It’s no secret that I think everyone should have a blog. Even in a world dominated by social media influencers, where so many people think blogging is dead.
Trust me, there are still a lot of reasons to create a blog or a website.
Having a blog has led to hundreds of relationships I never would have formed otherwise.
It’s led to bucket list experiences, I never could have imagined happening.
And it’s given me a business that has allowed me to work from anywhere in the world (including some pretty cool spots).
But for a lot of people, the process is daunting.
Maybe you don’t feel like you have a good idea…
Maybe you aren’t a technical person…
Maybe you don’t know where to start…
Well here’s a very simple thing I learned a long time ago.
If you want to take a meaningful step towards making a change in your life, all you need to do is buy a domain, get a hosting account, and install WordPress.
Even if you go no farther than that, you’ll have taken one actionable step towards your goal, and that can help swing the momentum in the right way.
Check out our post on building an online asset if this idea resonates with you.
But if you’re not a technical person, those three things can seem like a foreign language.
The goal of this post is to help make things as simple and straightforward as possible.
You’re going to learn what hosting is, what types of hosting are out there, and which hosting option is best for your needs as you get your website or blog setup.
Many of the hosting services out there look the same, and if you don’t know what you should be looking for in a web hosting service, then it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like everyone is out to get you.
Never fear, this post is the only one you’ll need to make sure you get set up with the right blog hosting service, as quickly and easily as possible.
Table of Contents
How to Choose the Best Hosting Service for Your Blog
In this post we’re going to look at all of the following:
- Why good hosting is really important
- The One Thing More Important than Hosting
- The difference between shared, VPS and dedicated web hosting
- What the pros and cons are of each of the most popular hosting companies
- What features you should be looking for from any hosting company you choose
- How and where to buy your first domain
Want some help setting up your new blog? Check out our step by step guide to starting a blog.
Why is Good Web Hosting Important?
If you’re building a business online or online asset, there are very few upfront expenses that you have to make – at least for the type of businesses we’re advocating on this site.
That said, there’s one area where it’s worth spending a little bit of money: hosting.
Your hosting is the foundation for your entire business. If your hosting goes down, your entire business goes down. If it’s too slow, people will look elsewhere. If it doesn’t have the features you want, you’ll get stressed and frustrated.
Because of all of these reasons, it’s generally worth spending a little bit of time really figuring out which hosting service is right for you.
If you truly have a very limited budget, then the shared hosting solutions we talk about in this post will be fine – after all, thiz is what I personally had for years.
But read on, and really think about where you’re at and what’s right for you.
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Before We Start, Here’s The Only Thing More Important than Web Hosting
So it’s clear hosting is a really important component of your online business. That said, there’s one thing that I dare say is more important.
If you’re just getting started online, this is the most important word for you to understand.
WordPress is a blog/content management platform that makes it incredibly easy to build and manage a good-looking website. There’s a huge support community, plugins that can do anything you want, and thousands of beautiful themes and templates.
When I first started online I built a site on Drupal, and then Joomla thinking they were the best platforms. I was an idiot. (If you’re new, just ignore those terms altogether – you don’t need to know anything about them).
Start whatever you’re doing on WordPress and you’ll be glad you did. Most hosting companies have a one-click WordPress install, as you can see in the picture below.
That makes it easier than ever to use WordPress.
Now that I got that out of my system, let’s move on to the next step.
What Makes a Good Hosting Service?
There are so many factors that go into this, and things you can get confused by, so I’m going to make this as simple as I can for those of you who are just getting going.
Something you should realize is that most web hosting providers are all going to be relatively similar with the same features at the lower level.
But, here’s what you want to look for in a good hosting company:
- Security: Website security is important, you don’t want to get hacked, and if you have a few customers, you certainly don’t want their information hacked. So note what kind of security features are offered.
