosting.
The most basic plan of Hostinger, which is a shared web hosting with a plan name “Single” and priced at $1.39, provides a free SSL certificate, 30 GB SSD storage, and 100 GB bandwidth. It comes with a single e-mail account and gets weekly backups automatically. It does not offer a free domain on the cheapest plan, but all other shared hosting plans as well as cloud hosting options, have a free domain registration for 12 months.
One of the most important things to consider while selecting Hostinger as a web hosting service provider is its non-cPanel control panel. It comes with a simplified panel that supports WordPress on a CloudLinux platform. For those who used cPanel for many years, this might be a thing to “get used to”. On the other hand, this panel might be even better for starters with its simplified interface.
Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The company does not have 24/7 phone support. Instead, problems are mostly solved via live chat, which is only accessible after logging into your account.
Hostinger plans and pricing
Hostinger is offering three different plans for its shared hosting service: Single, Premium, and Business.
- Single shared hosting plan delivers 1 website support on 30 GB SSD storage. One e-mail account is free with this plan in addition to an SSL certificate. It is also WordPress-managed; which will make things easier to configure. Bandwidth is limited to 100 GB in this plan. It costs $1.39 per month.
- Premium shared hosting plan has all the benefits of Single plan, and it removes bandwidth limit. It adds a free domain to the basket and increases the number of websites supported to 100 and increases the SSD storage limit to 100 GB. The number of e-mail addresses that can be obtained raises to 100 as well. It costs $2.59 per month.
- Business shared hosting has all of the benefits of the Premium plan. In addition, the SSD storage capacity is increased to 200 GB and you gain daily backups and CDN services. It costs $3.99 per month.
Hostinger’s Premium Shared Hosting adds a free domain into the basked and Google Ads credits. The prices are similar to the Single plan, especially after the first period expires. Premium Shared Hosting plan seems reasonable; even you are aiming single website.
- Shared hosting plans range from $1.39 to $3.99
- Cloud hosting plans range from $9.99 to $69.99
- cPanel hosting plans range from $2.59 to $3.59
- WordPress hosting plans range from $1.99 to $11.99
- VPS hosting plans range from $3.99 to $77.99
- CyberPanel VPS hosting $3.95 to $77.99
Hostinger performance and uptime
Hostinger brings fast SSD storage for all of its plans. Hostinger’s response time on average of the last 6 months is 330ms. The company also has had an average of 99.95% uptime for the last 6 months.
Advantages and disadvantages of Hostinger
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free SSL with all plans | ✘ cPanel users might need time to get used to |
| ✔ Fast response times | ✘ Support queues might take some time |
| ✔ Easier control panel for beginners | |
| ✔ SSD storage | |
| ✔ Free weekly backups |
SiteGround
| Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, WooCommerce, Cloud |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $3.99/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.99% |
| Server locations: | The USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Singapore |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 day |
| Bandwidth: | ~10000 Visits Monthly |
Since 2004, SiteGround is an experienced web hosting service provider. It is also one of the highest-rated service providers by customers. SiteGround has shared hosting, WordPress, WooCommerce, cloud, and reseller hosting options.
SiteGround is a web hosting service provider which puts quality over quantity. Hosting on SiteGround costs higher than the average, and it provides lower storage than the other hosting providers. It also does not offer a free domain but brings free SSL, CDN, unlimited e-mail addresses, etc. The most basic plan, StartUp, has 10 GB of storage with “unmetered” traffic bandwidth.
SiteGround comes with a custom panel instead of cPanel. The custom panel, Site Tools, delivers what an administrator needs but in a different interface. Therefore, getting used to the custom panel might cause a little hassle. The panel lets users to backup websites daily for free. On-demand backups are also possible.
The web hosting service provider brings SSD storage for all of its plans, no matter how cheap it is. SSD storage makes the websites more responsive. On the other hand, SiteGrounds is using Google Cloud Platform servers as well as free CDN options. Those combined enable creating super-fast websites even with the cheapest plans.
SiteGround has a 30-day money-back guarantee much like other service providers.
