With so many options to pick from for web hosting, choosing the right service for your needs can be difficult.
Some hosts have unique advantages and value over others, so it can be hard to know which services will offer the best deal and which are best suited to your website needs.
We’ve seen the most popular web hosts in the industry for a few years now, and we wanted to see if our reviews stood up to repeated testing. This is not an exhaustive list of the hundreds of hosts out there, but we’ve put together a list of our favorite hosting services so you can decide which services are best for your needs.
So which web hosting services should you consider for your needs?
Bluehost vs. Siteground
With so many of the big players offering basic shared hosting packages, it can be difficult to figure out which service is best suited to your needs. For one, most of these hosts are relatively new, so we wanted to test them and see which ones stood the test of time.
Because both of these companies offer a one-click installation and easy installation options for WordPress, they are both great options for businesses and bloggers. On the other hand, Bluehost has a slightly more expensive pricing structure and Siteground offers a free website builder.
Note: HostGator also offers an excellent $2.99/month Bluehost for Business plan, which allows you to have an unlimited number of domains. However, it is limited to ten devices and has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Bluehost
Bluehost is owned by HostGator, the multi-award-winning web hosting company. It offers all the usual web hosting perks you’d expect such as WordPress and email accounts, but also offers several more unique services, such as a simple shared hosting plan for as little as $4.95 a month, which comes with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited email storage.
Another nice-to-have feature is the 24/7 support via chat, email, phone, and phone-based support from a “Bluehost expert”.
Bluehost has a few tiers of service that are tailored to meet your needs. The plans start out with a simple shared hosting package that is best for small business and bloggers. The Starter plan offers 2GB of RAM, 100GB of storage, and 5 email accounts for $4.95 per month. The PRO plan comes with all the same features as the Starter plan, but with unlimited storage and speed up to 5Mbps for $9.95 per month.
Prices for these basic packages may seem expensive, but many other shared web hosting services are priced around the $5-10 mark. For someone who needs only basic service, $4.95 per month is actually quite a good deal.
Siteground
Siteground is a smaller player in the industry, but it offers a solid set of hosting features, with some advanced ones thrown in for good measure. It has a $2.49/month dedicated plan with 5TB of storage, 25 concurrent users, and unlimited bandwidth.
For someone who needs some power, Siteground also has high-end VPS and dedicated server plans, priced from $16.99 (£12.97) a month to $1,185.00 (£937) a month for the “unlimited” offering.
When we tested Siteground, it was still undergoing maintenance, so we couldn’t test it in full, but we were able to sign up and test its signup and sign-in process.
Siteground’s cheap and simple shared hosting is great for a small business, but if you need more power, or you are willing to pay more, Siteground is also a good choice.
Hostwinds vs. Pacer
Hostwinds is another multi-award-winning web hosting company that offers a number of impressive offerings. It’s pricier than the other hosts in this list, and its prices start at $29.99 a month, but for that you get unlimited disk space, bandwidth, unlimited mailboxes, domain hosting, and a dedicated IP address. Hostwinds also has solid-state drive (SSD) hosting packages available, starting at $39.99.
Pacer
If you are looking for a Linux-based web hosting service, you can’t go wrong with Pacer. It has a number of Linux-based plans that range from $4.19 to $30 a month and are ideal for small businesses and bloggers.
With Pacer, you get unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited email accounts. It also has some truly powerful dedicated servers, starting at $139 a month and going up to $1,160 a month for the “unlimited” dedicated server plan.
Pacer is designed for people who are serious about their web hosting experience, but it’s also excellent for bloggers and other small businesses.