- SSL Certificates: Google is all about making sure sites are secure today, especially if you’re going to be collecting personal data or credit card information. SSL Certificates help encrypt data, you can tell if it’s there when you see https on the URL (like on this one). If you’re running an eCommerce shop, this is non-negotiable, and these days as Google as placed an emphasis on sites that are secure, it’s best to set this up from the beginning.
- Cost: A shared hosting account should be pretty affordable, certainly under $20 a month at the max while VPS and dedicated hosting will cost more.
- Backups: It is very important to backup your site on a regular basis, so make sure your hosting provider gives you backup options.
- Customer service: When you start building a site, you’re going to run into issues so it’s really important that you chose a hosting service that has really good customer service to help you out of the trouble you are (very likely) going to get yourself into.
- Email: You want to have a professional email address that is the same domain as your URL. So make sure your hosting provider can also give you the opportunity to add on email as well.
- Reliability: You don’t want your site to be down, ever. That means it’s important to work with a hosting company that is reliable and keeps downtimes to a minimum.
Your natural inclination is going to be to go with the value option, something that’s affordable, yet has some good features and offers plenty of customer service.
If that’s what you want, go with Bluehost. It’s affordable, and their customer service has always been fantastic (a very important thing if you’re just starting out). Here’s our full Bluehost Review.
However, before we can look at exactly what hosting company to use, it’s important to understand what the different types of hosting are. Let’s take a look at your options.
Why You Don’t Want Free Hosting
Let me tell you right now, you don’t want free web hosting. Sites like Wix or Weebly, which offer “free online website builders,” will give you zero flexibility, and pretty much make it impossible to actually run a business on your site.
Only use this if all you want to do is create a site that you’ll never update about your uncontrollable love of poodles.
All jokes aside, the biggest reason why you want to avoid going free is you have no control. You might have a ton of awesome content up on your blog and then all of sudden one day it’s gone because you’ve accidentally posted something that’s against the terms of service.
There goes your business, right down the drain.
In other words, don’t even think about going this route, I promise you it’s not worth it.
Free Hosting is Best for: People that don’t know any better.
The Most Common Types of Web Hosting
Once you start digging into hosting services, you’ll find there are a couple of different types of hosting options available to you. This is where it can get confusing and you can end up going with a more powerful hosting option than you need.
So, in this section, we’ll cover the common hosting choices you’ll face, plus our recommendations for each.
But first, check out this graphic. It’s going to be a nice visual illustration of the hosting options below.
The easiest way to understand the types of web hosting is to think of real estate.
Dedicated hosting is like a stand-alone alone single-family house. You control everything. VPS hosting is like a condo or a townhouse, you share a building (server) but you control your home. Shared hosting is like an apartment building, you have your own space but you’re sharing it with everyone else and you don’t control anything.
So with that in mind, let’s look at these options a little bit more in-depth.
Shared Hosting
There’s a good chance this is where you’ll want to start if cost is an issue for you. Shared hosting means that your website is hosted on the same servers as hundreds if not thousands of other websites. This is what makes these options more affordable.
While inexpensive ($3-15/month), there are some things you should pay attention to. Namely, site speed, email deliverability, and security issues. You want to research each of these as you look at shared hosting because site speed problems can impact your SEO rankings and well security issues are something you always want to avoid.
That being said, there are quite a few benefits on top of the price. Most shared hosting providers have one click WordPress installs, an easy to manage backend, good support, and limited database access. In most cases, you won’t see a massive hit on site speed and you can install other plugins for security measures to give added protection.
Some of the most common shared hosting providers are: Bluehost, Dreamhost, and Host Gator.
Best for: People with brand new sites with growing traffic, are on a budget, and need good customer support. These typically give you the best value for your needs.
Dedicated Hosting
With shared hosting, you have thousands of sites on one server, dedicated hosting essentially means you have an entire server just to yourself. It’s fast, expensive, and if you’re reading this article, it’s not for you, so move along.
Eventually, you might get to the world of dedicated hosting, but for people who are starting out or have small sites, this is not going to be the best fit.
So, yay, you don’t have to worry about it!
VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting
VPS hosting is a cross between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, and is the next logical step up from shared.
Think of VPS as your own little mini-server within a server. You don’t have the whole thing to yourself, but you have a portion of it that’s totally dedicated to you and your sites. So all of the downsides of shared, such as viruses and traffic slow down, don’t affect you as much with a VPS solution.
This is going to be more expensive than shared (obviously) but still isn’t outrageous.
A hosting bill for the year on Linode (which is where I used to have my site) is about $250 but it’s very easy for it to go up from there.
Best for: People who want better speed and reliability from the get-go.
One More Option: Managed WordPress Hosting
So we’ve covered the most popular types of hosting, but there are a couple more that have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years, so it’s worth mentioning them.
The first is managed WordPress hosting.
Since millions of sites out there are on WordPress, there are a handful of companies that specialize specifically in hosting sites that are on the WordPress platform.
These are usually a little bit more expensive, but if you’re using WordPress, and especially if you actually have significant traffic coming to your site, it can be worth it.
Some benefits of managed WordPress hosting:
- Automatic WordPress Updates – These services handle all of the updates to WordPress for you.
- Plugin Notifications – If you have plugins that won’t cooperate with new versions of WordPress, they will tell you and make sure you don’t have any site issues.
- Servers optimized for WordPress – Specifically, this helps make your site faster and more secure
- Testing Platform – Most of these services all you to make a backup of your site in a testing environment. So if you want to make a big change, you can test it first to make sure it works, before implementing on the live site.
- Built-in CDN – A CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. Basically, it means it will speed up your site if you have a lot of media or images.
By far the most popular managed WordPress hosting option is WP Engine. I run this blog on WP Engine and my golf site Breaking Eighty with them as well. Overall it’s been a really good solution and I highly recommend them.
Here is my detailed WP Engine Review about why I like this service so much.
Managed CMS Platform
Finally, the last big type of hosting you’ll see is the managed CMS (content management system) platform.
Essentially platforms like this combine numerous services into one large service.
A lot of people chose this because their sites are really big and they use a lot of different services to run things like a blog, membership site, storefront, etc., and they want to streamline it.
So rather than having a different company or service for:
- Blog
- Hosting
- Landing Pages
- Membership Site Protection
- Affiliate Program
- A/B Testing
- Etc.
There is one service that does all of this for you.
There are definitely some big pros and big cons to this route. A few years ago, I decided to move the site over to a platform called Rainmaker as a CMS, it didn’t work out and I don’t recommend that service in particular.
That’s not to say these types of systems don’t work, but I would suggest doing your research first!
Most of these aren’t built on WordPress, and reduce some of your long-term flexibility, so at this point I wouldn’t recommend them for your new site.
Knowing What You Need When it Comes to Blog Hosting
Alright, you know about all of the different kinds of hosting out there, but what about your needs? Depending on what you’re planning on doing with your site, one type of hosting might be a better option for your needs.
So, you’re going to need to think about your ultimate plans for your site before you jump into picking the right hosting.
Here are a few things you might want to consider:
- What platform are you using to build your blog? For example, using WordPress (more on why that’s a good choice below) or a setup that includes hosting.
- Are you going to be seeing tons of traffic? Yes, that’s the dream but for new bloggers, not something that is going to be likely for a little while, at least.
- Are you going to have periods of large influxes of traffic? A big sale, for instance, could end up driving thousands of extra people to your site, so you want to have a hosting situation that can handle it.
- Do you have any coding experience? Some hosting sites are very beginner-friendly while other cater to people who are able to make tweaks on their own.
- How many sites do you have? If you’ve got one site, then it’s no big deal, but if you have multiple sites (or plan on it) you’ll need to know if you’re going to be set adding these to one hosting account.
- Are you very concerned about security? While all hosting sites are going to provide basic security features, someone who is running an eCommerce shop is going to need a higher security level than a standard freelancing portfolio.