SiteGround plans and pricing
SiteGrounds has three different plans for its shared hosting services: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
- StartUp plan supports 1 website on its 10 GB of “webspace” since its hosting service is built on Google Cloud platforms. SSL and CDN come free as well as daily backups. There is no limit for e-mail accounts, and it comes as a managed WordPress form. It costs $3.99 per month.
- GrowBig removes the number limit of the websites of the StartUp plan and adds 10 more gigabytes of storage. With this plan, users can create backup copies when they need them free of charge. It costs $6.69 per month.
- GoGeek is the highest shared hosting plan of SiteGround as it delivers all of the benefits of GrowBig while doubling the web space storage. It also adds benefits of better resources and priority support. It costs $10.69 per month.
SiteGround’s StartUp plan seems to be reasonable for one website. However, you might need to upgrade it when your website reaches monthly 10k traffic.
- Shared hosting plans range from $3.99 to $10.69
- WordPress hosting plans range from $3.99 to $10.69
- WooCommerce hosting plans range from $3.99 to $10.69
- Cloud hosting plans range from $100 to $400
SiteGround speed and uptime
SiteGround promises 99.9% uptime; they will provide 1-month free hosting if their uptime comes between 99.9% and 99.0%. Every 1% missing uptime will provide additional 1-month free hosting to your account. Looking at the last 6 months, SiteGround has had an average of 99.99% uptime and 445 milliseconds response time.
Advantages and disadvantages of SiteGround
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free CDN | ✘ A bit more expensive than competitors |
| ✔ Unlimited e-mail accounts even with the basic plan | ✘ No free domains |
| ✔ Fast Google Cloud Platform servers | |
| ✔ Free daily backups | |
| ✔ Concrete uptime promise |
HostGator
| Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, VPS, Dedicaed, Reseller |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $2.75/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.98% |
| Server locations: | The USA, Brasil |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 days |
| Bandwidth: | Unmetered |
Founded in 2002, HostGator is a quite old web hosting service provider company. HostGator has offers of pretty cheap options which is one of the main reasons to choose them. The company has shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting service options.
Starting with 2.75$ per month, HostGator is one of the most economical web hosting service providers around. The most basic plan, which is named Hatchling, delivers a free SSL certificate and a domain and unlimited bandwidth and disk space. And it comes with a free WordPress and cPanel website transfer service option that generally costs a lot on other service providers.
HostGator uses cPanel as its control panel, one of the most common hosting control panels. It allows one-click WordPress installation. There is also a free website builder tool for creating a basic website for beginners. POP3 e-mail accounts with SMTP are also free and unlimited.
One of the best sides of HostGator is its support. The company has 24/7 phone call support for the whole year, every day. This might be an important thing to consider for webmasters to be able to reach all the time as well as beginners who might need phone support for website deployment.
HostGator has a 45-days money-back guarantee, which is above industry-standard 30 days.
HostGator plans and pricing
HostGator has three different shared hosting plans named Hatchling, Baby, and Business.
- Hatchling plan supports 1 website and it is ready for an immediate WordPress installation. Bandwidth is unlimited, a free domain included as well as an SSL certificate. Free migration comes with this cheapest plan, which makes it quite appealing. It costs $2.75 per month.
- Baby plan delivers every benefit of the Hatchling plan and removes the number limit of the supported websites. It costs $3.50 per month.
- Business plan has the same benefits as the Baby plan in addition to dedicated IP and SEO tools. It also offers to upgrade SSL certificates with Positive SSL free of charge.
HostGator’s Hatchling and Baby plans have no difference except the number of the websites. For one website, go for the Hatchling plan.
- Shared hosting plans range from $2.75 to $5.25
- WordPress hosting plans range from $5.95 to $9.95
- VPS hosting plans range from $23.95 to $59.95
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $89.98 to $139.99
- Reseller hosting plans range from $19.95 to $24.95
HostGator speed and uptime
CDN is free only for the top-tier plan, named Business, looking at the shared hosting options. SSD drives are being used all over the hosting plans, even on the most basic plan, Hatchling. HostGator has a pretty nice response time too, just an average of 655 milliseconds for the last 6 months. HostGator’s uptime for the last 6 months is about 99.98%, which is impressive.
Advantages and disadvantages of HostGator
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Pretty cheap | ✘ Prices go up a lot when the discount expires |
| ✔ Free migration is something to consider | ✘ Limited basic plan features |
| ✔ Unlimited e-mail accounts | |
| ✔ Phone support is active whole year, every day, every hour | |
| ✔ Uptime is impressive |
A2 Hosting
| Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, Managed WordPress, VPS, Managed VPS, Dedicated, Managed Dedicated, Reseller |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $2.99/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.97% |
| Server locations: | The USA, The United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 day |
| Bandwidth: | Unlimited |
A2 Hosting was founded in 2001; they have been in the industry for more than 20 years. The web hosting service provider offers nice combinations with its cheap and low-tier plans. But A2 Hosting shines on the high-tier plans with more advanced hardware. They offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, managed VPS hosting, WordPress hosting, managed WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, managed dedicated hosting, and reseller hosting plans.
A2 Hosting offers 100 GB SSD storage on its entry-level plan, Startup for $2.99 per month if you choose to go for 36 months. Even the cheapest option comes with several benefits such as unlimited e-mail accounts, a free SSL certificate, and provides website staging with Softaculous. The most remarkable benefit of A2 Hosting is the free site migration option. With this benefit, the beginner-level website owners will be able to carry their website to A2 Hosting without hassle.
A2 Hosting has a website builder tool that helps create a most-basic website with ease. The company uses cPanel as its control panel so the developers and administrators won’t face a non-familiar control panel.
One of the key benefits of A2 Hosting is being able to choose the data center location. A2 lets its users choose their data center, even on the Startup tier. While the company offers all SSD drives on their low and mid-tier plans, it also has plans with NVMe storage. The Turbo plans come with NVMe drives that are much faster than SSDs. A2 is one of the earliest adopters of the new storage hardware, NVMe which will be widespread like SSDs in the future.
The company has a full year of 24/7 live chat, phone call, ticket, and e-mail support options.
A2 Hosting plans and pricing
A2 Hosting has four shared hosting plans for its shared hosting service: Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost, and Turbo Max.
- Startup plan comes with a 1-website support and 100 GB SSD as well as the big value of free website migration. It also delivers an SSL certificate and it lets you choose the hosting location. It costs $2.99 per month.
- Drive plan has unlimited website support and it brings free automatic backups on the table. Resources are doubled in the Drive plan and the SSD storage limit is removed. Users can also create an unlimited number of e-mail accounts on this tier. It costs $5.99 per month.
- Turbo Boost delivers all the lower-tier plans’ benefits in addition to the “Turbo” feature for loading websites up to 20x faster. In this tier, SSDs are replaced with NVMe drives that deliver vastly improved read/write performance. It costs $6.99 per month.
- Turbo Max is the highest shared hosting tier and it multiplies the resources by 5, compared to the Startup plan. It costs $12.99 per month.
A2 Hosting’s Startup plan provides what ha single website needs. However, the Turbo Boost plan increases the performance by far with NVMe drives, which might be useful for search engine optimizations. You might want to consider the Turbo Boost pack even if you are aiming for one website.
- Shared hosting plans range from $2.99 to $12.99
- WordPress hosting plans range from $2.99 to $12.99
- Managed WordPress hosting plans range from $11.99 to $41.99
- VPS hosting plans range from $4.99 to $74.99
- Managed VPS hosting plans range from $39.99 to $99.99
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $129.99 to $219.99
- Managed dedicated hosting plans range from $179.99 to $279.99
- Reseller hosting plans range from $18.99 to $52.99
A2 Hosting speed and uptime
A2 Hosting has had an average response time of 300 ms for the last 6 months, which is quite fast. In the same time scope, their uptime is about 99.97%.
Advantages and disadvantages of A2 Hosting
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Low response times on Turbo tier plans | ✘ Data center migration is not free |
| ✔ Their support is active whole year | ✘ Automatic backup is not free on the Startup tier |
| ✔ Users can choose data center location | |
| ✔ They offer quite large storage for even the most basic plan | |
| ✔ Free migration |
InMotion Hosting
| Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, VPS, Managed/cPanel Dedicated, Bare Metal Dedicated |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $2.49/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.99% |
| Server locations: | The USA |
| Money-back guarantee: | 90 day |
| Bandwidth: | Unlimited |
InMotion Hosting is founded in 2001 and is owned by its employees. The web hosting service provider company offers a variety of plans for shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and reseller hosting options.