- Will you have a lot of data? Traffic volume matters when it comes to hosting but so does database size, so if you’re planning on having tons of large files hosted on your site, you’re going to need to think about going with a host that offers more storage.
- What’s your budget? At the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to afford your hosting. For those starting out price could be a big factor, if you’re looking to switch budget that into your monthly expenses.
Answering these questions is going to go a long way in helping you determine what web hosting company is going to be the best for your needs.
Here are a few more web hosting questions to answer before deciding on the best host for your goals.
Also, think about how your site might grow over the coming years. Sure, you can switch and upgrade hosts if you need to, but it’s always good to find a hosting company that can scale with you as your brand grows.
The Best Hosting for 95% of You
Ok, so that’s a lot of information and you probably got a little bit overwhelmed reading through all of the different options there.
So let’s get back down to business and make it simple for you.
If you’re just starting your website, stick with shared hosting for now.
Most good shared hosting providers will give you:
- Unlimited domains
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited file transfer
- A free domain
- Unlimited emails
And you should be able to get all of this for under $50 for your first year.
Note: Pricing can be more expensive for people outside the United States.
That’s an incredible deal and makes it a total no-brainer for someone who is just getting going.
Then if your site grows quickly, or you find yourself needing other features down the road, you can always upgrade.
The Best Blog Hosting Service for Newbies
So, when it comes to shared hosting there is one company I always recommend over others: Bluehost.
Why do I think Bluehost is the best shared hosting out there?
Specifically, because I have experience with it. If I’m starting a new, unproven site, that’s almost always where I start it out.
Most shared hosting companies are going to have very similar features, so to many, it’s almost like choosing a commodity.
However, I’ve found the Bluehost Support team to be invaluable. This is especially important if you’re just starting out. You will break something at some point, so having competent and easy to access support is huge.
Bluehost does a phenomenal job with that, so I think they’re great for those just starting out.
For brand new freelancers or bloggers, we recommend Bluehost as your Wordpress host. It's affordable and has 24/7 supoort
Also, if you’re just starting out with all of this and feeling a little overwhelmed, check out course The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Lifestyle Business. We hold your hand and cover all the basics.
Best Web Hosting for More Established Websites
If you have a blog that is getting a decent amount of traffic (say more than 10k unique visitors a month), then I’d highly recommend WP Engine.
That’s what I use for my more established websites, and while I pay a bit of a premium for it, it’s been worth every penny.
Get Started with WP Engine Today
Where to Buy Your Domain
If you’re going the shared hosting route, there’s a very good chance you’ll get a free domain when you get set up, so if you’re just starting one new blog, then go with that and call it good.
I’ve also used Name Cheap which is one of the cheaper services, but the user interface is absolutely atrocious.
For a few extra bucks one of my favorite sites to pickup domains is Hover. Their user interface is super simple and sleek, and over time, when you start piling up domains, you’ll be really happy about this.
Best Hosting Service For…
- Best Hosting Service for Most People: Bluehost
- Best Hosting Service for Established Sites: WP Engine
- Best VPS Hosting Service (if you’re technical): Linode
What Other Web Hosting Questions Do You Have?
Frankly, there are dozens of web hosting companies out there. Some big, some small, some cheap, some expensive, and I’ve never come across one that is the unanimous recommendation. Many people will have a preference, but almost always they’ll have a complaint or two.
The ones I recommend here are simply my best recommendations after creating sites for nearly a decade.
Have questions about what is right for you or how to go about getting your new site setup? Drop a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to get you the answers you’re looking for!
This post has been updated as of October 2023 for accuracy.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. Meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me!
Sean Ogle
Sean Ogle is the Founder of Location Rebel where he has spent the last 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give them the freedom to do more of the things they like to do in life. When he's not in the coffee shops of Portland, or the beaches of Bali, he's probably sneaking into some other high-class establishment where he most certainly doesn't belong.Join over 40,000 people who have taken our 6 part freelance writing course. Sign up below and let’s do this together.