“Core” is the name of InMotion Hosting’s most basic shared hosting plan. It starts at $2.49. It comes with free tools as well as unlimited bandwidth and 100 GB SSD storage. “Core” plan supports 2 websites, which is unusual for the lowest-tier plans. SSL certificate and 10 e-mail accounts are also included in this plan.
InMotion Hosting offers cPanel as the control panel. It has a one-click WordPress installation capability on all tiers of plans. BoldGrid Website Builder tool is also included for creating some basic websites without needing advanced technical knowledge.
InMotion Hosting has already adopted the most advanced storage tech, NVMe. The web hosting service provider brings NVMe drives to almost all of its plans, even the cheapest ones except the Core plan. NVMe drives are the fastest ones and it makes the websites more responsive.
InMotion Hosting offers a 90-day money-back guarantee as well.
InMotion Hosting plans and pricing
InMotion hosting has four different plans for its shared hosting service: Core, Launch, Power, and Pro.
- Core plan can serve 2 websites at once with a free SSL certificate. It comes with 100 GB SSD storage and offers 10 e-mail accounts. Core plan comes with unlimited bandwidth. It costs $2.49 per month.
- Launch plan improves Core plan with the addition of free domain, limitless websites, and storage. It also upgrades the SSDs to NVMe drives that boost websites’ responsiveness. The limit on the number of e-mails lifted and brings a 6x UltraStack feature for further performance improvement. It costs $4.99 per month.
- Power plan takes the Launch plan doubles its UltraStack speed and adds advanced caching to the basket. It also costs $4.99 per month but its renewal is $15.99, while the Launch plan costs $11.99 after the first term ends.
- Pro plan takes the UltraStack performance up to 20x and it delivers a legal agreement for 99.99% uptime. It costs $12.99 per month.
InMotion Hosting’s Core plan supports not one, but two websites already. But the Launch plan comes with NVMe drives as well as a free domain. You might want to choose the Launch plan even if you are aiming for one website.
- Shared hosting plans range from $2.49 to $12.99
- WordPress hosting plans range from $6.99 to $19.99
- VPS hosting plans range from $19.99 to $59.99
- Managed/cPanel dedicated hosting plans range from $139.99 to $539.99
- Bare metal dedicated hosting plans range from $99.99 to $499.99
InMotion Hosting speed and uptime
InMotion hosting has had an average response time of 350 milliseconds for the last six months. Looking at the hosting provider’s uptime, it stands shining by 99.99%.
Advantages and disadvantages of InMotion Hosting
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free SSL | ✘ Prices are higher than competitors |
| ✔ NVMe drives almost on all plans | ✘ Pricing is a bit confusing |
| ✔ Impressive uptime | |
| ✔ 90-day money-back guarantee | |
| ✔ 10 e-mail accounts on Core plan |
GreenGeeks
| Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $2.95/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.96% |
| Server locations: | The USA, Canada, the Netherlands |
| Money-back guarantee: | 30 day |
| Bandwidth: | Unlimited |
GreenGeeks is one of the younger web hosting service providers around with its foundation date of 2008. The company uses 100% renewable energy on its servers for the sake of the environment. GreenGeeks offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and reseller hosting on its plans.
The tiers of shared hosting and WordPress hosting are quite similar on GreenGeeks. The most basic plan on shared hostings, which is named Lite and priced at $2.95, is limited to one website and 50 GB of SSD storage. However, it brings a free SSL certificate as well as a free domain for the first year. Every-day backup is also included. Even the most basic plans on GreenGeeks come with free CDN. We should mention that they plant one tree for each plan.
The company uses cPanel and Softaculous combination for managing and improving the websites. The users of GreenGeeks can choose to use the free drag-and-drop website builder as well as transfer their existing website from another host free of charge.
GreenGeeks offers fast SSD drives that are configured as RAID-10 arrays on all of their plans. With the combination of SSD drives and free CDN, GreenGeeks aims to deliver nice speeds and low response times. However, their response times are not the greatest in the industry.
Also, GreenGeeks has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
GreenGeeks plans and pricing
GreenGeeks has three different tiers for its shared hosting plans: Lite, Pro, and Premium.
- The entry-level tier, Lite, supports 1 website on its 50 GB SSD storage. It delivers a free SSL certificate as well as a domain name. This is a managed WordPress hosting and it delivers CDN as well. It has free daily backup support. Users can create up to 50 free e-mail accounts. It costs $2.95 per month.
- Pro plan removes the website number limit and offers a “better performance” on its unlimited SSD storage. It also removes the free e-mail accounts limit. It delivers on-demand-backups and free access to WordPress Repair Tool as well. It costs $5.95 per month.
- Premium tier has an upgraded performance and it comes with dedicated IP and free Alpha SSL. It costs $10.95 per month.
GreenGeeks’ Lite plan delivers what you need for one website. However, the “Better performance” on the Pro tier might be reasonable for search engine optimizations as well.
- Shared hosting plans range from $2.95 to $10.95
- WordPress hosting plans range from $2.95 to $10.95
- VPS hosting plans range from $39.95 to $109.95
- Reseller hosting plans range from $19.95 to $34.95
GreenGeeks speed and uptime
The average response time of GreenGeeks hosting in the last 6 months is 520 milliseconds. The uptime of GreenGeeks in the same time scope is 99.96%.
Advantages and disadvantages of GreenGeeks
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Environment-friendly hosting | ✘ Not the fastest hosting around |
| ✔ Free website migration | ✘ Most basic plan is limited to 1 website |
| ✔ Free CDN | |
| ✔ Pretty cheap | |
| ✔ Domain and SSL included |
Liquid Web
| Hosting types: | Managed WordPress, Linux VPS, Windows VPS, Cloud, Dedicated |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $13.30/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.995% |
| Server locations: | The USA, the Netherlands |
| Money-back guarantee: | 14 days Free Trial |
| Bandwidth: | Ranging from 2 TB to 10 TB |
One of the oldest web hosting service providers, Liquid Web was founded in 1997. The company focuses on bigger businesses rather than personal blogs or small businesses. Therefore, Liquid Web does not offer shared hosting options. The company has Linux VPS hosting, Windows VPS hosting, cloud hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and dedicated hosting plans. The company provides WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento hosting services via its partner, Nexcess.
The most basic tier under managed WordPress hosting plans is named Spark. This tier provides 15 GB SSD storage and has a bandwidth limit of 2 TB. It provides unlimited e-mail accounts. The company offers free website migration on those plans. In addition to those features, Spark brings free backups and free SSL certificates. This tier costs $190 annually with no increment on the price when it expires.
Liquid Web offers a variety of three different control panels: Plesk InterWorx and cPanel. This might help developers to select their favorite control panel or shift their control panel depending on the needs. Either way, it is good to have the ability to choose control panels.
Liquid Web has an option to take full advantage of managed WordPress hosting as a free trial for full 14 days. The users can just try the features and speed before buying the full package.
Liquid Web plans and pricing
Liquid Web has seven different tiers for its most basic service, managed WordPress hosting: Spark, Maker, Designer, Builder, Producer, Executive, and Enterprise.
- Spark tier has 1 website support on 15 GB SSD storage and offers up to 2 TB bandwidth. It has no limit for e-mail accounts but has a 2 TB bandwidth limit. It gives free SSL as well. It costs $13.30 per month.
- Maker tier upgrades website support to 5 and SSD storage to 40 GB. The bandwidth limit goes up to 3 TB. The plan gives free SSL for every website on it. It costs $55.30 per month.
- Designer tier upgrades website support to 10 and SSD storage to 60 with 4 TB bandwidth limit. It costs $76.30 per month.
- Builder tier upgrades website support to 25 and storage to 100 GB. It has a 5 TB bandwidth limit. It costs $104.30 per month.
- Producer tier offers 50 websites on 300 GB storage with 5 TB bandwidth. It costs $209.30 per month.