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How come you left out Media Temple? They are the freaking best and have the worlds best support!
You know, I haven’t had a ton of experience with Media Temple, but I’ve heard good things. I might need to do a little more research and talk to a few people that use them and update the post. Thanks for the thoughts!
I have heard quite a few negative things regarding their grid service when it comes to downtimes and slow performance.
Their managed VPS is probably the best choice but also rather expensive at $50 a month.
Digital Ocean currently has the cheapest unmanaged cloud VPS out there with word press one click install and security updates can also be easily done (which is all that Media Temple does for you anyway with their managed VPS).
Lots of value in this post, Sean. Thanks for taking the time to write this up! I’ve bounced around a number of hosting providers over the last several years…this post would have saved me a lot of trouble 🙂
Hey Sean,
I totally agree with all this post apart from one part I take exception to – the bit on Free Hosting (“For people that don’t know any better”)
I disagree, although please feel free to tell me I’m wrong! Here’s why:
I’m currently in the process of creating a couple of ‘lifestyle’, low-maintenance micro-blogging platforms. I don’t care about SEO and ranking on Google if I can tap into a social network where I can easily build an audience.
The answer? Tumblr.
Although with Tumblr you have less flexibility, a limited selection of free themes, it allows you to:
– ‘crowdsource’ posts (people can easily submit to your blog)
– easily create fresh content (either by micro-blogging from your smartphone or by ‘re-tumbling other people’s tumblr posts or stuff you like on the internet)
– push stuff out and have it look beautiful with little or no effort
– don’t have to worry about security updates, etc.
– you’re allowed advertising, affiliate links, etc.
– you can create as many micro blogs/sites all under one account/username – so you can create a post about one topic in under 5 minutes for one site, and then easily switch over to another account and blog about something else on your other site (all from your phone)
– these sites take a few minutes to set up!
etc.
Food for thought?
Great summary post Sean. I have to say that up until now I’ve been impressed with FatCow. You can even pick up an account for as low as $15 if you catch the right offers. Not had any major problems with the web hosting and the live chat support has always been excellent. My biggest gripe with them is the webmail that comes with the hosting – that seems quite poor.
However, compared to some of the hosts I’ve worked with for clients, FatCow are a dream. Some hosts don’t use CPanel, and some don’t even let you point domains at subfolders etc which is a massive PITA!
Would second the comment about WP Engine. Haven’t used them, but have only heard fantastic reviews.
Thank you Sean…
First I’ve heard of fatcow… given your recommendation, very tempting until there’s moooolah :º)
~ d
Great rundown, Sean. When I first started, I hosted with Dreamhost. They’re perfectly fine if you have a low-traffic site.
I now have a professional plan with WP Engine at $99/month. One thing to watch out for is that WP Engine charges based on number of unique visitors, and they count uniques completely differently from how you’re used to seeing them in Google Analytics. So, each month, WP Engine counts more than twice the amount of visits that GA does.
If you go over the WP Engine traffic limit for your plan, you pay $1/thousand visitors. These add up quickly. With the new pricing strategy, I would have paid $250/month instead of the $99 I’m used to. A tremendous (and kind of aggravating) jump.
So, my solution now is to treat WP Engine as the “big league” and use Dreamhost as a kind of “bullpen.”
My high traffic and money earning sites go on WP Engine, and my little hobby sites, personal sites, brand new sites, etc. go on one $10/month account at Dreamhost. If one of them develops into something more, it gets promoted to the big league.
I really liked this analogy of having newer sites with little to no traffic in a bullpen phase on a shared server.
I am still on Dreamhost but having issues getting the site to load at an acceptable speed- I’m guessing some more tinkering behind the scenes with code in wordpress might be part of the way forward.
Cheers!
Mike
Perfect timing as we were just discussing if we should make the server switch! I had never heard of WPengine, just checked out their site and it sounds awesome! Thanks so much for all the info, if we ever meet up, i’ll buy you a beer.