- Executive tier brings up 100 websites on 500 GB SSD storage with 10 TB bandwidth. It costs $384.30 per month.
- Enterprise tier has a 250-website limit with 800 GB SSD storage. It has a 10 TB bandwidth. It costs $699.30 per month.
LiquidWeb’s hosting tiers’ prices vary much more than the other hosting companies. Choosing the Spark plan is quite reasonable for one website. In the next tier, Maker, the price increases as much as $42 per month.
- Managed WordPress hosting plans range from $13.30 to $699.30
- Linux VPS hosting plans range from $15 to $125
- Windows VPS hosting plans range from $54 to $169
- Cloud hosting $150
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $169 to $549
Liquid Web speed and uptime
Liquid Web hosting has an uptime of 99.995% for 6 months, which is impressive. The response times of the websites also have an average of 270 milliseconds for the last 6 months. While being remarkable, those numbers belong to VPS hosting plans since Liquid Web doesn’t have shared hosting plans.
Advantages and disadvantages of Liquid Web
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ 14-day free trial option | ✘ It is expensive because no shared hosting option |
| ✔ Variety of control panels | ✘ Limited storage on the cheapest plan |
| ✔ Uptime is impressive | ✘ Limited bandwidth |
| ✔ Response time is also impressive | |
| ✔ Free SSL for every website |
NameCheap
| Hosting types: | Shared, Managed WordPress, Reseller, VPS, Dedicated |
|---|---|
| Price: | Starting at $1.58/mo* |
| Uptime: | 99.96% |
| Server locations: | The USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands |
| Money-back guarantee: | – |
| Bandwidth: | – |
NameCheap was founded in 2000 and they have been around for 22 years. The company brings competitive prices to the market with its managed WordPress hosting, shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting services.
NameCheap offers very cheap shared hosting plans, starting from $1.43 per month. The Stellar plan, which is the base tier of the shared hosting plans, brings a free domain name and free CDN for faster access of the assets on the website. This plan can handle 3 websites on its 20 GB SSD storage. A little more expensive tier, Stellar Plus, removes the disk space restriction and makes the number of websites “unlimited”. All shared plans come with free SSL.
NameCheap Stellar shared hosting plan comes with cPanel as its control panel with Softaculous installed on it. Softaculous can handle the installation of needed components to build up a website. Migrating a website to NameCheap is free too.
NameCheap grants users to select the location of the server: USA, UK, or EU. Selecting UK or EU adds an extra fee of $1 per month. But it also brings cloud storage to the table.
NameCheap plans and pricing
NameCheap has three shared hosting plans: Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business.
- Stellar tier supports up to 3 websites on its 20 GB SSD storage. It brings a free domain name as well as a CDN service. The bandwidth is not limited, a free website migration, and free SSL certificates for all websites. It costs $1.58 per month.
- Stellar Plus plan adds an auto-backup feature to the basket and removes website number and SSD storage limits. It offers free SSL certificates for up to 50 websites. It costs $2.68 per month.
- Stellar Business plan delivers the same features as Stellar Plus; but limits the SSD storage to 50 GB while providing access to cloud storage, which provides better performance. It costs $4.68 per month.
NameCheap already offers 3 websites with its most basic plan, Stellar. It is a quite reasonable plan. But if you want extra performance for SEO reasons, you might also consider the Stellar Business tier for its Cloud Storage feature.
- Shared hosting plans range from $1.88 to $5.68
- Managed WordPress hosting plans range from $24.88 to $54.88 (per year)
- Reseller hosting plans range from $17.88 to $56.88
- VPS hosting plans range from $9.88 to $17.88
- Dedicated hosting plans range from $915.88 to $2171.88 (per year)
NameCheap speed and uptime
NameCheap has had an average of 99.96% uptime in the last 6 months. The average response time of the hosting is 377 milliseconds in the same time scope.
Advantages and disadvantages of NameCheap
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free CDN and domain name | ✘ Extra fee for EU and UK servers |
| ✔ Free SSL | ✘ Uptime could be better |
| ✔ Cheapest among its competitors | |
| ✔ Comes with cPanel | |
| ✔ Users can select the location of the server |
FAQs about Web Hosting
What is web hosting? Explanation & meaning
Web hosting is a service you get for keeping your websites on. It is mostly paid subscription on web hosting service providers. They can be either on a single physical computer or virtual machines. There are several web hosting types with different configurations and topologies.