I think this is a pgreat post. I had really followed your advices, but the main question is: why you hadn’t included ipage in your post? Do you think it doesn’t worth it? I would bang my head against the wall if you know something bad about it, because I had gotten its services for the next 3 years! Until now I had fou.d it reliable.So whT do you think?
Re: Shared hosting
One thing that wasn’t mentioned is that in many cases sites on shared hosting will suffer downtime on a frequent basis. Most people are unaware of this, obviously because they aren’t monitoring their websites 24/7 but with a free service like pingdom.com you can get email & SMS alerts whenever they go down.
Having started to track my bluehost account, I can see my site(s) go down, quite often during peak hours (late afternoon UK time) and usually for about half an hour!
This is awesome, I’d never heard of that service. When I was on shared, I’d notice it every once in awhile, but I wonder if it was actually happening more often than I knew…
One thing I would advise against is getting your domain name from the same place you host your site. If things go south with you and your host, they can (potentially) hold your domain hostage. For those who don’t know, the registrar is where your domain name is held and a host is where your site is stored. Most of the businesses listed are both.
At your registrar there will be a setting, called a nameserver, that points to your host. If you ever get to a point where you want to switch hosts, all you have to do is change your nameservers to point to your new host and viola, you are up and running on the new site.
The hosts that also have your domain name are not going to want you to go so they can make moving away from them a royal pain. Keeping your domains separate leaves total control in your hands, not theirs.
Thanks, Sean!
Definitely a good point, Kent! Thanks for sharing 🙂
When one is searching through reviews of web site hosting companies, be aware that there are a plethora of fake reviews, where the reviewer is being monetarily compensated by the hosting company for the positive reviews. After reading several you can develop a knack for deciphering the fake reviews from the genuine ones.
About a year and-a-half ago the founder of HostGator, Brent Oxley(who started the company from his College dorm in Florida), sold the company to Endurance International Group for $225 Million.
Also, iPage is the very same company as Fat Cow( same management, same servers in upper Mass., etc.).
Right now, I am partial to one you didn’t mention~ inMotion, based in L.A. with servers in So. Cal. and Arizona, mainly due to their speed and customer service.
I’m currently with Host Gator and have a Pingdom account set up, so I can confirm that my site goes down regularly although usually for very short periods. My business is focused on the European market, so one thing I’ve been told by a developer here is to make sure your site is hosted on the continent where the majority of your visitors will be coming from as there is significant lag time for the site to load when the content is coming across the ocean. Some hosts have servers in different locations and allow you to choose. He also mentioned SSD (Solid State Drive) servers which are the new thing and apparently much faster than traditional servers. One company I’m considering switching to is a2hosting.com which has servers in the US and Europe as well as an SSD option that is quite affordable. Wondering what your thoughts on SSD hosting are Sean?
I’ve also got Cloudflare on my site now which hosts cached versions of my site in different locations around the world to speed up loading time. I’m paying $15/month at the moment for that and will be experimenting to see if a new host will increase loading time more than the Cloudflare network.
I dont know a whole lot about how SSD in the hosting world, but I do know when I switched from a traditional hard drive to SSD on my laptop, the load times went down to almost nothing. So I can only imagine it would be a good thing in servers. That said, in reality you probably aren’t going to notice a huge difference on your end.
I was always confused between dedicated hosting and VPS but now the difference is clear after reading your article. Thanks for sharing this wonderful and much required information. I’m sure its going to help every newbie and bloggers who are just close in being a problogger. I’m with JustHost and really happy with their shared hosting. 🙂
I have a blog that I started two years ago and it is completely on weebly. This was before I knew better. Is there a way to transfer all content into WordPress and do a redesign? I even asked people on o desk to do it for me but I haven’t found anyone that Ifeel can do it properly. I know I backed myself into a corner and I feel that I am stuck with weebly but I want to change. I am even open to paying someone to make it happen but haven’t found anyone that can help. Please advise.
Yeah that’s tough. I’d do a quick google search for “migrate weebly to wordpress” and you should find your options pretty quick. It also depends on the size of the site etc. If it’s small and you dont have social stats or anything you could just copy and paste content.
Some decent advice Sean, but I have one recommendation I think you and your readers may be interested in, which is WordPress on Google App Engine. There are a couple of major benefits to this combination. First of all, Google App Engine has a free tier, which offers plenty of bandwidth for bloggers that are just starting out…
https://cloud.google.com/pricing/
Secondly, if one of your blog posts suddenly becomes very popular, Google is equipped to scale to meet the demand, so you aren’t dropping traffic from your hosting being down.
Is it the cheapest option for everyone? Probably not if you’re regularly exceeding the free tier, but for starting out it’s a good option, and migrating to another WordPress host later on is a straightforward process. The only other downside is that it takes a few more steps than the standard ‘1 click install’. If the language in this guide puts you off, then perhaps someone you know can help you do what it asks… https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/wordpress
HTH.
Synthesis (www.websynthesis.com) offers managed WordPress hosting and the same feature set as WPengine with a little more bang for your buck – the affiliate payouts are less lucrative though which is probably why you don’t see more people recommending them even though it’s a better deal!
I’ve never heard of them, I’ll take a look and see what I can find out about it!
Web hosting play the key roll in your ranking position for any search engine . It all depends on which kind of plan and service selected by you for you website . The above information so much helpful to go for best selection of a hosting service.
I’ve been doing some more research into this arena and have decided to go with http://www.pressable.com. The seem to have a unique pricing plan in the premium wordpress hosting space in that they allow you to have multiple sites under your plan and charge by the number of pageviews shared between the sites. I like this pricing model better as it’s much easier to understand that metric as opposed to bandwidth + RAM + CPU + Storage or some combination thereof. They seem to have very good reviews. One thing they lack is phone support, but you can get a 5 site plan with 15,000 pageviews/ month for $25/month. They also include a CDN. Since I’m currently paying $20/month for cloudflare and would no longer need it, it almost pays for the entire hosting account. I also like that I can host my personal travel blog in the same place since without having to have another hosting account for that site.
Is it the cheapest option for everyone? Probably not if you’re regularly exceeding the free tier, but for starting out it’s a good option, and migrating to another WordPress host later on is a straightforward process.
Great post Sean!
Probably the best choice to start is a good shared hosting (don’t try free hosting), where the quality-price ratio is pretty good.
The main things to consider are (as you said):
– quality of the support (it will save your life 😉 )
– speed
– scalability
In addition, it’s good to have “unlimited” resources, so you have to think only on the content
Thanks for clearing my doubts. before reading this article i was confused between dedicated server and VPS and i hope this post will also help many newbies to understand about the web hosting. thanks for sharing.
Thanks Sean for this post. I’ve been in the business of web hosting over 4 years and I’ve tried out various services. I’d like to point out that a great customer service and user experience is key when it comes to web hosting. I think WebHostingBuzz seems to be doing okay too.
Sean – hugely helpful post – Are you familiar with DreamHost’s DreamPress hosting? It appears to compete with WPEngine. If so, any thoughts?
I know people that have used Dreamhost’s basic shared hosting, but don’t know a whole lot about DreamPress. The people I know who have used WP Engine love it. It has a few features like a built in CDN and 1 Click Staging that are particularly useful.
Sean, thank you for this very informative post. You covered a lot of information. The only thing that i would like to add is this: when choosing a hosting company make sure that you are not just a number, build relationships this could be priceless.
Hey Brian – can you expand on what you mean by building relationships with a hosting company? BTW – I just set up with WP Engine. I’m a beginner so haven’t really tested all their services but so far all is good and as promised/implied.
I am considering starting a lifestyle/cooking / blog. I have never blogged before, completely and totally unaware or how to get started. I read your post, and found it to be very helpful, but am still unsure of how to get started ( setting it up) without much expense, but still be able to attract advertisers to generate revenue. I want my blog to reach locals where I live, and to be easy to find, but would like a wider audience for those all over interested in my content. I just don’t know which hosting company etc… I need to consider for the theme’s I want to blog about. Do you have any recommendations. I guess the best for me would be to do a shared blog?