How does web hosting work?
Web hosting companies have very powerful computers, named “servers”, to host a lot of websites. Those servers are meant to work every day, every hour, every second to make sure every web sites are online the whole day. That’s why we can say that web hosting is a very well-maintained computer for rent. Of course, the companies also add the required software and infrastructure for the sake of the competition among them; which minimalized the required effort to run a website.
What are the web hosting types?
Essentially there are 3 types of web hosting: shared, VPS, and dedicated. Shared hosting holds many websites on it and they share the whole resources of the server. VPS hosting is similar to shared but their resources are dedicated as virtual servers. Dedicated hosting uses all server resources for itself and does not share with any website or service.
In addition to these basic models, providers are also adding extra features like WordPress-ready hostings or managed/unmanaged hostings as well as hosting that serves in several locations at once, etc. As a result of these, web hosting service providers add new types of hosting from combinations such as managed WordPress hosting.
- Shared Hosting: Shared hosting generally includes the most basic plans of the web hosting service providers. It shares all the resources on the server with other websites. It is mostly enough for websites with a small audience.
- VPS Hosting: VPS hosting consists of virtual machines on a server. The resources are shared with other VPS websites but it limits the resources for all users. This results in more consistent websites. VPS hosting is good for websites with a small and medium audience.
- Dedicated Hosting: Dedicated hosting is the hosting type that which you don’t share your resources with any other website. The whole server is dedicated to your website. Dedicated hosting is good for websites with a large audience.
- Bare Metal Dedicated hosting: Bare metal dedicated hosting is the same as simple dedicated with an exception: user gets the full server as hardware and all the installations must be done by the user as well as the required maintenance. Bare metal dedicated hosting is good for websites with a large audience and has an IT guy with great knowledge.
- Cloud Hosting: Cloud hosting is the hosting type that has its resources on the cloud network instead of a single computer placed in a server rack. This provides great flexibility and scalability to the user.
- WordPress Hosting: WordPress hosting is generally a shared hosting sub-model that delivers almost all of the necessary tools and software as “ready to use” to the customer. It requires less knowledge to configure. This might also limit the capabilities of standard web hosting. WordPress hosting is good for websites with a small audience.
- Managed Hosting: Managed hosting means the web hosting service provider will handle most of the required website maintenance. Except bare metal, all of the hosting plans might also offer a managed plan. Managed hosting is good for companies that aim to get rid of the hassle of maintaining a website.
- Linux Hosting: Linux hosting is the hosting type that has Linux operating system lying under the hood. The customer can install the required software to run a website on it.
- Windows Hosting: Windows hosting is the hosting type that has Windows operating system running. The customer can install the required software to run a website on it.
- Reseller Hosting: Reseller hosting is the packages the web hosting service providers offer to the administrators and webmasters who want to sell their service to other customers.
How do I choose a web hosting service provider?
You can choose a web hosting service provider by checking their prices, responsiveness data, uptime data, technologies they bring, as well as the support they provide. That’s why we have covered all of the information you need for choosing the best web hosting service provider!
How important is web hosting for SEO?
The speed drastically affects websites’ appearance on search engines. Search engines do want fast websites to show on their first page of the search term. Even if your website exactly matches a search term on Google, faster websites will have a big advantage to be shown on top of yours.
How important is web hosting for the audience?
Websites with instant page-load capabilities are more likely to catch and hold the target audience. Slow loading speeds, as well as downtimes, will cause your audience to leave, and maybe never come back again.
What is CDN in web hosting?
CDN in web hosting is the abbreviation of Content Delivery Network. This feature enables websites to store important files on several data centers around the world; resulting in faster content delivery worldwide.
Can I switch web hosting companies?
Yes, you can switch web hosting companies. You can either migrate your website to another web hosting service provider if you have the knowledge, or you can pay for your migration to the target hosting company. Some hosting providers might migrate your website free of charge.