Thank You, Debra
Hi Debra
Great to hear you want to start blogging. Why not start of by using wordpress to make your blog. Its a great tool and easy to use. You can choose from many themes and they 1000s of tools you can use to improve those themes.
Also Plenty of tutorials on how to setup your website with WordPress
Thanks
Martin
Meathosts.com
Sean, thank you for a very informative and useful post. I currently have 3 websites with GoDaddy and I’m happy, However, I’ll keep this post bookmarked for future reference as I found it covering a lot of useful information.
I would like to thank Sean for sharing such an informative blog post that will help those people who are looking to for a best web hosting service on affordable charges. Many people who don’t have enough idea and also don’t have knowledge how good web hosting is important?
thank you about this awesome information.
It’s always better to take your time and choose the right web host the first time. I didn’t and ended up moving my site from one to another, a process which is never fun. Although with WordPress at least there are plugins available to make the transition easier.
I have found a secret and simple method that works very well:
Just search in Bing or Yahoo (not in Google!) for “what is the web hosting company with the world’s lowest account cancellation percentage”. You should use this complete search term WITHOUT the quotes and you can copy this long search term here if you want.
If you follow this advice, a handful real good very best hosting providers (guaranteed) will appear at the top of the search results. These are the only 100% reliable ones.
These are the providers who are not afraid to be transparent by publishing their web hosting account cancellation percentage. Don’t use Google for this because their search results are much less relevant than Bing or Yahoo. Good luck!
Thanks Sean, i was little bit confused about choosing the reliable web hosting provider for my upcoming blog. now lot of my doubts clear to read this post, hope the things all right as you shared.
Thanku for clearing my confusion. I was really cofused between choosing a dedicated hosting and VPS but your article made things crystal clear for me. Nothing less then a blessing for all the new entrants in this field.
Thank you for this article Sean. I have been looking at WP engine. I have to do a little more research, but it might be exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Excellent article, Sean. There are quite a few decent WP hosting companies. SSD drives are especially important on the hardware side of things. The greater number of plugins the faster the drives need to read/write to keep up and still provide quick page loads.
I use WP-Engine for my blog and those guys are the best. Glad that you are thinking the same, Sean.
But how about some other similar “managed WordPress hosting” as Kinsta for example? Does someone has tried them? I have an interest in Kinsta, but I am no sure how good are they compared to WP-Engine.
Great tips about choosing an hosting provider. i am using the hostgator, after reading your article i have to think more before choosing the right hoster. thank you
Hey Sean, this is a great write up, you have summed up quite valid points here in a very detailed and comprehensive manner. Every blogger should read this post.
I am also a blogger and Bluehost is always the first choice for me. They have an awesome tech support a great loading time and is affordable as per your recommendation.
Reading this post completely was surely worth my time. Thanks for the valuable informations.
Cheers….
I will tell you my story, a bad experience: A few months ago I acquired the “1984.is Hosting Company” service and I hired your hosting because it had a very good reputation, in Iceland they place it as the best. But after I made the payment, they canceled my website, they kept the money I paid them and they did not solve the situation, now my website is still down and they never answered, they are scammers.
Hey Sean,
Looks like I’m late to the party but the information that you shared is still relevant and very helpful for the beginners.
I have just started my blog and have selected Bluehost as it has a great customer support and its cheap.
Thanks
Thanks for writing this blog it is very helpful for me about Hosting Services . I am using the Hostgator, after reading your article I have to think that best web hosting.
Web hosts are companies that rent out their services and technologies to host websites on the internet. And for any website to generate traffic and the importance of the website web hosting is very important.
Really very nice information on this site. Thanks for sharing this nice information.
thanks for providing such amazing pieces of information. Keep it up.